Monday, April 27, 2009

Web Hosting - What Does the Future Hold?

Web hosting has come a long way, combining the need for the best technologies and reducing the service charges. Over the years, with the advances in Internet connectivity and availability across the world, the concept to access software across locations has gathered momentum. This idea coined as SaaS (Software as a Service) is believed to further speed up in demand in the coming future.

The concept of software services through huge virtual servers that provide solutions to clients at their location is the new emerging concept. Earlier the fixed location of hardware and software required movement of personnel for installation, repair and maintenance of website related work. With more firms adopting the web based query resolution and trouble shooting techniques, web hosting is also being conducted on the same lines.

The revolutionary concept in the field of web hosting has been the introduction of control panels. These allow the web master to independently incorporate changes in the website. It also enables monitoring of interactive information from remote locations. With the customer base spreading far across the world, web masters prefer to have servers located at multiple places to cater to the local users. However, the control of activities is restricted to certain locations. The control panels help to quickly respond to changes in user's tastes and preferences and also help to maintain SEO rankings.

The concept of cloud computing, that was long present in realm of software development is now being vigorously incorporated in web hosting. It is expected that the major players in the hosting business will be based on this technology. It is generally accepted, that dedicated servers are never utilized to their full capacity, leading to waste of disk space and computing power. A combination of few servers, when working in coordination can do more work than, if these were segregated for each website. This concept has enabled hosts to guarantee features that were previously, not a standard. These include the maximum possible server uptime with no technical glitches. This is possible due to the sharing of computing load among the servers. The hosts assure the clients of unlimited disk space and bandwidth, which comes from calculating the average use of their infrastructure.

Other possible features are charging users, while accessing the servers for specific information. This can reduce the hosting rates borne by the web masters. Hosting companies have also started wielding their servers, as advertisement centres to earn enough and to further push down hosting charges. Hosting companies have huge databases of active users and target them to sell web development tools and software. Hosting is expected to become more user friendly with options to store and upload pictures, data files, and music folders.

Also, the use of Virtual Private Servers (VPS) that has started as a trickle is expected to gather momentum soon. The concept, similar to cloud hosting, is aimed at utilizing the maximum of the installed capacity available to the host. The method involves separating a single server into separate sections for each client, depending on the requirements for the particular web site. Here, there is an inherent advantage over the method of cloud hosting. There is the least possibility of users of other websites robbing the first of its web space or data transfer speed. Each compartment acts as an individual entity, and can be rebooted without affecting the other "servers". Unlike cloud hosting, the data security is guaranteed and information is not spread around on many servers. Each VPS can have a unique IP address, tables, filtering tools and routing methods. Also, each has its own configuration files and undergoes software up- gradation independently.

Peter Brittain is from Perth Website Hosting company, Northern Lights which specialize in high speed web hosting services.

Peter Brittain - EzineArticles Expert Author

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