Microsoft Hosting Summit and New Features for Hosts
This year’s Microsoft Hosting Summit signaled to me the long path that we have been on to get to a point where the Microsoft Web server is not just another platform but a great platform.
Most who have looked at Windows Server 2008 and IIS 7.0 quickly see the massive improvements in the platform as a Web and database server platform. With support for the popular PHP language and applications through FastCGI many hosts who already offer Windows Server 2008 are seeing an increase in interest from traditionally LAMP customers.
Microsoft’s recent campaign and launch of a “Web Platform” takes IIS to the next logical evolution. After many years of hosting providers struggling to help customers and businesses deploy applications on their Apache or IIS Web servers, Microsoft is now releasing the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (WPI) and Microsoft Web Application Installer (WAI). These were demonstrated at the Summit and received great reviews.
Also of interest are unique IIS 7.0 extensions being introduced including Microsoft URL Rewrite, Application Request Routing and the Microsoft IIS Media Pack. With these I believe that the we will see more customer’s request Windows Server 2008 and IIS 7.0 and possibly an end to the comparison between platforms.
The real story here is that clearly Microsoft has been listening to its customers and hosting partners. While some of these tools are available on the LAMP platform or through other vendors it’s always good to have them as native on the platform. This blog focuses on customers and their use of the technologies we provide them. With tightening budgets and many fundamental changes in our industry, it’s good to see that Microsoft is doing their part to strengthen our offerings with their recent releases. NaviSite’s Dedicated Server customers choosing Windows Server 2008 now have a whole new suite of tools to utilize.
William Toll has held product management positions in the Web hosting and financial industry since the late 1990s. Now at the leading hosting services provider, NaviSite, William is responsible for developing the company's small business hosted product lines, including one of the industry's biggest ... (Read full bio)
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October 2009 - Web Hosting's All Star Team
This has been, for us, one of the most interesting, exciting and challenging build-ups to an issue of the magazine yet, Web Hosting's All Star Team. The balloting process was our first experiment with a kind of user participation we're planning to do a lot more with in the months to come. We had thousands of ballots submitted, with hundreds of write-in suggestions and a demonstration of user engagement that has us feeling super positive about the project.
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July 2009 - What am I Worth?
One of the interesting luxuries of working on a project like the printed WHIR magazine is that it allows us to play with things like our point of view from one issue to the next. In recent months we've been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers. This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, "what am I worth?" It's a complicated question without a clear-cut answer.
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May 2009 - The Blueprint for a Small Web Host
I was a little surprised by how difficult it became to see this idea through. We set out to assemble a blueprint for a small hosting business, but butted up pretty quickly against the general impossibility of covering all the territory that was out there to be covered. The basic constraints of a printed magazine, and the less-than-infinite amount of time we had available forced us to face the fact that we could never produce an exhaustive guide to starting a hosting company.
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