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Win a Free Ticket to php|tek for Your User Group!

By | May 16th, 2012 at 2:05PM

User group leaders, listen up! We have an extra Full Experience tickets to php|tek, and we’d like to give it to the community to use. php|tek happens May 22-25 in Chicago, Illinois, and is jam packed with PHP goodness, including an Unconference and a Hackathon. I mean, have you seen this schedule?!  Your winner is also welcome to join us at the Engine Yard JAUNT on Friday night after the conference. There is undoubtedly much awesomeness to be had next week.

If you are interested in participating, drop me a line by Thursday, May 17 and let me know. We’ll randomly select a user group to receive the ticket, and you can give it out however you wish. Thumb wrestling champion? Karaoke competition? Hackathon winner? Best high fiver? It’s really up to you.

As soon as you have a winner, let me know and we’ll make the arrangements with the fine folks at Blue Parabola, hosts of the conference.

Announcing Database-less environments

By | May 15th, 2012 at 5:05PM

At Engine Yard, we believe that you should have the flexibility to set up your environments and manage your data stores as you see fit. This is something we take seriously as we continue to evolve Engine Yard Cloud and today, we are happy to announce database-less environments as an alpha release. If you need to utilize data offerings outside of our natively supported MySQL or PostgreSQL, then this feature will enable you to do so.

Enabling the feature

With database-less environments, it is no longer necessary to have a MySQL or PostgreSQL instance in every environment. Simply boot up a ‘No Database’ cluster with one of our Add-on database providers or roll your own using utility instances. Now it is easier and more affordable than ever to get started on Engine Yard.

You can enable this feature using the Early Access tools. Once you have the ‘No db’ feature enabled, you will be able to select the “No Database (Alpha)” option under Database Stack on the new environment form.

You can add as many application instances and utilities as you need, and you can stop paying for database masters that you don’t use.  For example, you can follow the Mongoid RailsCast (Episode 238) and create a simple blog using Mongoid using two application instances and three utility nodes.

Infographic: A Mobile Storm in the Cloud

By | May 15th, 2012 at 3:05PM

Did you know that there are 3 billion more smartphones on earth than there are humans? Maybe that doesn’t come as much of a surprise to you. But what you might find more surprising is that the growth in smartphone adoption has actually contributed to Engine Yard’s success. That’s right: as smartphone adoption has grown, so has app consumption. As a result, businesses are now prioritizing mobile application development. By 2015, mobile application development projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4 to 1. Innovation in mobile is imperative, and there’s a need for tools that enable businesses to innovate quickly. Many cloud computing technologies–like Engine Yard’s Platform as a Service–have enabled developers and businesses to focus on application innovation.

The below infographic includes even more interesting facts about innovations in mobile, cloud computing and PaaS. Check it out and let us know where you think these fields are headed next.

Platform as a Service
Copy and paste onto your blog:

<a href="http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2012/platform-as-a-service/"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12384" src="http://www.engineyard.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/platform-as-a-service-v2.jpg" alt="Platform as a Service" width="930" height="5572" /></a><br/>Courtesy of: <a href="http://www.engineyard.com">Engine Yard</a>

Exciting New Integration: Badgeville in our Helpdesk!

By | May 15th, 2012 at 8:05AM

We are pleased to announce that we have integrated Badgeville’s gamification technology into our Zendesk ticketing system.  As you use the helpdesk to perform different actions,  (searching documentation, contributing to forums, completing satisfaction surveys, etc.) you will be able to earn many different badges and complete many different missions.

Through this integration we hope to increase community engagement, and to not only give you new channels to share your experiences and ideas, but also to reward you for it!

While inside our helpdesk, if you hover over a user’s picture, a little summary profile will appear showing how many points and rewards that user has, as well as the last badge that they have earned.

By clicking on “Click for profile” you will be brought to the user’s showcase that shows their progress on the current missions, with hints on how to earn the badges associated with them.  You will also be able to see your showcase anytime, by clicking on the “Profile” link in the upper right corner.

Also, there have been a few new Community forums opened up in the last week, so if you want to share your ideas and start earning some badges, check them out here!

Keep your eyes open. We will be introducing additional missions in the future.  If you have any questions or feedback, please open a ticket and I will get back to you!

Happy playing!

Engine Yard Expands IaaS Offerings with HP Cloud Services

By | May 10th, 2012 at 5:05AM

We’re excited to announce that we’re expanding the infrastructure options available to our customers with support for HP Cloud Services. We empower developers by providing a rock-solid platform with choices of infrastructure and components that make their job of building great applications as easy as possible. Engine Yard is one of the first PaaS providers to add support for HP’s public cloud, which is based on their world-class hardware and software, using key elements of the HP Converged Infrastructure combined with OpenStack technology.

For the past six years, our customers have relied on the Engine Yard platform to enable them to innovate faster, with higher reliability and while maintaining control of their environment. We continue to invest deeply in our open source PaaS to provide value for our customers. We want to ensure developers can rapidly build and iterate their applications while using Engine Yard Cloud to provide the on-demand scalability and reliability they need as their businesses grow and succeed.

By combining our leading commercial-grade open PaaS with HP’s public cloud infrastructure offerings, we’re providing development teams a powerful new solution to rapidly deploy both large and small applications in the cloud. Engine Yard has deep roots in open source, and we continue to champion open computing by adding new IaaS options like HP’s public cloud.

We’ll be announcing more details about availability. To get updates, click here.