Measuring the Web Hosting Business

• By The WHIR, January 21, 2004

•   Digg
    Delicious
    Reddit
    Newsvine
    Stumbleupon
    Twitter

  (close)

  From:

  To:

  (close)
  Share | Send | Print | Comments (0)

Measuring the Web Hosting Business

By Philbert Shih

From Web Hosting Monthly, January 2004 edition

January 21, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY

REVIEW) -- As the Web hosting industry continues to grow, so too does

the quantity of research and statistical tools hosting companies can

use to measure and assess the market.

One company in particular, UK-based research and analysis firm Netcraft (netcraft.com),

has succeeded in establishing itself as the leading provider of Web

hosting industry research and statistics. Netcraft tools measure the

total market share of Web servers and operating systems and generate

other data sets such as counts of Web servers located at hosting

service providers and surveys of resellers and SSL transactions. Its

client list is a who's who of the industry, including such notables as

EV1Servers, 1&1, Verio, C&W, Rackspace and Interland.

Netcraft is best known for its Web server

survey, accepted by many as the definitive picture of Web server market

share. The survey measures Web server software usage on Internet

connected computers. It does this by polling each site with an http

request determining the Web server that supports the site and a full

inspection of the TCP/IP characteristics of the response to determine

its operating system. Its sample size is comprised of as many hostnames

(domains) that provide an http service as it can find. In July 2000,

the survey received responses from over 18 million sites. In December

2003, that number was nearly 46 million.

The strength of the Netcraft survey is

its census-like scope. "So far as I know, nobody else is trying to get

close to a census on the Web servers, operating systems and hosting

locations that Web sites use," says Mike Prettejohn, director of

Netcraft. "The commercial value in the Web server survey is in having

both breadth and depth - coverage as close to a census as possible."

Netcraft tries to find as many Web sites as it can in order to attain

as accurate a depiction of the market as possible. And it encourages

people to pass on information about sites that they think Netcaft may

not know about so they can be included in the survey, he says.

Another valuable statistical tool

Netcraft produces is its hosting provider switching analysis. Currently

licensed by companies that host 14 percent of the active Web sites on

the Internet, the tool allows hosts to identify where new customers

were previously hosted and what provider a lost customer has moved to.

Netcraft says this analysis gives hosts a way to track their own

progress, identify and gauge competitors, and research new markets. It

can do this for any of the world's top 1,500 hosting companies.

What exactly are Web hosts doing with

Netcraft's research and statistics? "Hosting companies primarily use

the data for competitor analysis and also market momentum and sizing,"

says Prettejohn. They also use the many macro-level statistics it

produces to evaluate global market trends and make investment

decisions, he adds.

"We use Netcraft and several other tools

in trying to size the marketplace and get a sense of who is growing and

who is shrinking," says Jim Collins, chief marketing officer of

Florida-based Affinity Internet. UK-based 1&1 Internet uses

Netcraft to "monitor our competition," says CEO Andreas Gauger. Since

its October entry into the US market, 1&1 has used Netcraft's tools

to track its progress and identify where customers are coming from,

says Gauger.

Port 80 Software (port80software.com),

a developer of Microsoft Web server add-on tools, has developed its own

independent survey that paints a somewhat different picture of the Web

server market. Port 80's survey is technically similar to Netcraft's,

running a header check to determine which software is being used to

serve a particular hostname. But the difference lies in the data

sample. Whereas Netcraft compiles its data from all Internet connected

computers, Port 80 uses the Fortune 1000. This group, Port 80 argues,

is of more relevance to business decision-makers and serves as a

counterweight to Netcraft's data sample, which Port 80 says is biased

in favor of low-traffic Web sites and servers that host multiple

domains. According to Netcraft's December survey, Apache holds 67.41

percent market share and Microsoft 20.87 percent, while Port 80's

survey has Microsoft at 53.6 percent and Apache at 18.9 percent. The

contrasting results demonstrate how different statistical tools can

create different portrayals of the market. In fact, Port 80 developed

the survey specifically because it questions the way Netcraft's survey

is commonly referenced by the media as the definitive representation of

overall Web server market share, explains Joe Lima, chief operating

officer of Port 80 Software. This is something the company says is

misleading by definition, especially in light of its survey's results

that show high Microsoft platform uptake in enterprise computing

environments.

The Port 80 survey demonstrates that

consulting more than one resource can add supplementary perspectives of

the market, helping decision-makers construct as balanced an assessment

as possible. The online portal webhosting.info (webhosting.info)

is another source for hosting industry statistics. Operated by domain

registrar Directi, webhosting.info publishes free micro and macro

statistical information and performance reports on every hosting

company in the world. "Our data and reports are very helpful for Web

hosting managers and can play an important role in the decision making

process," says Namit Merchant, business head of the webhosting.info

project. "Using our reports, managers can identify where they are

getting new business from... identify their loss of business... and

view detailed reports on those companies."

Regardless of what survey or statistical

data hosts use, it is important they not become overly dependent on a

single source of information. Affinity's Collins certainly believes in

the value of Netcraft's research, but says hosts should be cautious

about accepting one company's data as a standard. "We add the

information we get from Netcraft to that of other industry analysts

such as Yankee Group and Tier One to try to piece together an accurate

picture of the industry," says Collins.

Even more balance can be created by

complementing numbers with non-statistical data. Canadian Web host

HostingPlex uses less hard statistical data and more intuitiveness to

assess the market. "All you really need is to listen to what your

current customers want... that's what we think the 'industry' is," says

Kaumil Patel, president of customer care for Hostingplex (hostingplex.com).

Going to forums is one way to find out what customers want. "We scour

the Internet, read our forums, read webhostingtalk.com... and make our

judgments and assessments from there."

Hosts can also use other non-statistical

information such as their own internal information on their

performance, word of mouth research on their competitors and financial

information on publicly listed companies, says Prettejohn.

Netcraft's wide acceptance as an industry

standard, if anything, bears out its high utility for hosting

providers. Complementing its numbers with data from the growing number

of resources available can help hosts to better assess the market and

make critical business decisions.

Tags:  SSL  Domains  Affinity Internet  Directi  ETT  Hostingplex  Internet Connect  LS Host  Microsoft  NEC  Net Connect  Netcraft  Port 80 Software  Portal  Rackspace  TS Host  Verio  Webhosting.info  Yankee Group 

• Print | Comments (0)

• (0) Comments
• View Post