The macroeconomic climate and the rise of cloud computing are the two most significant trends impacting the Internet infrastructure sector. Their impact will be felt not just today, but for years. We've been taught that recessions are bad for business – but what if this recession is an opportunity that could help catapult hosting and colocation straight into the mainstream of enterprise IT? Join Tier1 Research's Daniel Golding for a hard look at where we are right now, where we are going tomorrow, and what we can do today to make that future the best possible one for our businesses and our customers. Forget pie-in-the-sky predictions and vague generalities, and get ready for a combination of hard metrics and actionable advice you can use today.

Disaster recovery is dead, right? Or is it? Old-style 'DR' has been declining in revenue for years, but new technologies and shifting economics may bring a new and more encompassing disaster recovery that's a standard part of every hosting offering, not just a luxury for a few high-end customers. This panel focuses on Tier1's sweet spot – that nexus where technology, product and finance meet the customer. How will universal virtualization, cheap 10-gigabit waves, highly reliable datacenters and disparate regulatory regimes shape the services that we provide and our customers expect?

Cloud storage is the fastest-growing segment of the cloud computing market. Tier1 has gathered leading companies from both the cloud storage enablement and cloud storage services sides of the market to discuss the pros and cons of traditional SAN- and NAS-based storage versus modern cloud storage. How do hosting operators wishing to offer cloud storage services deploy these technologies side-by-side? What have use cases shown in terms of the pitfalls and opportunities for new monetization and partnerships?

Most datacenter technologies lead to a chorus of complaints and hand-wringing – "We're running out of power; it takes too long to build; blade servers are bad…" – but what if there were technologies that could save power, increase reliability, decrease build times and reduce costs? This panel is not about the problems of the datacenter; instead we take a hard look at the best solutions to our most vexing problems, with an eye toward breakthroughs in cost, efficiency and reliability.

In a time of limited capital expense budgets and tight credit markets, planning how to grow your datacenter footprint has become increasingly complex. New options are asserting themselves and existing options have become more nuanced. This panel will explore the intersection of greenfield builds, wholesale datacenters, colocation, and other options from the viewpoint of the managed hoster as buyer, not provider. This panel will help you plan your 5 year datacenter strategy: is a datacenter lease in your future?

Every hosting provider is eager to jump on the cloud infrastructure bandwagon – but what exactly is 'the cloud?' At the same time, hardware and software vendors are coming out of the woodwork to extol the wonders of their amazing cloud-enabling technologies. For the first time at a public event, Tier1 is presenting our Cloud Codex, a comprehensive system that helps hosting providers create and evaluate cloud computing and storage solutions and vendors. The Cloud Codex includes specific evaluation criteria and a taxonomy that will help you decode this confusing area and validate your own offerings while you evaluate your competition.

It's been a very rough year for Internet infrastructure finance. After the Rackspace IPO became, as some call it, "the last helicopter out of Saigon," the global IPO market shut down. At the same time, lending dried up and credit markets turned their backs. As those same credit markets begin to show signs of life, T1R Research Director Daniel Golding asks the bankers "What now?" How do we finance our businesses? How do we build new datacenters? How do we make mergers and acquisitions happen? Is the door for these interactions closed forever, or will good times come again?

Expanding into new markets is a particular challenge for hosting and colocation providers. Issues like real estate, financing, datacenters and zoning are among the topics that will be discussed by a group of seasoned real estate and hosting professionals. It's not so much 'where to next?' but 'how do I get there?,' with a special emphasis on firms with tight capital constraints.

This session is an opportunity for the audience to pepper the analysts with questions, comments and ideas that will lead to thought provoking responses and topical conversation that benefit the hosting community.