[OxLUG] Web platforms

Hello, I'd like to address people who run Internet sites/portals, or work for
ISPs or hosting companies and administer busy web servers.

I am a Unix developer, specialising in system and network software. At the
moment I am evaluating a viability of developing a commercial web server and
possibly some back-ends to support dynamic content, database access, etc.

Since most installations use Apache as a web server, I'm looking into
developing something that would offer much better performance, scalability and
reliability. Some of the points on the check list are:

Reliable and portable codebase. Support for Linux, BSD and Solaris. 100%
uptime, meaning no 64-bit bugs, or random crashes.

Event driven I/O. Support kqueue/epoll/ports in order to handle thousands of
concurrent connections.

Fine-grained multithreaded architecture. Implement parallel tasking library
with a thread dispatcher to support 100s of concurrent threads, e.g
UltraSparcT2.

Flexible support for virtual hosts. Dynamic configuration, upload/download
bandwidth limiting.

Support for dynamic load balancing across a cluster of web servers. All
servers communicate statistics on current CPU load, memory capacity, I/O load,
etc. Each server can be gracefully shut down and taken offline without
affecting availability of web content.

So I'm trying to find out whether people are having any problems with their
current software stack (Apache, Zeus, etc). What features are lacking and what
they would like to be implemented.

If you're paying too much (Zeus) or not paying anything (Apache) for your
software, what would make you switch to a commercial web server.

PS. I am not trying to sell anything at the moment. I am simply evaluating a
possibility of working for myself and doing something I really enjoy.

Thanks.