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The exhibit hall at HostingCon offered the opportunity to see many vendors and also catch up with colleagues and partners.

Roundup: HostingCon 2012 Highlights (Continued)

From diversity in the workforce, to business models of cloud, presenters at HostingCon 2012 covered a broad range of topics relevant to the hosting industry. Here's our roundup of noteworthy coverage of this week's conference held in Boston, via The WHIR:

Here's our roundup of noteworthy links to coverage from the second and third day of this week's HostingCon 2012 in Boston, via the Web Host Industry Review (The WHIR):

How Diversity Impacts the Bottom Line - Art Elizarov, VP of People Strategy at DreamHost, said the traditional paradigm of diversity focuses on equality, but diversity can actually affect an organization’s bottom line. Researchers at the Harvard Business School surveyed of the 250 businesses found that businesses with a diverse workforce made 18 to 69 percent more in terms of net income or operating revenue. Also, diversity can also have a positive impact on customer service and customer satisfaction. He went on to describe how companies can launch their own diversity efforts.

How To Deliver Products Customers Will Pay For  - Fortutity co-founder David Koston presented how businesses can achieve successful product development through the use of customer development and lean project management. He described Heroku, a Ruby on Rails-based web host that offers a solution focused around customer issues rather than a technology model as more traditional hosting companies tend to be based on.

Cloud Business Models - With the worldwide cloud computing market projected to jump from $68.3 billion in 2010 to $148.8 billion in 2014, there is no denying the opportunities in offering cloud services. The traditional cloud distribution model is shifting to a new model, where cloud vendors are moving away from selling directly to their SMB end users, to selling through a cloud service broker via aggregators, consultants, customization, and integration. Pierre Descoteaux, of Ingram Micro, says his company is deploying this aggregation model.

Finding Your Niche in the Cloud for Service Providers - The good news for service providers is it is not too late to offer cloud services. Tony Lucas of Flexiant said cloud will continue to be a fragmented market, and is a really great market to be in right now.

See other coverage of HostingCon 2012:

Roundup: Day 1 Highlights from HostingCon

HostingCon 2012: Photo Highlights of Day 2

Photo Feature: HostingCon Highlights

IPv4 Addresses Now Driving Hosting Deals 

Cloud Buzz Boosts Business for Hosting Firms