.Kiwi turns to new CIRA platform for registry services

.Kiwi will be run on .CA manager’s platform.

Competition in the backend registry services business is heating up, and .CA manager CIRA has entered the game with .Kiwi as a client.

.Kiwi will switch its backend to CIRA’s Fury Registry Platform, the companies announced today.

There are about 10,000 domain names in the .kiwi zone file. The domain name is designed for people and businesses with a connection to New Zealand.

The move to a new registry provider was necessary because .kiwi’s current backend provider, MMX (Minds + Machines), is getting out of the backend registry business. MMX is itself switching to another registry company that has traditionally handled a country code top level domain, Nominet, for its domain names.

Nominet also recently snagged Automattic’s .Blog as a client.

Pricing for registry services has dropped significantly over the past couple years since new top level domain names were introduced.

Public Interest Registry is putting its .org contract out for bid. It pays Afilias over $30 million to manage its 10 million domains. To give you an idea of the level of new competition, over 20 companies are bidding for PIR’s contract.