The first day of sessions at this year’s Parallels Summit ended with a panel discussion, moderated by Bill McNee, founder of Saugatuck Technology and featuring former 1&1 Internet CEO Anreas Gauger, Rackspace founder Morris Miller and IBM VP of strategic alliances and CTO Bernie Meyerson, the last two of whom delivered keynote presentations earlier in the day.
The panel discussion was called “Weathering the Storm: Finding Silver in the Clouds,” another address of what is apparently the key topic of the event: the cloud.
Discussion has varied throughout the event, viewing the cloud alternately as a threat, as an opportunity, a source for innovation or a possible solution to questions of energy efficiency.
Interestingly, the conversation strayed from the limitations imposed by the session’s title. It went far enough that I’m not going to attempt to recount everything that was said. Instead I’ll focus on a few of the key points that kind of stuck with me.
I think the panelists agreed that one of the outcomes of cloud computing will be that the significance of the infrastructure involved in a hosted application or hosting solution – particularly as a selling point for the service – will diminish to the point of disappearing. They will cease to be the selling point, because they will be taken for granted.
This very reasonable take on the future of hosted services has a couple of obvious implications for hosting providers.
Gauger stressed several times that a strategic move for hosting providers would be to focus their business on becoming agile, and able to adapt and incorporate new services quickly. Hosting providers shouldn’t spend their time building applications that they can buy from other people. It’s an argument that’s pretty in tune with the whole Parallels philosophy, of course. And it’s something I’ve been hearing a lot of for a while.
Asked to offer attendees a take-away from the day’s events, Meyerson said hosts should identify something they do really poorly (I’m paraphrasing. I think he might have used the word “dismal”) and get somebody else to do it for you. That will help you understand the argument for cloud computing.
About Liam Eagle
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 Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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