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Hosting Dons a New Hat
(eFE, 5th December 2005)
Web hosting seems to be back in demand albeit with a new face
Slowly and steadily, the definition of hosting is changing. From websites to e-mails, from multimedia to mobile services, from IT infrastructure to IP telephony, everything has come within the ambit of hosting. Some of the popular value added services like ringtones, video clips and music need to be hosted to be downloaded. Application Service Providers (ASPs) are aiming to reach small and mid-sized businesses (SMB) that cannot afford their own IT departments. They are making traditionally expensive software available to smaller companies, thus, falling very much within the ambit of hosting services.
Web hosting and corporate email services are definitely catching on very fast now and so are network/ internet connectivity services for SMBs. Net4In-dia CEO Jasjit Sawhney says, "Because the days of one size fits all are over, the need for customized, high-value web-hosting services is the winning solution for SMBs seeking to maximise ROI". India has probably the lowest internet penetration, at present, compared to most developing/ developed countries in Asia. The same goes for the number of websites hosted in India. Also traditionally, a lot of Indian content was hosted in countries, which had better and lower cost infrastructure (read band width costs).
This has all significantly changed in the last few years. India will witness much higher growth rates in the hosting business than a lot of other countries in Asia, Mr Sawhney says, "there are a huge number of SMBs that are yet to have an online presence and with the changing dynamics of doing business internationally as well as within India, it will be imperative for them to have an online presence".
According to a recent IDC report, emerging markets in India and China are expected 'to lead the growth of the Asia Pacific market — Web hosting spending is set to go up from $521 million in 2004 to $924 million by 2008 in the Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan, Key to the growth of the market is the returning focus on developing a model fore-business. India is expected to show the largest compound annual growth, with its share increasing from $40,45 million in 2004 to $95.14 million at a CAGR of 24%. Firms with under 1,000 employees are expanding their use of a wide variety of advanced IT services, with Web hosting and network and security consulting the most widely used. A report from the Yankee Group says, the Web hosting market continues to expand rapidly, driven by the increasing numbers of SMB companies offering online services.
Taking a bird eye view, hosting has gone through a sea change since the birth of HTTP protocol. During the formative years of internet, hosting was synonymous with Web hosting — it still is for a majority of the audience. Virtualization technology fueled the growth of Web hosting market. Says Swamp Das, head, worldwide professional services, Ensim Corp, a hosting software maker, "Today, it is possible to host a large number of websites on a single physical server by sharing the resources like IP address, CPU, disk and bandwidth". While the content and complexity of websites have grown manifold, thanks to broadband, real-time applications like audio and video live broadcast and video conferencing can be seen as a lower-budget extension of this phenomenon. Mr Sawhney adds, the more users that come online will definitely drive more and varied types of content, which needs to be hosted somewhere. Key drivers in the future will be various entertainment and education applications, which will also obviously be hosted. Content services and access (broadband) services will always drive one another, hence creating an inherent demand for hosting services.
Earlier, hosting was limited to external websites, which are to be consumed primarily by internet community. Today, everyone from hardware and software makers to telecommunications companies are touting the dawning of the ASP market, where customers will pay outside providers to run expensive and difficult to maintain enterprise software.
"If you are in the Web hosting business, or any type of Internet-related business at all, VoIP is something you need to pay attention to," says Mr. Das. "One of VoIP's most compelling benefits to Web hosts is not just as an offering, but also as a business tool that they, too, can use," he adds.
While websites and emails continue to dominate the hosting market, corporate world is increasingly looking at outsourcing IT infrastructure as well. Then, virtual private networks provide a safe and secure communication infrastructure for private data traveling across the public internet, They also make it possible to host application with sensitive data (like HRMS
system, accounting software, ERP software, to name a few) and mission critical application
outside the corporate premises. HCL Infinet VP (operations, M. Ashok Kumar says, data centres are providing a platform for organisations to host their converged applications through a managed end-to-end service provider perspective. "In India, there has been a significant growth in the number of dedicated hosting providers/ data centers. Service providers also understand the need of facilitating organizations by giving them a centralized distribution/ access of their applications and are offering managed end-to-end hosting model” he adds. |
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