Rated by internet research group Netcraft (netcraft.com) the world's largest and fastest-growing domain registrar, as well as its largest Web host, Go Daddy is consumer-level Web hosting's largest and probably best-known player. The company said last week that it would transfer its entire domain portfolio, approximately 4.5 million domains, from Linux-to Microsoft-based solutions.

The announcement capped some significant gains in the lower-cost end of the Web hosting market - a segment of the business in which Windows-powered solutions have not always necessarily been the obvious choice. Early March, publicly-held Web hosting firm Web.com, then known as Interland, announced that it had labeled Microsoft its "preferred platform" for delivering hosting services.

Michael Van Dijken, marketing manager for Microsoft hosted solutions, says the decision furthers a shift that has been building in Go Daddy's business toward Windows-based solutions.

"[Go Daddy's] background is Linux," he says, "and over the last year and a half they've made more and more of a move toward windows. Right now Windows is the fastest growing segment in their Web hosting business."

Like many hosts operating at the low-cost consumer hosting level, Go Daddy offers customers a choice between Linux and Windows plans. And Microsoft itself, through the refining of its solutions, has had a hand in driving that shift.

"Typically," says Van Dijken, "features play a big role in the choice you make when you decide how you want to host your web site. And Go Daddy has, certainly in the last 6 to 12 months, made it such that its Windows offer is more attractive to customers than its Linux offer."

Part of that attractiveness comes from Microsoft's focus on partnership and development. While open source solutions may have major label products produced for compatibility, and may see rapid development, Microsoft has the advantage of having a roadmap and actively partnering with the developers that produce software for its platforms - both impossibilities for open source systems.

The company, says Van Dijken, is actively anticipating the needs of hosting end customers and helping its partners to build those into its systems. One such example is the company's work to integrate SWsoft's SiteBuilder and other similar tools.

"For end customers who are buying their services directly from Go Daddy," he says, "the things that are most important to those customers right now would be blogging tools, the ability to put photos online and then site building tools. People don't want to have to work with a clumsy HTML editor to try to create a Web site and figure out how to upload that to the platform."

All of this suggests that Go Daddy's Web hosting operations will continue to rely on Microsoft more as they develop, and obviously that's something Microsoft intends to encourage. And with the switching of its domain hosting platform, Go Daddy has shown a considerable trust in Microsoft's software.

One of the deal's most important revelations, says Microsoft, is the fact that Go Daddy had built a very successful business, and was seeing continued success, on its existing platform. Companies like Go Daddy don't make major changes to the operation foundations of their business unless they're sure there's a real benefit there, says Microsoft.