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.

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.

The Web and Microsoft : summit

Microsoft Hosting Summit: I sort of saw this coming

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