WebhostingDay Conference Kicks Off

The fifth annual installment of WebhostingDay has kicked off in Bruehl, Germany and has already been the source of several great happenings and conference talks. Last evening was the 'Come Together'' party at the Ling Bao Hotel which featured live music from the 70's and 80's. The meeting and networking event attracted several hundred participants and lasted well into the night. The beer and wine flowed freely, and the food served was among the best cuisine served at a trade event in my entire life.

I spent part of the evening discussing current hosting events with a few industry luminaries. Among them, Jeff Hardy a business development expert from SmarterTools who had arrived just one day before, and was looking quite fresh despite what must have been pretty severe jet lag. When asked about why the hosting industry seemed to be weathering the financial crises quite well at this point Mr. Hardy answered, ''Difficult times breed opportunity. Some of those displaced will start their own companies and will need email, websites, analytics and support. Traditionally the most stable industries in downturns have been the utilities. Hosting today is essential for business - it's a requirement. Hosting is now a utility. You simply can't be a plumber or a florist and not have a website.''

Also present at the Come Together event were Herbert Vitzthum the CEO of SPAMRobin - the spam eradication service. Our table was also graced with the presence of first time attendee, Phil Robinson, a developer with business website hosting firm 34SP.com. Mr. Robinson summed up his thoughts on the networking opportunity, ''Everyone here either runs a hosting company or sells products and services to hosting companies. It's easy to strike up a conversation with like minded businesses.'' Also seen at the buffet area was Tier1Research analyst and long-time hosting expert, Phil Shih.

The opening sessions began this morning and the conference is continuing this afternoon and evening. In opening remarks, Professor Jens Bocker, University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg promised that the speakers and conference panels would address the following strategic questions:

1. What are the key drivers in our business?

2. Which topics will influence and change our business?

3. What are the latest developments, and what are the consequences for our industry?

4. What will be the major success factors in the future?

A fuller review of the sessions will be afforded by a full article, but one particularly interesting keynote that delivered on the promises above was presented by Shannon Poulin, Enterprise Marketing Director of Intel. Mr. Poulin offered up several different and divergent definitions of Cloud Computing and added that Intel does not want to get into the debate of defining Cloud Computing, but simply wants to provide the basic building blocks for the technology. He also described with some graphical animations the new 'power capping' technology which will be built into next generation Intel boards. This will allow data center operators to specify maximum power usage requirements and have the Intel power capping technology adjust CPU performance to limit power usage below the user-specified threshold. A second piece of this presentation focused around developments in hardware that are enabling virtualization.

Look for more updates in the next few days and a full article on WebhostingDay 2009 next week.