December 17, 2008 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – Web hosting expert Derek Vaughan recently spent some time investigating the shape of things to come as far as the web hosting industry is concerned. His conclusion? People in the industry are positive about what’s likely to happen in 2009.
Writing for HostSearch.com, Mr. Vaughan discussed the issue of web hosting in 2009 with a number of key web hosting industry players and those in related industries. Specifically he spoke to Rob Lovell of
Parallels, Daniel Foster, co-founder and principal of
34sp.com, Stacy Griggs, Vice President in charge of sales with
HostMySite.com, Robert Cassidy, Vice President of Marketing and Product Development of HostMySite.com, and Nils Decker, Chief Marketing Officer with
SpamExperts B.V.Despite “unusual and unpredictable business times”, the web hosting experts Mr. Vaughan spoke to remained “quite upbeat on the prospects for both the website hosting industry as a whole”. Rob Lovell sees web hosting becoming more of a commodity in 2009, suggesting, “The big few really are now established and entrances to the market from Yahoo, Google and Microsoft will impact the lower end of the hosting market considerably.” Daniel Foster on the other hand sees 2009 as potentially “the Year of the Cloud”. “In 2009, I`m sure there will be more buzz about cloud and utility computing,” suggested Mr. Foster, who is also positive about the cloud’s impact on "traditional" hosting companies. “Not everyone has the technical expertise to manage a complex hosting solution so hosts that can provide solutions relevant to their customers should continue to see growth,” he suggested.
As far as the growth of the industry is concerned, 2008 saw a continued trend towards consolidation, and Stacy Griggs thinks that’s not likely to change in 2009. “Companies that were dependent on a low cost of capital will struggle as capital will be tougher to get and a lot more expensive”. In addition, Stacy sees “surprisingly strong” growth in dedicated servers and collocation during the period. His colleague at HostMySite.com, Robert Cassidy, sees “huge upside and opportunity for quality hosting providers in 2009” as customers “continue to come to the web for information, entertainment, purchases and operational efficiency” and come to hosting as an outsourcing opportunity. Meanwhile, based on feedback from customers, Nils Decker sees the importance of virtualization increasing in 2009 and agrees with Daniel Foster’s prediction that cloud computing will “play a vital role”.
Derek Vaughan is a hosting feature writer and consultant for major web hosting companies. His experience includes serving as Vice President of Marketing at HostMySite.com, Vice President of Marketing at Aplus.NET, and as Senior Director at Affinity Internet Inc. Mr. Vaughan has previously worked for the Walt Disney Company on the ESPN and NASCAR brands. Mr. Vaughan is also currently serving on the Advisory Board for HostingCon, the hosting industry's leading trade event. Click here to see more of this excellent article on the
web hosting industry in 2009.
