Agathon Group - "The Good Stuff"
Hiring Developers ASAP
by Alan Ritari on June 2, 2010 11:29 PM.
Agathon Group is seeking two crack web programmers to join our team. Our workload for at least the next 18 months requires a balance of both PHP and Ruby on Rails. We prefer to hire full-time staff, although we will consider part-time or contracting arrangements for the right people.
These are 100% telecommuting positions, but do require that candidates be eligible for employment in the United States.
We need developers who are:
- Self-motivated, who work diligently with minimal supervision;
- Proficient in both PHP and Ruby on Rails — we’ll ask for sample sites and detailed descriptions of your role in each;
- Capable of hand-coding XHTML + CSS;
- Confident in your wielding of JQuery;
- Well-versed in web development and design, even if you may not have mastered all aspects;
- Strong written and verbal communicators;
- Comfortable with distributed development, version control and Linux servers; and
- Available immediately or sooner.
Several of our largest clients in the coming year are Christian non-profits. If this is a concern, then perhaps this isn’t the right position for you at this time.
Agathon Group is a virtual company with staff distributed across five 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, competitive pay and a decent benefits package.
Please email hr@agathongroup.com to get the ball rolling.
Cloud computing and latency
by Peter Green on April 29, 2010 4:42 PM.
For about as long as people have been writing about cloud computing, they have been complaining of the problem of latency in cloud computing. These latency complaints largely fall into two categories: latency in storage and latency in virtualization. Let’s take a look at each problem and see what we might be able to do to mitigate them, or, even better, eradicate them altogether.
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.
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