June 5th, 2007 |

I remember entering the exhibit hall at HostingCon last year in Las Vegas before the show had started in order to set up the TechPad Agency booth. As I walked into the vast exhibit hall for the very first time I recall seeing a MASSIVE structure with video screens being hoisted into position by a team of workers. “Man that’s a HUGE booth!” I said. That was my first impression of Microsoft at last year’s event. When the booth was actually completed and open to the attendees - it was staffed by an army of Microsoft personnel from around the globe available to discuss any hosting topic.

So what will Microsoft bring to HostingCon 2007? Here is what a few of the folks at Microsoft had to say when asked what we can expect at this year’s show.

”At HostingCon 2006, attendees had a number of questions about our product and solution roadmaps. Since last year, Microsoft has broadened its hosting commitment on at least half a dozen fronts, including solution enhancements, software plus services enablement programs, and product investments, which will enable our hosting partners to easily and quickly deliver powerful applications and value-added services to end users in multiple segments. I’m looking forward to sharing information about these investments with the hosting community.” – Chris Samson, Senior Hosting Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corp.

”This year Microsoft aims for attendees to walk away with fresh perspectives on how to compete with the giants entering the industry, how to do more for their customers and where they should be making their investments. In addition, Microsoft looks forward to demonstrating its latest Web products, as well as exciting new offerings planned to come out in the next few months.

2007 is going to be another exciting year for Microsoft as we approach the launch of Windows Server 2008, and without letting the cat out the bag, we plan to have some interesting announcements at the conference, as well as demos of Silverlight, Expression, Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7), and SQL Server 2005.

HostingCon has proved to be an important forum for dialogue on important industry issues. Microsoft recognizes the invaluable opportunity that this provides and we are thrilled to be involved as platinum sponsors once again.” – Michael van Dijken, Lead Marketing Manager, Hosting Solutions, Microsoft Communications Sector

”HostingCon is the best hosting-centric venue for Microsoft to demonstrate its products and solutions that enable service providers to offer value add services while focusing on lower TCO.” – Chuck Ladd, Hosting Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corp.

Be certain to stop by Booth #309 at this year’s HostingCon to see everything that a world-class exhibitor brings to our event!

This content was written by Derek Vaughan and provided courtesy of the dedicated server hosting experts at The Hosting News.

June 3rd, 2007 |

Have you ever needed to scale up an online business very quickly? Have you ever wished that you could stop worrying about infrastructure and easily scale up on down your online operations to meet demad? Have you ever dreamed of having an online platform that had the same reliability characteristics as Amazon.com? Well if so, HostingCon 2007 presents a great educational and networking opportunity for your business.

Jinesh Varia, Evangelist with Amazon Web Services will be co-presenting the keynote presentation entitled, Hosted Services - What’s Next?. Jinesh will explain the benefits of Amazon’s Web Services products and how these concepts will change the landscape of hosted services.

I recently caught up with Jinesh to see what might come up in the presentation. Jinesh commented, “We will be showcasing our newest Infrastructure-As-A-Service offerings Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (still in beta) and Amazon Simple Storage Service from the hosting perspective and highlight its advantages over traditional hosting.”

According to the Amazon Web Services website, “Amazon has spent 11 years and over $2 billion building the infrastructure, technical knowledge, and operational excellence to operate a world class web-scale computing platform. Amazon Web Services has now released a variety of web services (programmatic access to its open APIs) that enable developers to leverage Amazon’s data and robust infrastructure, easily and inexpensively. These fundamental services allow external developers and businesses to build their web applications in a reliable, scalable, and cost-effective manner.”

The essence of the product is that one can dynamically scale an online system up or down and pay only for what’s used.

Jinesh went on to comment on his thinking on attending this year’s event, “HostingCon attracts the finest and brightest people from the hosting industry and it will be the right place to spread our vision. We feel that our infrastructure services - especially Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 - will change the way people think about hosting. Features like the ability to consume hosting services in variable units (by the hour or by the GB), and the ability to spawn up an Amazon-class server by a web service call will not only give resellers, distributors, and hosting providers new ways to do businesses but also give developers new way to develop cost-effective applications.”

Jinesh also provided the following links for reference:

Here’s a good overview of the Amazon Web Services done by BusinessWeek Online.

The Amazon Web Services that will be the subject of Jinesh’s presentation -
Amazon EC2, and - Amazon S3.

This content was written by Derek Vaughan and provided courtesy of the hosting experts at The Hosting News.