April 16, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Research and analysis firm Tier 1 Research (t1r.com) released a new quarterly report on Tuesday revealing that the managed hosting sector has "experienced tremendous growth" of approximately 30 percent in the past 12 months, driven by a handful of different trends including virtualization, business continuity services and security technologies.
In the report titled "Managed Hosting: Market Overview Spring 2008," T1R explains that despite the dipping economy in the US, there has actually been a rise in managed hosting adoption by small to medium-sized businesses and mid-tier enterprises in both the US and Europe. Rackspace, Savvis, AT&T and Verizon Business have been the biggest beneficiaries of this market growth, being the clear leaders in the managed hosting sector, says T1R.
"There will be continued jockeying and consolidation in the managed services sector as larger storage companies continue to eat up smaller backup-and-recovery service offerings, and encroach more on the territory of managed hosters," says Antonio Piraino, senior analyst at T1R and author of the report.
Key areas of focus for the market include SaaS hosting and continued adoption of platforms serving as both exchange point and facilitator of new online services. The report also found that virtualization technology will be a key aspect of several new emerging service lines, as will the ability for customers to obtain these services in an on-demand manner.
Utility storage and computing services will show strong growth in 2008 with new competition coming from established managed hosting providers like Savvis and Rackspace, says T1R.
The industry has already seen some strong examples of this in the last week with utility hosting services provider Layered Technologies' recent expansion through its acquisition of FastServers.net as well as cloud storage platform provider Nirvanix's new European funding.
T1R says that some of the other trends transforming the industry today include e-discovery services, managed messaging and IM, managed VoIP, managed databases and managed application services.
This 55-page report is part of a series of quarterly reports designed to provide timely analysis and perspective on key technology trends and developments in the managed hosting marketplace and provides market-share data on the top public and private players in the market, as well as updated forecasts for 2008 revenues.
Last month, T1R released a report analyzing the evolution of the mass-market hosting sector into a space that is fragmented, under pressure and transforming rapidly.
