The Third Wave Of Web Hosting

The Third Wave Of Web Hosting 
By Bruce Zhang
b>The First Wave - ISP Wave

The first wave of Web hosting started in the middle of 1990s. Atthe time, there weren't really many web hosting companies. Webhosting was a part of ISP (Internet Service Provider) operation.Within two years, the number of ISPs had grown from a few dozensto a few thousands in United States alone. Many analystspredicated that the consolidation of ISP industry wasunavoidable. But the analysts didn't pay much attention to thefuture of the web hosting. The web hosting clients for ISPs weremost small to medium-sized organizations which couldn't offer tohave dedicated Internet connection. 

The Second Wave - One Plan Hosting Wave As large telecommunication companies entering into the ISPindustry and the prevailing of broadband connection into bothcommercial and residential buildings, a few leading ISP, such asAOL had grabbed residential users from small ISP companies, andtelecommunication companies had stolen or acquired commercialclients from small or regional ISP companies. Because of theeconomy of scale, ISPs couldn't compete with either AOL, Comcastor Qwest for Internet connection service. Most ISP companieswere disappeared as fast as they were emerged. 

On the other hand, the growth of the Web has pushed the secondwave of web hosting. The web hosting companies offer hostingservice at a fraction of cost of what ISPs used to charge. Incontrast to the Web hosting service from ISP, which is oftencustomized for each client one way or another, the idea of onehosting plan has helped grow the client base from a few hundredsto hundreds of thousands at few leading hosting companies in afew short years. Todays' web hosting companies don't offerInternet connection service at all. It's unbelievable that earlyISP companies had never attempted to transform themselves intoweb hosting companies to survive the inevitable consolidation ofISP industry.