The First Wave - ISP Wave
The first wave of Web hosting started in the middle of 1990s. At
the time, there weren't really many web hosting companies. Web
hosting was a part of ISP (Internet Service Provider) operation.
Within two years, the number of ISPs had grown from a few dozens
to a few thousands in United States alone. Many analysts
predicated that the consolidation of ISP industry was
unavoidable. But the analysts didn't pay much attention to the
future of the web hosting. The web hosting clients for ISPs were
most small to medium-sized organizations which couldn't offer to
have dedicated Internet connection.
The Second Wave - One Plan Hosting Wave
As large telecommunication companies entering into the ISP
industry and the prevailing of broadband connection into both
commercial and residential buildings, a few leading ISP, such as
AOL had grabbed residential users from small ISP companies, and
telecommunication companies had stolen or acquired commercial
clients from small or regional ISP companies. Because of the
economy of scale, ISPs couldn't compete with either AOL, Comcast
or Qwest for Internet connection service. Most ISP companies
were disappeared as fast as they were emerged.
On the other hand, the growth of the Web has pushed the second
wave of web hosting. The web hosting companies offer hosting
service at a fraction of cost of what ISPs used to charge. In
contrast to the Web hosting service from ISP, which is often
customized for each client one way or another, the idea of one
hosting plan has helped grow the client base from a few hundreds
to hundreds of thousands at few leading hosting companies in a
few short years. Todays' web hosting companies don't offer
Internet connection service at all. It's unbelievable that early
ISP companies had never attempted to transform themselves into
web hosting companies to survive the inevitable consolidation of
ISP industry.
The Third Wave - Hosting Plan for Users
Seasoned webmasters can easily setup a new website in minutes
with one of their preferred hosting companies. Novice webmasters
are often confused by the various web hosting plans - ASP Web
Hosting, Budget Hosting, Dedicated Servers,
eCommerce Hosting, FrontPage Web Hosting, Hosting With
Templates, Managed Web Hosting, PHP Web Hosting, Reseller
Hosting,
Sh
ared Hosting, Unix / Linux Hosting, Virtual Private Servers,
Windows Hosting or Co-location Hosting. The size of the Web will
continue to grow exponentially as more and more people join the
crow to create their own websites. If web hosting companies do
not expect average Joe to understand operating systems,
programming languages or variations of web servers, they'll
develop the service and sell the hosting plan that'll make sense
to average Mary. New web hosting plan will be labeled in terms
of what is can do for hosting customers, instead of technical
buzzwords.
The Web hosting industry has been enjoying healthy growth as the
global economy and IT industry revives. It's too early to see
the tide of the third wave in Web hosting right now. If the
first and the second wave of Web hosing were pushed by the start
of a new economic cycle, the coming of the third wave may not be
an exception either.
Copyright @2005, Bruce Zhang
You have permission to publish this article electronically free
of charge, as long as the bylines and links in the body of the
article and the bylines are included.
About the author:
Bruce Zhang has over 10 years of experience in
web development, database
design and managing web servers. He currently manages dozens of
websites using ASP Web Hosting, Budget Hosting, Dedicated
Servers, eCommerce Hosting, Managed Web Hosting,
Reseller Hosting for web hosting needs.
