For web hosts, the industry is changing very quickly and adapting to the changing characteristics of the modern hosting industry is a huge challenge in itself to say the least. Good or bad, the future of the industry is going to be even more dynamic than it is today and we can’t ignore the fact that in technology world future is always very near.

Changes in 2012

In last one year, we have already seen enough signs that the face of the industry is changing at a rapid pace, and it has already seen huge overhauls and seems to have taken a different direction altogether.

By changes, we don't mean the regular mergers, shut downs or buyouts, because that still is the regular thing; even though GoDaddy broke a big news by putting itself for sale. By change, we mean the biggies like Microsoft, Google and Adobe fast venturing into the traditional hosting marketplace, and giving a rusty time to the small players.

Survival is Becoming Tougher for the Smaller Players

Small to mid-size web hosts can't do anything about it, but wait and watch and most of them don't even have a response plan quite yet. Chances of survival in front of such big guns are very weak, but there is always a way and experts believe it is a host's willingness to do something different and the out-of-the-box thinking that can still take them places. The most important point to consider is sitting with no new ideas and hoping for things to work wouldn't obviously help the cause.

Let us quickly take a look at different factors that are driving the transformation in hosting industry.

Important Market Transformations

• Continuous expansion with cloud technology,

• Youth oriented services as it is the you who demand changes for they today have even better infrastructure in their house than we see at offices,

• Hand-held computing is changing everything.

• Mobile devices like smartphone, iPads, tablets etc are changing everything at a very rapid state,

• 3G and 4G technologies are the obvious driving forces.

Some Interesting Facts About the Transformation in Hosting Industry

• There are more than 1 billion mobile users in the world and there are over 500,000 mobile apps out there across different stores,

• There are a total of 630 million laptops, 80 million notebooks, 1.2 billion mobile phone, and 220 million smartphone used worldwide.

• Net public cloud revenues in the world are close to 23 billion, and it's likely to cross 30 billion mark soon enough.

• There are over 700 million users of social networking websites.

• Amongst 50 million servers out there, 50% are virtualized.

Expected Changes in Cloud Technology

• We might be expecting to see integration between the vendors, but the delivery will continue from one particular provider.

• We are expected to see more platforms that would allow easier integration of special cloud products.

• ISV is also going to become a cloud broker.

In a Nutshell

All these facts clearly go to show that the overall hosting industry is undergoing a major overhaul; that said, web hosts are also likely to see an increase in the number of opportunities, and grab a bigger market share in the forthcoming years.

It's also great to see people becoming environment-conscious, we would also certainly see greener cloud environments instead of the traditional global net. In coming days, we'd also get to see many of the core business apps hosted in cloud environment.

So, now that you know what's in store for you, as a hosting provider, it's time to adapt to the changing industry, and ensure that you don't get left behind by your competitors. Keeping your business up-to-date with latest technological tools must be high on your list.