The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced the addition of seven new top-level domains, turning industry-wide attention to this issue. Mr Audrey Apfel, vice-president and research director with Gartner says, "The addition of these seven new high-level domain names by ICANN is only the tip of the iceberg".

"Organisations must register names in multiple registries for both offensive and defensive purposes, but with the knowledge that no one can cover all the options. The future will bring more options, not less. Organisations with no plan for adapting their domain naming strategy to these changes do so at their own peril," Mr Apfel says. "Organisations have mistakenly assumed that having a domain name with `dot.com' was enough. Being in `dot.com' does not mean you are dot.done'," Mr Apfel adds. Gartner estimates that the up-front cost of developing this strategy will cost the typical Global 2000 organisation $75,000. According to Gartner, the process of developing this domain strategy must consider multiple factors. These include marketing and branding issues for existing and future initiatives and products, legal exposures and liability, domains beyond dotcom, non-English language variants of names, a process for ongoing revision on a biannual basis to address new high-level domain names, products,acquisitions and mergers at a yearly cost of US $20,000.