The Future of Hosting
September 12, 2007 by Kevin Hazard, Web Hosting Evangelist in Evangelist's Corner
With the Tier 1 Research Hosting Transformation Summit coming up next week, I thought I’d take a moment to prognosticate some of the topics of conversation that might be overheard during three-day event.
Let me set the stage for you before I amaze you with my (soon-to-be proven accurate) predictions …
The Attendees: Hosting service providers, content delivery networks, independent software vendors, investors, deal-makers and key hosting value chain vendors.
The Goal: Discuss the evolving hosting landscape and how technological innovations will change the industry.
The Setting: A little town in Nevada …
The Conversations That Will Be Overheard at The Summit
I think this whole “Internet” thing is a fluke, and it’s on its last leg. We’re reinvesting in parchment paper and homing pigeons. It’s retro. It’s the past AND the future.
We’re developing underwater data centers. Seventy percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, and we’re going to capitalize on that potential data center space.
We’re replacing all of our servers with iPhones. We don’t know how that will affect service levels, but it’ll make all of our data center pictures look very cool. Additionally, we’re setting every iPhone’s homepage to http://iphone.facebook.com to become the Facebook-est host in the industry.
I’m very interested in Utility Computing, but I’m still not clear as to how the servers will connect to my hot water heater and/or clothes dryer.
We’re in the alpha phase of “smell-o-hosting” development. We plan on rolling into the beta phase as soon as the smells we transmit deviate from “burnt silicon.”
Wait … So you’re saying that the NOC projectors can display data center monitoring statistics? We just use ours to play life-sized games of Tetris.
We’ve cut support calls down to zero! Instead of having normal “classical” hold music, we are looping David Hasselhoff singing Hooked on a Feeling. In fact, we haven’t had anyone stay on the line beyond the first line of the song.
As you can see, I’m not breaking any ground with those guesses. Who doesn’t want underwater servers? What about the data center full of iPhones? Yeah, that’s what I thought. I’ve warned you, so don’t be surprised when you try to call your data center and you hear “Ooga Chakka…” Wait. No. I won’t subject you to reading the lyrics.
I’ll report back next to let you know how well I did with my forecast.
-Kevin
September 12th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
My moon data center will blow away your underwater data center for coolness.
September 13th, 2007 at 7:51 am
Gary, I think the only problem would be when it comes time to order new servers up there… Shipping is probably pretty expensive (until someone opens up an warehouse down the crater from you)… In the underwater data centers, you’d just use a ship to ship.
September 13th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
I prefer Get Into My Car, personally.
Don’t Hassle The Hoff.
September 15th, 2007 at 2:15 am
Data center underwater? On the moon?
I’d like to build a data center suspended in the sky using thousands and thousands of weather balloons. We can have a helicopter deliver our Dells and hardware: Yeehaa!
September 27th, 2007 at 7:46 am
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