NetBenefit are part of the publicly listed Group NBT plc (LSE:NBT) and have a broad customer base. They first came to my attention for their domain registration services, but also offer managed hosting and co-location. They have started to provide virtualization services, based on VMWare technology, and I’m sure we’ll hear more about that later this year.

It is almost impossible to have a conversation about hosting with out ‘the green issue’ coming up these days. Kristel and Mark confirmed that they are frequently asked questions about their policy and how they source power. Their latest data centre uses renewable resources, something that is becoming a theme for many. It seems a reasonable question to ask of a supplier, as environmental policies start to propagate up the supply chain. If you aren’t being asked questions about your energy usage yet, then expect to be soon.

The majority of customers are building services on Apache with mySQL (now part of Sun’s empire), and hybrid set ups are very common – where users have their own data centre, together with some servers in a hosting provider’s facilities. This set up provides the best of both worlds, keeping key applications in-house and on-net, while putting Internet bandwidth-hungry apps off-site. Interestingly, Mark noted that Web 2.0 adaption has resulted in growing bandwidth requirements, due to richer content and more interactivity – something to be aware of as you adopt the technologies.

NetBenefit partner with Panther Express to provide their content delivery network service (See NetBenefit CDN), a solution that has worked to great effect for The National Archives, supporting well over a million downloads over the course of four days. “CDNs aren’t just about cutting costs,” said Mark, “they are about better user experience, performance and moving the content closer to the customer.”

Many hosting providers are challenged to provide CDNs, due to the need for a large number of geographically dispersed hosting locations, so partnering with a CDN player is a smart move. It is a good complement to traditional hosting, and something to think about if you have very high traffic volumes to a global audience.

NetBenefit, like many in their space, see Amazon S3 and Google as a big competitive threat, but are quick to point our their advantages in customer support and pre-sales consultancy. They don’t compete at the lower end of the market (Group NBT has the Easily brand to cover that space). They seek to differentiate themselves by using quality equipment (they use Dell hardware), and pride themselves on their highly experienced staff.

Related Posts

• Rackspace Heads for the Clouds
• Letting MOSS Grow Under Your Feed – SharePoint UG
• VMWare or is that VM Where?

• Acquired on-line storage company Jungle Disk.
• Acquired specialist hoster Slicehost. (see Rich Miller’s post)
• Struck a CDN Deal with Limelight Networks (detail at CloudPundit)
• And launched a cloud strategy with Cloud Sites, Cloud Files and Cloud Servers.

I think they’ve rather swallowed this cloud computing thing, and swept in talent from the space. This week’s ecommerce expo in London gave me the chance to catch up with Fabio Torlini, Marketing Director of Rackspace.

We had a very feet-on-the-ground discussion around cloud computing. Fabio agreed that cloud wasn’t the future for everyone, but that it made sense for some. Rackspace sits very much at the premium end of the market, catering to mission critical needs. This has kept them clear of the commoditization of hosting, letting them invest in quality support and adopt a packaged approach to meeting customers’ needs.

I know from my time in the Valley that many a start up owes its success to Rackspace offerings, keeping servers going in all Internet weather. Cloud services haven’t had a great reputation, with some big players suffering a number of big outages. Fabio sees cloud services as a lower-SLA form of service. I’m not sure that I totally agree – cloud brings with it a very different philosophical approach than the one used to build web-applications on dedicated services. But there is a good argument for using cloud-based services for applications with elastic capacity demands and less stringent availability requirements.

Hosted and cloud services alike are a good way of moving spending from CAPEX to OPEX, smoothing big capital expenditures into recurring operational costs. That makes even more sense in times like today, when budgets are tight. It is also a more success-based model, since you buy more services as and when you have the business growth to justify them. No point being stuck with a huge, out of date building and servers for a business that didn’t hit its growth targets.

Another advantage of moving applications into a hosted environment, or for that matter a cloud, is gaining the economies of scale that a company like Rackspace have. Very few businesses would be able to afford to build their own state of the art data centre to match the recently opened facility in Slough. Rackspace understand dealing with customers directly, and also working with partners. According to Fabio, they have a strong channel model, with about half of their business being indirect.

Competition in the space is intense. When the likes of Amazon (with their S3 offering now out of beta) and Google appear in the competitive landscape, it is time for some strategic thinking and action. Even more so when Microsoft decide that they want to play in the cloud too. While many providers at ecommerce expo were holding their heads in their hands, Rackspace seem to be keeping their head above the clouds (don’t groan!). Their very high service levels, and the addition of some leading-edge cloud-based offerings, keep them at the top of the game.

Related Posts

• NetBenefit – UK Hosting
• Start ups – Get out of my Cloud
• Why the Cloud Need Standards