What does everyone think of Web Hosting's Future? Is it only getting better? Worse? Are we going to be hosting family and personal sites more than commercial? What do you think? What is your vision?

Aloha
well first I am more of a designer than a hosting co
I host my own clients as part of my service
I see more and more interactivity needed
I think some of the things like the sharepoint service that MS now has will be more popular for the small biz market that has brick and mortar type biz

also that service will have to rise to keep cutomers and that people will become willing to pay more for service as interactivity becomes more important.

so hosts will have to offer these services to be competitive but at the same time there will be plenty of room for small hosting companies to make there share.
every one I am sure is trying to figure this out if we only had a crystal ball.

I just hope the gov does not try to step in and control any thing or try to maybe some common nations to do some governing of hosting and make someone liable for illegal activities such as hosting porn on a .porn and other things

also going to see more and more home servers as speed and bandwith increase so soem of the small fun family etc... sites will end up being hosted at home

Originally posted by dherman76
What does everyone think of Web Hosting's Future? Is it only getting better? Worse? Are we going to be hosting family and personal sites more than commercial?

--shuffle, shuffle, lays out tarot cards and goes into a light trance--

As the largest sector of the business market finally gets serious about their use of the web as part of their business practices and brings in experienced professional web developers, they will stop demanding the cheapest service and expect a higher level of quality.

But at the same time, they won't be able to afford the Exodus' and Navisites of the world and their high priced managed hosting.

Because professional web developers are becoming more and more educated about hosting, they will be very choosy about the hosts they do business with and will become an important distribution channel for business-oriented web hosts. Partnerships with developers will become crucial to hosts' survival.

The ASP model for big businesses failed rather badly, due to their 'new economy' business models, and their old economy spending habits. However, because smaller organizations can't afford the high cost of application development that goes into next-generation web sites, there will be a need for small business-focused ASP's.

Especially with the booming service industry, hosted applications will become key to maintaining business customers. Web-application development companies should introduce suites of applications for hosts to customize and deploy, adding an important value-added service that can either be sold as part of a package, or billed on a time and materials basis.

Some will be simple and very user friendly, that can easily be customized using web interfaces and design templates and focused for small businesses, others will require professional developers and will be aimed at somewhat larger organizations, or those who don't quite fit predefined categories.

Lower-priced hosts should be able to dominate the consumer hosting market, especially if they focus on the level of support needed for consumers as opposed to businesses being served by professional web designers. They'll also get the small businesses as they begin the progression towards ecommerce, small businesses are known for conservatism regarding technology adoption, so there should be plenty of business from them for years to come.

--wakes from trance--passes deck of cards to the next person in line...

Originally posted by Honu
[B]I think some of the things like the sharepoint service that MS now has will be more popular for the small biz market that has brick and mortar type biz

My cards only know that if Honu is right, it will be a total disgrace. It cannot get any worse than that. FrontPage and anything that's Microsoft or FrontPage related in my opinion is evil. It will mess things up further. :(

Originally posted by bert
My cards only know that if Honu is right, it will be a total disgrace. It cannot get any worse than that. FrontPage and anything that's Microsoft or FrontPage related in my opinion is evil. It will mess things up further. :(

There are free ($0.00) and free (in the GNU way) replacements for SharePoint. I think PHPGroupWare is one example of that.

I don't think that MS will be the leader in that area. More businesses are realizing that they don't need to waste their money on MS products, and instead are beginning to notice alternatives. Also, MS was late into the finding, sharing, and publishing information market.

Originally posted by qslack


There are free ($0.00) and free (in the GNU way) replacements for SharePoint. I think PHPGroupWare is one example of that.

I don't think that MS will be the leader in that area. More businesses are realizing that they don't need to waste their money on MS products, and instead are beginning to notice alternatives. Also, MS was late into the finding, sharing, and publishing information market.

Agreed. :eek:

Originally posted by bert


My cards only know that if Honu is right, it will be a total disgrace. It cannot get any worse than that. FrontPage and anything that's Microsoft or FrontPage related in my opinion is evil. It will mess things up further. :(

Aloha
yeah I agree I wish FP could fall off the Earth
just to clarify this heheheheh
that things like this I guess making it easier to do inranet and webpages etc....
seems like my first 128K MAC and all of a sudden all the desktop publishers were born (most all are gone now)
funny how there are a lot of people getting into the web design biz and webhosting biz who have no clue
one in island here is like we are the first one on the island (there domain was registered less than a year ago)
I am getting sick of people scamming people and taking advantage
Maui seems to have a lot of advertising stuff everyone is the most viewed tourist site etc.. they say
so advertise with us for $99 a month we will provide a link to your site on ours !!!

YEAH !!!!!!!!!!

I ask to see log files to prove it
there response is OH well those are not for public view I can not let you see them but we get X amount of hits.
dont you believe us ???

arghhhh I am hoping as sites get more and more complex that the biz model changes so the little guys go away.
at this time they can have the small sites that they do for $100 (as some of the cheap hosting places do then kick you off when you ues more than they like agian the good hosts explain there limits sure you all know what I mean by this)

so I still think we are going to go through a time when things like sharepoint adn MS FP get more popular for a while till they realize they do not know what they are doing.
this will relate to hosting as people will be trying to get the cheapest they can driving prices down and service down
so those that hang on and go through the washer will be there after the storm.