Liaison Technologies, Inc. (ʺLiaisonʺ) is a global integration and data management company that provides complex business solutions and services to over 8,000 organizations in over 35 countries. Liaison is a global leader in business-to-business integration services that helps companies maximize... Read more
Liaison Technologies, Inc. (ʺLiaisonʺ) is a global integration and data management company that provides complex business solutions and services to over 8,000 organizations in over 35 countries.
Liaison is a global leader in business-to-business integration services that helps companies maximize cost efficiencies and improve supply chain operations. Liaisonʹs services portfolio includes master data management ("MDM"), business-to-business and enterprise application integration project outsourcing, managed services, and a robust service oriented architecture-based network platform. Headquartered in Alpharetta, GA, USA, Liaison also has offices in the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
The potential use of the .LIAISON gTLD will primarily be driven by Liaison's future business strategies as identified in its press release page: https://liaison.com/about-liaison/news.
The intended future mission and purpose of the .LIAISON gTLD is to serve as a trusted, hierarchical, and intuitive namespace for Liaison and end-users, and potentially Liaison's licensees and other strategic parties.
Recognizing the potential dynamic evolution of the .LIAISON gTLD as a trusted brand namespace, Liaison has decided to utilize itself as the entity to file this application and bring the .LIAISON gTLD to market. Although Liaison is committed to moving forward with the .LIAISON gTLD application, it has not at the time of filing this application been able to fully vet and analyze all potential use case options.
Although ICANN has not specifically recognized a .BRAND gTLD specification in the current gTLD application round, it is widely anticipated in the brand owner community that this will become a specialty subset of gTLDs.
.LIAISON is intended to be one of those .BRAND gTLDs, with the goal of protecting Liaison's online presence and identity, expanding its marketing and promotion efforts, providing a secure channel for online products and services, and offering a platform through which to consolidate many of the intellectual property activities of Liaison.
Liaison intends to initially limit registration and use of domain names within the .LIAISON gTLD to Liaison and potentially licensees and strategic parties. This initial limited use will allow Liaison to establish the .LIAISON operations and achieve full sustainability. This limited distribution, coupled with the other requirements set forth in Specification 9 of the template Registry Agreement, is intended to exempt Liaison from its annual Code of Conduct Compliance requirements.
After Stage 3 (see below), Liaison will evaluate whether opportunities exist to carry out the business strategy for the .LIAISON gTLD through expansion that continues the sustainable operations of the registry through registrations that may or may not be fee-based to parties other than Liaison and potentially its licensees and strategic parties.
Liaison currently plans a four-stage rollout for the .LIAISON gTLD:
1. Stage 1
The initial stage of implementation of the gTLD will involve Liaison registering a limited number of .LIAISON second-level domain names.
This initial use will provide Liaison's IT and security personnel the time to run a number of tests to ensure seamless and secure access using the .LIAISON gTLD domain names, interoperability with various software and Web-based applications, and unbroken and secure use of all names. This initial allocation will also allow the appropriate Liaison staff to coordinate with the internal and external staff responsible for the delegation and setup phases of the .LIAISON gTLD to ensure a proper transition from delegation to full operation.
2. Stage 2
Once all testing has been successfully completed, Liaison will begin allocating domain names in .LIAISON for more widespread internal corporate use.
It is in Stage 2 that Liaison will evaluate expanding the operations of the .LIAISON gTLD potentially to permit registration by other registrants such as licensees and strategic parties. Should an assessment of its expansion strategy lead to a decision to extend registration rights to other parties, this expansion is currently planned to take place during Stage Three. However, any expansion would be conditioned upon a review of Specification 9 (Registry Code of Conduct) set forth in the template Registry Agreement to ensure compliance with Liaison's business model.
3. Stage 3
It is in this stage that Liaison may potentially implement its decision to potentially extend registration rights to licensees and strategic parties, depending upon compliance with Specification 9 as noted above. The dates of such expansion are subject to change depending upon business, strategic, and industry factors at the time.
After consideration of the following factors: analysis of Liaison's existing domain name portfolio; internal analysis of marketing initiatives; and the fact that Liaison will have full control over the number of registrations in the .LIAISON gTLD namespace, Liaison is confident that the number of domain name registrations will be less than 10,000 in the first five years of operation.
4. Stage 4
Based on its experience in the first four stages, and based on its experience with any expansion implemented in Stage Three, Liaison will assess whether its business plan and expansion strategy should be augmented by extending registration rights to a broader class of entities. It is anticipated by Liaison that changes to the domain name industry, and particularly the impact of .BRAND gTLDs, will take a number of years to be realized and assessed. Any decision to expand the gTLD beyond corporate, licensees and strategic parties' use will take into account this experience as well as the technical analysis of potential expansion.
The potential use of the .LIAISON gTLD will also be driven by Liaisons' future business strategies.
Using current projections based on Liaisons' existing businesses, future business plans, current domain name portfolio, and other strategic factors, Liaison estimates second-level domain name registrations to be in line with the projections set forth in the financial template provided in the answer to Question 46 of this application.
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