Dedicated Hosting's New Direction

Tags:  dedicated server  managed hosting  Anet  Directi  Rackspace  Technorati  The Planet  Web.com 

The October issue of Web Host Industry Review magazine ought to start landing in your mailboxes this week. It's a lovely bright yellow, and, among other things, it contains a transcript of a conversation I had a few weeks ago with Douglas Erwin, CEO of The Planet and EV1 Servers.

The interview was timed, not coincidentally, to take place almost exactly three months after the last time we spoke - shortly after the two companies merged, and Erwin assumed the CEO post - at which point he described his plans to spend the next 90 days first putting a new management team in charge of the merged company, and second laying out a framework for how the merged company intended to operate.

As is sometimes the case, the interview was long. And the transcript, as it appears in print, is a selection of some of the key moments from that interview. In cases like these, we tend to run the whole interview on the Web, where we're free from the constraints of word counts. You can read the longer transcript here.

It's a long transcript. Erwin spoke quickly and had a lot to say. Obviously he had fulfilled his intention of developing a plan. For me, the conversation cleared up quite a few questions I had about how the company intends to employ what is probably the most impressive set of resources in the dedicated hosting business.

The company sounds like it's well on track. For my money, here's your Web hosting company to watch for the next few months.

A few specific points:

- The new management team is in place. Erwin describes the team in pretty thorough detail during the interview.

- The company is moving away from prefab hosting packages to an unbundled build-it-yourself sort of offering.

- It is expanding its lines of business to include a lower-cost dedicated server line, a more standard dedicated server offering and a high-end managed hosting offering that appears designed to compete with companies like Rackspace.

- The company will introduce a new brand, along with a new name and a new Web site, in January of 2007.

Forgive me for getting caught up on the little details, but I get excited about the big decisions involved in branding. Especially when the companies I've become very familiar with suddenly become something else altogether (as in the case of Interland). The company is definitely planning a new name, according to Erwin. And I find myself more than a little bit interested in the outcome of this particular project.

I suppose I'd be most amused by some kind of confusing cris-cross of the names "Everyone's Internet," and "The Planet;" something like "Everyone's Planet," or even better, "The Internet."

I know it's a long shot, but my vote is in. Please, mister Erwin. Call your Web hosting company "The Internet."

Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with We... (Read full bio)

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Comment by Anonymous on Friday, October 20, 2006

What intrigued me most about the interview was this statement from Doug: "the networks that we're building are being prepared for the future applications in hosting and infrastructure (which is video)".

Video is HUGE. According to comScore, 110.3 million people in the US viewed streaming videos during the month of July. And according to venture capitalist and CNBC commentator Paul Kedrosky, there are only 110.9 million television-owning households in the US. So online video = TV in terms of audience size.

http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1035
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2006/10/19/fun_with_intern.html

Viewers mostly streamed videos from major aggregators such as Yahoo! Video/MySpace/YouTube instead of smaller web hosting customers' sites - but maybe Doug is planning to acquire the next YouTube? Now that - combined with The Internet name - would be exciting!

Comment by Anonymous on Saturday, October 21, 2006

> Video is HUGE. According to comScore, 110.3 million people in
> the US viewed streaming videos during the month of July. And
> according to venture capitalist and CNBC commentator Paul
> Kedrosky, there are only 110.9 million television-owning
> households in the US. So online video = TV in terms of audience
> size."

Careful Isabel. Your math and subsequent conclusion only jive if you assume every household has an average of one person in it ;-)

But your point is well-taken (and I'll bolt on my own little piece to it). More sophisticated hardware, smarter software and faster, more stable data delivery infrastructures are resulting in a larger variety of quality delivery mechanisms for content and entertainment. It's amazing how fast the development cycle is playing out with the Internet compared to other media (though the first 40 years were right in sync with other media development timelines, if not slower).

The "guess the next big Internet 'thing'" game is becoming more fun to play every day!

Comment by Anonymous on Saturday, October 21, 2006

You're totally right, Paul! And I've never been good at math; got a D in algebra in 7th grade :) By the way, Kedrosky also mentioned that there are ~60 million cable subscribers among the TV owning households. I'm guessing the average household size is larger than ~2. Still, the viewership of Internet video content seems to be catching up with cable. In fact, more and more of my friends (who aren't even in technology-related fields) are watching TV shows online. So going foward, it'll be tough to distinguish between "the Internet" and "other media". There will be less and less other media content that isn't available on the web.

Comment by Anonymous on Saturday, October 21, 2006

Oddly enough, I failed Algebra in middle school and had to take remedial math *oops*. That was a lucky catch on my part :) It's getting tougher to distinguish between media in general already, given that the same hardware pushes all of it at once. Right now, from a consumer standpoint, about the only difference between your phone, TV signal and Internet connection is the device that decodes each one. Already I can watch cable TV on my computer as easily as I can surf the Web on my TV. Given another year or two, if you can explain the difference between media delivery channels, you're smarter than I!

Comment by Anonymous on Monday, October 22, 2007

"the networks that we're building are being prepared for the future applications in hosting and infrastructure (which is video)"

First build a tech team for today's application then switch to future. I have been with Ev1/Planet for 7 years. They were really good once... They are the worst now...

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