Website Hosting Avoids Hostage Taking

I saw an article this morning in the Wall Street Journal that I just had to comment on. According to the news coverage, ''Workers at a French factory of U.S. industrial conglomerate 3M Co. were holding their boss captive on Wednesday to protest planned layoffs, in the latest sign of growing public anger at rising unemployment in France. The stand-off, which isn't violent, started on Tuesday when workers refused to allow plant director Luc Rousselet leave his office unless 3M sweetened severance packages being negotiated for the fired workers. Negotiations between the two sides are supposed to re-start late on Wednesday to try to find a solution.''

Now having attended the WebhostingDay 2009 conference recently, as well as currently living in France - I think that I speak with a bit of authority when I say that the European and French ways of doing business are certainly different than the U.S. Notably, it is not uncommon here in France for workers to hold a ''greve'' or strike (read: walkout) to express displeasure with any aspect of work or government action related to the economy. Further, it should be noted that the action described by the Wall Street Journal was not violent in any respect - acknowledging the right of workers to take non-violent action to show displeasure.

However, even with the cultural differences there remain many similarities between the European Union economies and the U.S. economy. There are clear trade partnerships in place, and travel and tourism between these two economic powers is vibrant. As one currency becomes relatively stronger against the other, tourist flock to the country with the weaker currency to take advantage of ''cheap'' vacations. So why aren't web hosting company employees holding their bosses hostage?

The answer is simple: web hosting has yet to feel the dire and somber economic impact of the global financial crisis. WebhostingDay 2009 is evidence of this in the European community. The event was completely sold out weeks prior to the first day of activities. Professor Jens Bocker from the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg offered the following statistics for the conference held last week:

* Attendees and exhibitors were present from more than 40 different countries around the world.

* The registered attendance grew from around 1,000 attendees last year to nearly 2,500 attendees n 2009.

* WebhostingDay 2009 featured 50 speakers from a wide range of hosting-related firms and consultancies.

* There were 45 exhibitors in the exhibit hall this year.

Everyone I spoke with at the conference was upbeat and forecasting sales growth for the balance of the year. So has web hosting escaped the economic crisis, or is it simply the last industry to feel the full effects? Here are a few more comments from those actually involved with web hosting commerce.

One UK website hosting firm that has recently hired new employees - even in the face of this downturn - is 34SP.com. Co-founder Daniel Foster remarked, ''Of course employee moral is higher when a firm is hiring rather than laying off. We're not seeing any particular downturn from the current economic situation, indeed our product may be more attractive to potential customers then the expensive offerings of our competitors.''

One webhost that would be a proxy for the broader hosting economy is Site5 Web Hosting. Company CEO Ben Welch-Bolen is a veteran of the hosting business, and prognosticated on what will transpire for remainder of 2009, ''We expect to see a lot more signups from people starting businesses online. Reseller hosting has been especially hot as has people looking to start drop shipping or online stores. We are also seeing people putting their resumes on their personal sites or even starting blogs to make themselves more marketable in niche industries.''

From the looks of things at this point - website hosting will avoid any hostage taking...for now.