The IT landscape has changed significantly in the 12 years since the first HostingCon. The ecosystem is no longer comprised of providers solely offering hosting or software. Instead, the field is made up of managed service providers, value-added resellers, independent software providers, data center and co-location services, cloud services, telcos, infrastructure and software-as-a-service providers. These are just a few examples of the types of providers vying for business in the competitive cloud services space.

“IT infrastructure is increasingly consumed as a hosted service through third party service providers and this trend will only accelerate. The shift in how IT is consumed and delivered means that technology buyers will both change in profile and decrease in quantity,” said long time industry analyst, Phil Shih of Structure Research in an exclusive report for HostingCon. “More specifically, that means we will see less enterprises and more service providers buying technology.” Get a complimentary copy of this insightful report when you register for HostingCon.

As a service to our Penton Technology event attendees, exhibitors, readers and the IT industry, we are launching the first annual State of the Cloud and Service Provider Ecosystem Survey with our industry partners Cheval Capital and Structure Research in an attempt to more thoroughly explore this trend. Although we couldn’t answer every question that was on our mind, we chose the ones that will help us determine to what extent businesses out there still consider themselves as primarily web hosts, how many and what type of business are using partners and what parts of the service provider ecosystem are experiencing the most growth.

“I’ve been covering the cloud and hosting industry for over five years, there is no doubt in my mind that it is evolving,” said WHIR and Talkin’ Cloud Editor in Chief, Nicole Henderson. “The more businesses can get a handle on how the cloud services industry is shifting and get ahead of the trend, the more opportunity they have to be successful. This report will help quantify the trends we’ve suspected are happening but haven’t completely identified yet. This information could give businesses a real opportunity to get ahead of their competitors.”

If you are in the cloud services industry, we welcome you to participate in this important research. Results will be revealed at HostingCon 2016 in New Orleans, July 24-27. In the meantime, please download our 2013 Hosting Infrastructure Ecosystem report. Although it’s been out for a while, it gives a great overview of how hosting interacts with the rest of the service provider ecosystem.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to complete the survey and your honest input!

Please click here to start the survey. As a thank you for your time, the first 400 qualified participants will receive a $5 Starbucks gift card.