Web Piston: Choosing a New Strategy

Abstract

Web Piston is a successful enterprise that provides its small business and individual clients with automated web design and web hosting services. Owing to the rapidly changing competitive environment, however, the company’s founder, Ricardo Lasa, feels that a change in strategy is necessary. The case describes the competitive environment for web hosting and outlines four alternative strategies: 1) becoming a “freemium” player, 2) becoming a custom web site developer, 3) creating a marketplace to match web clients and developers, and 4) focusing on developing portals for deployment on social networking sites. The principal objective of the case is to provide a rationale for making the decision, or to offer an alternative strategy. A teaching note may be obtained from Dr. T. Grandon Gill (grandon@usf.edu). The case is almost entirely undisguised and was specifically intended to focus on building judgment/evaluation skills in the presence of considerable uncertainty.