September 2021 Summaries

In September, DigitalOcean welcomed Nimbella, a serverless platform provider, to its family and released several key infrastructure enhancements. These include the availability of Reserved IPs for custom images, Let's Encrypt wildcard certificates support for Load Balancers and Spaces, and expansion of App Platform into LON and TOR regions. Additionally, new preconfigured 1-Click Apps were launched in the DigitalOcean Marketplace, such as CUBITE, Chatwoot, Teleport, and Kasm Workspaces. The developer experience was also improved with updates to the Terraform Provider.

DigitalOcean is hosting the eighth annual Hacktoberfest, a month-long celebration of the open-source community. This year's event introduces new initiatives to further support the open-source community, including ways for people to participate without submitting pull requests. New features include showing appreciation to maintainers, enabling donations through Open Collective and GitHub Sponsors directly to open source projects, and adding GitLab support for Hacktoberfest. The event is open to anyone worldwide, with participants encouraged to contribute 4 accepted pull requests or make a donation to their favorite open-source project.

The retail industry faced significant challenges in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and remote working, with many businesses shifting to online shopping. Despite these challenges, eCommerce is predicted to continue its growth in 2021. To be successful, eCommerce startups must overcome various industry-specific challenges such as dynamic pricing, inventory management, high-dimensional data analysis, and shopping cart analysis. DigitalOcean has supported numerous eCommerce businesses with tools like Managed Databases, Kubernetes, and Droplets to power their growth. Key strategies for success in eCommerce include leveraging dynamic pricing tools, adopting an ERP solution early for inventory management, and utilizing data analysis to inform decision-making.

DigitalOcean has acquired Nimbella, a serverless platform provider, to complement its Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings. The addition of Nimbella's serverless capabilities will provide more choice to application builders while maintaining simplicity and price predictability. Nimbella has built a differentiated platform that addresses the challenges of adopting serverless technologies, making it more accessible for developers and small businesses building applications. DigitalOcean plans to integrate Nimbella into its platform in the first half of 2022, offering advanced capabilities to customers while simplifying cloud computing.