trends

What's one of the newest trends in Web hosting? Full-featured Website creation and hosting solutions that downplay the need for separatedesign and hosting functions altogether.

Ever looking for insightful views on the topics of internet technology and business, HostReview conducted an exclusive head-to-head interview with executives from two major web hosting companies. Our topic was web hosting trends 2009: what does the year hold for the web hosting industry and its clients? We talk to John Lee, Senior Vice President of Small Business Hosting, with Hostway, and Urvish Vashi, General Manager, Dedicated Hosting, with The Planet. Both companies have strong, and well deserved, presence in our Annual Web Hosting Awards listings.

The web hosting industry is in a very interesting position in the beginning of 2009, heavily influenced by two opposing trends. The first trend is the continuing growth in IT infrastructure and innovation in the sphere of web-related technologies, while the second one is decreased consumer spending in the face of what everyone expects to be a lengthy, unpleasant recession.

By all accounts, the web hosting industry is holding its ground in the economic downturn. Across online meeting places for hosting professionals, such as the ongoing discussion in the sizable LinkedIn Hosting Industry group, there are no indications that the industry is undergoing a crisis period. On the other hand, the stock market slump in the beginning of October hit hard on the big publicly traded hosting companies -- was that simply the side effect of an economy-wide event, or indication of specific weaknesses in the web hosting sector?

According to ReadWriteWeb, the five big data center trends this year are blade servers, green tech, virtualization, scalable cloud platforms, and Linux in the enterprise. In the full article, you can read their rationale for choosing these technologies.