By Ryan Galloway

Ryan Galloway is a freelance writer and editor based in New York City and occasionally blogs for Rackspace Hosting.

More than ever, rich media experiences like streaming video are dominating the web. Streaming video has long been at the forefront of the web’s most recognizable entertainment properties, but it’s also a growing force in the world of eCommerce.

Online merchants are finding more and more that providing streaming video demonstrations and multi-angle visualizations of products helps bridge the gap between the convenience of eCommerce and the familiarity of brick and mortar stores. There’s a good chance that you’ve seen them already, like a video demonstrating the fit of a shirt, the depth of a saucepan, or the functionality of a piece of software. Video is especially useful for purveyors of big ticket items like furniture and appliances, those products that customers may be hesitant to purchase sight unseen. Even automakers are using video to demonstrate their cars to shoppers online.

So if video is such a useful and well-received tool for online merchants, why aren’t more of them using it? One likely answer is that it requires a significant amount of data storage and a hosting solution capable of delivering that content. For many businesses, small and large alike, this sounds either too expensive or too far from their current web capabilities.

Enter Rackspace’s Rich Media Hosting Solutions. Rackspace offers a range of hosting solutions for businesses of every size.

Dedicated hosting offers serious rich media horsepower for video-heavy presentations. This is a great solution for businesses who already have or need to build a sleek, top-shelf web presence with rich media at its core.

Cloud hosting offers a tiered range of on-demand availability that can be tailored to your business needs. Not every business demands a full-on, video-centric experience. Sometimes a few product demos will do just fine. When that’s the case, Rackspace’s Cloud solutions may be your best bet.

RackConnect represents of a range of hosting and computing solutions. If your web needs span more than one platform, RackConnect can help you get the most out of both traditional and cloud computing. Unlike other multi-platform solutions, RackConnect provides dedicated security — including a powerful firewall — that encompasses your entire computing portfolio. This is an ideal solution for companies with complex computing needs.

We all get a chuckle when we stumble across ancient webpages with spinning gifs and flashing text. Those old artifacts of late-90s web design seem comical now, but it’s not that hard to find active sites that haven’t adapted to contemporary expectations. The time will come, and come soon, where sites without rich media components will look just as antiquated. If you’re still unsure about whether or not there’s a hosting solution that can propel your business into the rich media future, it might be time to contact Rackspace.