In Cloud Hosting Prices Pt. 1, we covered the discrepancies in Cloud server prices and the discrepancies between the amount of resources Cloud hosting solutions provide. In Cloud Hosting Prices Pt. 2, we covered why Cloud support platforms only serve to confuse the market and annoy consumers. In Cloud Hosting Prices Pt. 3, we are going to cover how web hosting providers can resolve these issues to make Cloud Computing cheaper and easier to navigate.
Education Fixes All
The single best way to stabilize the prices of Cloud servers and Cloud hosting resources is by educating the market on the real cost of Cloud resources. The best hope the market has in controlling cost of Cloud hosting solutions is to understand that RAM, Bandwidth, Disk Space and CPU Cores are cheaper now then they have ever been. By understanding that Cloud providers are setting their own prices regardless of product markup, consumers can begin to demand web hosting providers supply their products at a reasonable monthly cost.
By educating the market as to the actual costs of virtualized Cloud resources, consumers will not only begin to demand Cloud services at a reasonable cost, they will also begin to understand what parts of Cloud hosting (Windows licensing, data center hosting) drive up costs. By understanding that the type of data center your Cloud host operates from, consumers will begin to demand providers operate from better infrastructures and thus, can fully hold up to the industry standard – yet hardly followed – 99.9% uptime.
If this sounds like a bad deal for providers, just ask yourself, the last time you went down for three hours because your “redundant” technology proved to be anything but, how much did you lose on providing SLA credits to pissed off consumers? When the market is educated, consumers and providers are better off.
Cloud Support: Pick and Choose
The major issue with Cloud support across the web hosting industry is that providers support what they want without having an industry standard to work from. Some providers support server-to-server migrations with control panels. Some Cloud providers support server-to-server migrations only when control panels are in place (thanks Plesk and cPanel). This discrepancy confuses and annoys consumers.
To fix this problem, providers have to choose one of two avenues. Either, a Cloud provider goes fully unmanaged. By operating unmanaged, prices for solutions will be lower and consumers will know exactly what they are buying. Unmanaged means all hands off, it’s your problem now.
The other solution is to decree an industry standard. Like HIPPA, the web hosting industry needs a guiding body of laws and regulations stipulating what services are supported and what services are not. Moreover, this legislation needs to insulate the consumer from insane support costs ranging from a few dollars per instance to thousands of dollars per month. Instead of operating Cloud support platforms as a hand over fist revenue leader, providers need to determine a reasonable price and stick to it.
One more thing, when it comes to 24/7/365 support, eliminate the term. Consumers are sold on the idea of 24/7/365 Cloud support however providers know it is anything but. Instead, sell consumers on the power of a product rather than selling them on when downtime happens, we are here for you. If providers put as much effort into securing their solutions, consumers wouldn’t have a need for 24/7/365 Cloud hosting support.