August 21, 2001 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- The Internet is undergoing a radical transformation from a simplistic communicative tool to a vehicle that accommodates transactional business processes, according to Mark Shull, CEO of Digex.
In his keynote address that opened the proceedings at the Web Hosting Expo on Monday, the executive stated that the industry is evolving towards offering more sophisticated application solutions to satisfy the complex needs of business.
Shull believes that most Web presence providers do not offer a high level of advanced services for clientele. Principally, most deliver services sufficient for marketing sites with simplistic back-end database integration. Such Web services usually only provide front-end presentation and some database functions which are usually only CGI driven. Further, many hosting solution providers only focus their resources exclusively on exit capacity, such as bandwidth and network capacity and rollout.
Shull believes that the evolution of network computing will instead involve a shift from exit capacity to management of data in a business environment. “Since the railroad or network has already been built,” he said, “the focus is now to add value.”
While current Web services are not presently enabled to manage transactions, Shull envisions a future where the ability to manage applications and transactions are key. Application server platforms will allow for the construction of highly complex architectures that can fully integrate with internal systems and processes. Such platforms will thus be advantageous since they will provide true supply chain management with associated transaction savings.
Shull believes that these types of advanced application solutions will fuel the demand for Web hosting services in the near future, since such services can provide the appropriate profit margins necessary to sustain a business model.
For this reason, he believes that there will be a categorical shift from crude shared, dedicated and co-located hosting offerings, to those focused upon application servers. Shared, dedicated and co-located services are so simple in design that Shull referred to them as the transport of “blob data” or uncomplicated graphical and text content. Because of this, Shull has avoided the deployment of such client services by Digex, especially co-location (which are typical to Web hosting industry-at-large). Instead, Shull states that Digex is pursuing the rollout of only the most advanced, managed application server platforms over the next 12 months, which will position the company to offer the most highly developed hosting solutions in the industry for serious business.
He envisions the future of enterprise hosting to entail the leveraging of new software licensing models to reduce costs, and hence has embraced the extended service provider (xSP) model in order to fulfill the emerging demand for distributed Internet-based applications by mid-to-large businesses.
