718Web Hosting Is Leaning towards the Cloud
posted on February 1st, 2010
Three hosting providers - 1&1 Internet, XCalibre and Liquid Web - have come out with separate announcements of their plans to enter the private cloud computing market. This trend puts questions about the future of mainstream web hosting into the limelight.
According to the providers who have rolled out new offerings, the increased interest in the cloud has disrupted the traditional hosting models which also reshaped the current competitive landscape. The providers also predict that a lot of clients are going to stick to their current legacy hosting models.
Emil Sayegh, Cloud General Manager for Rackspace predicted at last year’s HostingCon that cloud computing will affect a major change in the world of web hosting. He says that over the next five years, the cloud will render shared hosting as we know it obsolete. Sayegh also adds that the industry has to come up with an environment where dedicated servers and cloud computing can coexist.
It seems that his predictions are beginning to take shape. Liquid Web has recently rolled out its Storm on Demand infrastructure as a service. According to the company’s CEO and Founder Matthe Hill, the new product is comparable to the EC2 by Amazon, albeit more user friendly. Clients will be able to take running servers, resize them online and continue to do so as the need arises. Hill also said that clients using the service will be billed by the hour.
The move to the cloud by web hosts is perhaps inevitable. Liquid Web acknowledged the ability of the cloud service to cannibalize a significant part of its business. Hill said that they don’t have to be too concerned, however. If they didn’t start providing for the cloud, their competitors surely will. He expects that half of the company’s business will come from the cloud by 2011.