Gartner: Local Focus for Colo Customers

Over at CloudPundit, Gartner analysts Lydia Leong reports some interesting trends in her customer interaction. "My colo inquiries this year have undergone an interesting shift towards local (and regional) data centers, rather than national players, reflecting a shift in colocation from being primarily an Internet-centric model, to being one where it’s simply another method by which businesses can get data center space," Leong writes. "Based on the planning discussions I’m hearing, I expect this is going to be the prevailing trend going forward as well.

"People are still talking about hosting, and there are still plenty of managed hosting deals out there, but very rarely do I see a hosting deal now that doesn’t have a cloud discussion attached," Leong adds. "If you’re a hoster and you can’t offer capacity on demand, most of my clients will now simply take you off the table. It’s an extra kick in the teeth if you’ve got an on-demand offering but it’s not yet integrated with your managed services and/or dedicated offerings; now you’re competing as if you were two providers instead of one."

The importance of cloud service adoption for hosting companies was a key theme in the presentations at HostingCon 2009 by Parallels CEO Serguei Beloussov and Emil Sayegh of Rackspace. Read CloudPundit for more on Leong's take on customer trends.