With the increasing usage of smart phone devices (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Nokia and tablet devices) among system administrators and datacenter workers to manage their deployment footprint, many trends can be observed by looking into usage patterns of these workers to find identify inefficiencies for further improvements. Caleb take an in-depth look into both industry patterns as well as usage trends in order to figure out what is grabbing user attention in the hosting industry.

1. Opportunities in the mobile space for hosting
providers to add value and improve profitability
Presented by: Caleb Kow, MobPanel

2. What to Expect
 Background
 20 minute presentation – focus on facts & statistics
 No companies mentioned (though they should be fairly
obvious to those of you who are experts in the industry)
 Staged Scenarios – how to improve ARPU, acquire higher
value customers through value offerings
 Why is the mobile cloud the next big wave?
 Data, Statistics, References are all copyright of their
respective sources

3. Audience Poll

4. Mobile Adoption Quick Facts
 Mobility as a lifestyle choice for consumers
 Blog/Tweet/Check-In/Surf/Tweet/IM/Updates/Tweet/…
 Mobile device becoming our wallet (App Stores, Purchases, NFC)
 Smart Phones increasingly preferred choice
 Nielsen November 2010: 45% of acquirers chose a smart phone
over feature phone
(http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/apple-leads-smartphone-race-while-android-attracts-most-recent-customers/)
 Skepticism over balance between Functionality, Security &
Privacy
 Security Breaches
 Privacy Invasions

5. Mobile Adoption Quick Facts

6. Mobile Adoption Quick Facts
According to GigaOM(http://gigaom.com/2010/03/26/1-in-2-americans-will-have-a-smartphone-by-christmas-
2011/), one in two Americans will have a smart phone by Christmas – this year!

7. Mobile Adoption Quick Facts
© Chetan Sharma Consulting

8. Mobile Adoption in Hosting Industry
General Websites
Increasing number of mobile compatible websites
Render content customized to screen real estate
“Mobilizer” Services
Take an existing website and convert it into a mobile-
optimized view
Control Panels skinning themes for mobile devices
Hosting & Cloud Providers
Allow customers to open tickets conveniently through a
mobile interface
Native applications to manage cloud slices

9. Opportunities for Hosting Providers
Convenience Familiarity Mobility
• “I want it right here right • Increased adoption of • Ability to accomplish work
now” drives familiarity with a while on the go
• Business owners not particular mobile or screen • Stuck in traffic? Long
necessarily always in front interface commutes? Flight delays?
of their computer screens • People are using smart Tasks can still be
phones/devices to do more accomplished.
day to day tasks
Service Providers can increase value offerings

10. Questions to ponder upon
How can my
customers manage How can I reduce
their websites more customer service
conveniently? cost overheads?
Service Provider
Dilemma
Am I reaching
How do I maximize
out effectively
revenue from
to customers?
customers?

11. Thought-Provoking Questions
How can we make How much control is
purchasing hosting sufficient for effective
services as simple as management without
“buying an app”? compromising security?
Value of
Mobility
Can hosting providers
Which mobile platform(s)
make the entire customer
would give me the best
experience more social
return on investment?
and/or collaborative?

12. What Phones are folks using these days?
 Know your “turf” before deciding on a mobile strategy
 Pay attention to emerging trends in order to ride growth waves

13. What Phones are folks using these days?
 Know your “turf” before deciding on a mobile strategy
 Pay attention to emerging trends in order to ride growth waves

14. Understanding the Mobile Consumer
Source:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703326204575616310040096840.html?mod=e2tw

15. Possibilities for a
Mobile Future

16. Scenario 1: Active Engagement
 John is the owner of johnisthebest.com
 90 days before johnisthebest.com is about to expire, his
web host sends him a friendly email
 60 days before johnisthebest.com is about to expire, his
web host sends him yet another friendly email
 30 days before johnisthebest.com is about to expire, his
very patient web host sends him a more seriously worded
email
 The same happens 3, 2 and 1 day before the final expiry
 Domain expires…..

17. Scenario 1: Active Engagement
Isn’t this
just simply
Domain Name yourdomain.com magical?
expires in 24 hours, last chance to
renew now at half the public price!
Expire Renew

18. Scenario 2: Collaboration
 John is the owner of johnisthebesthost.com
 He employs 2 outsourced techs to manage all his shared
hosting servers
 Techs are “trigger happy”, love to reboot servers
 Especially those which are in the process of being rebooted
 Massive mayhem.. fsck woes.. never ending chkdsk…
 Techs blame it on not knowing when a particular server has
already been rebooted by the other tech
 John is sad

19. Scenario 2: Collaboration
Amazing..
Tech A requests permission to reboot
Isn’t it?
Server 5 from Rack 2 (Windows
Server 2000 – Shared Hosting)
Deny Approve

20. Scenario 3: Ubiquitous Access
 John from johnisthebesthost.com braved through the worst of LA traffic to
reach his favorite steak house. Just when the order is served, John receives a
call from his mum that her website is down, and immediately deduces that he
has to reboot the entire cloud slice powering his mum’s site.
 The steak goes to waste. John braces himself for a mad dash into
traffic, again. This is the second time its happening this month.
Solution?
Login to the mobile web application and reboot
his cloud slice. The steak tastes great.

21. Security Concerns
 Loss – Theft or malicious activity
 Insecurity – Storing sensitive data on mobile phone
 Administrator Privileges – entry point to gain full access to all accounts
 Session Hijacking – MITM, spoofing attacks
 Malicious Applications – Trojans and backdoor applications
 Private Networks
 Tunneling
 VPN
 Two Factor Authentication Tokens
 Administrative Approval Checks

22. Trends which we (MobPanel) have learnt
o System Administrators love statistics
o Server Load Averages
o Disk Utilization
o Frequent checks across all servers
o Allowing customers to “self serve manage” their sites through a mobile interface
has a direct impact on customer service helpdesk ticketing load
o Perceived value goes up when hosting customers are offered the option to manage
their sites through a mobile phone, on top of established control panel software
o Users choose to manage their site through a mobile phone for simple
straightforward tasks (eg creating an email account, changing ftp password, reboot
server)
o Users prefer to manage their site using a desktop and control panel access for
advanced functionality (eg creating a database, creating a database user, assigning a
database user to the newly created database)

23. Conclusion
 Mobilizing of the hosting industry is already underway
 Hosting Providers making their websites mobile
compatible
 Site management functionality in native mobile
applications
 Opportunities for commercialization
 Engage customers wherever they go
 Ride the wave of smart phone adoption

24. Questions?

25. Thank You for being here!
Caleb Kow
caleb@mobpanel.com
http://www.mobpanel.com