A short history of Internet Infrastructure; why an ecosystem-oriented conference for service providers has never been more important
The Internet infrastructure sector has always had a full cast of characters. The sector was born out of the carrier-neutral data centre, which later branched off into retail, wholesale and interconnection-oriented variants. With data centres in place, by the late 1990s, the foundation was there for the first generation of hosting services to emerge. Literally thousands of providers occupied a highly fragmented landscape that was still heavily slanted to mature economies in the US and Europe.
It did not take long for the sector to evolve. Web hosting and dedicated hosting gave birth to managed hosting. The need to cache content and optimize performance spawned CDNs. By the year 2006, the sector was barely a decade old, but it saw the birth of public cloud, with the launch of AWS. Public cloud took some time to get going, but hosted services were already transforming. Service providers competed in public cloud against the likes of AWS, trying out various ways to differentiate, but they also built private clouds and served up bare metal for those that still preferred this type of platform.
After the financial crisis in 2008-09, the sector began to reach another level. The downturn opened the eyes of decision-makers to the value proposition of cloud, which turned CapEx to OpEx, and added cost savings and predictability. The sector also began to expand into global markets. Asia was a new frontier, but markets in Latin America and MEA also began to gain momentum. As the business went global, the next big shift was already taking place. MSPs, managed hosters and other managed infrastructure providers found that competing long-term with the public clouds was going to be increasingly difficult. Rather than compete, service providers saw the value in managing public cloud for the many organizations that now ran on it. It was not a wholesale change, but a transition that continues today. Public cloud is now a fully integrated part of the ecosystem, with service providers specializing in it and others making it an important part of their portfolios. Meanwhile, in the data centre space, a growing number of operators have focused almost exclusively on serving hyperscale cloud tenants.
Just as fast as hyperscale rose, the growth in Internet usage precipitated the need to decentralize and reach users in less connected or difficult to access places – what became known as the edge. The edge is not necessarily a new thing, but the natural byproduct of all this Internet infrastructure – it will just be smaller and in more places, sometimes far away, with different underlying form factors.
Today, the sector is a highly integrated and interdependent ecosystem. Service providers used to build data centres. They almost never do that these days in favour of colocation. Service providers previously competed head-on against public cloud. Yes, that still happens, but the way they think about AWS, Azure and GCP is now very different. Smaller service providers, and even scaled ones like GoDaddy, run their entire infrastructure on public cloud. Other providers are similarly asset-light because they focus on managing customers that ultimately run on public cloud platforms. They are a part of the public cloud value chain and have a rooting interest rather than a competitive outlook. Providers increasingly zero in on what they are good at, leaving the rest to partners and specialists.
Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic added another twist to the story. In a similar way to how the financial crisis helped raise the profile of cloud and outsourced infrastructure, the pandemic has had a similar effect. Except this time, cloud is a better known commodity, and the result has been acceleration of trends and adoption across the board.
At this point, you might be asking what does this short history have to do with an executive summit? One of the unique things about the infrastructure service provider sector is that it flies under the radar and does not have a high profile. There are few forums for networking, sharing and discussion. Back in 2005, the first service provider-oriented event was founded: HostingCon, which retired in 2017. Tier1 Research founded an event – The Hosting Transformation Summit – the same year and had a run that ended in 2019. These two events overlapped, but slanted to different parts of the ecosystem. In 2018, we founded infra / STRUCTURE to bring the entire ecosystem back together in one place, with a focus on executive-led discussion about the industry and high quality networking. The conversation is meant to be forward looking and global in scope.
There have been various smaller events and conferences across the MSP and data centre worlds over the years. They tend to be siloed and even regionally oriented. They often rinse and repeat the same content and audience. The sector has lacked a go-to event for some time and infra / STRUCTURE has stepped into that void. It is the place where MSPs, managed hosters, data centre operators, subscale and hyperscale can meet in one place to try and understand and navigate a market that everyone has a stake in.
Service providers continue to be at the heart of the Internet and are indispensable to their customer’s success. There has never been a more important time to be actively involved in the sector and attending events. Infrastructure service providers have always been agnostic. They use different technologies, operate in different markets and support multiple clouds. Partnership is a critical part of bringing all the pieces of this puzzle together and there is still no better way to do that than to meet in person. Please read more about infra / STRUCTURE at www.infrastructuresummit.io and let us know if you have questions. We have assembled an excellent group of speakers and unlike any other event, there is a significant amount of marketshare data and insights shared for all attendees. Attendees also receive a free report. And remember, this show is about all parts of the ecosystem, large and small. Everyone has a stake!
We look forward to hosting you in Toronto this September 14-15, 2022. And remember, service provider operating executives attend for free. This event is for you! REGISTER HERE.
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