Cloud Hosting

Service providers are in a transitional phase between traditional hosting and cloud services, influenced by a change in customer demand. This is in turn causing a fundamental shift in how service providers source and operate their data centres. Where in the past service providers opted for tier 1 or 2 data centres to optimise margins, I see an increasing trend towards the use of higher quality data centres.

Times continue to change for European hosting providers. With more enterprises drawn to cloud-based infrastructure (IaaS) by the promise of cost reductions and increased scalability, traditional hosting and integration revenues are coming under pressure.

Global cloud providers are increasingly considered as the main competition in the eyes of local and regional service providers in Europe. According to Interxion's annual research of the European hosting and cloud market, 37 percent of respondents view global providers as their main competition, which represents a significant spike from last year’s response of only 13 percent.

Most of the hype surrounding cloud often comes with a US perspective, particularly considering the provenance of the market’s heavyweights. But despite the US enjoying great success in this area the European market landscape is a completely different challenge. So what can European hosting companies do to cut through the noise of the competition and be heard in the cloud market? Here are 7 key success factors that will help any hosting company transform the way they are approaching and capitalizing on cloud computing.