The United Nations of Web Hosting?
September 29, 2007
I have seen that Liam Eagle from TheWHIR Blogs published an article in his blog titled “A governing body for hosts?“. Since I’ve read the article I felt I needed to add something to this topic. Let me first say I don’t like the idea of founding any kind of world hosting body.
First of all because it would bring politics to web hosting business. I know that Liam has said he means “entirely non-profit organization”. But even an NGO must have a founding principle. And I doubt that any kind of NGO has something to do in web hosting market. Those of you who read my blog know that from time to time I mumble something against web hosting companies that sell in big numbers and agains Google’s march to become global Internet monopoly. But even when I do this I don’t mean to put someone on top of them to govern or to set rules.
The second reason which makes me opponent of the idea is that the hosting market does not need a censor. It is true that shared web hosts do impossible to sell and often mislead their prospective customers. But anyone who are in search of a website service is responsible to stay informed about the market.
Liam says that so far “the formation of a comprehensive hosting organization has a 0% success rate”, but he adds that “The fact that it hasn’t happened doesn’t make it any less important a pursuit”. According to him, the web hosting industry has a “very weak voice” and he adds that he means ”consumer media, mainstream business, and government”.
But do we need another level of goverment and what will such kind of a body should do? I belive that we don’t have to establish an artificial institutions in any market area. There are State and Federal institutions in each country as well as an International law. I believe those are good enough to regulate the technology markets.
And finaly we have a few web hosting industry annual events in North America as well as Datacenters’ confecences in Europe and Asia. Forums like Web Hosting Talk and media such as TheWHIR are setting standards in web hosting industry every day. I belive those work fine. So do we really need a global web hosting watchdog?
Look Inside Tomorrow’s Web Host
September 24, 2007
Dan Golding, Tier 1’s Vice president and research director, told the audience at “Hosting Transformation - 2008 and Beyond” conference that “hosting providers should focus on providing services that SMBs couldn’t, or wouldn’t, provide to themselves”.
This is true in a world where many professionals still don’t use e-mail under their own domain name. Even in United States. A friend of mine, CPA who works in New York, told me he does not need to use his own branded e-mail because it is more convinient for him to use one in Yahoo. I wasn’t able to persuade him that his firm would attract more clients if he had a good looking website.
When it comes to web hosting we can say that the future belongs to those companies who are good enough to invent and implement a product or service and to persuade more people to use it. Sometimes it can be a completely useless thing such as … tamagochi. Do you remember small handheld “digital pet”? It came out in 1996 and millions accross the globe went crazy about it.
Any kind of service or product can become trendy in shared web hosting market. What a company needs is a good idea. One that works is SitePal. The company which released the service gave to the dot-com business a good example of money-making idea which entertained many online. So if you are web host or dot-com business owner you have an example for ”key to success”. Invent a service or product which makes people to feel good or just give them something handy.
Business Hosting Providers Need Different Approach
I would suggest anyone who runs Linux based web host to spend some time to find why does Microsoft’s share in the server hosting market increase. I think that Microsoft has better approach to tech businesses in general. It is focused to deliver “community hosting” services that serve good to workgroups and networks of users. I doubt that Windows is better or more reliable server OS than Linux but it enables businesses to organize their work using exchange server. And this is a good reason for many SMB’s to pay more for Microsoft exchange hosting than to use a cheaper Linux based solution.
I remember that one of the serious hosting industry’s analysis said in 2006 that the growing number of SMB’s who want to outsource their hosted solutions brings growth to US and Canadian web hosting markets. So just think about how to attract more business to chose your company for their business hosting partner.
