The Web and Microsoft : hosting

Poll: What makes a good Web Hosting Company?

klevereblog — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:39:00 GMT

As the web involves and the landscape of services offered by web hosts change along with it, I have wondered what make a good web host. It seems that today there is a proverbial chicken and egg scenario as relates to the hosting Industry Developers and businesses have needs of a host but many times the host has to determine what those needs are. How do host market to these audiences? How do they determine what they need to offer? How do developers and businesses alike decide what they want from a host? What makes one host better than another? Is it the services? Is it the support? As the industry evolves how are web hosts differentiating themselves?

Why waste your space when you can waste ours?

klevereblog — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:39:00 GMT

Microsoft offers several free solutions through our Live Services that might enhance your website. Here are a few that I believe are really useful.

1. Windows Live Sky Drive: Sky drive provides users with 5 GB of free disk space for storing files. Not only can you store the files it also allows you to share these files with others.

2. Silverlight Streaming: As Silverlight as well as web video become ubiquitous Web developers will need additional space to host there applications. Silverlight Streaming provides users with 10 GBs of free space for storing video and Silverlight applications. You can upload your own videos that will then be encoding to utilize a Silverlight player. You can then embed these videos into your own website. This means you are not wasting website space for video content and that you automatically gain the advantage of having a content delivery network to support your content.

3. Live Mesh: While in its early stages I see Live Mesh as a new opportunty for developers. Today Live Mesh offers users the ability to have an online or Live Desktop where data can be synched to. Not only that but you can synch folders between multiple PC's. I imagine a time where Live Synch can be utilized to synch your web applications between development and Q/A or staging enviromnments. Live Mesh too offers 5 GBs of free data storage.

Check out these services and more at: Microsoft's Windows Live Site

Steve Ballmer mentions hosting in Interview

klevereblog — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:26:00 GMT

Hear Steve Ballmer discuss IT & the Heroes Happen Here launch

Microsoft Hosting Summit: I sort of saw this coming

klevereblog — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:18:26 GMT

The first full day of the Microsoft Hosting Summit opened with a keynote from Martha Bejar the Vice President of Microsoft Communications Sector Worldwide.

Martha provided a welcome and overview of the event, but perhaps the person that really set the theme for the summit was John Zanni, the director of our hosting business unit.

John spoke about new competition in the Hosting space particular in the lower end of the market. He brought of the notion of "Amazooglesoft" referring to the gorillas who are now affecting the hosting industry.

He noted Amazon's cloud computing offering as well as companies such as Ribbon. He spoke about Google entering into the hosting space with it's application hosting offer. And of course he talked about Microsoft and many of the things that we are doing that can be seen as encroaching upon our customers territory.

Since the introduction of Office Live many of our hosting partners have wondered if Microsoft is now a competitor. Now with the introduction of Microsoft Online (hosted exchange and collaboration) and SQL Data Services this brings up similar questions. Because of climate changing entries from other large competitors Microsoft too has entered the market. What makes us unique is our relationship with other hosting companies which causes the perception of us competing seem negative. John Zanni focused however on the partnering opportunities that Microsoft's online offers provide. Not only that it the unique relationship that we have with hosting providers creates a lot of opportunities.

In a previous blog post I posed a question. I wondered if a hoster could turn to a third party to offer services to their customers which services would they offer. It's not a new concept for hosting companies to partner with other businesses to service customers. Several services are not offered by the Hosting company themselves such as domain names, search engine optimization, even professional design services. These for the most part are not seen as core services. Services like Microsoft Online and many of the Windows Live services present new opportunities for hosters to rely on Microsoft on services that might be seen as more closely aligned to their core businesses. As an example many hosters offer mail services as an add-on for their web hosting business. Mail is seen as a necessity in order to compete in the market but is not necessarily a business many web hosters would like to be in. Also many times they are offering the service for free and thus are not receiving value for the service. One customer attending summit specifically said if their business could offer mail through a third party such as Microsoft that they would.

For most web hosting companies I see services such as mail and streaming as auxiliary or fringe services that a lot of hosters have to offer but do not always want to offer. Some are already turning to Google, Microsoft and Amazon for many of these services which allows them to focus on their core business and their unique customer base. For some hosting companies this could very well mean they become an aggregator of services from other vendors, offering those services along side that own core offerings.

John Zanni touched on this when he talked about the questions he hears from customers during his travels.

"Will Microsoft Online take business from me?"

"Should I stay in the low-end market?"

"Should I be a hoster, a reseller or both?"

"Should I monetize customers by selling SaaS services hosted by others?"

He spoke to how Microsoft is positioned to partner with customers in a number of ways whether helping a partner build their platform and reach customers via a sale through model or by providing SaaS and S+S solutions that hosting partners sale with Microsoft. From his perspective John sees hosting partners differentiate themselves by offering targeted variations of the Microsoft services.

I agree that online services from Microsoft allow us to partner in a new way while maintaining the current relationships we have with our hosting partners. We can continue to help their Windows business thrive by providing a solid hosting platform and by providing best practices and architectures, but we can also provide alternatives through services that they can offer as well.

Hosters I know where your customers are?

klevereblog — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 03:04:00 GMT

In case you were wondering, hosters your customers are here in Austin, Texas at the South by Southwest Interactive, Film and Musical Festival. Every wonder where the next Web 2.0 buzz is coming from? Want to reach film makers who are interested? What about musicians who need a presence on the web? They are all here. Web designers, Developers, Producers and Musician all in one place. Oddly enough there is only one hoster who has a booth in the Exhibit Hall. The Interactive Conference is for those interested in the web, interactive gaming, and rich media and includes all of the "big names". Microsoft, Google, Digg, Yahoo, Facebook, Myspace, Paypal, Amazon, MTV, Univision, SpikeTV, Apple are just a short list of the names of those in attendance. This conference brings the world of media together and definitely represents and an opportunity for hosters and service providers. I will continue to blog from the event.

What if all Microsoft Products Were Free?

klevereblog — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 22:49:00 GMT

I was wondering what would happen if all of sudden all Microsoft Products were free. Which products would you choose simply based on merit (how good the product is)? For web hosters how many of you would offer windows at the same price as your Linux platform. How many of you simply would not offer Windows still? And Why? Just curious?

3 cool things from Microsoft Hosting Summit 2007 -- Day 1

klevereblog — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 23:42:00 GMT

Here are three cool things that were mentioned at the Microsoft Hosting Summit. Some of the things here are things I knew about but until now have not been at liberty to discuss.

1) This morning a discussion on application virtualazation brought forth a demonstration on the SoftGrid/Softricity where basically applications can be streamed virtually to a desktop from a server. For example let's say you did not won't to deploy office to all of your desktops. The demonstration showed a scenario where word could be launched from the server but have the lookand feel as if it were launched locally from the desktop. This is really cool stuff and will have a tremendous impact once made available to hosters. All those guys that have to offer services through Terminal Services will have better options for deploying desktop apps.

2) This is something I've known for a while, but better now than never. Scott Guthrie and Bill Staples demo'ed for the hosting community a feature that we have been begging for. Shared IIS configurations. Where multiple servers can use the same configuration stored on a UNC share. This will make deploying server farms a whole lot easier.

3) Also ScottGu mentioned today that IIS7 will have a service feature that will make supporting videos with WPF/E much easier. Look out flash player.

There will be more to come as the conference continues. I truly believe this is becoming the premier industry event more than 340 customers and partners with another 150+ Microsoft employees here to discuss hosting.