The hosting industry is maturing. You can see that by the mergers and acquisitions, the consolidation of suppliers both vertically and horizontally, but most of all you see it in the buying habits of the consumers. The mass-market is no longer buying hosting like it used to. What does that mean for us in the hosting industry? How do we grow revenues in light of this changing market?

1. Your Product is a Commodity:
What Now?
Judah Johns
Vice President Business
Development
Reseller.PlusServer (HEG)

2. Hard Truths
•Death, Taxes… Commoditization
•The cycle from product launches to maturity to consolidation to
commoditization is faster than ever
•In a commoditized market, owners of hosting companies need to rethink
their business
Used to be
•Even mass-market clients wanted “hosting”
•Cloud was cool
Fact
•Hosting isn’t cool: Digital Ocean was cool... Sort of
•Mass-market trends
•Automation is not going to be good for everyone

5. • Annual global IP traffic will hit 2 zettabytes (1000 exabytes) in 2016*
• Global IP traffic has increased 5x over the past 5years and will increase 3x
*
• CDNs will deliver carry almost 2/3 of traffic by 2019*
• 2/3 of all IP traffic will originate from non-PC devices*
• Traffic from wireless/mobile devices will exceed wired device traffic in
2016*
• Globally, mobile data traffic will grow 3x faster than fixed IP traffic from
’15-’19**
All these things will affect consumer behaviour, especially for
hosting providers who are very near to the infrastructure
serving these clients.
Cisco VNI 2015, **Akamai State of the Internet 2015

7. • It’s like ignoring Net Neutrality: it will affect your business
• Amazon / Microsoft / Google are working on Web 5.0
• See specialized WordPress hosts

8. • “It’s not a commodity!
• “It’s complicated and the clients need our
help.”
• “Clients need to be able to pick up the
phone. The need handholding.”
• “What about security?”
• “Performance matters, and those big guys
don’t provide it.”
• Or… “Storage!” ... “Scalability!”
• “You can’t commoditize service.”

9. • Product Innovation
• Packaging
• New market niches, especially in
unsophisticated areas
• Generate more referrals
• Offer increased service
• Find out what part of your service you
can guarantee
• Partner with complementary products or
service providers
• Employ your non-customer facing
assets

10. • What tools do you use daily?
• What are you an expert in?
• What advertising hacks have you
discovered?
• What other industry do you
understand well?
• What other industry or market do
you always look at and think, “They
could totally do that better.”

11. • Do you have a real, active program in
place?
• How does it work for your employees?
• Is it only your sales guys working to
bring in new business?
• Do you have sales? Or is it all
inbound?
• What incentives are in place?

12. • You run a hosting company: TRUE
• On a daily basis, you only do hosting:
FALSE
• Do you know tech: YES
• You know how to build a product and
market it: YES.
You have hidden assets and skills
that you can use to grow your
business.

13. The majority of the Internet is run by small to medium sized hosters.
Many will not survive the next 5 years.
There is plenty of room for those that innovate to
not only survive, but thrive in doing so.
“IF NOT US, WHO?
IF NOT NOW, WHEN?”
-JOHN F. KENNEDY