VeriSign recently renewed its contract with the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to serve as the exclusive provider for .net domain names (see: ICANN Renewal Bumps VeriSign Shares Higher).

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The technological and economic features of the industry are also such that a single provider is often able to serve the overall demand at a lower total cost than any combination of smaller entities could.

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Relevant Disclosures: I serve as a trustee for TIAA, a provider of retirement plans to the not-for-profit sector.

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Neuralytix, the company I serve, believes that IT should really be a provider of data and information, not a support and maintenance organization for for infrastructure.

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The company said it is one of the caterers that serve Air Canada but not the airline's provider out of Victoria -- from where the flight took off.

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In some cases, as in our programs to backstop money market mutual funds, the purpose of the facility is to serve, once again in classic central bank fashion, as liquidity provider of last resort.

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But even that really does serve the long-term goal of the company being a streaming-only provider with very low operational costs and a simple business model and user interface.

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Adam Aronson is CEO of Arrowsight, a provider of remote video auditing services for the food processing, quick-serve restaurant and health-care industries.

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However, while SpaceX is currently the provider furthest along in the NASA effort to develop cargo and crew capabilities to serve the International Space Station (ISS), there are many others.

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