Every online business needs a good web host to keep their website from underperforming during traffic spikes. It’s not something every web host out there can do. Over the years, web hosting evolved in a spectacular fashion especially with the advent of cloud technologies.
 

Will the cloud impact the future of web hosting as well?

 
It most certainly will. Back in the days, large websites with growing traffic had to resort to a dedicated server with powerful hardware and abundant resources to sustain website performance. This was an expensive option for many small and medium-sized online businesses. However, as cloud technologies evolved, new hosting options emerged.

Cloud hosting is just as good as a dedicated server but with a pay-as-you-go pricing model where the tenant only needs to pay for the resources they use. And when they require more resources, the cloud host scales. Essentially, the website gets everything it needs from the cloud environment, and the website owner pays only for what the website consumes in order to sustain performance. This can however vary depending on the nature of the web host and the hosting package.

The bottomline is that cloud is indeed transforming the concept of web hosting.
 

Trends to watch out for in 2018

 
Demand for comprehensive hosting packages

Users no longer see web hosting services as a service that hosts their website on a server. They now expect more solutions in a single hosting package. The modern-day hosting approach is all about getting a comprehensive hosting package with web design, search engine optimization, eCommerce, and email hosting services.

They essentially get their website designed, search engine optimized, and secured with SSL for eCommerce transactions in addition to getting their email hosted by the web hosting provider. The one-stop shop approach would only become more demanded this year according to experts.

Dwindling numbers of hosting data centers due to Autoscaling

Last year, many surveys found that over 80% of IT managers use cloud technology instead of data centers. Based on the findings, experts predict that corporate data centers or hosting infrastructures would eventually go obsolete with the cloud’s rapidly increasing momentum.

Cloud computing is only getting cheaper while offering improved performance and robust security. The cloud’s autoscaling feature allows the number of servers in a data center to scale automatically depending on the varying computational load.

The cloud’s many benefits also led to an increase in cloud hosting resellers, which is only expected to grow exponentially in the next decade.

Advanced forms of security

Despite the cloud’s rapid growth, many are still concerned about having their personal data stored in the cloud questioning the extent of security cloud can offer compared to a private dedicated server. There’s some validity to such concerns. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link after all.

Cloud’s security is still not evolved yet to have no ‘weak links’. There are vulnerabilities. Quite recently, even Amazon suffered serious security breach. However, this only served as a wakeup call and cloud security only advanced further since then. This year, we will be witnessing much more advanced forms of cloud security.

Green hosting

Green hosting is not exactly a new trend. The concept of green hosting stemmed from the fact that servers that power millions of websites in the internet consume an immense amount of energy. To reduce such power consumption, many hosting companies went the eco-friendly way minimizing the impact of web hosting on the environment.

They instead use renewable energy, carbon offsetting, energy saving technologies, and even plant trees around their data center. Green hosting appeals to people who are concerned about the environment. We may see it in a different form this year, and web hosting is expected to consume a lot less energy in the coming years. Green hosting in 2018 is also expected to be part of eco-friendly initiatives by many tech companies.
 

Conclusion

 
The evolution of web hosting from a big picture view has always been consistent. It only gets better over time. Now with the cloud taking matters into its hands, we can expect more stable, high-performance, and well secured hosting solutions to come out this year in more than one form. The trends mentioned above are just a few of the ones worth noting. Nevertheless, nothing will be driving web hosting irrelevant for a long time for sure. Websites will always need a home.

Written by: Safeer