Introduction

How different will be the kind of future web hosting ? With day by day betterment in technological aspects ,one thing is sure the hardware aspects will be quiet sound that, the processing capability , RAM memory e.t.c may multiples of 10?s of Giga Bytes or more e.t.c
Will that means that there wont be any congestion problems , or problems like sever going down e.t.c, That future is not far away.sure Intels Dual processing system can be considered as a small step towards this. Below are few other concepts towards this.

The Future of Web Hosting is About to Get SaaSy

Experts at the Tier 1 Hosting Transformation Summit in Sin City say: Web hosting will stay sweet and get SaaSy.
Get ready to hear this term more and more in the Web hosting market: Software as a Service. True, you may be familiar with the concept under the much maligned ASP model or more recently as software on-demand, but SaaS is the newer, glossier version.
With the current $10.6 billion USD hosting market expected to grow at a 10 percent clip for the next two years, much of that growth will be due to how effectively Web hosting providers embrace the SaaS phenomenon.
Pascal Martin, General Manager of Hosting Solutions of Microsoft said, it is the number one driver (of hosting) for years to come. Martin added that while 15,000 Independent Software vendors have written to the SaaS paradigm, the remainder of the 70,000 need to jump on the bandwagon soon and not just for CRM applications but more diverse applications. Among those identified by the panel, participating in the two-day Summit held at Ballys in Las Vegas on Nov. 8-9, were email, gaming, online collaboration, online tax applications and Human Resources on demand.

Martins colleague, Michael van Dijken, Microsofts Marketing Manager of Hosting Solutions, identified the benefits of this compelling business model as part of his presentation. For the ISVs, he noted that this new market opportunity presents predictable annuity based revenue, positive customer experience and the always welcome opportunity to provide more value-added services. The end user will enjoy lower cost of entry, rapid deployment, adapting to changing business conditions and the all important ability to focus on core business.

What else should the Web hosting consumer expect in terms of costs and services?

If the CEO of Germanys Intergenia and St. Louis-based-SERVER4YOU had his way it would be continued cheap, or to be a little more delicate inexpensive, hosting plans.
Thomas Strohe said customers will move from shared to dedicated if the price is right. At lower prices youll see customers move from shared to dedicated. And at Intergenia we are able to keep those costs low and still make a profit. In Germany, we can make a profit on shared hosting at $2 US a month.

Two of the dominant players in the shared field and indeed hosting in general, Affinitys Simon Anderson and GoDaddys Warren Adelman raised their eyebrows to that proposition.

Adelman said its more of an issue to get the customer the right offering. Virtual Private Servers may become the norm over time as it has the advantage of less complexity. Ademan added, shared hosting will be the realm of the personal user. How do you provide higher support while seeing prices decreasethats the challenge.

Affinitys Anderson summarized that the Web host must play the consultative role. Web presence is the first need and (the real issue) is how to make the customer succeed after that.

Its a safe bet that the Web hosting industry of the future will look very different from the one todays hosting providers are used to, and thats certainly cause enough for concern to those in the business. An even greater concern, though, is the serious possibility that the future isnt as far away as some hosts might believe.

Over the past year, plenty of signs have emerged that indicate the face of Web hosting is already starting to stretch and shift in new directions. And its not just all the usual suspects of change – i.e., shutdowns, mergers, buyouts, etc. – although there have been plenty of those. No, the new winds of change include acquisitions of companies that deliver more than just additional hosting customers, a fresh generation of startups that look nothing like your fathers Web hosting company, and experiments with innovative ways to sell hosting to the next wave of customers.

Consider the growing trend of acquisitions focused on providers of small-business tools and services other than hosting, for example. One of the more recent – and most notable – transactions is Interlands purchase of the Website publishing company Trellix, completed earlier this month. The acquisition arms an already dominant player in the SME (small-and medium-sized enterprise) hosting industry with an even stronger grasp on the market by giving it control over a site-creation tool already used by millions of consumers.
Everyones Internet/Rackshacks buyout of HostingTech Magazine this month also creates unique new marketing opportunities for a veteran hosting provider, putting it at the helm of a recognized trade publication. Thats added muscle for a company that also operates a popular hosting industry forum, WebHostingTalk.com.

Of course, theres still plenty of activity in the garden-variety host-to-host acquisition arena, too: 2001 – 2002 saw more M&A headlines than either of the previous two years, and 2003 is showing all signs of that trend continuing.

And then theres the new breed of Web hosts emerging onto the field: ventures like OnSmart Network, ServerBeach or Ready-Set-Web, all squarely focused on the SME market. Ready-Set-Web, started by software R&D company Webnox Corp., roams the furthest into new territory with its ready-made Websites for rent and a range of personal-interest and business templates that include domain name registration and regularly updated site content. In promoting its services, Ready-Set-Web barely mentions the word hosting, much less old-World hosting terms like megabytes or bandwidth.

The future of SME hosting gets even more interesting when you factor in the small-business hosting forays of Net service providers like Yahoo! and its business-class Web hosting service, or AOL, with its AOL for Small Business offering for small-office/home-office customers. Both services, launched late last year, promise to make an already competitive hosting industry even more cutthroat, considering Yahoo!s and AOLs well established brand-name familiarity with millions of consumers and entrepreneurs.
While traditional Web hosts cant help but notice these developments, many havent yet fully formulated their response plans. Theyre dead certain they need to do something different to stay in the race for new and existing small-business customers. But theyre still fuzzy on the details of what that something different is or should be.

Although theyre still exploring their long-range strategic options, small-business hosts at least realize they must keep up with the competition as far as value-added services and tools are concerned. That explains the growing number of hosting providers that are expanding their services, implementing automation tools, adding site-design tools or wizards, and making e-commerce a standard offering, even with entry-level plans. And thats a movement guaranteed to pick up steam in coming months.
What else does the near future hold? Look for more Web hosts to forge increasingly creative alliances with complementary service providers, seek out new ways to sweeten their appeal to resellers and affiliates, and experiment with less-traditional means for marketing their services. Among those who have already taken that last step are EarthLink and C I Host, both of which recently began promoting their services through retail storefronts, either on their own or through partnerships.
While no one company has yet shown it has all the answers, for the average host hoping to stay on top of the small-business market in 2003 and beyond, one conclusion is loud and clear: the coming months and years will present challenges like no time before, and it will take creativity and stamina to stand up to the test. The future of Web hosting is here.

CLUSTERED SERVERS

clustered approach to Web hosting can bring sites to greater heights, because it goes beyond the limits of one physical server. Clustered or grid Web hosting technology allows processing power to be shared across many servers, distributed in real-time. That means websites are powered by a virtually inexhaustible source, as even the largest customer cant take up more than a fraction of the total server pool. It also means that if one server is ever under threat, many other servers are available to share the load or take over.
TopHosts spoke to leading Web host, Netfirms, which operates through a vast clustered environment. They host over 350,000 websites and serve over a million customers, all running on grid hosting technology made up of thousands of servers. Jason Matheson, Netfirms Product Manager, says his company firmly believes clustered hosting is the optimal solution for websites, superior to all other types of systems.
Clustered hosting is better on all levels Its faster to develop on, its more reliable because theres no single point of failure and its going to be up 100 per cent of the time. Youre not going to miss a beat, Matheson said.
He says clustered hosting infrastructure supplies a level of service unrivaled by dedicated or other traditional solutions. All their plans, ranging from their basic $4.95/month to Enterprise packages at about $100/month, run on this technology, which distributes loads among multiple servers. Separate server grids are also tasked to HTML processing, database processing and file storage. This ability ensures consistent and reliable performance something Netfirms customers demand, Matheson said.
When it comes to secure Web hosting, clustered also holds a significant edge over traditional architectures. Most importantly, when facing denial-of-service attacks (DoS) hacker assaults designed to shut down or overwhelm servers through unwanted or malicious code threats can be dispersed over a pool of servers. Because theres no single point of failure in a clustered server system, individual hardware components affected by attacks wont impede operations. Instead, Web hosting providers can simply take infected servers out of traffic handling during assaults.
Matheson also says clustered hosting allows for much faster and easier development among servers. When hosting providers need to change customer accounts, settings or resources, for example, those adjustments can be transmitted immediately to every server in the cluster. But with typical shared hosting architectures, changes to a configuration file become live only after individual servers reboot during off hours, or on a cyclic basis.
So, if clustered Web hosting provides faster performance, greater security and efficient programming capabilities, why isnt it more widespread? According to Matheson, its simply harder to do.
Its (clustered Web hosting) not easy. It requires a highly skilled team of engineers. Second, its expensive and not something smaller hosts can afford to do, he said. But I think a lot of hosts grow into it eventually because they realize its the way to go.
A true clustered system requires various server grids focused on specific functions. Netfirms maintains thousands of servers, arranged in grids for Web hosting, email, CGI processes, database processing, file storage and others. All that hardware equals a lot of resources, time and money
Another The new feature which has recently popped up is Multi Domain Hosting. This feature is pretty new and also unknown to many

Conclusion
Any way one thing is sure , as far as the internet is gonna be there, WEB hosting is going to play a very important role, and the fact is that internet is an ever growing baby, still its in its infant stage, growing day by dayand this growth is gonna benefit the web hosting companies. So with increasing demands the number of tickets will rise up, but present day problems like server going down, high load average e.t.c will be over forever with technological advances. But still future web hosting is gonna be more end client oriented , with each customer customizing their needs in their website. So the companies will need to be ready with all the software tools in their hands. ONE thing also sure Linux will replace Windows

Article Authored by Alan

Author, Alan , is a Systems Engineer with SupportPRO. Alan specializes in Cpanel servers. SupportPRO offers 24X7 technical support services to Web hosting companies and service providers.

If you require help, contact SupportPRO Server Admin