GovHost services going nationwide

Cities and counties across the country will be able to tap the GovHost.com

suite of products to deliver electronic government services following today's

launch of the national GovHost Premier Partner Program.

The new program is designed to help VC3 Inc., an e-government solutions

provider, take nationwide its product suite that targets small to medium-size

municipalities, said David Dunn, president and chief executive officer of

the Columbia, S.C.-based company. GovHost's current customers are located

in the Carolinas and Georgia.

"We waited to launch this reseller initiative until the product was

mature enough," Dunn said. "We have 15 government customers, five live sites,

and the others going live over time. E-government has been a springboard

for moving forward in technology [and] to sell nationally."

The GovHost product suite includes 14 virtual government modules that

are hosted individually or as a create-your-own-suite for cities and counties.

These modules enable local governments to provide online services to citizens

without having to hire additional information technology staff.

The company's application service provider framework enables a government

entity's online services to be outsourced and handled by VC3 at a data center.

The governments are not required to buy the software but simply subscribe

to it, Dunn said.

New Age Technologies, a systems integration firm based in Louisville,

Ky., signed on this month as the second participant in the GovHost Premier

Partner Program and will target the Midwestern and mid-Atlantic regions.

The first partnership occurred last April, when VC3 signed a reseller

agreement with Berryman & Henigar, a San Diego-based municipal services

firm, to target portions of the West Coast and Florida.

It takes about 45 days between VC3's first contact with a potential reseller and the time

when they are fully trained and ready to offer the GovHost suite to potential

customers, said Scott Spears, director of channel marketing.

"The ideal situation is that we're signing up several partners to look

a lot like VC3 does," Spears said. "It should take about 20 [partners] to

cover the whole country. We're looking for six to be productive in the first

year and to have the whole country covered by the end of next year."