Cloud Hosting as the Future of Windows Web Hosting

Initially, non-tech savvy website owners usually regarded web hosting as one of those odd things that they just did not want to get involved with, yet they required it on a continuous basis to host their websites and online business. But, over time, things have changed, and today most of the website owners and the knowledgeable folks do care about the minutest detail related to web servers and hosting.

In the current scenario, Windows hosting has gotten higher popularity than Linux hosting, although most website owners prefer a combination of both so as to meet all their web hosting requirements. Now, it is time to take a look at the future of Windows hosting.

Cloud hosting has been one of the buzzwords in the web hosting arena of late, and, whenever any website is hosted under cloud hosting architecture, the resources from all servers can be shared to ensure the highest level of performance. As such, cloud hosting makes things faster, and easier.

What’s more, the cloud hosting architecture helps in rendering a “pay as you use” model, which simply means you pay for only whatever you use. Certain cell phone networks are also adopting this model at the moment, and this will sync with the development of the SaaS (software as a service) model.

However, this architecture is still in early ages. Everyone has different opinions about Cloud hosting, and it will take some time to realize its true potential.

There was a time when free web hosting services were extremely popular. But, over time, their level of popularity decreased, due to an absence of support, low level of reliability, and higher downtimes.

As the profitability of online businesses grew higher and higher, everybody started using paid shared web hosting services, which involved annual subscriptions, but ensured that you could call up the support team in case of any issues anytime! Secondly, shared web hosting providers also started offering free goodies like free website builder, direction submission, andGoogle Adwords credit.

Moreover, just as every coin has a flip side, the cons of shared web hosting slowly came into picture. It is a bitter reality that, since multiple websites are hosted on a single web server, malware or any other problem can affect the other sites on the server. (The tech support team will rule this out, of course, but remember that it is quite possible just about anytime.)

As a result, the importance of dedicated hosting came into picture. Dedicated hosting, dedicated IP, added firewall protection, and miscellaneous proxy settings can help you a great deal in nullifying any of the ill effects propagated by other sites hosted on the same web server.

Well, you must be wondering, we’ve already gotten enough security, sophisticated technologies, and literally nothing better is needed at this point of time. However, once cloud hosting architecture evolves to a bigger and better extent, the conventional hosting is expected to be replaced completely.

Even today, the majority of the folks pay fixed charges for hosting, and there are very few web hosting service providers that offer you the leverage to pay for only whatever you use, rather than fixed monthly or annual charges.

There are still many hot choices like the MT’s Grid made available at $20 a month and the Virtual Private Servers to cater to the needs of the business users and website owners who require lot of web storage space and high quality dedicated support. But, in most of the high level hosting solutions, it has been observed that the level of control of user decreases substantially.

There has been a massive change to the landscape of web hosting. Initially, free website and blog hosting services like blogger.com and Wordpress.com were the buzzword, but now people only use them just as another personal blog. Nobody really wants to host a highly informative site with blogger or any of the free hosting services.

In a similar fashion, people prefer dedicated IP, extra security features and dedicated hosting to ensure that their value site doesn’t get affected by others.

Last but definitely not least, “pay for only what you use” or SaaS is becoming another popular model in all the fields, and web hosting is no exception. However, it will be interesting to see whether the future of Windows hosting will be a hand-shake with Linux hosting or if Windows hosting will be able to survive as a solo contender.

Remember, even today, the most popular blogging software like Wordpress, PHP discussion boards, and online galleries can’t be set-up with Windows hosting. Linux hosting is a must, although a combination of both always produces the best results.

References

• A Brief on Cloud Hosting: http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/web-hosting-knowledge/a-brief-on-cloud-hosting/
• Cloud Hosting: Future of Webhosting?: http://www.webhosting.uk.com/forums/webhosting/5210-cloud-hosting-future-webhosting.html