Web Hosting Mass-Market Quarterly Fall 2008 Report Released

New York, New York - (The Hosting News) - September 24, 2008 - A new report released by New York-based independent research firm, Tier1 Research (T1R), analyzes the mass market as the shared, virtualized services and standardized dedicated server segments of the hosting sector.

The quarterly report series analyzes the most important developments in a space that continues to transform rapidly, remains fragmented and is under increasing competitive pressures from all directions. Adding color to this context is the growth in broadband access and powerful Web-enabled mobile devices, which has pushed growing numbers of people to take more of their personal and professional lives online.

All these developments have created demand for a wide range of online services and applications that hosters are offering alongside traditional hosting services. At no other point in the sector's history has competition been so intense. Pure-play hosters still number in the thousands and domain registrars, design shops and application providers all see the value in offering hosting as a complement to other products and services.

Meanwhile, Google, Microsoft and Amazon all threaten to unleash their considerable resources on the sector. Perhaps most importantly, there is an emerging challenge to the traditional paradigms of hosting service delivery. This is made possible by virtualization technology and increasingly sophisticated user interfaces, which are creating new and often more efficient ways to bill, provision and deliver hosting and compute resources. Despite all these challenges, the sector's mainstays of shared and dedicated hosting remain resilient, underscoring the inherent value proposition of the sector.

Against this background, Tier1 Research reviews and evaluates the impact of key events in the past quarter, while elucidating the most noteworthy trends. The report also tracks changes in market share and projects the overall size of the market. Finally, the hypotheses are tested against the empirical evidence, while attempting to peer into the future, as well as the financial implications of developments affecting recent trends and future directions for the managed hosting sector.

T1R, a division of The 451 Group, is headquartered in New York. The company analyzes the financial and industry implications of developments affecting public and private companies within the IT, communications and Internet sectors - with a particular focus on hosting, Internet infrastructure and IT services. Clients include institutional investors and technology vendors, along with end users and venture capitalists. The clients leverage T1R's analytical insight for idea generation, trend identification, due diligence and grounded opinions, as well as metrics and forecasts on companies and industries covered.