William Toll
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)
Startups - ISVs, Web 2.0s, Social Apps
2009 is proving to be the year of the startup. With the economy providing the stimulus to many an entrepreneur, we are seeing a new wave of customers.
Entrepreneur’s seem to thrive on the “tough economy” and are always looking for ways to “get going” with their dreams and business plans. (aka “When the tough get going”). As hosting providers we were traditionally the home for “production” Websites and applications. With this new wave of customers we are seeing them use our managed dedicated servers and virtual servers to develop, test, iterate, beta and go live with. Startups are now collaborating with developers and key stakeholders worldwide on servers in our data centers.
The platforms are mature – whether it be ASP.NET, PHP, Ruby on Rails, or Java, it’s now easier than ever for developers to bring their entrepreneurial dreams to the “big screen”. Even the new environments are designed and highly conducive for hosting services whether it’s Adobe’s AIR, Silverlight or even Facebook and Twitter apps. The latter are driving the forces of change – almost weekly we are seeing the kind of innovation that we have traditionally seen in longer term cycles.
The opportunity to have rapid exposure through Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets gives every startup a running start. Programs like Microsoft’s BizSpark, (NaviSite is a BizSpark Network Partner - Hosting) provide the support mechanisms for startups whether they be traditional applications being deployed as a service or new innovations. It seems that many of the barriers to entry are now gone –and we as hosting providers are here to foster this new world.
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.
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.
Parallels Plesk Panel 9.0 Enables New Customer Segments
At the recent Parallels summit in Las Vegas attendees were learning about many topics with a particular emphasis on Cloud Computing, Virtualization and the various products of Parallels. One product certainly stands out, the product that started it all “Parallels Plesk Panel”.
Over the past 9 years we have all seen how a hosted dedicated server has gone from being an intangible command line driven server to a highly sophisticated system capable of performing various tasks with a few simple clicks. The competition was strong for a while but now that Parallels has acquired all of the major panels except the other great server control panel from cPanel things are starting to get interesting from the customers perspective.
Traditionally a control panel user was a reseller looking for an easy way to offer hosting services and other traditional users included less technical Web designers who were looking for an easy way to satisfy their clients’ needs. With Parallels Plesk Panel 9.0’s integration with Parallels Plesk Billing 6, APS, and reseller functionality we now have a complete system which can run on one server and perform many tasks.
Parallels realized that many shared Web hosting customers are outgrowing shared hosting. Customer’s expectations from their Website functionality has increased dramatically in the last few years. A simple Website, form and blog are no longer enough for a business to confidently claim a Web presence. Both resellers and designers more than ever need to integrate and bill for the many new functions found on a Website in 2009 and Parallels has these customers covered 100%.
At the conference Andrew Andriatis and Jon McCarick delivered back to back roadmap sessions on Parallels Plesk Panel and Parallels Plesk Billing respectively. They clearly sense, and rightly so, that as small business customers outgrow shared hosting (more so than ever for functionality than performance/space), they will need an easier and more streamlined control panel to empower business owners with the ultimate in functionality and a whole new level of ease of use. The next version of Parallels Plesk Panel promises to have the ultimate interface for a DIY toolset making it simpler adventurous small business owner.
Another new customer segment for Parallels can be found through the growing number of applications available in APS. Now more than ever resellers who specialize in one application can easily sell the services enabled by Parallels Plesk Panel. Imagine an agency that manages blogs and online customer service for a SMB – now that agency can easily offer a full service “Web hosting” account to their clients.
It’s great to see the forward thinking that is being applied in the next version of Parallels Plesk Panel and Parallels Plesk Billing.
NaviSite is excited to see the momentum around our new discounted bundle of Parallels Plesk Panel 9.0 and Parallels Billing 6.0 for our Dedicated Server offerings.
Hosting Storage and Customer Needs
Over the years we have seen disk storage allotments increase dramatically with hosting plans. About 9 years ago a large shared hosting provider had a “leading storage allotment” of 150MB on their $19.95 plan. Back then, utilization was about 20% of that allotment and we all thought, what would a customer do with that space. One of my friends in the industry recently told me that back in the day 7,000MB of storage hardware deployed by a shared hosting company would cost $60,000. Obviously the laws of technology innovation and cost reduction are at play here.
Today shared Web hosting companies market 10,000MB with a $4.99 shared hosting plan. That is a dramatic decrease in the market price for shared hosting disk storage. The difference today, when put in perspective is that customers are actually increasing their usage of this storage dramatically. With the digital revolution (audio, video, and images), the increasing size of databases and compliance needs driving record/log storage, we may be entering a period when demand is beginning to outpace supply.
The good news is that additional storage options are becoming increasingly popular. With the increasing availability of larger server grade hard drives, Network Attached Storage, SAN storage, customers seem to be asking for a lot more detail on how to meet their storage needs for today as well as tomorrow. Recently I met with a customer who we are implementing a solution for and I thought it was great to see their how well they planned for future storage needs. Customers are finding a NaviSite Managed Virtual Dedicated Server with SAN storage or a Managed Dedicated Server with NAS storage options as affordable and flexible enough to meet their disk based online storage needs for today and tomorrow.
I think it is clear – the need for storage will continue to increase exponentially – and we as hosting providers should be able to satisfy that need with a suite of affordable options.
Survey: SMBs Look to Hosting Providers for Support
After listening to a few hours of sales and support calls for NaviSite Dedicated Server prospects and customers it became clear to me that SMB’s are looking for technical support as much as they were looking for hardware, software and networking equipment! Information technology technical support /server support/application support/networking support are all problems around which that Web hosting providers receive calls and tickets. A combination of a difficult economy and an increasing reliance on employee’s access to applications, servers, email and more, SMBs are now no longer satisfied with the level of support full-time employees can provide.
We recently ran a survey on our landing pages and social media sites to understand the current satisfaction level that SMBs have with IT support providers. The survey was titled “24/7/365 – Myth or Reality”. Interestingly while 68% of respondents said they expect their Website and application servers will run without an issue this holiday season, over 73% said that their IT personnel would not be available at midnight on New Year’s Eve. The survey indicated that CEO’s seem to know that downtime costs money with 53% of respondents indicating that the first person to know about downtime is the CEO/owner. The survey results also showed that 43% of the time in-house IT support personnel do not answer their phone when at 3am an issue with the IT infrastructure is reported.
This survey indicates that outsourcing of managed dedicated servers, application servers, Exchange email and more to a hosting provider promises to provide SMBs with 24/7/365 support for IT infrastructure.
The support that hosting providers give is more than a bullet in the list of features – it is a defining benefit that we provide to the customers. While the level of support and managed services differs between hosting providers, it’s clear that many SMBs can get more responsive support than in-house from hosting providers.
