Hi,

A news to share.

The implication of web hosting market after the terrorist attack.
by Terence L
September 19, 2001
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The September 11 attack that destroyed the World Trade Center shocked the world. Hoping to keep the markets running and the economy from heading for global recession, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by half a percentage point on Monday morning, September 17.

What happens next in the U.S. economy, in turn, will inevitably affect the Internet industry and web hosting market outlook.

Last week's terrorist attacks have channeled millions of people throughout the world to seek and find out through the Internet what actually happened. Not surprisingly, after recovering from an initial state of shock, the public is becoming nervous and this eventually will affect buying behavior.

Both consumption and investment could be put on hold as people reassess the situation. This possibility is especially significant when the recession has already led to layoff announcements and hit part of the global economy. And with the recent destructive Nimda worm that has plagued the Internet since 9am EDT on Tuesday, September 18, Internet connectivity for many users is extremely slow and thousands of websites have been knocked offline. The U.S. economy may be entering uncharted waters.

Nevertheless, despite the slump in the Internet economy and the recent disaster in the US, hosting services are still required, and companies are all the time using these Internet services to communicate and conduct commercial activities. The importance of Internet services can be seen during this terrorist attack, when millions turned to the Internet to reach family and friends, to get relief and emergency information, and some, to get live market coverage.

A disaster like this will cost massive loss of business data and many companies at this time are considering outsourcing technology and computing operations especially business application and enterprise websites which can be located or hosted geographically at different locations and be accessible from any Internet connected computer.

In other words, backing up data in multiple locations and data centers is a necessity, and outsourcing computing operations with application and hosting providers proves useful and important. The data center is the foundation on which the hosting platform stands. Power, cooling equipment and network connections to the Internet are adequate and redundant. The network architecture within the data center is secure and designed for flexibility with no single point of failure. Such services if deployed correctly will ultimately ensure fast recovery and continuous business operation if a disaster strikes.

At this point in time, to help mitigate the impact of the tragedy, application and web hosting providers may want to conduct seminars, guide and educate companies on the importance of backups and outsourcing services in a secure data center especially when such services are easily accessible and can be maintained through the Internet.

In short and overall, the coming months could be the time when we will see an interruption in consumer spending and yet a surge in demand of security and web hosting services.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Surge or delcine?
Current indicators for our company shows a rapid surge after the horrible incident as we were all suprised that we met our weekly sales quota just in 2 days. Normally we would average it at 6 days.

It is a definately a surprise to us, but we are certainly not glad about it as it is built on a cost which we all condemn.


There are couple reasons I can think of right now (its early in the morning and my brain is not functioning yet)

1. Perhaps because communities and companies found the importance of Internet Communications through email after the WTC incident. As statistics show, there are less than 10% of companies in North America with websites and utilizing the Internet, and with phone and cell communications lines overloading from the disaster in Manhatten, the only alternative is Email. (Snail Mail just dont cut it)

2. As a hosting company based in Canada, we are less subject to security and privacy interference from agencies such as the FBI. As we have all seen in the past week, Privacy and security on the Internet, especially in the U.S has been heavily scrutinzed.
In addition, during last week, we have seen 1 U.S based hosting company being raided by the FBI.


3. As Colief of Hostpulse.com mentioned in the previous message about data backup, that is certainly one of the reasons. There was definately a surge in email, application hosting this week.


There are probably more reasons which my poor little brain can't think of right now.


I would certainly like to know how our hosting counterparts in the U.S are doing and wish them well and best of luck.

Hmm

should the title be

The implication of the terrorist attacks on the web hosting market.

OR

The implication of web hosting market after the terrorist attacks.

I guess i have to read it a few times before posting. Guys, sorry for the inconvenience.

I am absolutely stunned at the surge of new clients we've received since Sept 11th. The day of the attack, we had one sale (wayyyyyyyy low for our average). Starting the day after the attack - sales have almost doubled, from what they were before Sept 11th. I can't explain it.

--Tina

our sales have also doubled since the 11th..
but so have the number of accounts being closed
:rolleyes:

Make sure youre checking the new accounts for validity very carefully, we have had a large increase in the number of fraudulent orders since the day of the attack, mostly from the middle east.

-Brendan