{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-author-jsx","path":"/blog/author/ben_uretsky/","result":{"data":{"prismic":{"allFeaturedblogs":{"edges":[{"node":{"featured_blogs_enabled":true,"heading":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"Featured posts","spans":[]}],"featured_blog_1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Blog","_linkType":"Link.document","blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":790,"height":395},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/6d8d81b1-971a-4313-b033-b4e125cb14a0_MondoDB-blog-header-790x395.PNG?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Introducing DigitalOcean Managed MongoDB – a fully managed, database as a service for modern apps","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2021-06-29","blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"MongoDB is one of the most popular databases, and it’s ideal for apps that evolve rapidly and need to handle huge volumes of data and traffic. It offers advantages like flexible document schemas, code-native data access, change-friendly design, and easy horizontal scale-out.","spans":[{"start":22,"end":44,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://db-engines.com/en/ranking","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"However, building and maintaining MongoDB clusters from the ground up can be a huge undertaking. Developers often complain that they have to spend their valuable time and resources on database management. Well, we’ve been listening and have some great news: accessing and managing MongoDB on DigitalOcean just got a lot simpler!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We are excited to announce that DigitalOcean Managed MongoDB is now in General Availability. Managed MongoDB is a fully managed, database as a service (DBaaS) offering from DigitalOcean, built in partnership with and certified by MongoDB Inc. It provides you all the technical capabilities that make MongoDB so beloved in the developer community. Together we have ensured that you will get access to all the latest releases of the MongoDB document database as they become available.","spans":[{"start":32,"end":91,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/managed-databases-mongodb/"}},{"start":230,"end":241,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.mongodb.com/","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Managed MongoDB simplifies the MongoDB administration. Developers of all skill levels, even those who do not have prior experience in databases, can spin up MongoDB clusters in just a few minutes. We handle the provisioning, managing, scaling, updates, backups, and security of your MongoDB clusters, allowing you to offload the complex, time consuming –yet critical – database administration tasks to us. This empowers you to focus on what really matters: building awesome apps.","spans":[]},{"type":"embed","oembed":{"height":113,"width":200,"embed_url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvHQSV7jnKA","type":"video","version":"1.0","title":"Create a MongoDB Database on DigitalOcean","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_url":"https://www.youtube.com/c/Digitalocean","provider_name":"YouTube","provider_url":"https://www.youtube.com/","cache_age":null,"thumbnail_url":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NvHQSV7jnKA/hqdefault.jpg","thumbnail_width":480,"thumbnail_height":360,"html":"<iframe width=\"200\" height=\"113\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/NvHQSV7jnKA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen></iframe>"}},{"type":"heading2","text":"Benefits of Managed MongoDB","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Easy set up and maintenance: We create the database clusters for you. Simply choose the cluster configuration (e.g., memory, disk size, number of nodes, etc.), and the data center in which you want to host the database. Follow a few simple steps and your database cluster will be up and running in a matter of minutes. You can spin up clusters using the cloud control panel, CLI, or API.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":28,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Automatic daily backups with point in time recovery: Data is one of the most important assets of an app, so it’s critical to backup your database. We take backups of your entire clusters automatically on a daily basis, for free. We also provide a point in time recovery for 7 days, that way if things go wrong due to human error, machine error, or some combination of both, you can easily restore the database as it was at any point in the previous 7 days. \n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":52,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Automatic updates and access to latest MongoDB releases: You get access to MongoDB 4.4. This is the latest release of MongoDB and comes packed with numerous enhancements like hedged reads, rust, and swift drivers. Since we have developed Managed MongoDB in partnership with MongoDB Inc, you will always get access to new releases as they become available. With Managed MongoDB, the updates happen automatically. Just select a date and time for the updates and we take care of the rest. This makes it easy to stay up to date with MongoDB releases without disrupting your business.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":56,"type":"strong"},{"start":148,"end":169,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.mongodb.com/new","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"High availability with automated failover: If your database goes down, it can take down the entire app, leading to bad customer experiences. With Managed MongoDB, you can easily minimize the downtime for your database and make it highly available with standby nodes. Standby nodes add redundancy, so if for example the primary node fails, the standby node is immediately promoted to primary and begins serving requests while we provision a replacement standby node in the background.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":42,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Scale up easily to handle traffic spikes: As your app gains traction and the usage grows, it’s important to have a database that can keep up with the increased demand. With Managed MongoDB, you can easily scale up the size of database nodes when needed.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":41,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Secure by default: Since data is critical, it also needs to be secure. We encrypt data at rest with LUKS and in transit with SSL. When you create a new cluster, it’s placed in a VPC network by default that provides a more secure connection between resources. You can also restrict access to your nodes to prevent brute-force password and denial-of-service attacks.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":18,"type":"strong"},{"start":178,"end":189,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/networking/vpc/"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"The need for Managed Databases","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"DigitalOcean’s mission is to simplify cloud computing so developers, startups, and SMBs can spend more time building software that changes the world. While databases are a critical component to any application, building, maintaining, and scaling them can be complex and time consuming. For developers that are building apps for their business, database administration is often not a core focus area. But it’s quite common to find developers that write the code and then also roll up their sleeves to maintain databases. Such users would rather offload the tedious database administration and focus their limited time and energy on building and enhancing their apps. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"With this in mind, we introduced Managed Databases a couple of years ago and are excited to add Managed MongoDB to our portfolio. With this release, DigitalOcean Managed Databases now supports the following engines:","spans":[{"start":33,"end":50,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/managed-databases/"}}]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/87745cc1-1c5f-4463-b104-104b7fc30dc7_managed-databases-logos.png?auto=compress,format","alt":null,"copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":849,"height":104}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Managed MongoDB launch comes on the heels of DigitalOcean App Platform, a modern, reimagined PaaS (Platform as a Service) that we released a few months ago. App Platform makes it very easy to build, deploy, and scale apps and static sites. You can deploy code by simply pointing to your GitHub and GitLab repos, and App Platform will do all the heavy lifting of managing infrastructure, app runtimes, and dependencies. App Platform, along with Managed Databases, helps fulfill DigitalOcean’s mission by empowering developers, startups, and SMBs to focus more on their apps, and less on the underlying infrastructure and databases.","spans":[{"start":45,"end":70,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"How Managed MongoDB works","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"DigitalOcean provides you with various compute options to build your apps like:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Droplets: On-demand, Linux virtual machines suitable for production business applications and personal passion projects.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":8,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"DigitalOcean Kubernetes: Managed Kubernetes with automatic scaling, upgrades, and a free control plane.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":23,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"DigitalOcean App Platform: A fully managed Platform as a Service.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":25,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"No matter which compute option you choose to build your apps, you can easily add Managed MongoDB to it. In addition to this, Managed MongoDB also integrates with the Node.js 1-Click App from DigitalOcean Marketplace making it a lot easier to build Node.js apps.","spans":[{"start":166,"end":215,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/nodejs"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Simple, predictable pricing","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Just like all DigitalOcean products, Managed MongoDB provides simple, predictable pricing that allows you to control costs and prevent any surprise bills. You can spin up a database cluster for just $15/month, or a highly available three-node replica set for $45/month. Click here for more information.","spans":[{"start":270,"end":301,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/#managed-databases"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Regional availability","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Managed MongoDB is currently available in the following regions:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"NYC3 (New York, USA)","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"FRA1 (Frankfurt, Germany)","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"AMS3 (Amsterdam, Netherlands)","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We will be making Managed Mongo available in other regions soon. Please check out the release notes for most up to date information on regional availability.","spans":[{"start":86,"end":99,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/release-notes/"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Join us at deploy, DigitalOcean’s virtual user conference","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Today we have deploy, DigitalOcean’s signature user conference, which focuses on celebrating, educating, and connecting awesome builders from all over the world.","spans":[{"start":14,"end":20,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://deploy.digitalocean.com/home"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Check out the keynote session from DigitalOcean's CEO, Yancey Spruill, in which he talks about where we're headed as a company and shares some exciting product updates. His keynote will be followed by sessions from community members, engineers, customers, and other experts that are building technologies and businesses powered by the cloud. With live Q&A and an active Discord server, there’s ample opportunity to engage and learn something new. Click here to attend the deploy conference.","spans":[{"start":14,"end":69,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://deploy.digitalocean.com/agenda/session/552806"}},{"start":347,"end":384,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://do.co/deploy-discord"}},{"start":461,"end":489,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://do.co/deploy"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We are also launching a hackathon for DigitalOcean Managed MongoDB. Learn how you can participate, submit an app and get a t-shirt.","spans":[{"start":24,"end":66,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/mongodb-hackathon"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We hope you will give Managed MongoDB a try. Here are some sample datasets and sample apps that you can use to kick the tires. Check out the docs and let us know what you think!","spans":[{"start":22,"end":43,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://cloud.digitalocean.com/databases/new?engine=mongodb"}},{"start":59,"end":90,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/do-community/mongodb-resources","target":"_blank"}},{"start":141,"end":145,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/databases/mongodb/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you’d like to have a conversation about using DigitalOcean and Managed MongoDB in your business, please feel free to contact our sales team.","spans":[{"start":120,"end":142,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/company/contact/sales/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Happy coding!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"André Bearfield","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Director of Product Management","spans":[]}],"tags":[{"tag1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Tag","tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}}],"author":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Author","author_name":"André Bearfield","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":553,"height":547},"alt":"André Bearfield","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/fdc7c85186f0a850b04083e1d4306bd1c19772e8_andre-bearfield.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"andre-bearfield"}},"_meta":{"uid":"introducing-digitalocean-managed-mongodb"}},"featured_blog_2":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Blog","_linkType":"Link.document","blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":790,"height":400},"alt":"Droplet Console","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/710499ae-78cc-4179-afc1-15793637b200_DODX3727-790x400-logo-2.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Securely connect to Droplets with SSH key pairs using a new Droplet Console","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2021-08-10","blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"The famous author Ken Blanchard once said, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.\" This is something we truly believe at DigitalOcean, and we always strive to enhance our products based on customer feedback.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"With this goal in mind, we are excited to introduce a new Droplet Console that will make it much easier to connect to your Droplets securely. The new Droplet Console provides one-click SSH access to your Droplets through a native-like SSH/Terminal experience. It also eliminates the need for a password or manual configuration of SSH keys. Starting today, we’re pleased to announce that the new Droplet Console is now available to all Droplet users.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Why you should be using Secure Shell (SSH) ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Password-based security is notoriously insecure due to password fatigue and the overuse of passwords such as ‘123456’. Secure Shell or SSH is a network communication protocol that solves this by using passwordless solutions for encryption, enabling two computers to communicate and securely share data. At a high level, SSH works by creating cryptographic key pairs consisting of a public and private key, which are computer generated and stored separately to ensure their security. ","spans":[{"start":80,"end":117,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://cybernews.com/best-password-managers/most-common-passwords/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"SSH has become the default encryption protocol for many industries, but it was difficult to use SSH keys with DigitalOcean’s current Recovery (VNC) console, which is why we developed our new Droplet Console. The new Droplet Console is backed by an agent that security supervises the key pair, while also providing one-click SSH access to our users. You can see the full list of features below.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"The new Droplet Console: More time saving, less time wasting ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The new Droplet Console is for everyone who is looking to build fast, secure apps and avoid hassles with SSH access & usability issues.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"In addition to easier SSH access, the new Droplet Console comes with:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Copy/paste text: Instead of typing lengthy key pairs and text manually, you can use copy/paste to save time. ","spans":[{"start":0,"end":17,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Multi-color support: Multi-color support makes the console more useful and intuitive, and breaks the conventional standard appearance which is black text on a white background. ","spans":[{"start":0,"end":41,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Multi-language support: DigitalOcean’s new Droplet Console supports multiple languages, meaning you can now type and view any content in any language that is supported by UTF-8","spans":[{"start":0,"end":24,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"OS/images supported: Linux distributions (Ubuntu(16.04 - 20.04), Fedora (32 & 33), Debian (9), CentOS (7.6 & 8.3), CentOS 8 Stream, Rocky Linux and Marketplace images.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":20,"type":"strong"},{"start":148,"end":159,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The new Droplet Console is available by default on any new Droplets you spin up. You can also enable it manually on older Droplets. Click here to learn more!","spans":[{"start":132,"end":157,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/how-to/connect-with-console/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Check out this short walkthrough video that shows the new Droplet Console in action: ","spans":[]},{"type":"embed","oembed":{"type":"video","embed_url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt7QihVuxiE","title":"Access Your Droplet Terminal Through the Web Console","provider_name":"YouTube","thumbnail_url":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Qt7QihVuxiE/hqdefault.jpg","provider_url":"https://www.youtube.com/","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_url":"https://www.youtube.com/c/Digitalocean","height":113,"width":200,"version":"1.0","thumbnail_height":360,"thumbnail_width":480,"html":"<iframe width=\"200\" height=\"113\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qt7QihVuxiE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen></iframe>"}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We hope you’re excited about the new Droplet Console. You’re welcome to spin some Droplets up right now, and try out the new Droplet Console – why wait?","spans":[{"start":72,"end":103,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://cloud.digitalocean.com/droplets/new"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Happy coding!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Harsh Banwait, Senior Product Manager","spans":[]}],"tags":[{"tag1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Tag","tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}}],"author":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Author","author_name":"Harsh Banwait","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":399},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/e83ff690-b20c-4d88-a2b6-57e562558cd6_download.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"harsh-banwait"}},"_meta":{"uid":"new-droplet-console-ssh-support"}},"featured_blog_3":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Blog","_linkType":"Link.document","blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":790,"height":400},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/588e28d3-d41e-480b-937b-8c3b19201f6e_DODX3568-790x400-Blog.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"How to scale your SaaS product without breaking the bank","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2021-06-22","blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"These days, if you are in the business of software, chances are you are delivering or plan to deliver your services using a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. A combination of internet-based delivery, subscription-based pricing, and low-friction product experiences have made SaaS solutions valuable tools for their users, and an excellent vehicle for software builders looking to distribute their products.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"These factors have made SaaS solutions ubiquitous; SaaS is the largest segment in the public cloud market, and is used to provide functionality ranging from personal finance apps for consumers, to productivity software for businesses, and even tools and services for software developers themselves to compose their applications and simplify their workflows. It is also not uncommon to find micro-SaaS applications being built for specific industries such as retail, job functions such as accounting or marketing, or tasks such as event management. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The best thing about this SaaS wave has been that it has allowed a new generation of software builders to build and monetize applications and participate in the digital economy. Previously, you had to be a big company with lots of resources, name recognition and distribution networks to successfully sell software products. Now, irrespective of whether you are a single person working on a passion project, a small team of developers in a startup, or a small and medium-sized business (SMB), the SaaS model enables you to express your ideas in the form of software and deliver them to customers anywhere in the world.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"The unique challenges of building SaaS solutions","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Despite the opportunities that come with the widespread adoption of SaaS products, software builders still have to answer key questions in their journey to building successful SaaS products. Understanding what customers to target, features to prioritize, how to price your product, and how to acquire customers are all critical questions to figure out while you are also doing the important job of actually building and operating the product. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Writing the code, testing, deployment, monitoring the usage in production, and ensuring that your apps are able to handle the additional demand when customer base and usage grows are all essential and time-consuming tasks.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Additionally, being able to test multiple ideas, pivot, and double down on the ideas that actually work is critical in early stages of SaaS development. Once growth comes, it is equally important to scale up without compromising on performance or reliability. Needless to say, all of this needs to be economically viable as well, since not everyone has the resources of large SaaS providers like Salesforce or Adobe.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Cloud Computing enables builders but also poses challenges","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Fortunately, for the act of building and operating your apps, cloud computing can help take some load off your shoulders. Unless you have the scale and resources of Facebook, chances are you are not going to set up your own data centers to host the computing infrastructure that powers your SaaS company. Public cloud infrastructure providers can bring great value to SaaS builders by providing on-demand computing services with usage-based pricing. However, just like how the legacy software companies weren't built for the SaaS model, the early (and big) cloud computing services were not optimized for the unique needs of small SaaS building teams. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Smaller SaaS teams face challenges with large cloud computing providers, including:","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"Too many technology options","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"There are just too many options for tech stacks on which to build your SaaS - programming languages, application development frameworks, libraries, runtime environments, architectural patterns, and deployment models - and the list is growing by the day.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"Complexity of cloud computing services","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Even when you have decided on a technology stack, there is a lot of cloud vendor-specific terminology you need to learn and heavy lifting you need to do to build on the cloud, not all of which contributes to making your SaaS applications successful.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"Unpredictable costs","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The experimentation necessary in early stages of SaaS development, as well as the scaling of applications required during the growth phase, call for affordable and predictable pricing from your cloud provider. The last thing SaaS teams want is surprising and indecipherable bills from your cloud provider. Unfortunately, smaller businesses often experience unpredictable costs with cloud providers who are busy serving only the large enterprises.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"DigitalOcean provides a simple, cost effective solution for SaaS builders","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Fortunately, at DigitalOcean we have a laser focus on small software development teams, who are trying to build the next generation of applications. Today, DigitalOcean customers are already building SaaS applications which serve all kinds of customers.","spans":[{"start":191,"end":217,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/solutions/saas/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We believe SaaS builders should focus on building apps that power their business, and not spend their valuable time on managing infrastructure. That is exactly what we have been able to enable through our intuitive products that are built for scale and reliability.","spans":[{"start":205,"end":223,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Vidazoo is an advertising technology company specializing in video streaming and serving. It serves video ads to thousands of websites and handles close to 10 billion requests per day. \n\n“We are as much a data company as an adtech company. Our business relies on speedy and accurate data processing at massive scale. DigitalOcean provides us the perfect set of tools to operate our SaaS business profitably, while not making us feel the need to become full time system administrators. We plan to move a lot of our apps to DigitalOcean App Platform and other fully managed products.” - Roman Svichar, CTO of Vidazoo","spans":[{"start":0,"end":7,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://vidazoo.com/"}},{"start":187,"end":583,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We believe in meeting customers where they are. If they already have an understanding of cloud infrastructure technologies, they should be able to leverage that knowledge and get started with our products without any further ramp up.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Whatfix is an enterprise SaaS provider that offers a digital adoption platform to businesses. The company helps enterprises gain the full value of their investments in enterprise applications by providing real-time, interactive, and contextual guidance to users of those applications. \n\n“What we really love about the DigitalOcean platform is the ease of use. We feel like we know infrastructure and can handle most of the configuration and management. What we needed from a cloud was not bells and whistles but efficiency and reliability. DigitalOcean provides us a platform to build our apps and then gets out of the way. Just how we like it.” - Achyuth Krishna, Director of Engineering of Whatfix","spans":[{"start":0,"end":7,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://whatfix.com/blog/driving-the-future-now-were-excited-to-announce-our-90-million-series-d-funding/"}},{"start":287,"end":648,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We understand that scaling while maintaining reliability of applications and profitability of business is important, so we provide robust solutions which minimize downtime.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Centra is a SaaS-based e-commerce platform for global direct-to-consumer and wholesale e-commerce brands. Centra provides a powerful e-commerce backend that lets brands build pixel-perfect, custom designed, online flagship stores. \n\n“How do we enable our customers to create differentiated online experiences? How do we ensure their e-commerce apps stay up and running at all times? How do we scale on-demand when traffic grows or new customers come in? These are the questions that we ask ourselves every day. Thankfully, we have a partner in DigitalOcean that provides just the platform to answer those questions enabling us to guarantee 99.9% uptime for our clients.” - Martin Jensen, CEO of Centra","spans":[{"start":0,"end":6,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://centra.com/"}},{"start":233,"end":673,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"These are just a few examples of SaaS businesses finding success on DigitalOcean. We are constantly amazed by the creativity and innovation that software builders are utilizing our platform for. If you are interested in learning more about product updates, technical deep-dives and best practices for building SaaS products and businesses, please contact us to learn how we can help you get started. ","spans":[{"start":340,"end":357,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/migrate/?utmmedium=blog","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Come build with DigitalOcean!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Looking to migrate your SaaS to DigitalOcean? Leverage free infrastructure credits, robust training, and technical support to ensure a worry-free migration.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":156,"type":"strong"},{"start":0,"end":156,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/migrate/?utmmedium=blog","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Raman Sharma","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Vice President, Product & Programs Marketing","spans":[]}],"tags":[{"tag1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Tag","tag":"Developer Relations","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"developer-relations"}}}],"author":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Author","author_name":"Raman Sharma","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":512,"height":512},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/497b4b14-d192-493a-8b66-7ae176ba99f3_raman.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"raman-sharma"}},"_meta":{"uid":"how-to-scale-your-saas-product-without-breaking-the-bank"}}}}]}}},"pageContext":{"limit":12,"skip":0,"numAuthorPages":1,"currentPage":1,"uid":"ben_uretsky","data":[{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"Ben Uretsky","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":197,"height":197},"alt":"Ben Uretsky","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/9c33dc1465bf14e543a18d402452f77970d3b4c1_aaeaaqaaaaaaaa3gaaaajdbmyjgxnzvjlti2zwutnddlzi04mgyxltlhyjfhotnlytgzna.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"ben_uretsky"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":2286,"height":1510},"alt":"Picture of Ben and Mark","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/764e2f903ada646e9a5abb31b90401c01766158e_ben_and_mark-1.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"The Next Wave: DigitalOcean's New CEO","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"A few months ago, I announced my plans to find my successor as we approached our next phase of growth. Today, I am very excited to announce that Mark Templeton will be joining us as DigitalOcean’s new CEO.","spans":[{"start":20,"end":38,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://blog.digitalocean.com/onwardandupwardtogether/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We were looking for a leader who could scale our operations, evolve our go-to-market strategy, and help us reach our audacious vision of becoming every developer’s cloud platform of choice when deploying software. After spending time with Mark, I knew that he was the perfect fit for us.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"From 2001 to 2015, he served as president and CEO of Citrix Systems. While at Citrix, Mark helped grow the business from $15 million in revenue with one product, one customer segment, and one go-to-market path to a global industry leader with more than 100 million users and annual revenue of over $3 billion. He joined the company prior to its initial public offering and served in a leadership capacity throughout his 20-plus years with the organization. Under his leadership, Citrix earned multiple “best places to work” awards and Mark himself was honored with several awards including a coveted spot on Glassdoor’s Highest Rated CEOs list in 2013.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"When I asked him what he saw in DigitalOcean, he replied that he was inspired by our unique position in the market and focus on delivering simplicity at scale. He went on to talk about our incredible team, happy customers, and what perfect timing it was to make an enormous impact on the industry. He compared the opportunity to his early days at Citrix — when the company had a singular focus on offering the best remote access technology in the world. That focus was the seed of the Citrix vision of a virtual workplace, inspired by the deep belief that work was not a place.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Mark believes we have an incredible opportunity to serve tens of millions of developers and the digital-first businesses they go on to create. He shares our focus on simplicity and supports our efforts to ensure our cloud is an enabler for a future that accelerates software development and inspires innovation among our customers. Mark will help DigitalOcean operate and scale to a whole new level while doubling down on our strategy to be the world’s simplest cloud experience.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We are so fortunate to gain a leader with Mark’s experience, talent, and vision. DigitalOcean is at an inflection point and we’ve laid the groundwork together for this rocket ship to soar. We now have a $200 million run rate and a community that is more than 3.5 million developers strong. As we enter into our next chapter, I am confident Mark is the right leader to inspire and scale our team, accelerate our business, and most importantly, uphold our commitment to our customers and the developer community at large.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Please join us in welcoming Mark on what promises to be an exciting journey!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Ben Uretsky","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Co-Founder, DigitalOcean","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2018-06-20","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"the-next-wave-digitaloceans-new-ceo"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"Ben Uretsky","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":197,"height":197},"alt":"Ben Uretsky","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/9c33dc1465bf14e543a18d402452f77970d3b4c1_aaeaaqaaaaaaaa3gaaaajdbmyjgxnzvjlti2zwutnddlzi04mgyxltlhyjfhotnlytgzna.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"ben_uretsky"}},"blog_header_image":null,"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Onward and Upward Together","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"As we turn the page on 2017, I’m proud to share that DigitalOcean had another tremendous year of rapid growth and strong profitability, a combination which few tech companies have achieved at our scale. We are rapidly approaching $200M in annual recurring revenue and are looking forward to celebrating our 6th anniversary next month. The key to our success is our disruptive offering — a cloud computing platform that is engineered with simplicity at the core — and our vibrant, growing developer community. We see a substantial and growing market need, and believe that DigitalOcean is perfectly positioned to lead this category in the years ahead.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"While we have enjoyed great success since I co-founded the company in 2012, I believe we have barely scratched the surface. I’ve been reflecting on our next phase of growth and what it will take to reach our full potential, and it’s become clear to me that now is the right time to identify my successor as CEO of DigitalOcean.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"I recognize where my strengths lie and where others will have more experience to give. With all of the exciting opportunities in front of us, including the possibility of an IPO — a long-term goal we have frequently discussed internally — I feel a new seasoned executive will be best to guide the company through the next chapter of our journey. We have engaged a leading search firm to help us find a great leader. One that will be inspirational, able to scale our operations beyond 1,000 people, evolve our go-to-market strategy, and help us reach our audacious vision. Someone who can build a global brand that could potentially help us become a publicly-traded company with the simplest cloud platform for developers to run applications of any size.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Once we’ve identified this person, I’ll be taking on a new role as Chairman of the Board, which will allow me to support our company vision and strategy while working closely with the new CEO.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"When Moisey, Mitch, Alec, Jeff, and I started the company in 2012, we left our families and friends in New York to join the Techstars program in Colorado. We slept on bunk beds and worked relentlessly pretty much every day until midnight. Finding product-market fit didn’t happen overnight and it took months of iterating and refining our product offering. We had 400 users when we graduated from the Techstars program, and while we knew we had developed something special, trying to raise venture capital at that time was a real uphill battle. We heard many “no’s” from investors along the way, but believed in our long-term vision.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"After returning to a small office in New York City, we launched the first SSD virtual machine service with unprecedented price-to-performance on January 15th, 2013. We instantly went from signing up a couple of new users per day to more than 100. I vividly remember sitting at our kitchen table with the co-founding team, having to manually install SSDs into our servers to keep up with the demand. It’s been a humbling journey to say the least, and I could not have imagined the growth, success, and scale we would achieve only five years later. DigitalOcean has accomplished so many incredible things over the years and I know that our product, people, and operations have never been stronger.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Aug 9, 2012 - Mitch, Alec, Moisey, me and Jeff walking on stage for Techstars demo day","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/935995c0c9d0359ffca3dccb6b5395f0bb745e7b_image.png?auto=compress,format","alt":null,"copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":960,"height":960}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We have raised $123M from some of the world’s leading VCs that share our belief that the developer will lead the continuing technology revolution. Today, we have a team of 400-plus employees around the world with growing offices in New York, Cambridge, Mass., and Bangalore. Our user base has grown with us and last year we crossed one million users from almost every country in the world. Over the last few years, our product went from a single offering, Droplet, to a complete cloud platform. We are extremely proud to be one of the largest and fastest-growing cloud providers in the world.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"I’ve always said that putting the business first and doing what is right for DigitalOcean is my highest priority. I’m making this decision knowing that DigitalOcean’s best days are still to come. We have never been in a better position to begin this transition. We have a great leadership team in place, the business has very strong momentum, and we are a clear leader in our industry. I’m confident that our new CEO will be able to rapidly build on this strong foundation.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"No matter who our next leader is, one thing that definitely won’t change is our unwavering commitment to delivering the industry’s simplest cloud computing platform, while building one of the world’s largest developer communities. All of the core elements that have contributed to our success — the powerful simplicity of the product, the dedication and talent of the team, and the passionate community of developers that we serve — will remain the same.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"I am tremendously excited about DigitalOcean’s future and the milestones ahead. I want to thank everyone who has helped turn our dream and passion into reality. The skills I have learned and friendships I have made while helping to build this company will last me a lifetime, for which I will be forever grateful and I couldn’t be more excited for the journey ahead.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Onward and upward together,","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Ben Uretsky","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2018-02-22","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"onwardandupwardtogether"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"Ben Uretsky","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":197,"height":197},"alt":"Ben Uretsky","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/9c33dc1465bf14e543a18d402452f77970d3b4c1_aaeaaqaaaaaaaa3gaaaajdbmyjgxnzvjlti2zwutnddlzi04mgyxltlhyjfhotnlytgzna.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"ben_uretsky"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":784,"height":418},"alt":"Sea creatures partying with a thank you and 1 million users banner illustration","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/97840b8ecbc9c64318a899b96a655247d04e4550_1million_blog.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Riding the Jet Stream to 1 Million Users","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"Today, we’re excited to share a recent milestone with you: DO now supports 1 million users around the world. We’ve grown with our users, and have worked hard to give them the products they need to run their services without compromising the user experience they’ve come to love. We’re grateful to our users and community, and to the people that have helped us grow and learn along the way.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"In 2012, DigitalOcean had a modest start. Our staging environment was around 4 or 5 servers, and we had a handful of engineers running the platform. We had two datacenter regions, 200 Droplets deployed, and a vision for what cloud computing could become. But most importantly, we had the support of a community of developers that helped us realize that vision.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"A Maiden Voyage","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Holding user groups in our early stages really helped us answer key questions about what aspects of the user experience could be improved. We launched our first datacenter, NYC1, and opened up our first international datacenter, AMS1, in January 2012.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":19,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/a-lean-start-for-digital-ocean/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Our users have played a huge part in helping us determine where to launch new datacenters to serve them better; in addition to NYC and Amsterdam, we now have them in San Francisco, Frankfurt, London, Singapore, Toronto, and Bangalore. Our dedicated team of network engineers, software engineers, datacenter technicians, and platform support specialists have worked tirelessly to give all of our users a great experience and access to simple cloud computing at any scale.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Making Waves","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Among our early adopters were projects and companies like JsFiddle.net, AudioBox, and GitLab, who have scaled along with us as we’ve grown. Projects like Laravel Forge also chose to host their applications on DO. We’ve also partnered with companies like GitHub (Student Developer Pack and Hacktoberfest), Docker (Docker Student Developer Kit and our Docker one-click application), CoreOS, and Mesosphere on major initiatives.","spans":[{"start":58,"end":70,"type":"strong"},{"start":72,"end":80,"type":"strong"},{"start":86,"end":92,"type":"strong"},{"start":154,"end":167,"type":"strong"},{"start":254,"end":260,"type":"strong"},{"start":305,"end":311,"type":"strong"},{"start":381,"end":387,"type":"strong"},{"start":393,"end":403,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Developers that helped spread the word when we first started include John Resig (jQuery), Jeff Atwood (Stack Overflow), Ryan Bates (Railscast), Xavier Noria (core Rails contributor), and Salvatore Sanfilippo (Redis).","spans":[{"start":69,"end":79,"type":"strong"},{"start":90,"end":101,"type":"strong"},{"start":120,"end":130,"type":"strong"},{"start":144,"end":156,"type":"strong"},{"start":187,"end":207,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Pere Hospital, co-founder of Cloudways, found DigitalOcean in 2014 while looking for an IaaS partner that could add value to his clients’ business processes. When Cloudways hit 5,000 DO compute instances they had their own internal celebration—and they’ve added thousands more since.","spans":[{"start":29,"end":38,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"John O’Nolan, founder of Ghost, shared this anecdote: “On one of DigitalOcean's birthdays, the team sent us a couple of vinyl shark toys as a surprise and a thank you for being a customer. These sharks quickly became a mainstay of our weekly team meetings, along with the most horrific slew of puns: “Are you being ‘shark-astic’?” “That sounds a bit fishy.” etc. The jokes went so far that six months later we somehow found ourselves on a retreat in Thailand with our CTO, Hannah, coding at a table in a full-body shark costume.”","spans":[{"start":25,"end":30,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"preformatted","text":"6 months ago @digitalocean sent us a shark toy and now the jokes have escalated so far that our CTO is literally coding in a shark suit. pic.twitter.com/6UpQuoPFrW\n— John O'Nolan @ 🇬🇧 (@JohnONolan) December 5, 2016","spans":[{"start":13,"end":26,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/digitalocean"}},{"start":137,"end":163,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://t.co/6UpQuoPFrW"}},{"start":198,"end":214,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/JohnONolan/status/805706906333388801"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Additionally, several community members embraced DO and created tools that extended our API early on. Jack Pearkes created the command line tool, Tugboat, in 2013. Ørjan Blom created Barge, a Ruby library that pre-dated our official Ruby library, droplet_kit. Lorenzo Setale created python-digitalocean, which remains the most widely used Python library on DO. And Antoine Corcy created DigitalOceanV2, a library that helps PHP applications interact with v2 of the DO API. There have also been many others that have shared feedback with us and created tools of their own. We thank all of you for being a part of this.","spans":[{"start":146,"end":153,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/petems/tugboat"}},{"start":183,"end":188,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/blom/barge"}},{"start":283,"end":302,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/koalalorenzo/python-digitalocean"}},{"start":387,"end":401,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/toin0u/DigitalOceanV2"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"All Hands on Deck","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Members of the DO community have become a part of the DO family. We’ve reached over 1,600 tutorials on our Community site, in large part due to technologists that have contributed articles through participation in our Get Paid to Write program. Marko Mudrinić, for example, has written a number of articles for the Community site, frequently engages with other users in our Q&A section, and contributes to the official DO command line tool, doctl.","spans":[{"start":245,"end":259,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/community/users/xmudrii"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We’ve been lucky to have community members go on to join the DO team, like Community Manager Kamal Nasser and Platform Support Specialist Jonathan Tittle. Jonathan was an early adopter, having migrated his company’s customers to DO back in 2012. He then became one of our most engaged Community members. Jonathan told me, “When I look over questions posted to the DigitalOcean Community, I can honestly look back and say 'I’ve been there' and recall the countless times that I ran into an issue and couldn’t find the answer on my own, much less get the help I needed from someone who knew. When the questions were stacking up one day, I dove in and did my best to help. I quickly found myself spending countless hours troubleshooting alongside a user until an issue was resolved. I was simply trying to offer a helping hand when and where I could.”","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Over the Horizon","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The journey to 1 million is full of stories, people, moments, events, and companies that have crossed paths with us and have inspired us. Our users have been with us every step of the way, and we’ve tasked ourselves with meeting their growing infrastructure needs, and their goals for engaging and collaborating with us. There is so much more to come, and we’re excited to share it all with you. Thank you!","spans":[{"start":235,"end":263,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://blog.digitalocean.com/2017-whats-shipping-next-on-digitalocean/"}},{"start":285,"end":319,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://blog.digitalocean.com/tag/community/"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2017-07-19","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"1-million-users"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"Ben Uretsky","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":197,"height":197},"alt":"Ben Uretsky","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/9c33dc1465bf14e543a18d402452f77970d3b4c1_aaeaaqaaaaaaaa3gaaaajdbmyjgxnzvjlti2zwutnddlzi04mgyxltlhyjfhotnlytgzna.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"ben_uretsky"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":784,"height":418},"alt":"banner flags with the words Net Neutrality illustration","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/d9acdba6807edab1dee707e8da1fda9f642bb47e_net_neutrality_blog.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Net Neutrality: Why the Internet Must Remain Open and Accessible","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"DigitalOcean is proud to be taking part in today’s Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality. Access to an open internet is crucial to allowing companies like DigitalOcean and the thousands of businesses we power to exist. This is not something we can take for granted. Efforts to roll back the protections provided by net neutrality rules will stifle innovation and create an uneven playing field for smaller companies competing with entrenched players.","spans":[{"start":51,"end":87,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.battleforthenet.com/july12/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"I want to share the letter that I sent to our representatives in the Senate and encourage you to join us in speaking up while there's still time.","spans":[]},{"type":"preformatted","text":"DigitalOcean Inc. supports the Federal Communication Commission’s Open Internet Order and the principles of network neutrality that it upholds. As an infrastructure provider serving over  one million registered users, we support our customers’ rights to fair, equal, and open networks access as outlined in the Order. We have not experienced, nor do we anticipate experiencing,  any negative impact on broadband investment or service as a result of the Order.We strongly oppose the Commission’s recent proposal to dismantle the 2015 Open Internet Order. As evidenced by the federal judiciary over the past two decades in Comcast Corp. v. FCC and other cases, the Commission cannot enforce unbiased and neutral Internet access without the Title II classification of broadband providers as telecommunications providers. Therefore, we ask you to codify Title II reclassification into law. It is the only way to uphold network neutrality principles.As a direct competitor to the largest technology infrastructure providers in the nation, we are concerned that the Commission’s recent Notice for Proposed Rulemaking (WC Docket No. 17-108) will create an anti-competitive market environment because the costs of unfair networking practices will be forced onto infrastructure providers such as ourselves. Furthermore, many of our customers are individuals or small edge providers for whom changes to current network neutrality policies would significantly raise barriers to entry in various markets. Without legal protections against network blocking, throttling, unreasonable interference, and paid prioritization, it will be more difficult for us and for our customers to innovate, compete, and support the free flow of information.By protecting network neutrality, we hope that the 115th Congress can promote investment in New York, eliminate business uncertainty with regards to FCC rulemaking, support competition in the broadband market, and encourage small businesses to innovate. We look forward to working with you on passing legislation related to this issue.Signed,Ben Uretsky,\n  CEO, DigitalOcean Inc.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you’re in the US, join us and stand up for your right to an open and accessible internet by submitting your own letter to the FCC today.","spans":[{"start":95,"end":132,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.battleforthenet.com"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2017-07-11","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"net-neutrality-letter"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"Ben Uretsky","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":197,"height":197},"alt":"Ben Uretsky","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/9c33dc1465bf14e543a18d402452f77970d3b4c1_aaeaaqaaaaaaaa3gaaaajdbmyjgxnzvjlti2zwutnddlzi04mgyxltlhyjfhotnlytgzna.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"ben_uretsky"}},"blog_header_image":null,"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Update on the NRA Trademark Complaint","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"Yesterday, network access was taken down to sharethesafety.org which was hosted on our service by a customer, an intermediate platform provider. We want to let you know what happened.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"On June 23rd, we received notice from the NRA's counsel that sharethesafety.org was infringing NRA's trademarks. The NRA demanded that we remedy the problem by removing the material. In response, we followed our standard procedures for trademark infringement notices and informed the customer immediately of the NRA's demands. We provided more than 5 days for the customer to respond to or resolve the issue. We also spoke to the customer on several occasions to inform them that we intended to take action on the trademark claim. They chose not to remove the violating material. Accordingly, our Trust & Safety team restricted network access to their Droplet, which caused an outage to all of their user's websites hosted on that Droplet. In less than 2 hours of the outage, the customer was able to address the trademark notice, and network access was immediately restored.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"DigitalOcean followed procedures that help protect us from having to resolve what can be complicated disputes between third party rights holders and our customers regarding IP issues. In this case we should have given greater care to the customer's voice and their right to engage in parody. In retrospect, we believe that the website identified in the NRA's takedown notice was not a trademark infringement but was instead protected by the First Amendment. We at DigitalOcean champion freedom of speech and the free and open web.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Going forward, we will be working closely with our legal counsel to review our Trust & Safety procedures so we can make better decisions. We are committed to providing our customers with the best level of service and supporting their rights and freedoms. That is our responsibility as an infrastructure service provider and one that I take very seriously.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Sincerely,","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Ben Uretsky","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Co-Founder & CEO","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2016-06-29","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"update-on-the-nra-trademark-complaint"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"Ben Uretsky","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":197,"height":197},"alt":"Ben Uretsky","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/9c33dc1465bf14e543a18d402452f77970d3b4c1_aaeaaqaaaaaaaa3gaaaajdbmyjgxnzvjlti2zwutnddlzi04mgyxltlhyjfhotnlytgzna.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"ben_uretsky"}},"blog_header_image":null,"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Network Instability in NYC2 on July 29, 2014","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"Last Tuesday we suffered the second network incident in our New York 2 (NY2) region in the span of a week. This is not acceptable to us, and I want to personally apologize to everyone who was affected.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"At DigitalOcean, one of our core beliefs is that our customers deserve as much transparency as possible. This applies just as much when we have problems as it does when things are going well. With that in mind we'd like to share some details on the incident and our response.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Our network is designed with a pair of core switches that each of the server racks are connected to. These core switches are also connected to one another and coordinate between themselves to allow a single bonded logical connection to each server rack through both cores. We always have sufficient capacity available on each core switch to handle all of our traffic so that we can continue operating normally if either core switch fails.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"In addition to having fully redundant core switches, we also have redundant routing engines in each core switch. The routing engine is essentially the brain of the switch – it handles management functions and some higher level network protocols. This redundancy is intended to allow us to continue operating with core switch redundancy, even if we have a failure of a single routing engine in either core switch.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"On Tuesday July 29 at 13:09 EST, the solid state disk in the active routing engine failed on one of our core switches. This triggered a failover to the backup routing engine, however the failover was not completely successful. As a result, the coordination that is necessary between the two core switches to present a single bonded link to the server racks was left in an inconsistent state. This, in turn, caused a portion of our network to be unreachable. We discovered the failed routing engine immediately, but it took us nearly an hour to fully understand that the failover was not completed successfully. Once we discovered this, we made the decision to completely isolate the broken core switch from the network moving all traffic over to the remaining core switch.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The recovery efforts were hampered by a recently discovered problem with the software on our core switches, which we believed may cause problems on the remaining switch if we moved all of our traffic to it. Since we had just finished qualifying a new version of the software in a pre-production environment, we made the decision to apply the update to the unaffected core switch before isolating the failed one. This added approximately 15 minutes to the recovery time, but ultimately put us in a stable position from which to continue operating until we could perform the necessary repairs on the affected switch.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We have been working around the clock since Tuesday to better understand the failures that happened, return the network to a fully redundant state, and make changes to our configuration and to our standard operating procedures to improve our ability to respond to similar failures in the future.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"First, we repaired the broken core switch and successfully returned it to production restoring core switch redundancy. This was successfully completed on Wednesday evening. We also made the decision to isolate a single core switch from the network a standard troubleshooting procedure when we see similar unexplained traffic loss for part of our network in the future. This should allow us to respond quickly to this type of problem going forward.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"As of Wednesday evening the network has been returned to its original configuration, all devices are fully redundant and functioning normally. We do not expect any further issues to recur at this time. We are confident that our NYC2 region has been stabilized.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We are working very closely with our networking partner to understand the nature of the failure, assess the chances of a repeat event, and to begin planning architectural changes for the future.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Our initial focus was on verifying the configuration so we initiated a line-by-line configuration review by engineers at our network partner in order to confirm that we have the most optimal settings for our architecture. Beyond validating the settings, we also asked them to test this configuration in their lab to ensure that it performs as expected on the hardware configuration and software versions that we are currently operating.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"In parallel, we returned the broken routing engine for complete failure analysis and we hope to get more definitive answers about both the cause of the failure and why the backup routing engine was unable to successfully take over. We expect some preliminary findings on this over the next few days.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Finally, we've scheduled a full network review with the chief architect at our network partner to identify short term tactical changes that can make our network even more stable, as well as longer term architectural changes to support us going forward. We will be reviewing these suggestions early next week and making decisions about how to proceed.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We know that you rely on us to be online all the time. We appreciate your patience and continued support. We'll do whatever it takes to ensure that your trust is well placed.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Thank you,","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Ben Uretsky","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"CEO, DigitalOcean","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-08-01","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"network-instability-in-nyc2-on-july-29-2014"}}}]}}}