Liam Eagle: LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

I was a little surprised by how difficult it became to see this idea through. We set
out to assemble a blueprint for a small hosting business, but butted up pretty
quickly against the general impossibility of covering all the territory that was out
there to be covered.

The basic constraints of a printed magazine, and the less-than-infinite amount of
time we had available forced us to face the fact that we could never produce an
exhaustive guide to starting a hosting company.

Furthermore, the reality is that nobody in our audience is out to start a web
hosting company. The purpose of the exercise was really to provide existing hosting
providers – companies that have, at some point, faced the decisions we would examine
- an opportunity to re-examine some of the choices that make up the nature of their
business.

Ultimately, we decided the answer was to focus on those decisions that weren’t
necessarily related to products, as much as to policies. In particularly we focused
on those decisions that might have changed over the course of the last few years,
those that would more than likely offer the most fodder for reappraisal.

Among those pieces, we look at the basic operating system decision, which
significantly influences many of the decisions that follow; we look at the changing
role of automation and virtualization in hosting; we examine the notions and
varieties of reselling; we look at the nature of managed services; and several other
key features.

In the interest of drawing this away from the entirely theoretical, we have tried to
include examples of the finances involved wherever possible. Hopefully it will
provide you the opportunity to revisit those decisions as we intended.