Julien and Hannes, can you give us some background on STRATO and on your roles within the company? Julien Ardisson: I'm the CTO of STRATO, and I'm responsible for our data centers and different product lines. My technical background is as a computer scientist, and I've been with STRATO for seven years.
Hannes Migga-Vierke: I'm responsible for our business products at STRATO
Julien: We are the second largest European hosting firm, with more than 1.3 million customers, and 4 million domains online. STRATO was founded in 1997, and we have been elected Web host of the year by a number of well-known computer magazines.
We operate across six European countries: Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. Our product range includes Web hosting packages, domains, online shops, and both physical and virtual servers, as well as managed servers. We also offer a SaaS package called STRATO Company Portal for small to medium-sized enterprises.
What can you tell us about the balance of Windows versus other offerings in your hosting business? Julien: For our dedicated servers, we offer Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, or Linux. Our shared Web hosting platform is based on Solaris. We also offer Exchange Server hosting.
What led you to add Windows-based hosting to STRATO's offerings? Julien: We launched the dedicated Windows-based hosting project on top of Windows Server 2003 and immediately saw great potential in Windows Server 2003-based hosting. Since then, we've seen Microsoft put a lot of effort into Windows-based hosting. We feel that it is important to offer Windows solutions to our customers as many of them are used to a Windows environment and want it on their server as well.
Would you say that Microsoft has made significant investments in making it easier to build out a hosting offering on top of Windows Server 2008? Julien: Windows Server 2008 is a great step forward as a base platform for a hosting product. Previous versions of Windows Server were the regular enterprise IT-focused release, which could be modified via hoster-targeted license agreements to make it easier for hosters to deploy.
Microsoft has recognized that the hosting market is very important, and that Windows must also be designed and appropriately licensed to serve that market—not just enterprise IT.
Are some customers pre-disposed to buy Windows now that you offer it? Hannes: Yes, some are. The main driving factor that leads customers to choose a Windows Server-based hosting solution in Germany is that they have the same user interface at home and on the servers they are supporting internally.
The customer also knows that Microsoft is supporting the operating system for more than just one to two years. The problem we have in Germany with Linux systems is that they are typically only supported for one to two years, and then advisories and security updates become limited.
With a Windows-based solution, they know that Microsoft will continue to support the platform for more than five years.
Given Microsoft's increased support of PHP-based solutions on Windows, have you seen any of your customers move in that direction? Julien: We have the demand. The important thing for our customers is that if you buy a Windows Server 2008-based hosting package, you have the ability to run any open-source PHP based application on it.
How many of your servers are running virtualized, and what trends have you seen there? Julien: Out of the 35,000 servers in our data centers, 14,000 are virtualized. Our virtualized server footprint is growing faster than our physical one, so there is a great deal of potential there both economically and ecologically. Obviously, one server shared by various people consumes less electricity than the same amount of physical machines—also thanks to a higher and more even work load. This pays off in our and the customers' wallets. In addition, saving electricity is beneficial for the environment.
Microsoft is able to provide STRATO a hypervisor that is already embedded in the operating system, and that gives Microsoft a great advantage over some of their competitors.
Are there reasons that you see the embedding of Hyper-V in Windows as a greater advantage than going with a KVM-based solution from Red Hat or a Xen-based solution? Julien: The fact that the hypervisor, the operating system, and all of the management tools are integrated into one stack is a major advantage for Microsoft. This makes it easier for our customers and for us to manage an integrated Microsoft stack and makes it more cost effective to acquire it.
Any closing thoughts? Julien: I think the most interesting thing for STRATO is to see how Microsoft continues to bring Azure to market. I'm also very pleased to see the progress that Microsoft has made in the hosting market in general.
Their progress is helping us out, because years ago, hosting was a niche market. Microsoft is helping to make it a mass market. Offerings like Azure are an opportunity for us to develop new products and a possibility for us to change to meet new needs.
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