Driven by new technologies, changing customer demands and competition between providers, the web hosting industry is constantly evolving. In this post, we explore some of the latest trends and innovations that are helping to transform the web hosting landscape and deliver better services for customers.
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Working towards sustainability
According to 8 Billion Trees, the internet is currently responsible for 3.7% of global CO2 emissions , a figure that will rise significantly as the world becomes more reliant on digital technology. To avoid this, the industry is beginning to take action to reduce its carbon footprint and one of the main ways this is happening is through the development of greener web hosting.
As a result, we are seeing more hosting providers use renewable energy sources (look for hosts with Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin (REGO) certificates), while carbon offsetting has become a major trend. Additionally, providers are beginning to adopt more energy-efficient infrastructure, such as SSDs, and comply with international standards such as ISO 14001. ISO 14001 certification shows the web host complies with environmental performance standards through the use of efficient power, cooling, lighting and other infrastructure.
Infrastructure and technology
The constant development of new technologies offers web hosting providers enormous potential to improve services to customers. One of the key developments in recent years has been edge computing – an infrastructure where data is processed closer to the user, at the edge of a network, instead of having to travel to a data centre. One of its main benefits is that by being close to the user, latency is reduced, making it ideal for those who need digital experiences to happen in real time, such as those playing multi-player online games, businesses using IoT devices, and streaming platforms.
When it comes to hardware, a major advance has been the development of NVMe technology. When SATA SSDs first appeared, they were a significant improvement on HDDs, both in terms of speed and reliability. NVMe drives, which are a specialised form of SSD, are even faster than the SATA models. These are now found in the latest web servers, providing users with even faster website loading times, more efficient data retrieval and improved handling of simultaneous requests.
Cloud remains one of the most attractive solutions for businesses, with a recent PwC survey showing nearly 80% of respondents had adopted the technology in most or all areas of their companies . One of its most popular features is its scalability, the ability to scale up on demand during peak periods and scale down to save costs when demand is lower. While this has enabled businesses to optimise performance and operate cost-efficiently, new developments are providing even greater benefits. For example, AI-enabled cloud monitoring tools now allow companies to optimise performance, allocate resources and scale up or down across multi-cloud setups. What’s more, these tools can predict when peaks will happen and scale automatically, reducing the need for manual intervention.
Find out How the Cloud is Driving a New Era in Web Hosting
Security and reliability
The growing sophistication of today’s cyber threats means security is paramount, while reliability is essential for delivering services in an increasingly digital market. One of the biggest security issues is when companies fail to update software, leaving their systems vulnerable to attack. To eradicate this, automation is playing an increasing role in protecting businesses by autonomously taking care of updates and security patching. The latest firewalls also work autonomously, monitoring systems around the clock to block threats, manage suspicious traffic and identify and prevent hacking and malware.
For additional protection, today’s cloud-based backup solutions are also automated, enabling businesses to schedule backups at the frequency they need, create retention policies, encrypt data and check it for integrity.
While not new, SSL certificates have now become one of the most important trends for all websites. Not only do they play an essential role in encrypting data, like financial information, sent from a user’s browser to the website; they also ensure browsers label SSL-protected websites as secure, reassuring users that visiting your site is safe.
Read: SSL Certificates – What They Are and Why Your Website Needs One
As the world becomes increasingly digital, it’s more important than ever that websites and critical applications remain online all of the time. Service providers have improved availability through a number of means. One of these is RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks), a virtualisation technology that duplicates data across multiple disks so that if one drive fails, the data is still available on others. Another technique is data mirroring, a process whereby data in one location is copied to another in real time. This ensures that there is always an up-to-date replica which can take over should there be an issue.
At the same time, web hosts now use powerful server monitoring tools that can spot hardware issues before they become a risk to availability. This allows providers to move websites and apps to other machines to ensure downtime doesn’t happen.
Innovation in web hosting
Technological innovation continues to drive progress in the web hosting industry. We have already touched on how AI is benefitting server management by automating resource allocations in the cloud and how it aids security by identifying and eradicating threats. However, as with many other industries, it is now also being used for customer support, with some providers employing AI-enabled chatbots to deliver immediate responses to customer queries.
Another innovation is serverless computing. This is a type of cloud hosting where the provider manages the allocation and provisioning of servers, freeing up developers to work on their applications without the distraction of server administration. Aside from streamlining development, this model can also help optimise costs, as customers are only charged for the resources they use instead of paying for server capacity.
API-first architecture is another trend that is changing how companies use web hosting. Here, new projects begin with the creation of APIs, essentially a set of rules that allow different apps to communicate with each other. Using this method, businesses make it simpler to add new features to their applications and link their apps to other systems. As a result, businesses can more easily scale applications for growth and expand their functionality.
Arguably the most popular trend in web hosting today is managed services, also referred to as managed hosting. Available for all solutions (shared hosting, VPS, cloud and dedicated server), managed hosting sees the web host take on the responsibility of server admin, operating system updates and security patching on the customers’ behalf. Some solutions go even further, with services like security, performance monitoring and free daily backups included in the package. It is even possible to create bespoke managed solutions that meet the needs of individual customers. By removing the technical burden, this has proved very popular for businesses without in-house IT skills or those who want their IT teams to work on more productive tasks.
Discover the 7 Biggest Benefits of Managed Services
Conclusion
As the industry that all other industries rely on to maintain their digital services, the web hosting sector is constantly evolving and adapting. The latest trends and innovations bring customers the benefits of new technologies, improve services to meet their needs, counter the threats posed by cybercriminals and find smarter ways to improve sustainability.
Looking for innovative web hosting solutions using the latest technologies? Whether you’re a large enterprise running critical applications or just need a personal website, we have hosting packages to suit all needs. For more information about our solutions, visit our homepage
