Agathon Group - "The Good Stuff"
More awards for our cloud platform
by Peter Green on February 17, 2010 4:12 PM.
Once again, 3tera, the provider of our AppLogic cloud platform, has won an award for its excellent cloud computing product. They have been voted “Best Software as a Service” by the readers over at HostReview.com. The award announcement describes the AppLogic platform:
AppLogic, the industry’s only cloud computing platform, enables infrastructure solutions that adapt to changing needs at the speed of business. Now using AppLogic, IT professionals can: deploy online applications in minutes instead of weeks, scale on demand and deliver security and business continuity for all applications, be in full control of their cloud environment.
You can read the full award announcement or see all of the awards over at HostReview.com. We’re very proud to be associated with this great company and users of a very mature and appreciated cloud computing platform like AppLogic!
Congratulations, 3tera!
New AppLogic (Cloud operating system) release
by Peter Green on October 29, 2009 4:39 PM.
3Tera released a new version of the Cloud operating system we use and Agathon Group got some prominent mentions in the press releases (e.g., here and here)!
The gist of it is that this newer version of the operating system offers levels of self-healing, diagnostics, and failover capabilities found in no other private Cloud software. Feel free to contact us if you want to find out more!
Green clouds
by Peter Green on October 9, 2009 2:21 PM.
No, this isn’t a post about acid rain. It’s a post highlighting a new article by Chris Thorman at Software Advice that talks about all of the environmental benefits that SaaS provides over on-premise hosting. The gist of this well-written article is that SaaS generally provides both tangible and intangible “green” benefits over maintaining “in house” hardware and software.
It’s no stretch to extend this specifically to cloud computing and the green benefits pile up even higher. In addition to the points that Chris highlights, cloud computing has been shown to more effectively utilize server resources, versus traditional hosting. And a more efficient use of server resources leads to lower overall power consumption.
To illustrate this, you might need four physical servers to run your web site: one load balancer, two web servers, and a database server. The power supplies in those four servers might be rated at a total of 2000W. In comparison, running your web application on one of our private clouds could get you the same computing power, only with two servers rated at a total of 1200W. That’s a power savings of 40%… and running your web application on our shared cloud (which is an example of what Chris calls a “multi-tenant architecture”) could help you reduce your carbon footprint even more. Even if the “green” benefits of saving power don’t excite you, saving some “green” on power (the price of which is only ever increasing) ought to at least get you interested!
Saving money and being good stewards of the environment, all while maintaining (if not surpassing) performance and flexibility… it’s clear that cloud computing (and SaaS in general) is a major “green” win.
IPv6 and Cloud Computing
by Peter Green on October 5, 2009 11:59 AM.
Recently, 3Tera announced IPv6 support for their AppLogic cloud computing platform. This was just another in a long list of innovations and firsts from 3Tera in the cloud computing marketplace, but is particularly interesting for Agathon Group. Not only did we receive a mention in the press release, but because of our robust infrastructure and relationship with 3Tera, we are one of the few cloud providers in the world that can offer IPv6 support for our Cloud Applications and Private Clouds right now!
Read the entire press release, or read more about IPv6 as well as why it’s so important. Then contact us for more information on how you can make IPv6 and cloud computing work for you today!
Aloha on Rails "Pau Hana" Party
by Alan Ritari on September 15, 2009 12:38 AM.
Get enough smart people in the same room and good things are bound to happen. That’s why some of the most valuable times at conferences are between sessions and into the evenings. Speakers get us thinking and dreaming, and then we riff off each other.
It’s in the spirit of helping this conversation along that Agathon Group is sponsoring the Pau Hana Party for Aloha on Rails. The party starts right after the last conference session on Monday, October 5th at Tiki’s Bar and Grill, just a five minute walk toward Diamondhead. Bring your conference badge to get in, and join us for live music, free drinks, pupus and prize drawings.
Be sure to find us and join the conversation — who knows, maybe we’ll all come up with the Next Big Thing. Either way, there are certainly worse places to hang than at Tiki’s watching the sunset over Waikiki Beach! Aloha!
Agathon @ Aloha on Rails
by Morgan Foster on July 24, 2009 5:08 PM.
As many of you know, we span many time zones here at Agathon Group, both with our technology, but also with our employee locations. Because of this, we rarely get to see each other face to face, and have always used a conference of some sort as a good excuse for us to all get together while also attending a conference (we have to, of course, be as efficient as possible :)).
Lucky for us we found (if you don’t mind my early 90’s lingo) a pretty rad conference to attend this year.
Aloha on Rails is a solid Ruby on Rails conference with some fantastic presenters and keynotes. And I don’t mean to rub it in, but it’s also in Honolulu, so you can’t really get a better location either. :)
The conference runs from October 4th to 6th this year, and there is still room, so if any of you are looking for a great conference and location to head to this year, I would highly encourage you to check out Aloha on Rails. And as a big plus, you’d get to hang out with us a little bit too! We never underestimate the value of face to face time not just with our own employees, but with our clients and friends as well.
We are very excited to be doing that at the Aloha on Rails conference this year. Hope to see some of you there!
Defending the boutique
by Peter Green on July 24, 2009 12:24 PM.
Over at the Signal vs. Noise blog at 37Signals, Matt laments the pretentiousness of the word “boutique” as a company description. The goal is to find a word that describes a company that “[is] small and cares about quality and is trying to do something great for a few customers instead of trying to mass produce [junk] in order to maximize profit.” The problem, Matt continues, is that:
Boutique has connotations. It conjures up fashion. Something that’s precious and hoity-toity. And it seems exclusionary too. Like it’s just for the elites or something. If someone said, “We should go with a boutique agency”…it would make me roll my eyes a bit.
I respectfully disagree — for us, “boutique” remains a fantastic word to describe Agathon Group’s professional practices. Another word we use (including on our home page) is “studio”; both have a number of elements that we value. (I will use them interchangeably below.)
Seeking Rails Developer (short-term)
by Alan Ritari on July 9, 2009 5:12 PM.
Update: this position has been filled. Thank you everyone for your interest!
Agathon Group is in need of an experienced Ruby on Rails Developer to help us finish off a mix of internal and external projects. This is a 100% telecommuting, full-time, three month contract position.
We need someone:
- Self-motivated, who works diligently with minimal supervision;
- Proficient in Ruby on Rails — we’ll ask for sample sites and detailed descriptions of your role in each;
- Capable of hand-coding XHTML + CSS, preferably with a little JQuery on top;
- Optionally experienced in PHP;
- Comfortable with distributed development and Linux servers;
- Eligible for employment in the US; and
- Available immediately or sooner.
Agathon Group is a virtual company with staff distributed across four states and six timezones. We need someone we can trust to be highly motivated to produce good work even when we can’t look over your shoulder. You also need to be very good at what you do, because our clients trust us to deliver higher quality work than they can get anywhere else.
In return, we offer great team chemistry, interesting projects/challenges and competitive pay. If this goes well and projects keep arising, the position may change to a full-time staff position at the end of the three month contract.
Please email hr@agathongroup.com to get the ball rolling.
Some More del.icio.us Links
by Morgan Foster on June 1, 2009 3:29 PM.
As some of you my know, we have a delicious account that we post on quite a bit. If you do follow us on there, then you can probably ignore this post, but I figured I’d highlight some of our recent links, as you may find them interesting.
Determining Browser Market Share - I found this interesting, especially since the questions about what browsers to code (and debug) for come up quite a bit with designing and implementing new sites. In other words, do we build on IE6 or Firefox 3, for example? This link is at least showing that FF3 has a greater market share in general, and is a whole lot easier to build on. Our general practice at Agathon is to start with the latest Firefox, ensure functionality in Safari (which is not difficult) then IE7 (this is more difficult), and then IE6 if needed (which is by far the most difficult).
Best UNIX commands on the web - Anyone using one of our grids could certainly find these handy.
10 Advanced PHP Tips - When are PHP tips not handy?
Donation Usability: Increasing Online Giving - Very useful research done on how donations are lost simply because ministries and charities don’t communicate what they are about and they don’t know how to use donations well. Great research and info in here for Non-Profits, Ministries, and Charities.
Modal Windows in Modern Web Design - Some nice tips on using Modal Windows in web design.
As always, 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! :-)
Memorial Day in Mexico
by Peter Green on May 26, 2009 12:12 PM.
My family and I decided that we would spend this long Memorial Day weekend volunteering at Door of Faith Orphanage south of Tijuana, Mexico. Aside from the puzzled looks that always accompany a decision like spending free time in a part of the world where 50% of the population lives on less than $5 per day, we got our share of concerned looks about threats of swine (er, “H1N1”) flu and drug-related violence in the area. We were undeterred — we had been looking forward to this long before any of the flu news broke — and we reassured the concerned parties as best we could. It was one of the more wonderful experiences my family and I have ever had in our lives. For me, just being able to hold and comfort babies, to watch my own children seamlessly integrate with their peers (rather than just trying to help “those people”), to work alongside gringos and Mexicans that have God’s own heart for the weak and helpless at the center of their ministry… this was all far more valuable than a weekend sitting on the couch and watching basketball.
The flu and violence reports turned out (as expected) to be blown way out of proportion by the US media. (To quote one of the workers, “The closest we’ve gotten to the swine flu here is San Diego.” Ha!) We never would have known that, though, without going down there and seeing things for ourselves.
There will always be people close to you that don’t have your vision or passion. Even with the best intentions, they will try to dissuade you from a decision that doesn’t make sense to them or that flies in the face of (their) logic. They will try to convince you that it’s much more comfortable or secure with them, that it’s best to just stay put. Don’t be deterred — follow your passion and reap the benefits of pushing through any discomfort once you realize that you are actually doing something you love, something you had thought about for a while, something everyone else thought was crazy.
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