Contegix | Cloud Hosting, Managed Hosting & Colocation Services » cloud http://blog.contegix.com Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:50:49 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Announcing Our Cloud 9 Technology Kick Off Event in Saint Louis! http://blog.contegix.com/2011/03/16/announcing-our-cloud-9-technology-kick-off-event-in-saint-louis/ http://blog.contegix.com/2011/03/16/announcing-our-cloud-9-technology-kick-off-event-in-saint-louis/#comments Wed, 16 Mar 2011 17:03:04 +0000 admin http://thoughts.contegix.com/?p=709 At Contegix we are continually seeking out ways to facilitate a deeper understanding of cloud computing. For those interested in becoming better educated regarding this innovative technology, we welcome you to attend our Cloud 9 Technology kick off event in Saint Louis. Contegix is hosting this event on March 29th at the Soulard Preservation Hall, where registration will begin at 3 pm.

The Cloud 9 Technology kick off event will feature Krishnan Subramanian, analyst at Cloud Ave, as our keynote speaker. At Cloud Ave, Krishnan regularly writes about cloud computing, open source and the various interfaces designed to integrate these tools effectively for use in business. At our conference, he will present the idea of cloud computing, how the shift to cloud impacts businesses big and small, various delivery models and deployment options. As Krishnan shared in his Cloud Trends report earlier this year, it is important for the existing and potential customers of cloud services to understand where technology is headed in this market and to make strategic decisions aimed at helping to maximize the benefits of cloud computing and open source products for their business needs.

This event also provides an opportunity to hear from one of Contegix’s customers, Scott Delap, who serves as the scalability architect at Riot Games. He will share how Contegix has enabled Riot Games to utilize the cloud for game server provisioning on demand and for load testing.

Contegix is a member of the VMware Service Provider Program, which will also allow us to share the stage with VMWare. Don Schleicher, vice president at VMWare, is going to discuss what is happening in the public cloud.

Matthew Porter, the CEO and Co-Founder of Contegix, will explain how various cloud technologies work together and Contegix’s vision for the future of cloud computing, which includes outsourcing that extends into the system administration of the infrastructure and application stack.

With the growing use of managed hosting providers for hosting infrastructure and managed applications, this is an event you do not want to miss.

Cloud 9 Technology World Tour 2011 takes place in St. Louis at Soulard Preservation Hall on Tuesday, March 29, 2011. For more information and to register, go to www.contegix.com/cloud9.

We look forward to seeing you there!

]]> http://blog.contegix.com/2011/03/16/announcing-our-cloud-9-technology-kick-off-event-in-saint-louis/feed/ 0 Cloud Technology in Schools http://blog.contegix.com/2010/04/08/cloud-technology-in-schools/ http://blog.contegix.com/2010/04/08/cloud-technology-in-schools/#comments Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:15:59 +0000 anne.ellegood http://thoughts.contegix.com/?p=216

Recently, a friend of mine who is a teacher came to me and said that a few  educators in her building were buzzing about The National Education Technology Plan 2010, which recommends the usage of open source technology and cloud computing being utilized by school districts.

“So, what exactly IS cloud computing? The plan had mentioned something about it and I don’t have a clue what it is” asked my friend, a junior high history teacher, who knows that I work for a major technology company.

‘In short, cloud computing is a way for an institution to host tons of information on a virtual server that is built to size in order to accommodate storage and usage needs, while being flexible enough to change the size of storage according to usage patterns, trends and influxes. It also provides access to frequently used applications through the web in a secured environment.

This technology, tied with students having access to computers in the class or their own laptop, would be really help to make your life simple. You could have your own “classroom” space on the cloud and build it out to host your own site and portal, where the kids could send you homework via email instead of handing in papers. They could work on group projects online, contribute on the forum, share information when studying for tests and so on. The cloud would give your class unlimited storage capabilities in a secured environment. Just think – laptops, e-books…you know, the education field has come a long way since chalkboards and textbooks.’

“If you ask me, it just seems like away to encourage children to hide behind an online environment even more and not really interact with each other. What’s next? No classrooms? No schools in favor of absolute virtualized online classrooms? Most children I encounter have poor reading and language skills thanks to technology. Anne, they CAN’T EVEN READ and yet we are supposed to trust that this technology will be a cure for all of our education woes? But hey, at least they’ll have a cloud to store stuff on, like poorly written papers.” She was clearly passionate about her argument, and I saw her point.

‘Don’t get me wrong – technology is not to be a replacement. It is a tool. Students still need to have human social interaction and the adjustment from that. The migration to cloud usage would be a way for districts to house data securely and relatively cost effective, while providing students access to a myriad of information as it pertains to your school or classroom’s cloud, right over the web from wherever they are. I will always be a huge advocate for books too, but not having to lug around 20lbs worth of books on your back might be nice. And, guess what? Those books could be ordered and stored online on the cloud making the excuse of “I forgot my book” a thing of the past. And just think of how many books – even an entire reference library could be stored on your cloud. The possibilities are limitless. We just have to make sure it all is in a careful balance. Technology isn’t going anywhere and in today’s job market, you must have these hard skills.’

My friend was still very uncertain of the future of teaching and technology usage in the classroom, especially the notion of “the cloud”. Change for most people is always hard because it is a learning curve. Adapting to ever-changing technology is no different.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the possibilities of cloud and open-source technology usage for schools and teachers. What do you see as being the biggest challenge? What is the greatest benefit? Who are the clear losers in this change, and the winners?

Best,

Anne E.

Contegian-at-Large

]]> http://blog.contegix.com/2010/04/08/cloud-technology-in-schools/feed/ 0 Cloud Templates – What Do You Want To See? http://blog.contegix.com/2009/11/02/cloud-templates-what-do-you-want-to-see/ http://blog.contegix.com/2009/11/02/cloud-templates-what-do-you-want-to-see/#comments Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:57:41 +0000 Matthew Porter http://thoughts.contegix.com/?p=143 When we began building Contegix, we realized it was always about the applications.  No one buys a server (physical or virtual) to run a ping and get some ICMP packets.  The Internet has, and always will be, about the applications.  Therefore, we made the application infrastructure the core of our management and focus of our hosting services.

As we build out cloud templates, we want to extend this belief into the templates themselves.  It can not be about just the operating system.  Each template has been built “The Contegix Way”.  These are built using the components and deployment methodologies that have served our customers for years and continue to do so today.  Some of these target developers, some for system administrator implementors, and some target application users.  Below is our list, but we want your feedback.

For developers:

For system administrators / application implementors:

For application users:

Yet, we want to hear – what do you want to see in a cloud template and ready to deploy in less than 5 minutes?  Please leave comments.

]]> http://blog.contegix.com/2009/11/02/cloud-templates-what-do-you-want-to-see/feed/ 5 Building the Cloud – More than Water & Hot Air http://blog.contegix.com/2009/07/17/building-the-cloud-more-than-water-hot-air/ http://blog.contegix.com/2009/07/17/building-the-cloud-more-than-water-hot-air/#comments Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:47:28 +0000 Matthew Porter http://thoughts.contegix.com/?p=111 We have been chatting about our cloud computing platform (known internally as Project Zeus but to be official named later) a fair amount in the past few months.  We have talked about our features and it being truly designed for the enterprise – small and large.  We have not talked about how it was built.

Earlier this week, our development team at Relevance put up a blog post on their work on the web and mid tiers for the project.  This promises to be the first in a series on how to build a cloud computing platform.  At least, how Contegix built a cloud computing platform designed around our principles and requirements.

Read the post, and one will find a number of interesting jewels.  One thing might stick out as very interesting. While we are known for our Java hosting, our cloud was built using Ruby and Rails.  Relevance used JRuby in the mid-tier for  numerous reasons, including the VIJava library for VMware.  The web tier is pure Rails 2.3.2.  Since Contegix is one of the largest managed Rails hosting companies and has been for quite awhile (anyone miss the Apache+fcgi days?), this was a natural infrastructure for us to support.

More information coming about our cloud late next week.  Launch is quickly approaching!

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