The Australian Web hosting arena is tipped to take off by more than 100 percent in the next six months, as more local businesses turn to the Net or move to upgrade their online presence.
The local Web-hosting market reached AU$42 million by mid-2000 and is anticipated to surpass the AU$105 million mark by year's end, according to research group, IDC.
"The big driver is the Internet and e-commerce market," IDC's senior analyst Internet and ecommerce, Brooke Galloway, told ZDNet.
IDC claims that 74 percent of Australian customers currently adopt shared hosting practices - where multiple, simple sites are hosted on one server for as little as AU$10 per month, per site.
The low cost of the service means that shared hosting only accounts for 17 percent of a service provider's revenue, whereas 23 percent of revenue comes from dedicated/simple hosting services - where one Web site is hosted on one server.
Depending on the extent of the dedicated hosting service, a provider can charge up to about AU$800 per month.
Therefore, although only 9.3 percent of customers currently use dedicated/simple hosting, it's a bigger revenue earner for service providers and IDC anticipates this is where the market will see substantial future growth.
"While today many sites are information-based static, more and more will begin to support dynamic e-commerce enabled activities as well as interactive applications, and will need to move towards some form of dedicated hosting environment," Galloway said.
Local Web hosting specialist InstaWeb supports IDC's predictions, claiming to have seen a 250 percent growth in customer numbers in the last 6 months, with a shift to the hosting of more dynamic sites in the latter months.
"Where there used to be flat/informative type sites, now we're finding a development to very advanced sites," InstaWeb MD Andrew Hennell said.
Hennell claims that 50 percent of InstaWeb's client base now comes from the higher end of hosting, which he expects will increase to 70 or 80 percent within the next 12 months.
"The market seems to be moving pretty much in line with the industry," Hennell said.
