Cloud hosting is out, but not you.

Artashes

Artashes

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For those that do not yet offer cloud infrastructure:

As a provider of web hosting solutions, be it shared, VPS or dedicated servers, do you feel at all pressured that you do not yet provide cloud computing solutions, while the likes of Rackspace, Tier3, Strata or GoGrid are aggressively moving into the marketplace and essentially becoming the leaders in the field? With so much talk surrounding cloud hosting, what are your business objectives in response? Sit back and see how it plays out and play catch-up later or act as soon as possible, because you feel if you don't offer the service you are missing out on new opportunities to maximize revenue?
 
Not really looking to offer cloud services at this time. Does this mean we may eventually have to play catch up? Possibly, but I don't see that as a negative.

We're actually looking at green possibilities first - installing solar panels on one of our data centers. :D
 
We're not actively promoting the Cloud solutions at the moment either. We have a testbed of cloud solutions that we're currently running through different data centers, and we have a handful of customers who have requested it specifically so we are working with them to help improve various aspects of their sites (mainly the display of images from multiple locations). However we've found CDN to be much more powerful in that regard than a Cloud Solution in the traditional sense. Of course, when you really come down to it, Cloud and CDN are VERY similar. Cloud is the processing power, and CDN is the storage of the data.

Most people that we have talked to are looking at a Cloud solution to help speed up their sites, however a CDN is really a better solution for them as it's really the content delivery that they're after. Depending on who you use for CDN there are even some places that can do MySQL Databases on a CDN - so we'll be experimenting with that in the months to come.

For now however, shared hosting and single/clustered dedicated server hosting still holds the market as the Cloud Hosting solutions are still out of budget range for most personal users and small or startup businesses.
 
Maybe later on in the future, but not yet!..Shared hosting is still by far the most commonly used hosting environment. And, it's still the one that most webmasters on the internet really need, since most websites don't even use 1Gb disk space/5 Gb bandwidth. ;)
 
Hosting wise I couldn't add much to the above, namely we've dabbled but again there isn't a big rush to promote it just yet. From a programmer standpoint people have been using cloud computing and more commonly virtual computing long before it started within hosting for the use of testing. Though personally I doubt many would ever go as far as to use servers from a third party, mainly as software details of which in the wrong hands could damage said company far more so than managing their own internal servers in a cloud or virtual environment which is the current defacto.

Otherwise as per Conor's example there is little difference between cloud and traditional techniques.
 
There are a few major difficulties for any web host to build a any kind of advanced clustered infrastructure, or let's call it Cloud.

1. The costs
Building a private Cloud requires significant investment. We have calculated that we shall put around $100,000 in purchasing hardware needed to set up a cloud. The networking equipment is not included in this price. It should cost another $100k.

2. The Cloud software platform
Anyone who wants to deploy their own cloud should create its own in-house platform or to buy a cloud automation platform from someone. There are very few software providers that offer fully automated and mature solutions. But there are many that claim to offer cloud automation solutions, having at the same time some kind of virtualization platforms.

3. The migration Process
There is no hosting standard for the cloud. There is no Cloud scenario for web hosts. No practices on successful migration to follow. So, it looks risky!

4. The Marketing and Branding
When you start a cloud hosting provider today, people usually say "Great. What kind of a cloud is this... is it like EC2, or more like RackSpace, etc.". So any web host that moves to the cloud infrastructure must have answers on such questions and to be prepared to spend a lot of money to position its cloud hosting service on the market.

I have thought a lot on these issues and I have answers for myself. We have a plan how to move to a cloud infrastructure. But it will cost us a lot of money. Honestly I think that middle-sized and smaller web hosts must team up or merge in order to successfully compete major clouds.
 
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Super info here about migrating to cloud technologies. We've received ZERO questions about cloud services from prospects - while we (daily) field some pretty complex questions across the board. :)
 
I have yet to be asked about "cloud" while weekly we get questions about CDN. I'm not 100% convinced it is the way to go for many businesses because the costs can get prohibitive quickly.
 
Although our main push for some time will continue to be shared, vps and dedicated solutions, we are taking steps to prepare for cloud computing.

I think there is something positive to be said about letting some of the others “blaze” the trail for the rest of us.

Not only does this allow us to sit back and observer where the pitfalls may occur, I think that it will also help to promote more competitive pricing for the rest of us.

At least that is the hope
 
Well it's the end of April, and we're finally at a launch stage of our cloud solution to the public. We have about 2 dozen users with large sites already utilizing it, and loving the ability to extend the memory on the fly (especially at times of big promotions and mailings). Taking a machine that's usually running 8GB memory and boosting it to 48GB for a weekend mailing list to 900,000 users has been a wonderful experience for one of our clients. Not even a blip when he puts so much memory on the system. A far cry from his 4GB Dedicated Server that he was actually spending MORE money on than what he is now. Reducing a $900/month invoice to less than $500.

While people are still struggling through the CDN end of things, I've personally found it on our site to be a huge asset. The speeds that we've seen on our site by going to a CDN has been incredible. And for only $40 for 1TB of bandwidth (which I dare say we'd use within a year), it's an impossible opportunity to pass up.
 
The main problem with setting up cloud infrastructure is only the big players can afford to invest in their own full cloud. I don't believe the cloud is for everyone, we seem to be gaining customers at a nice rate by offering 'standard' VPS hosting.
 
We are currently upgrading our infrastructures to offer this service shortly. But we will still be offering shared hosting. In my opinion, cloud hosting has a poor marketing advantage compared to shared hosting. It takes all its power in comparision to VPS or dedicated.
 
We've found the cloud structure and pay-by-the-hour billing to be ideal with larger customers. If they're not already spending $200/month on hosting fees, the cloud is likely not for them. Once they're into the $200/month range and advertising with traffic and load spikes on their websites, the cloud is a great solution. It's not geared for small mom and pop sites, but if you have a site with a lot of traffic or CPU processing needed, the cloud options are a wonderful solution. Much easier (and less expensive) than setting up clustered machines which was the old way.
 
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