Rightside, the domain name services company and Donuts, the largest new domain name extension stable, announced this week the extension of their agreement, through which Rightside provides back-end registry services to Donuts’ set of 200 new generic Top Level Domains (new gTLDs).
The extension comes as surprise since Donuts announced last quarter that it was working on its own branch of Nomulus, Google’s open source registry backend management platform. In addition, there was rumoured to be acrimony between the parties following Donuts’ failed buyout of Rightside’s gTLD registry business for USD 70 million .
Taryn Naidu, CEO of Rightside said in a release:
This agreement, an extension of our five-year relationship with Donuts, ensures the continued availability of the technology platform relied on by hundreds of Donuts’ registrar partners and millions of their end-user customers.
Donuts’ CEO Bruce Jaffe added:
Rightside has been a critically important partner during our gTLD portfolio’s first three years in the market, and we look forward to building on our shared success.
A registry back-end system performs the critical functions necessary for a domain name registry to fulfill its technical obligations in running a top-level domain such as provisioning and maintenance of domains in the registry database and the domain name system (DNS), supplying WHOIS services, providing shared access to registration functions for domain name registrars, and numerous features to support the business and operational requirements of registry operators.