In the early days of the Internet, OBS used to not only design and develop internet solutions for publishers, but we also served as a managed host for the custom applications we built – keeping the system software environment and the applications updated, secure, and otherwise supported (customer and client support included!), all running behind the first T1 line in our town of Rockport, Massachusetts.

Back in the 1990s, hosting was a hands-on, custom, expensive operation. Since then, the industry has definitely consolidated and changed dramatically. Boutique managed host service providers providing highly customized managed hosting services specific to the publishing industry are few and far between these days, as off-the-shelf and open source programs have begun to supplant complex custom-coded solutions.

Managed hosting as an industry is changing dramatically. With the rapid migration to the cloud, most large providers have begun to migrate away from offering traditional managed hosting services based on dedicated hardware. Large enterprises even opt for private clouds! Cloud-based managed hosts can better control uniform, updated, secure environments that include computing, database, storage and backup resources on-demand (elastic computing), with business models that allow clients to pay for only the resources they need, when they need them.

In the meantime OBS has changed too, moving its business away from managed hosting – and the room filled with servers powered by its own dedicated generator – to focusing our custom solutions on our clients, their users, and the global needs of their content.