Agathon Group - "The Good Stuff"
Agathon Group, International
by Peter Green on September 3, 2008 4:09 PM.
We are excited to announce that Agathon Group is going global! Not “global” in the sense of “the ends of the earth”; rather, we are establishing our presence in data centers in two international locations: Vancouver and Toronto. Both data facilities are world-class and include every certification you can think of: SAS 70 Type II, CICA 5970, PCI, etc. That means you can now have a private grid in a data facility normally reserved for banks, government agencies and medical organizations.
This also marks our first foray into a data center east of the Mississippi. Much like our employees (that span six time zones!) you can now host your data with us all across North America.
Space in our Canada data centers will become available in late September 2008 and should go pretty fast! So drop us an email (or fill out our contact form) and let us show you how Agathon Group (International!) can help your organization in the U.S., Canada, and beyond.
Bootcamp Early Registration Ends in One Week!
by Alan Ritari on August 28, 2008 8:48 AM.
Register today to lock in the early bird $325 rate. Prices increase after Sept 5th by fifty bucks for either of our two tracks. The CSS, Javascript, and AJAX track is already shaping up to be one of our best classes ever, and back by popular demand we’ll also be teaching an updated version of our Linux Systems Administration track. These in-person tutorials provide a concentrated dose of valuable training to help you be more effective in your work and play. Learn more.
Start Conference: Marketing, Success & Wrap-up
by Alan Ritari on August 27, 2008 9:36 AM.
Silicon Valley is an alternate universe, parallel to the real world but different. Peter noticed it first—people talk faster and don’t mince words. Get to the point, build it and flip it. I’ll let the Start Conference speakers get to the point of success in their own words…
IMC Registration Closing!
by Morgan Foster on August 26, 2008 7:58 AM.
Every year we attend the Internet Ministry Conference (aka IMC), and we’ve found it to be such an invaluable conference for networking and learning, that the last couple years we’ve become sponsors (you can see our lovely logo on the right side of the IMC site). You’ve probably heard of our Bootcamp training courses that we do in conjunction with the first couple days of the IMC, and if you’re planning on attending our Bootcamp courses, we highly encourage you attend the IMC as well. Even if you’re not attending our Bootcamp courses, we still recommend the IMC.
However, time is running out! Registration closes in just 5 short days, so make sure you get registered soon. You can do so here:
https://www.internetministryconference.org/register/
Check out the session schedule as well, and you’ll see that our very own Alan Ritari will be speaking on Wednesday of the conference.
And if you attend, make sure to stop by our sponsor table and say hi. You can finally meet me face to face, and maybe get some swag too.
Try Our delicious Links!
by Morgan Foster on August 21, 2008 10:33 AM.
You probably didn’t know, mostly because we haven’t told you, but Agathon has a delicious account that we post to quite often. Since we are online all the time (and since we span 6 time zones, I mean that quite literally), we are always coming across pages, videos, or blogs that are very helpful in our work, and could probably be very helpful in yours. Here’s a sampling of our most recent links:
Jquery and Animation Jumps - Very cool video detailing how to fix a common jquery animation issue, however, the most interesting thing about this video is the use of a few essential web development tools: jquery (obviously), Firebug, and Textmate. If you’re unfamiliar with these, the video does breeze through them pretty fast, but you can see how to use Textmate for quick edits, jquery for quick effects, and Firebug for quick debugging.
Adactio: Journal—The Lessons of CSS Frameworks - Great writeup of Eric Meyer’s CSS Frameworks talk at An Event Apart in San Francisco.
Build Better Pages With Firebug - Speaking of Firebug, this is a pretty solid overview of Firebug’s features, and why you should be using it for your web development.
border-image in Firefox - A nice writeup of some upcoming CSS additions that are functional in both the latest Safari and Firefox. Creating pretty scalable buttons is going to get a whole lot easier.
Modify User Permissions - We get permissions questions all the time, so though some of you may already know these well, it never hurts to go over the basics, with a nice overview of unix permissions.
Terrifying Desktop Background - Okay I confess, this isn’t in our delicious links, but I found it amusing.
If you’d like to see our other links, you can check out our full list on our delicious page.
We’re braving the depths of the internet, so you don’t have to go as deep. :-)
New to Agathon: Luke Baker
by Alan Ritari on August 17, 2008 4:05 PM.
Just a quick one to note that Agathon Group has grown again, adding Luke Baker to our team. Luke strengthens our systems administration capabilities (especially related to grid hosting), bringing both his experience with linux and his development skills. Read more about him.
What's cool in systems, part 2
by Peter Green on August 15, 2008 11:45 AM.
In my last blog post, I talked a little about some current problems in systems engineering, namely:
New systems technology is usually either pretty boring or pretty difficult to get a hold of.
Grid computing, or IaaS, is a new systems technology that is neither boring nor difficult to get a hold of. Quite the contrary, it’s a readily-available, exciting way of approaching infrastructure.
Not all grid (or cloud) computing solutions are created equal. Amazon’s EC2, while the biggest name in the market, is not necessarily the best, having key deficiencies stemming from certain design decisions.
The post ended with a hint of a solution to those problems, as well as the other problems grid computing generally intends to solve. Enter AppLogic by 3tera.
What is it?
Conceptually, AppLogic is very similar to EC2 — you can take a number of physical servers and turn them into one virtual “grid”, at which point you essentially have your own private version of EC2. You can create an application, analogous to a blank canvas, within your grid. You can begin to paint a picture of your application, adding appliances (which are just virtual machines) of all shapes and sizes.
Why is it so cool?
At that point, the comparisons to EC2 start to fade. With AppLogic, adding appliances to an application consists of dragging an icon from the catalog onto your canvas: done. Configuring the appliance consists of right-clicking the icon and entering system details into a simple form: done. Networking appliances to each other is just pointing to an interface on one icon, pointing to an interface on another icon, and the appliances are connected. AppLogic does grid computing as it’s supposed to be: most things are trivial and the hardest things are possible, even easy.
Never mind EC2, comparing traditional system architecture and grid computing with AppLogic is right out. Instead of provisioning another physical server — gathering quotes, paying for hardware and shipping, waiting a week for it to arrive, going into the colocation facility, plugging it all in, configuring the software to match your current environment — with AppLogic, you just drag another web appliance onto your site application. Restart your application (a matter of minutes), and you just upgraded your site infrastructure to include another web server. Grid computing makes the resource virtualization possible; AppLogic makes it elegant and simple.
I get it… I think.
See, that’s cool. But wait: “That’s all fine and good,” you might be saying. “How does that work for my organization?!” In the final blog post in the series, I’ll present a few ways organizations can use grid computing to build their infrastructure with fewer engineering headaches and doing so for pennies (or, at least, dimes!) on the dollar.
Cloud Computing in the News
by Alan Ritari on August 12, 2008 9:22 AM.
We generally refer to Agathon Group’s highest tier of hosting as grid computing, but there are good arguments for calling it cloud computing as well. In both cases, people interact with distributed server resources without needing to concern themselves with the underlying architecture or location.
Below are a selection of noteworthy cloud articles this week:
Irked by eBay, Some Sellers Trade Elsewhere - One of Agathon Group’s grid customers got a great write-up in today’s Wall Street Journal, talking about how companies are stepping in to solve the online auction problems eBay is creating. Silkfair runs entirely on a dedicated grid with us, providing the reliability and scalability they need for rapid growth. Check ‘em out.
How Cloud Computing Is Changing the World - BusinessWeek gives an overview of cloud computing, describing it as a “sea change in the way computing is done.” The article also notes that competing cloud vendors like Amazon’s S3 service have issues with Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPPA regulatory compliance, an area where Agathon Group’s grid offerings provide clear benefit over most cloud vendors for companies that require stringent security and process controls. Yes, our solution is better than Amazon’s not just because it is easier to use, but also because we have the tools and data centers in place to ensure regulatory compliance.
Five cloud computing questions - The Industry Standard raises questions any company should ask themselves before moving to cloud computing. We have very, very good answers for all five.
Startup Of The Week: 3Tera - InformationWeek has a nice write-up on 3Tera, makers of the Applogic software we use to power our own grid hosting. Not a content-heavy piece, but a nice read nonetheless.
3Tera Unbundles Applogic and Unveils a Virtual Data Center - I’m cheating a little by including this link, as the article is from three months ago, but it’s one of the clearest explanations I’ve come across about why grid hosting, and Applogic in particular, offers enormous benefits.
Trademark Insanity - Rounding out the list of articles, Dell has applied for a trademark on the term “cloud computing,” and all indications are that the trademark will be granted despite numerous reasons the application should be summarily rejected. We can only hope common sense prevails.
Happy reading!
Start Conference: Your People
by Alan Ritari on August 8, 2008 12:12 PM.
“Find the best people in the world.” - Mark Hedland, Wesabe
Some businesses can cruise along nicely on the backs of average staff, but a start-up ain’t one of ‘em. Average people maintain systems, but it takes better than that to build something new. Speaker after speaker at The Start Conference drilled home the importance of surrounding yourself with smart people.
Smarts alone aren’t enough though. Part of the job of a business owner is to encourage staff to actively engage their smarts. Merlin Mann put it best, “To find a way to get the entrepreneurial spirit in everyone is gold… I’m answering phones, but I’m answering the %^@* out of these phones.” (Sounds like he’s met Morgan.)
Engage that entrepreneurial spirit across your whole team and people will notice. In answer to the question, “What three things do you look for in a business,” venture capitalist David Hornick responded, “People, people, people.”
The near unanimous agreement of speakers on the topic of hiring smart people was an affirmation for the ways Peter and I have tried to build out our team. We need more than clock punchers or people who are content running down a support checklist. We’ve sought out people who make inspired decisions, who can be effective with minimal supervison, and with whom we can trust the vitality of our business; the very best in our world.
This post is part of a series on our sponsorship of and participation in The Start Conference.
Start Conference: The Blogging Trifecta
by Alan Ritari on August 7, 2008 1:16 PM.
Peter and I are at The Start Conference right now, hanging out with other entrepreneurs and listening to an impressive list of speakers. The venue at Fort Mason is perfect, just the right size for the 450 people here all sitting in a theatre overlooking the San Francisco Bay. I love this city.
Starting off the day we heard back-to-back from three giants in blogging software, Evan Williams (Blogger.com, Odeo and now Twitter), Matt Mullenweg (Wordpress) and Mena Trott (Movabletype), sharing their stories about how they stumbled into success by making great tools to address a personal need. Rather than trying to satisfy the needs of some nebulous market out there, they made software that they themselves wanted to use. Matt put it best when he said, “my ideas come from frustration 90% of the time.” It was a timely reminder of the advice that you can almost never go wrong by scratching your own itches.
The other striking commonality between the three blogging entrepreneurs was how hard it was on them personally. Building great products took sacrifice and long hours, often motivated by little more than pride and fear and… something more. The successful startups all share a persistent belief that they can do it better (whatever “it” is) and that somehow everything is going to work out.
It’s that obstinate optimism that pulled them through hard times and brought them to where they are today.
This post is the first in a short series on The Start Conference. Other posts include Start Conference: Your People and Start Conference: Marketing, Success & Wrap-up.
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