by Markus Latzel, CEO Palomino System Innovations Inc.

There was an exciting event for everybody involved in the Hosting industry this month: the Parallels Summit 2009 in Las Vegas. For those that are not familiar with the significance of this, Parallels Inc. (formerly SwSoft) is currently the leading hosting control panel and virtualization provider in the world, and after some huge consolidation in the market enjoy a de-facto monopoly relationship with hosting service providers (HSPs) world-wide.

Palomino's hosting services are powered by Parallels PLESK hosting control panel, and I was interested to learn about trends in the market and Parallels road map for 2009.

Big buzz terms in 2008 were Virtualization and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). In a market where hosting is a commodity, providers are interested in added-value offerings and Parallels is making a push to promote SaaS integration and virtualization tools to hosting providers. Many HSPs now offer virtual private servers (VPSs) and Hosted Microsoft Exchange solutions as their higher-value offerings.

Price competition on these services has already started and personally, I was skeptical on whether hosting providers should deviate from what they do best - providing infrastructure and platforms for developers. Developing and maintaining a true SaaS operation requires software developers who take care of end-users directly and continuously improve the product. Hosting providers are often not keen on this business.

It was interesting to see that in 2009, Parallels seems to have recognized this and shifts to promoting "Infrastructure-as-a-Service" (IaaS) and "Platforms-as-a-Service" (PaaS) to their clients.

Now that sounds better! I am keen on following this development and believe that SaaS providers like Palomino will find great opportunity in aligning with this trend. In my view, clients can benefit from a strong relationship between HSPs and SaaS providers, and this relationship is working best if both are not encumbering each other but rather drawing on our respective strengths.

Altogether, the one common thread in the industry is denoted by the last letter in all these fancy acronyms: S, for Service. It's what we are banking on, and what our clients love about Palomino.

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