Not quite "just in time for Earth Day," as far as this blog is concerned, but April 22 (Earth Day) was actually the day we shipped the files for the latest issue of WHIR magazine off to the printer.

The date is fitting because May's issue is our "green issue," in which we look at one of the most notable issues in hosting from a variety of angles.

It's possible, I suppose that you're reading this blog for some reason other than the fact that you follow web hosting news, but if we accept my general "you, dear reader, are at least interested enough in web hosting to pay attention to the general industry news" assumption to be true, then it is probably also safe to assume that you've noticed the overall increase in "green" hosting news, not just in the last few weeks, but over the last few months.

Last year, not long after we settled on the notion of putting together a "green" issue, I began receiving the green issues of just about every magazine I regularly receive - I've got everything from Toronto Life to PC Magazine to Vanity Fair piled up around my desk.

Eco friendly living and business practices are a big issue across the board, and they've become a serious concern in the hosting business, which has an interesting relationship with environmentalism.

Hosting's biggest impact on the environment is through the consumption of electrical energy. Data centers, and the servers they contain, are an enormous draw on electrical power and, consequently, a significant producer of greenhouse gasses. But energy is also becoming one of the biggest expenses for hosting providers, making it possible for companies in this business to serve their bottom lines even as they pursue more environmentally responsible business practices.

This isn't the case in every industry. A lot of business are struggling to figure out ways to dispose of harmful waste, or to curb other destructive practices without the cost putting them out of business. For hosts, the path is clear.

There isn't yet a specific model for building a green hosting business. But it's on its way. What we set out to do with our green issue was describe the atmosphere in the industry relating to green initiatives, and we approached it form three angles.

The first was the movement itself, where, driven by the motives of conservation for its own sake and conservation for the sake of the bottom line, a culture is building among organizations and outfits working to build the standards by which we measure our "green" efforts.

Second is the practical implementation of green procedures in the data center. We examine the real-world limits most hosting companies face, and map out strategies for building efficiency into the data center.

Third is the message. Hosts pursuing green projects face a decision about the message they bring to customers. And those customers are not always receptive to marketing efforts tied inextricably to an ethical question.

Chances are, your experience with green hosting isn't going to begin, or end, with our green issue. But I'm hopeful that it will be helpful to you in mapping out your business's relationship with environmental issues.

Last Thursday, after the Microsoft Hosting Summit wrapped up, the WHIR contingent had the opportunity to tour Microsoft's Redmond, Washington campus with lead marketing manager for hosted solutions Michael van Dijken.

The tour actually began at the company's Bellevue office, just a few steps from the Westin hotel, where the conference took place.

We didn't spend much time at the Bellevue office, but we did get a chance to check out the lunchroom on the top floor which has a beautiful (dare I say, belle) view of Seattle - not to mention the very strangely enclosed immediate vicinity in Bellevue.

Over at the Richmond campus, the really remarkable thing is not necessarily the offices themselves - which from what we saw were about what you'd expect from any normal office space - but the overall scale of the campus itself.

It's probably fair to say that with a few exceptions scattered throughout, Microsoft's campus takes up about just all of what we saw of the city of Redmond (like Bellevue, a sort of suburb of Seattle). Obviously that's not entirely the case, but according to van Dijken, Microsoft currently has in the vicinity of 40,000 employees working at the campus. And according to Wikipedia, a recent census puts the city's population at somewhere in the range of 46,000. So anyway, it's close.

Another remarkable aspect of the campus is the fairly excellent job Microsoft has done building around the green parts of the city. There are trees - really huge trees, as a matter of fact - just about everywhere you look. Nice place to visit and, presumably, a nice place to work.

We spent a good chunk of our time in the Visitor Center, which provided some entertainment, as well as some of the best photo opportunities. I suppose it's a testament to my vanity that among my favorites was a picture of me, but there were some pretty amusing scenes - and it's my blog, so I suppose you'll have to bear with me just this once.

Another of the really interesting features of the campus was the "Connect" system Microsoft has in place. Because it's such a big place, the company - in an interesting eco-friendly undertaking - has set up a system of hybrid cars to shuttle employees between offices on-campus, which saves them from having to get into their cars to drive a mile or two. It's worth noting the sheer number of these shuttles. They were really everywhere, making up a sizeable percentage of the cars we saw on the streets.

Finally, we set up with Michael van Dijken for a WHIRtv interview. The full video of which can be viewed on the WHIRtv blog page.

These are just a few of the pictures I took on the tour. There are dozens more you can check out on our WHIR flickr page.

Microsoft Hosting Summit - See all our Event Photos

I've been including bits and pieces here in the blog, where appropriate, but I thought it would be worth reiterating, after the fact, that along with the written coverage from the event - and some excellent upcoming video coverage - we took a lot of pictures.

The whole purpose of that, of course, was so that our readers could check them out online. And I'd like to make sure you can do that.

There is now quite a long list of pictures in the Microsoft Hosting Summit 2008 photo set on the WHIR's Flickr page, including coverage of the general event atmosphere, exhibits, in-session shots and images from the networking events at Lucky Strike Lanes on Tuesday and The Parlor on Wednesday.

I'll include a few more pictures in this post, but you can go here to view the whole set.

Microsoft is a sort of fountain of terminology. Every time I speak to somebody at the company, I hear an acronym or a term I'm not familiar with. And a Microsoft-led series of presentations is just a concentration of that situation. There were whole pieces of software mentioned or alluded to in the Wednesday sessions that I'd never heard of. Microsoft is a big company.

One expression that came up pretty consistently on Wednesday was Microsoft's notion of the "software + services" ecosystem. This is not a new expression, but it's an important distinction that's worth understanding thoroughly.

I had the opportunity to talk to Michael Van Dijken, Microsoft's marketing manager for hosted services, Wednesday about that very thing.

Importantly, "software + services" is not a semantic distinction (it's not a different way of describing, say, "software as a service"). It's a description of Microsoft's vision for the software environment - which certainly involves software as a service.

Software as a service is the much-discussed delivery relationship that has a lot of people excited. On-demand software hosted in the cloud, in the opinions of many, is the future of software delivery - and the future of the hosting business.

Micrsoft's software+ services distinction, describes the idea that SaaS is a delivery mechanism, and while some applications such as Exchange or CRM lend themselves to that model (the excitement about SaaS is certainly not unfounded), others simply don't. They do, and will continue to, lend themselves to a desktop or on-premise model.

Many applications, he says, lend themselves to a blended model, in which an application has parts that are installed, and parts that are delivered as a service. As an example of this he offers the Xbox Live service. A video game can be played offline, on-premise, but the service piece, which enables players to play together online adds considerable value.

This combination is why Microsoft doesn't think of itself as a "SaaS company." It's not a defensive distinction, says van Dijken. It's a description of how Microsoft sees the world. We're not living in a world where all the software will be hosted in the cloud. Microsoft doesn't see its path as becoming like Google or Salesforce.com.

And those competitors have validated this thinking somewhat by introducing offline components to their services. Google released the desktop-installed Google Gears, and even Salesforce.com has issued offline pieces of its applications.

From a hosting perspective, hosts would probably prefer that all software transition to the on-demand model, considering the business that would create. Hosts typically aren't that interested in talking about the on-premise delivery model. But they ought to be very interested in the applications that will have service components. There's a big opportunity there, says Microsoft, for partnering with the ISVs developing that software.

Software + services isn't a description of a fully-developed marketplace, or a view from a crystal ball. It's an impression of the ecosystem that might develop around software and software as a service, and a best guess as to how things are likely to shake out. Nobody's quite certain what the value chain is going to look like, but Microsoft is trying to provide its partners with a model that will help provide ISVs and hosts with a model for working together.

Being at the Microsoft Hosting Summit this week gave me a chance to talk to Ravi Agarwal, founder of pivate label Exchange provider groupSPARK, who sold his company last week to managed service provider mindSHIFT.

Agarwal, who along with a less visible partner was founder and owner of the company, is clearly still on-board at groupSPARK. The business was acquired, he said, to add revenue to the mindSHIFT business, and will continue to operate as a separate unit.

Both companies are private, and they're not prepared to share the specifics of the acquisition, in terms of price or other details, but he says he and his partner have agreed to work with the company for an amount of time that can be measured in years.

Agarwal says groupSPARK was profitable, but without any large-scale backing, it was putting its own profits back into the business and was only able to grow as fast as those profits would allow. About a year ago, the company decided to set out in search of a buyer that could provide them with some of the financing they would need to grow at a pace that would keep up with the exploding demand for hosted exchange and related services.

GroupSPARK engaged an investment bank, Noonmark, to find a buyer. The mindSHIFT deal, concluded just last week, was about six months in the making.

Now that growth is taking place at a quicker pace. The company is hiring at a rate of about one person per week, says Agarwal, and is able to build out its infrastructure in advance of demand.

Beyond the obvious synergies related to the companies' shared unusual taste in capitalization, Agarwal says mindSHIFT has some technologies, such as online backup, that groupSPARK is likely to want to provide to its customers. And groupSPARK might have some things mindSHIFT will want to sell.

"Integration is at the bottom of the list right now," though, he says. The mandate at this point really is revenue growth, and not cutting costs.

My notes say "grueling," which is not quite the right word, but the Wednesday morning sessions at Microsoft's Hosting Summit were definitely an exercise in endurance, in terms of both the length and the volume of information to be digested.

From 8:15 to 12:30, the company rolled out a series of keynote presentations designed to put Microsoft's message to its partners into sharper relief, and to outline roadmaps for some of the software most relevant to the company's hosting partners.

A fairly long list of presenters took the stage during that time, and offered a lot of commentary on a lot of subjects. Covering everything interesting that came up is definitely the work of more than one blog entry (halfway through day one, my notes are close to 4,000 words long). But there were a couple of key points that kept coming up, which sort of put Microsoft's general partner message in context.

The early presentation by John Zanni seemed to anchor the whole thing, and while a lot of what he had to say dealt with what partners ought to expect from the conference itself, he brought up those key points that were repeated often in, or informed, the rest of the presentations.

First, and this is certainly not the first time I've heard this from Microsoft or anyone else, was the idea that there is a tremendous opportunity in what Microsoft terms the market for "software + services," of which "Software as a Service" is a part. With data from groups like IDC and Gartner, some of which you have probably seen, Zanni and other presenters highlighted the point that hosted applications, be they straight-up Microsoft applications or other tools developed by ISV partners, are one of the areas of greatest opportunity for hosting providers in the years to come.

Microsoft, says Zanni, is seriously invested in the hosting space, and the software + services space.

From that assertion come questions, presumably, of what Microsoft's approach to the market will take. The second really major point made in the morning sessions, and the one made most emphatically, is the fact that Microsoft is committed to its partners.

Not a surprising statement, given the audience. But there are some questions about exactly where partners lay in Microsoft plans, given the semi-competitive prospect of Microsoft's recently-announced Online Services.

According to Zanni, Microsoft depends on its partners. The company knows that in order to be successful, it needs its partners to be successful.

This, more than anything else, appears to be the premise of the event. The company wants to find out from its partners what they need in order to succeed - what strategies and processes work best for its partners so it can speed the process of integrating those processes into the platforms for high-end hosting.

Zanni says that's not just him talking. It's a notion that is held at even the highest levels of the company (he put up a slide with a quote from Steve Ballmer about the nature of the company's relationship with France Telecom).

Online services, he says, is about building the platform to grow the market - another concept I'll likely tackle in another post. But he, and Microsoft, see it not as competing but as an offering that will benefit partners.

But that key partner-focused message carried on into the other presentations, and to the event itself. The Hosting Summit is about Microsoft being transparent to its partners, in terms of its technology and roadmaps, and about inviting input, contribution and feedback from its partners.

It's worth pointing out that there are some folks who aren't quite as accepting of the message as others - that is, there are people who remain not quite convinced that Online Services , for instance, is not a competitive product to their hosted exchange product.

But that's all in the spirit of this event, according to Microsoft. That's precisely the kind of concern they want to hear about.

Tuesday is the first day of the Microsoft Global Hosting Partner Summit. And rather than hit the ground running with the sessions, keynotes and exhibiting, Microsoft let attendees ease their way into things; while registration opened at 9:00 this morning, the day's only two sessions began at 3:00.

No complaints here. I've had a few recent experiences with waiting in line at registration while the keynote sessions were going, and that was enough to make easing into this one a pleasant experience.

That left us with a few hours leading up to the start of the sessions, we spent a very small portion of that setting up our booth (which, if you're at the event is not difficult to find), and I spent the rest reading up on the schedule and taking some photos of the setup.

I'll be posting those photos up on Flickr when I post this blog, so I'll include a few in here if I'm able to (a lack of Internet is a problem I'll go out on a limb and say I will not encounter in downtown Seattle).

They won't all be here in the blog, of course, so if you want to see our photos from the event (which I'll be updating as often as I can), check out our WHIR Flickr page at www.flickr.com/whir.

I'll be posting notes from workshops and keynotes later, so keep checking back here for more coverage of the event.

This week, Microsoft will be holding its Global Hosting Summit in Seattle, and theWHIR will be there to provide as-it-happens coverage of the event.

The Global Hosting Summit is an annual event that brings together executives from Microsoft's top 180 hosting partners to "discuss trends and influences, learn, and network together." Conference general sessions, says Microsoft, will cover the company's strategy for partnering with services providers, while breakout sessions and workshops will provide an opportunity for deeper discussions.

Microsoft's objectives for the event include describing its vision for the hosting industry; outlining its plan for "Software + Services" and the Microsoft-hosted roadmap; discussing how partners can go to market with hosted services; networking between Microsoft and the industry; and hearing about its partners concerns and challenges.

The Summit's key themes include "succeeding as a service provider with mounting competitive pressures," how to partner with Microsoft in a Software + Services world, partnering strategically in the SaaS ecosystems and selling hosted services to SMBs.

All that is pretty much a verbatim repeat of the information we've seen about the event so far. We'll be posting coverage of the event for the next three days, however. So check back with the WHIR blogs for more. We'll also be shooting material for WHIRtv at the event, and that will show up on the site over the next few weeks.

Microsoft is posting information about the event at this site.

Along with the objectives and themes material, Microsoft provided some demographics about the event. Of the 320 "decision makers" representing its partners, 37 percent identified their primary business as Web hosting provider, 20 percent said application hosting provider, 11 percent are hosted exchange providers, 11 percent are telecommunications provider, 6 percent are ISVs and 15 percent are "resellers, Sis, VARs, distributors [or] consultants."

That's about all for now (until the event actually begins), except to say, of course, that if you're there and you'd like to speak to theWHIR, we'll be around. So please come say hi.

One thing that has come out of this conference is that Google is being treated with a lot of credibility as a threat to Web hosts. Now that we all agree (interesting in and of itself, I suppose) that Web hosts are clearly in the business of offering hosted applications, and Google has been extremely consistent in executing on its strategy of delivering hosted software.

And it is, of course, important to note that Google is not in the business of partnering with ISPs or hosting providers. Google is going it alone, and is succeeding at securing the market - hosted email, definitely, and to a fairly menacing extent other small business apps.

One of the remarkable things about that, and one of the things noted Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels, in his Tuesday keynote presentation, is that from the Web host's perspective, that makes Google the new "evil empire."

The company doesn't want to partner with distributors. It wants to control everything from user activity to user data to payment. And it doesn't appear to have any intention of leaving any business out there for anyone else (meaning Web hosting providers).

Once considered the "evil empire," Microsoft is now the nice guy in the SaaS market. Microsoft has always been friendly to the partner model, from OEMs to VARs and now more attentively to hosting partners. Now, the company is almost by default carrying the banner for smaller service providers into the battle for the business of small business.

It's a battle between giants - big as they come - and if you're a smaller hosting provider, you're either in the ring with Microsoft, or you're on the sidelines, probably cheering for Microsoft.

That metaphor maybe got a little confused. Basically, you don't have to be a Microsoft partner to want "partner-hosted solutions" to beat "one company operates the whole Internet" as far as SaaS models go.

From Serguei's perspective, the answer to the challenge is something akin to "use Parallels products," generally. More specifically he says you should be paranoid about efficiency, and about providing an automated and self-managed solution. And that mans an automated and virtualized architecture.

And make sure you own your customers. Hosts are in the enviable position right now of having the customer relationships that every builder of business applications covets. When adding those applications to your own offering, hang on to those customer relationships. Only resell solutions in a white-label model, he says, where you continue to own the customer.

Ultimately, Microsoft and Google are going to offer everything that hosting providers used to offer - domains, a Web presence, email, and everything else. For more complex business solutions, there's still room for hosting providers to make those customer relationships evolve.

Approximately an hour and a half after being driven to my inspired "just let them pitch it" conclusion, which I described in a blog entry yesterday, I saw a presentation that went against my feeling that presenters in general are unwilling to make (or are discouraged, directly or indirectly, from making) a sales pitch, and confirmed my feeling that an outright sales pitch would serve the presentation better.

At yesterday's 4:45 session "Server 2008 and IIS7 - New Hosting Opportunities with Microsoft Hosting," Microsoft Deutschland's Web platform architect evangelist Bernhard Frank took the opportunity to deliver a pretty unfettered sales pitch.

Granted, he had the built-in advantage of being scheduled to deliver a session on the features of a piece of software that is generally of interest to Web hosting providers, which sort of fundamentally made the "infomercial" feel more like information and less like a commercial. But an even more fundamental fact of the situation was the simple fact that it was a good presentation.

That is, it was interesting and engaging throughout. And I believe that a lot of that had to do with Mr. Frank apparently not feeling like he was under any pressure to carefully soften the message with a lot of possibly-irrelevant contextualizing. What we got instead was an unapologetically straightforward look at the features and functions of Microsoft's new products. No harm done.

There was a bit of PowerPoint, which I suppose is pretty inescapable as far as seminars go, but he cut that off at one point to project his laptop on to the big screen as he logged into a remote server and updated a website to include a FastCGI module by changing config files, and apply an application to a live site.

And the presentation concluded with a video showing how Mambo could be set up on a remote Windows server in about seven minutes, using the advanced Windows hosting package, in a process that did away with a lot of time-consuming troubleshooting and many pages of documentation-reading.

Maybe this is no real revelation, but I couldn't help but feel impressed with the degree to which we'd actually been provided practical information. Then again, maybe that's an indictment of typical boring tradeshow fare. I think I'll hold off on making a sweeping generalization either way this time.

And yes, I realize that the intricate workings of the newest Microsoft applications is not interesting information to everybody. But as I mentioned in the other post, the name ought to be enough to steer the profoundly uninterested in the direction of a different session.