WebhostingDay kicks off
WebhostingDay 2009 kicked off this morning with a short introductory keynote from Prof. Dr. Böcker. He has worked as a professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Bonn since 2000 and has an extensive background in IT and telecommunications.
Dr. Böcker pointed to the growth in attendance at WebhostingDay 2009. While some shows are shrinking and suffering from the effects of the current global economic situation, WebhostingDay is doing just the opposite. This year marks the fifth anniversary of WHD and attendance is at an all time high. Last year about 1,000 attendees were registered for WHD while this year, 2,500 attendees will attend – incredible growth.
There are people from forty countries around the world, drawn to WebhostingDay because, as Dr. Böcker put it, web hosting is a “people business.” This is the place to meet people, find out what the current and future trends are in the web hosting business, find out what the key topics are that have the potential to influence and change the business in the coming years, and to talk about the future of web hosting.
Dr. Böcker talked briefly about the economic situation. Obviously it’s impossible to get together and talk about business without talking about the impact of the global recession. While many sectors – autos, chemicals and others – are seeing significant shrinking, IT is still showing growth. Companies are looking at ways to reduce costs, increase efficiencies, and are being very careful with money according to the latest stats that Dr. Böcker presented.
Some of that is good news for web hosting firms who often have solutions that help companies do all the things they are looking to do in these tough times. For web hosting companies, the short term keys to success include providing the solutions that allow those companies to drive down costs through things like virtualization which offers better efficiency, better usage of equipment and infrastructure and reduction of capital costs.
Dr. Böcker says studies predict growth rates of better than 2.5% for IT in 2009. That’s pretty good considering what’s going on in other sectors and this fairly positive outlook for the web hosting industry is reflected in the attendance at WHD.
The message from WHD 2009 is that the industry remains strong, with great opportunity for companies that are able to capitalize by providing the services that businesses are looking for right now and in the future.
As I wrote this entry, I was cruising at 11,200m somewhere over New Brunswick, Canada. With about 5,400km to go before touchdown in Zurich, and then another short flight to Frankfurt, followed by a train ride down to Cologne and a cab ride to the venue in Breul, I was starting to have some second thoughts about making this rather lengthy trip to Germany for 
Of course, we’ve been active in Europe since we began selling domain names wholesale back in 1999 and some of our biggest and best customers are based in Europe. But we haven’t historically travelled to shows on the other side of the Atlantic. That being said, OpenSRS has long regarded Europe as an important part of our business.