But the dot-com bust, coupled with a downturn in the broader economy, dried up much of the expected business, and start-up hosting firms, banking on a coming gold rush that never materialized, ran out of money. What we're seeing now, said Forrester Research senior analyst Maribel Dolinov, is "a player shift.". "In the past six to 10 months, what we've been seeing is that the funding to help these businesses move on is simply not there. Heaven help you if you're a small (Web hosting) business and you're looking for money," she said.

Even well-known, relatively successful companies, such as Exodus Communications, couldn't survive the downturn, The company went bankrupt last year and was bought by British telecommunications firm Cable & Wireless, Jacobson thinks the Web hosting business will continue to consolidate down to a few major players, including services companies like EDS, Accenture and the original dual layer protective case for iphone xs max IBM Global Services, Those companies see Web hosting as a profitable adjunct to their other information technology outsourcing operations, Since those firms long ago spent the millions of dollars necessary to build data centers, they can add Web hosting services at little incremental cost..

Jacobson and other analysts also see telecommunications firms--such as Cable & Wireless, Digex and others--moving more deeply into Web hosting as a way to wring additional revenue from their corporate customers. And there may still be room for smaller players--like Conxion--which can specialize on a particular market segment, said Jacobson. Conxion's Salerno compares the existing Web hosting market to the car industry. "You have the top five (automakers), but you still have companies like Porsche. It's not for everybody but not everybody needs that," he said.

In Web hosting, "you'll have people at the very high end doing the Fortune 100, and people at the other end doing $19.95 dial-up hosting for consumers, And you'll have some companies in the middle, serving very specific needs," Salerno said, Forrester now says the market will top out at $5.6 billion in sales this year and could reach as much as $30.8 billion in 2006--if current Web growth projections pan out, "The business will move to fewer providers who have a larger the original dual layer protective case for iphone xs max share of the market," Dolinov said, "But is the market still growing? Sure."..

This week's departure of two well-known names from the Web hosting business is the latest sign that only the strongest will survive in the rapidly consolidating market. Reader Resources Web Hosting 101Pick the right Web host On Monday, Loudcloud, a 2-year-old company led by Netscape Communications co-founder Marc Andreessen, said it will sell its Web hosting business to services firm EDS for $63.5 million. Then, on Wednesday, Intel said it was shuttering its Web hosting division, which had such Web heavyweight clients as eBay, and would take a charge of $100 million to exit the business.