Leaders Converge at Hosting Summit
By Isabel Wang, theWHIR.com
September 20, 2006 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Tier 1 Research's (tier1research.com) Hosting Transformation Summit continued Tuesday at the Mirage hotel and casino in Las Vegas. Nearly 200 attendees gathered for the second annual event, coming from as far as Japan, in the case of Hitachi, and New Zealand, for Caledonian Investments, which is looking to broaden its predominantly Asian hosting portfolio by expanding into the US.
The audience included Web hosting notables Graham Weston, CEO of Rackspace, Lou Honick, CEO of HostMySite, and David Schairer, CTO of Concentric. Schairer became Concentric's 19th employee in 1994.
The day began with a "Hosting 2.0" keynote from Andy Schroepfer, Tier 1 founder and president. While a Hosting 1.0 provider's responsibility, he says, was to get consumers online, the host's role is expanding to encompass new forms of Web enablement. A Web site is no longer the only type of Web presence, he says, offering as examples location markers on mapping services, social networking profiles, listings on aggregator services like Amazon or eBay and mini-apps, or widgets, that can be integrated with third party Web sites.
Andy's "don't be an island" recommendation called for Hosting 2.0 providers to partner with owners of online advertising inventory, aggregate ecommerce Web sites into malls, and become distribution channels for Web-based software.
The day's agenda also featured brief presentations from speakers including Kevin Rose of Digg and Jonathan Crane of Savvis, as well as panel discussions on colocation, SaaS, e-commerce and M&A. The day concluded with a networking reception and poker tournament.
Hosting Transformation Summit concludes tomorrow with discussions on virtualization, content distribution networks and the influence of content and media on Web hosting.
To view photographs of the Hosting Transformation summit, click here.
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