A couple of weeks ago, we posted an interview with Michael van Dijken, Microsoft's lead marketing manager for hosted services, where we gained some insight into the direction Microsoft is taking with its partners through events like its annual Hosting Summit.

On the other side of the spectrum are the partners themselves, and we caught up with a good variety of them at the event to really get a sense of what the overall experience was like for them (considering this event really IS mostly about them, right?). We particularly decided to focus on questions like why they decided to attend the event, what they thought about the information Microsoft was presenting to them and what value they felt Microsoft's summit brought to the hosting industry as a whole.

As promised, here's a look at what some of the exhibitors and attendees thought of this year's Webhosting Day 2008 and the value they see in attending this annual event.

In the next few days, we'll be bringing you a one-on-one with Michael Korbacher, the director of Web and application, Hosting Communications Sector, Microsoft International as he gives us some insight into Microsoft's role at Webhosting Day 2008 as well as what kind of excitement Windows Server 2008 has been stirring up across the pond.

Today we wrote about Go Daddy's newest set of commercials starring the company's newest Go Daddy girl Amanda Beard, which will be airing for the first time this weekend during the ESPN2 Saturday Night College Football Primetime.

As with previous Go Daddy ads that have been known to leave audiences short of breath and the FCC in a fit (mainly I'm thinking of the ones starring WWE's Candice Michelle) Amanda Beard's ads seem to focus on her novelty as a seven-medal winning Olympic swimming champion, more so than her novelty as a "smokin' hot" member of the female sex (Thank you for saying it first, Bob Parsons).

Although let's be serious, clearly the ads showcase her assets (one of them has a shot of the Go Daddy logo conveniently placed on her backside) and the one we're about to show you here entitled "Shock" is definitely not shy with its innuendo. But really, how Go Daddy-esque would it be if it didn't insert a little bit of eyebrow-raising humor here and there?

All in all, this ad is DEFINITELY something you would expect from Go Daddy, but don't take my word for it. Check out the TV-approved ad we've posted or go to the Go Daddy site to take a look at the other Amanda Beard goodies.

Whatever your opinions may be about the ads, clearly Go Daddy is doing something very right with its use of videos if it is able to have such a stronghold on the domain name industry.

And honestly, I can't wait for the day Go Daddy signs on a male specimen to sell its domain registrations because its high time the company started catering to the ladies out there that may be interested in starting a website.

TAGS: "Go Daddy", "Amanda Beard"

Anytime Microsoft's hosting roadshow makes a stop on our home turf in Toronto (yes, we're proud Canucks) I always get the assignment of going to Microsoft's mall-like Canadian headquarters to check out a day packed with sessions and tutorials on Microsoft's latest contribution to the hosting industry.

And admittedly, I was expecting much of the same this time around, except things were a little different. We weren't at Microsoft's headquarters for one, having been relocated to the Novotel Hotel in Mississauga (due to an overlapping of internal event schedules) and the second difference (the main difference) was that there was a lot less talking and a LOT more doing at this event.

Being there in the conference room, looking at the rows of tables lined with laptops, I really felt like I was back in university, sitting in a classroom full of eagerly anticipating students, patiently listening to the prof outline the lesson for the day before unleashing us to dig our hands into the latest task. The buzz in this workshop, from presenters to attendees, was noticeable.

Rob Kent, a hosting technology specialist for Microsoft, says stirring up some excitement was part of the point with the roadshow this time around.

"This is a far more hands on event than in the past. Attendees will come away from this with the tools and knowledge they need to take IIS 7, quickly build it out in their own facilities and go into production, all well before Windows Server 2008 is officially launched in February. The hosting industry's becoming more and more commoditized and many hosts are finding that any edge they can get over their competitors, they're willing to take."

Rob took about an hour discussing Microsoft's hosting vision of platform, services and experiences, the movement towards functional hosting and of course, the plethora of opportunities and advantages available to Web hosts through the launch of Windows Server 2008 and IIS 7, before letting Brett Hill, senior technical product manager of hosting services for Microsoft, lead the labs.

Microsoft also heavily pushed its IIS 7 Go Live program, which enables hosts to develop and deploy IIS 7 on their infrastructures and offer it to end users before its officially launched on February 27, 2008. "We've already got hosting partners like Rackspace and HostMySite who've launched it into production and others are clamoring to get it. They want it and they want it now," says Rob.

Rob says some tips to best utilize your time at these events is to go through as much as the labs you can, but more than that, to take advantage of the fact that you have Microsoft's team right at your fingertips. He also says to try collaborating with some of the attendees, work through the labs together and really make the most out of the "classroom-style" environment. And, don't be afraid to grill the folks from Microsoft; that's what they're there for.

In an effort to encourage and embrace this feeling of community the hosting industry is really starting to develop, Microsoft is also ending off each workshop with a networking session and highly encourages attendees to fill out a feedback form to take home a DVD full of extra IIS 7-related labs as well as an opportunity to win a Zune.

If you haven't already registered for the event, go to the events page and check out whether its traveling to a city near you.

TAGS: Microsoft, "Windows Server 2008", "IIS 7"

WHIR TV recently checked out Tier 1 Research's third annual Hosting Transformation Summit at The Venetian in Las Vegas, which spanned over two-days and was packed with sessions about the future of managed hosting and the growing private equity interest in our lucrative industry.

Considering the assortment of analysis and information Tier 1 tossed at us, I was interested to see what the attendees thought of the event, which included a recurring interest in Dan Golding's keynote and an immense appreciation for the high-quality networking opportunities the event has become notorious for.

TAGS: Tier 1 Research, "Managed Hosting"

Verio's viaVerio Partner Summit 2007 wrapped up today after two days of presentations and workshops dedicated to helping resellers learn more about Verio's partners and offerings and to get a sneak peak at the future direction of the company.

The event kicked off with a brief presentation by Verio's president and CEO Kiyoshi Maeda, or as they call him Maeda-san, where he shared one of the biggest announcements of the event, Verio's Business Solutions. Although the offering will officially be launched next week, Verio's CEO discussed some of the solutions that will be available to its resellers including Microsoft Exchange, SugarCRM on-demand, PC data backup, McAfee Total Protection for Small Businesses and a unique package of software as a service solutions from SaaS provider Accrisoft.

Philbert Shih from Tier 1 Research presented one of the keynotes at the event, where he discussed the evolution of the hosting space and how Internet giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and even Apple were dramatically changing the hosting landscape. He offered tips on how Verio's partners could enhance and alter their businesses to successfully grow with the industry by doing more than simply hosting and instead becoming a hub for application and services as well as an advisory resource to customers; essentially to become a one-stop online business services shop.

There were also 16 breakout sessions/workshops throughout the event, where attendees had the opportunity to learn more about effectively packaging and selling Verio offerings like Microsoft Exchange and e-commerce solution ShopSite, as well as listen to partners and other resellers discuss their own growing pains as a business and how they overcame them.

One of the more interesting elements of the event were the Whiteboard Solutions where attendees had the opportunity to write down their ideas on a giant whiteboard throughout the day and based on the most popular choices, break out into mini-sessions dedicated to what people wanted to learn about the most.

Although this is the first time I've seen this model of democratic discussion forum within the hosting industry, I've been very fond of its implementation in PodCamp and BarCamp unconferences where the organizers simply put up a wiki and the community chooses what topics are most pertinent to them and then actually get to learn more about what they're most interested in. I would love to see more of this in our own industry as I believe it would be an interesting way to engage more users within the hosting space, just as PodCamp has done for the podcasting/vlogging space.

Although some attendees had a few organizational qualms with the summit, and really some bumps on the road are understandable considering this is the first time in seven years the company has held this event, the overall sentiment seemed positive and from what I was told, Verio is confident it will be holding a partner summit again next year.

TAGS: Verio

Tier 1 Research's Hosting Transformation Summit continued on Wednesday with another full day of uber-informative panels and sessions following up on the event's themes of managed hosting, the evolving data center space and infrastructure as well as financing in the hosting industry.

Andy Schroepfer kicked off the day with a critical analysis of Microsoft's desktop apps versus Google's online apps (in this case with regards to Microsoft's PowerPoint software versus Google's recently launched PowerPoint-like application, Google Presentation) and the idea that launches like these really pushed the "trade-off era" we seemed to be experiencing and that people had to consider what kind of trade offs they were making when using a desktop version of an application in comparison to a hosted version of it. Andy didn't seem to evangelize one over the other as there were benefits to one that outweighed the other and vice versa, but he did make a point of mentioning that he felt Microsoft would lose if it didn't get to where Google was heading and that Microsoft's emphasis on experience was what would keep the company on top of its game, at least for the next couple of years.

Schroepfer then moderated the keynote panel "The Private Equity Invasion and Hosting" where C.J Brucato from ABRY Partners, Bill Luby from Seaport Capital and Eric Harrison from GI Partners took the time to discuss how the Web hosting space stacked up next to other industries on the private equity screen and provided some thoughts on which companies in hosting would be good prospects for the next private equity acquisition. For the record, it's unanimous that the hosting industry is poised to grow for many reasons and will be very attractive to private equity, if not so already. And although the market is healthy and there's lots of growing interest, so far there seems to be no velocity of action, but there will be.

Another highly anticipated panel (at least for myself) was "How Green is my Data Center?" which was moderated by Martin Levy, a senior analyst at Tier 1, who led a discussion about how technology, techniques and in some cases, simple ideas, could help data centers become more green. Panelists from Datacenter Dynamics, Digital Realty Trust, Square D/Schneider Electric and Structure Tone, took the conversation from green implementations in facilities today to the idea that a good design is a great starting point to green savings and the fact (or misconception, according to DRT's Chris Crosby) that Europe was ahead of the US with recognizing the need for green technologies and implementing them.

Although the discussion intended to get into the concept of carbon credits and what Levy called "fluff" solutions like solar panels and wind power, it unfortunately never got to that part of the conversation. However, in an interview afterwards, Levy explained that as nice and ideal these types of green energy sources are, realistically they couldn't really provide the amount of obscene energy needed to power a data center facility.

Other informative sessions included "Marketing Best Practices for Internet Infrastructure and Software Companies," where panelists discussed what tools and techniques were being used today to attract new clients and retain legacy clients while maximizing the value of each customer as well as Tier 1's annual "Analyst Synthesis" where the analysts reiterated their individual messages to the audience and opened up the floor for attendees to grill them on any of their thoughts and findings.

The event wrapped up with a lot of positive feedback from organizers and attendees as well as a teaser about the first annual Tier 1 Research European hosting transformation summit, which is anticipated to be held sometime in May 2008. And if this any indication of what Tier 1 is thinking, Europe is the next big space for hosting. In fact, Andy's exact words were, "The industry is totally growth oriented and Europe is going to be on fire in the next couple of years."

Verio's viaVerio Partner Summit kicks off today so stay tuned for some of the WHIR's updates from the event.

TAGS: "Tier 1 Research", "Managed Hosting"

Tier 1 Research's third annual Hosting Transformation Summit kicked off on Tuesday at The Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada with a full-day of panels and sessions surrounding everything from the next-generation of managed hosting, to tips on how to make data centers more cost and energy efficient and the rapid growth of content delivery networks and their role in the hosting industry.

One of the discussions that stayed on everyone's minds throughout the day was Dan Golding's keynote, "Hosting Transformation-2008 and Beyond" where he talked about the next-generation of managed hosting and how hosting providers could market their services to attract the enterprise market.

Golding offered five key suggestions for managed service providers to embrace, which included concepts like becoming more available and reliable, as well as implementing standards and certifications to help drive the growth of the industry. The discussion also brought up the importance of enabling content like video and how CDNs could help with that, as well as the idea that Web hosts should begin offering their managed services in a highly on-demand manner so that people could simply click on the Web hosts' sites and "do the impulse try rather than the impulse buy."

Next was "The Ultimate Customer Panel," where Jim Cook, CIO of Jockey and Dan Demeter, CIO of Korn/Ferry International offered insight into what enterprise IT decision makers thought with regards to how Web hosts were marketing their services and how they could be more effective with connecting with the enterprise market.

Evolving techniques and technologies within the data center was another theme that came up a couple of times today with the panel, "What's New and What's Cool: Retrofitting Your Data center," where panelists from HITEC Power Solutions, IDC Architects and APC-MGE discussed what hosts could co to retrofit their data centers to handle both additional load and also become more energy efficient. Later in the afternoon Phil London from APC-MGE continued the discussion with the idea that higher power densities would continue to increase and hosts had to learn to adapt to this, which is where APC could help out with its capacity management solution.

Of course the topic of utility and grid computing and its emerging technologies, strategies and opportunities came up in a panel as well, which was preceded by Tier 1's Dan Ephraim and 3Tera's Berry X Lynn taking a moment to eulogize former CEO Vladimir Miloushev and his contribution as a thinker and innovator to the hosting industry.

Attendees also had the opportunity to learn more about the merger and acquisition opportunities in the hosting industry through DH Capital's presentation as well as Microsoft's thoughts on managed hosting and its belief that services are key, not technology and that hosts need the platform, the services and ultimately need to deliver experiences to end users to keep up with the changes the company sees in the hosting industry. Attendees also heard examples of how managed hosting providers could push into the enterprise market and how hosting providers and content delivery networks would inevitably have to work more together with the growing demand of efficiently and effectively delivering rich-media content to end-users.

An interesting factor we noticed throughout the day was the fact that Amazon's S3 solution was dissected in at least three of the sessions but it was unfortunate that the company itself wasn't present at the event, not necessarily to defend itself, but to simply offer some more information and insight behind its solution as it sounded like a large portion of the presenters and the attendees found interest in Amazon's technology and offerings and could benefit to hear more straight from the horse's mouth.

The summit continues Wednesday and wraps up with a panel on marketing best practices for Internet infrastructure and software companies.

TAGS: "Tier 1 Research", "Managed Hosting"

While at HostingCon 2007 we had the opportunity to sit down and chat with some old and new faces to WHIR TV, one of which were Richard Rosenblatt, the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Demand Media, who took the time to discuss his keynote "Next Generation Web: What Lies Ahead for Hosting" in more detail. He shared his thoughts on the .tv domain, where he saw social media going and how Web hosts could learn from Demand Media's marketing success.

We unfortunately ran into some technical issues with the audio, so we'll be sharing transcriptions of our interviews with you instead. Sorry for any inconvenience.

WHIR TV: Tell me about Demand Media. Who are you and what do you do?

RR: We see ourselves as a social media company. We have a really unique platform that allows you to build out social media content across millions of domains or millions of Web sites all tied together through a unique set of tools.

WHIR TV: Just to clarify from your presentation, you consider yourself a social media company but underneath all that you're a Web hosting provider and a domain registrar?

RR: That's a great question. So, we bought a registrar because we believe it provides the right infrastructure, the right elements to build a social media company. If you believe, like I do, that social media is going to go personal, that it's no longer about the big social networks but about your own social network, it's about Richard.tv, YourBusiness.com, then having the second largest domain infrastructure as well as domain understanding to then lay social media tools on top of, makes all the sense in the world because domains and hosting are integral to everything you do on the Web. I just don't think they should be the main thing that you pitch. You should pitch communication and social media.

WHIR TV: Why the focus on the .tv extension?

RR: We thought about .com because it's so widespread. We thought about the other TLDs. In the end we said, "You know what? Out of all the other domains out there besides .com, .tv is the most understandable. Globally, in almost every country in the world TV means the same thing, it means television and video." So if we made a video centric tool, like Channelme.tv, which is all about grabbing your own videos and expressing yourself, we thought it was the perfect domain to tie to those tools.

WHIR TV: What leads you to believe that social media IS going personal?

RR: I believe that's where it always goes. If you look back at 1996-97 people put their stores all in one big virtual mall at a company I was involved with, iMall.com, or you look at Geocities where everybody put their Web sites all on one big site, it started to fragment. People started to get their own URLs. They were no longer on Geocities. They started to get YourBusiness.com. IMall went from offering a mall to offering your own enabling tools, the ability to add e-commerce to your own Web site, so it always goes from mass to individual. If you look at MySpace or Facebook profiles, they all look like little Web sites, they remind me of little Geocities. At some point, they should all have their own domains and they should name themselves.

WHIR TV: How is your experience with MySpace helping out or playing into your goals with DemandMedia?

RR: The time I spent at MySpace is integral to everything I'm doing now. It wasn't the first time I got involved with user-generated content. When we did iMall in 1994, by 1996 we were offering stores and giving businesses the ability to build their own Web sites, which was user-generated content for businesses. MySpace kind of honed my belief and my understanding of what it takes to empower the user to produce content, which we're going to sell advertising against. What's unique about Demand is we're going to share that advertising revenue back to the users so it's all about publishing to get paid as well as to get famous.

WHIR TV: Can you go a little more in-depth with DemandMedia's monetization model?

RR: Sure, it's not that different with what you see with Google Adsense or a lot of other ad networks out there. Based on the page views, based on the number of metrics, we will give the user a percentage of the revenue we generate. Because of our ability to negotiate with all of the different monetization networks, we're able to get a much higher revenue share than an individual user can so we believe they can make more by doing a direct deal through us than with all the different providers out there.

WHIR TV: If more Web hosts start thinking this way and begin offering social media sites for consumers as a clever way to sell Web hosting and domain names, what's the best way for Web hosting companies to differentiate themselves from competitors who will be offering the same thing and how will they keep customers interested beyond the initial hype? Because as things go, a social media site is popular one day and then gets tossed for the next great social networking site that pops up.

RR: The goal of the presentation wasn't to give them the solution. It was to help them think outside of the box. The goal was to say, "Hey, we're sitting on this domain company and hosting and we're able to create this really cool product called ChannelMe.tv where Carson Daly and a bunch of other celebrities are involved and people are getting behind. And we're selling thousands of channels." Where you couldn't sell .tv's on their own, somehow you build a social media site and you can sell twice as much. It's very odd isn't it? It's all about presentation. The goal was not to give Web hosts the answer, but to show them the solution to differentiate themselves in a commoditizing type of business.

My second answer is yes, that's my whole point. People get fickle and jump around from MySpace to Facebook to all over the place because it's not about you it's about what is the new cool, hip place. If instead, a company is selling you the ability to build your own channel, your own url, maybe it'll be on the other social networks also, but in the end, it'll come back to your own identity and it's kind of like your phone number or your own address. It's like selling a business their url to build their business, it's the same with selling to an individual their url to spend their Web life on. See that's the transition, that consumers are now using the Web the way businesses used to. That's the way the markets always shift and that's what we see happening now.

WHIR TV: In terms of ChannelMe.tv how can businesses best utilize it to market who they are and benefit their businesses?

RR: There are a lot of businesses that buy their own .tv and post videos around a certain topic. For example, there is a channel called chocolatechipcookies.tv and what this user does is she grabs videos of how to make the best chocolate chip cookies from YouTube, MySpace and other hosting sites and she puts them up on her site. What this does is garner leads of people who are interested in chocolate chip cookies and I believe what she's doing now is selling direct-to-ship her own homemade chocolate chip cookies. So anyone looking for this topic will search for it on Google and they'll find her because she's aggregating content and is listed high because she's part of our network, they'll come to her and now she has a new customer that she can now communicate with through blogs, friends lists, profiles etc.

WHIR TV: How has the industry responded to these ideas you've put forth?

RR: To be honest, much more positive than I expected. All these businesses I've been involved with in the past, everyone's told me I'm crazy, it doesn't make sense, there's no advertising model people have been embracing this concept that social media goes beyond a big portal, so I would say the response has been 100 percent positive. We've had no serious negative response to these ideas.

WHIR TV: What's next for DemandMedia?

RR: I think we're going to keep building on our core strategy of the belief that social networking is going personal and vertical and we're going to buy lots and lots of companies and build lots and lots of tools to lead that market. As the market continues to fragment we want to be there in those passionate verticals to provide users with tools and technologies that they need. And we want to pay them for it.

TAGS: HostingCon, "Demand Media"

WHIR TV recently checked out HostingCon 2007, the third annual event dedicated to the Web hosting industry, held at the Navy Pier in Chicago. Liam has been bringing you in-depth coverage from the event through his blog and we have a lot of interviews to share with you in the coming weeks from keynote speaker Richard Rosenblatt from DemandMedia as well as with industry notables like John Zanni from Microsoft, Sandip Gupta from NetMagic (formerly from Ensim) and Paul Stapleton from DH Capital.

This week we bring you a one-on-one with conference organizer Frank Spaulding as well as some feedback from the exhibitors and attendees.

Also be sure to check out our pictures from the event!