Bandwidth trading
Because some large data centres have links to multiple carriers, some are now also setting themselves up as bandwidth exchanges, allowing customers to trade bandwidth on different networks.
"We operate an Internet exchange service that allows customers to exchange traffic with each other within the facility," says Pihana Pacific's Oates.
"We encourage the use of that because we're not in the bandwidth business. We see that is a more and more important value add because it minimises the need to buy bandwidth from your upstream provider. We'll be facilitating peering and exchange of traffic."
This not only allows customers to gain access to several providers, improving the consistency and reliability of their sites' performance, but can also allow them to gain access to extra bandwidth in times of high demand.
Automatic for the people
Managing Web hosting systems is becoming increasingly complicated, and around 52 percent of all problems are caused by human error, either accidental or procedural, according to Intel's Vrsalovic. "If we learn from history, then it's obvious this must be automated."
Like the telephone exchange and the automatic teller, Vrsalovic believes machines will be able to take over the mundane and repetitive tasks system administrators currently have to do.
Intel has developed a controller system for its managed hosting facilities, that uses a rule-based engine with artificial intelligence to run scripts that mimic the behaviour of a human operator.
"The controller addresses the issue of the enormous people cost involved in keeping these systems running," he says. It also makes administrators' lives easier. "Operators are under enormous pressure when something goes wrong, and this can create even more problems. Imagine instead having a button to press that says 'fail over'."
