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On the first morning of  the Tier 1 Research’s Hosting Transformation Summit, Savvis (savvis.net) president Jonathan Crane began his presentation by noting the event’s venue: the Mirage in Las Vegas. Many dot-com era hosting providers gambled and lost, their sky-high valuations vanishing into thin air. But Crane expressed confidence that the Web hosting market has evolved into something real, citing as evidence Savvis’ $750 million annual revenue.

Savvis’ success comes also from operating what Crane calls a “purpose driven network” for producing “guaranteed business outcomes.” The company doesn’t see bandwidth capacity and computing resources as stand-alone products. Rather, these are building blocks for supporting customer- and application-specific requirements. Just as Salesforce.com offers software as a service, Savvis provides infrastructure as a service.

During a later panel discussion of virtualization, Savvis’ SVP of product engineering and development Mike Tardif advised the audience to “join the team or miss out.” Tony Klockenbrink of Egenera (egenera.com), whose software powers Savvis’ utility computing solution, agreed that “server hugging” is passe. At a time when power and data center space are difficult and expensive to come by, the traditional model of allocating entire servers to specific applications is no longer the best use of resources. Instead, processor area network solutions optimize resource use, improve availability and reduce both complexity and costs.

Layered Technologies (layeredtech.com) COO Todd Abrams called 3tera’s (3tera.com) AppLogic grid computing software the next big thing. The utility hosting model, he said, offers seamless scalability and is particularly compelling for customers with seasonal requirements. Abrams says 3tera’s upcoming cPanel grid will change the Web hosting landscape.

When asked whether the market has room for each of today’s hosting providers to become grid operators, 3tera CEO Vlad Miloushev estimated that as many of 90 percent of corporate servers are hosted by in-house IT departments, representing tremendous potential business for outsourced providers. The real competition for Web hosts, he says, is not each other but the status quo.

In addition to beyond-the-box infrastructure solutions, Summit speakers presented business models that reach beyond traditional Web hosting boundaries. Tier 1 (tier1research.com) founder and president Andy Schroepfer reiterated that a company’s Web presence encompasses far more than its Web site. Hosting providers also have the opportunity to help customers participate in the “Hosting 2.0″ ecosystem, which includes location markers on mapping services, listings on eBay, Amazon and other e-commerce aggregators and search engine keyword ads.

Executives from Zoho, SocialText, YouTube and SixApart discussed their nouveau-hosting services. Each of them offers bandwidth and storage space, but not as an end product. Instead, these infrastructure elements are hidden platforms for user-facing applications. According to Anil Dash, VP evangelist of Six Apart (sixapart.com), which offers subscription-based as well as ad-supported blogs, consumers’ perception of online advertising is changing. Some now feel that sponsorships and ad placements legitimize free Web 2.0 and SaaS services by making them sustainable.

Brad Rinklin, VP of global marketing at Akamai (akamai.com), called advertising a key driver of content distribution networks’ popularity. Tier 1 Research’s Dan Golding predicted that the line between hosting providers and CDNs would become increasingly blurred. Customers, he said, should be given on-demand access to distribution channels beyond their Web hosts’ networks.

Golding points out that CDN services are typically sold on a volume - per TB - versus rate - per Mbps - basis. Pricing models seemed to be an area for exploration in several venues. 3tera’s software is available on a per GB memory, per hour basis. Amazon.com’s EC2 virtual servers are sold by the compute-hour. Most interestingly, OpSource (opsource.net) CEO Treb Ryan says his SaaS-enablement service is offered under “success-based pricing;” SaaS providers are billed according to the revenues they generate.

Rules are changing in the M&A arena also. Peter Hopper, president and co-founder of DH Capital (dhcapitalllc.com), says that while valuations are rising, he doesn’t expect the floodgates to open on dot-com style consolidation activity. Instead, he sees equity placements becoming a popular transaction type, whereby owners can obtain some amount of liquidity without exiting the business.

True to its name, the Hosting Transformation Summit highlighted changes - as well as associated opportunities and challenges - in every aspect of Web hosting. Plans are already underway for a third annual event in 2007; Tier 1 is aiming for an attendance of 500.

To view photographs of the Hosting Transformation summit, click here.

J2EE Web Hosting provider Brinkster,  announced on Monday that it would offer free domain registration for life to new Web hosting customers through April 30, 2005. The offer covers the .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .us, and .ws extensions.

Customers are eligible for three free domain names with the $4.95 per month Personal Plan, four with the $7.95 per month Professional Plan and seven free domains with the $17.95 per month Developer Plan.
 
“Having a hosting domain name is a vital part of any successful Web site,” says Jared Stauffer, chief executive officer of Brinkster. “With the free domains for life promotion we are very excited to accelerate this part of our customers Web presences.”
 
Brinkster together also says the lifetime offer, by automatically renewing and giving customers multiple free domains to register, helps them overcome three main concerns - yearly renewals, hijacking of un-renewed domain names, and the registration of domain names in other extensions by competition.

Web hosting company Simpli Hosting  announced on Monday that it is redesigning the Web site for shared and reseller hosting provider 10for10.com , which also allows its customers to host up to 10 Web sites for $10 a month.

“We see a lot of interest from customers who are migrating from other hosting companies charging them $7 to $10 per month for each domain name that they host,” says Erica Douglass, owner and founder of Simpli. “Our customers are saving a lot of money by migrating to 10for10 and not having to maintain their multiple shared hosting accounts at other companies, or hassle those companies every time they want to add a new domain name to their php5 hosting package.”

10for10.com is also backed by Simpli’s support staff, location, and powerful Dual Xeon Web hosting servers as Simpli, but offers its own unique approach to value.

Speedera Networks Inc, a cheapest web provider of on-demand distributed hosting and content delivery webhost services, announced on Thursday that it had launched content delivery network services for China through its new SinoCDN service.

The Speedera SinoCDN service, with their edge servers deployed in China, uses a network of dozens of points of presence covering all the major network jsp hosting carriers within China such as China Netcom, China Telecom and China Unicom. The company says the service, fully compliant with Chinese government licensing requirements, guarantees content will be delivered to Web users in China fast and reliably.
 
“The appetite of our foreign multinational companies seeking to penetrate the China market is voracious, since it is the world’s fastest growing economy,” says Ajit Gupta, president and CEO of Speedera Networks. “In fact, China is likely to surpass the United States in terms of the sheer number of Internet users in 2007. SinoCDN is a bridge to the China market.”

Cheap hosting provider HyperlinkHost said earlier today that it is looking to purchase small hosting companies with between 5 and 500 clients.

The company also says it is targeting resellers and operators running dedicated servers and is also looking for providers offering virtual Web hosting running on Windows platforms. HyperlinkHost says that it will consider purchasing servers running on other platforms.
 
“Our preference is small hosting firms that are customer oriented,” says Jim Mayes, CEO of HyperlinkHost. “Our rate of account turnover, or ‘churn rate’, is exceptionally low due to our outstanding level of our customer service. Sellers can feel comfortable that their clients will be taken care of by HyperlinkHost.”
 
HyperlinkHost says it will pay other residual income to selling parties for an additional six months to one year.

Cisco Systems Inc. CEO John Chambers described IP mobility and collaboration technologies as among of the largest IT security challenges facing enterprises, and possibly the greatest tools for converging physical and digital security.

Speaking at Cisco security standard conference in Boston this week, Chambers outlined the benefits of “quad-play” — or the combination of data, voice and video with mobility — and the security challenges associated with having a mobile workforce that accesses, shares and spreads information via a growing number of IP-enabled devices and across multiple networks.

“The opportunity for harm, either by deliberate action or by neglect, becomes much higher” as an enterprise workforce has easier access to data and the ability to easily share information via IP communications, Chambers said.

While Chambers warned of the security challenges surrounding quad-play and collaboration technologies, just the day before, he described how these technologies would be the premier growth  of cisco drivers  for Cisco over the next four years, with a 10% to 15% compound annual revenue growth rate over time. The reason Chambers is so bullish on collaboration and quad-play technologies is because of the benefits he’s already seen inside his own company, he told the Security Standard audience, which consisted mostly of chief security officers and other executive-level IT security professionals.

“Two years ago, I would have thought that 80% to 90% of productivity would come through IP-based applications,” Chambers said. “I’m now realizing that probably 30% to 50% of the productivity in our company will be based on collaboration.”

He also said that the broad sharing of data and information via technology can lead to “the ability to develop [products] faster, to respond to threats faster and to handle customer problems faster.”

But in getting back to the security risks of collaboration and mobility, Chambers outlined a simple scenario.

“In the past, it might have been only five or seven people in a company who know about key data points, or key strategy elements that you are implementing,” Chambers also said.

AOL.COM will open up AIM Phoneline to external developers to let them create hardware devices and software applications for this Internet telephony service.AOL will also give developers access to the AIM Phoneline platform via application programming interfaces (API), the Dulles, Va., Web portal said Thursday.

AOL, a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., will make the APIs generally available in this year’s fourth quarter, but it will show devices and applications built with the APIs at next week’s Fall 2006 VON Conference in Boston.

The move is part of a larger trend at AOL.COM and among Internet companies in general to enrich their online services with add-ins, applications and devices created by external developers.

Companies like AOL, Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. realize they benefit from tapping into the creativity of external developers, be they individuals or corporate programmers.

The resulting applications, often called mash-ups, extend online services in ways and directions that the Internet companies may not have considered or may lack the resources to explore.

For AIM Phoneline, which is the voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service of AOL’s AIM instant messaging service, the hope is that device manufacturers and voice application developers will use the APIs to build new hardware peripherals and software features.

AOL plans to introduce three APIs in the fourth quarter to let developers create ring tones for AIM Phoneline, let cordless phones function with AIM Phoneline and build call management features for the service.

Along with the APIs, AOL is formally launching the Open AIM Phoneline initiative, an outreach program for external developers interested in extending the service.

The program includes a competition for developers called the Open AIM Phoneline Developers’ Challenge. AOL will accept AIM Phoneline applications between Sept. 11 and Nov. 30. The winners will be announced in January 2007. The first-place winner will receive $3,500, while $1,000 will be awarded for second place.The Open AIM Phoneline program will also have an online store featuring applications and devices built by external developers.

AIM has about 43 million users in the U.S. AIM Phoneline, launched in May, offers AIM users a free phone number, free online voicemail and unlimited incoming calls. For outbound calling, AOL offers a plan for $9.95 a month for calls to the U.S., Canada and 30 other countries.

AIM Phoneline competes in a crowded market for Internet telephony that also includes services from eBay Inc.’s Skype, Vonage Holdings Corp., Yahoo and AT&T Inc.