November 2021 Summaries

In November, DigitalOcean hosted its deploy conference and released several key features. These include upgraded Load Balancers that can handle one million requests per second or simultaneous connections, new base images for Fedora 35 and Ubuntu 21.10, App Platform support for forwarding application runtime logs to Logtail, and additional marketplace apps such as Wireguardian VPN Access Server, Airbyte, Netmaker, and node-army. Furthermore, updates were made to the DigitalOcean Command Line Interface (CLI) and Terraform Provider.

DigitalOcean is a values-driven organization that focuses on simplifying cloud computing and fostering community within the global developer and entrepreneurial communities. The company has developed a culture of giving back to society through various initiatives such as Hollie's Hub for Good, partnerships with builders making an impact, and employee-led commitments. Hollie's Hub for Good is a platform that supports nonprofits by providing infrastructure credits, cash donations, and visibility into their efforts. DigitalOcean has committed to allocating 1% of its pre-IPO equity valuation, around $50 million, to expand this initiative over the next 10 years. Some projects supported by Hollie's Hub for Good include QuestaGame, EVE list, and Trusted World. DigitalOcean also supports various other initiatives such as BigBlueButton, an open-source virtual classroom that enables effective remote learning. The company has donated $25,000 to the project, which will help promote awareness, advocacy, research, and collaboration amongst the community. In addition to these efforts, DigitalOcean launched a charitable match program for employees in 2021, committing to matching up to $150,000 of qualifying employee donations. This initiative has allowed employees to double their impact on causes close to their hearts. DigitalOcean encourages nonprofits actively fighting to improve health and education, reduce inequality, or spur economic growth to register their projects on Hollie's Hub For Good. The company is committed to continuing these efforts into the future and finding new ways to impact its community for good.

Hacktoberfest 2021 was a successful event with over 141,000 participants contributing to open source projects. This year's edition saw higher quality contributions from participants, resulting in valuable support for the open source community. The event had contributors from 194 countries and completed users from 147 countries. DigitalOcean made several changes this year to improve the experience for maintainers, including tightening submission rules and providing better guidance on making quality contributions. Hacktoberfest is a global celebration of open source, with participants ranging from first-time contributors to experienced developers.

The deploy conference by DigitalOcean brought together a global community of builders to learn about cloud native computing and share their experiences. Yancey Spruill, CEO of DigitalOcean, shared insights on the role of software developers in business strategies and discussed the company's future plans. Sessions covered topics such as Kubernetes, scaling businesses, and customer stories. Key highlights included Kim Schlesinger's session on creating a Kubernetes cluster, strategies for scaling businesses presented by Nicholas Tate and Kamal Nassar, and various compelling customer stories.

DigitalOcean's latest research report "Currents" delves into how small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) globally leverage cloud solutions, their unique challenges, and the differences between tech-focused and traditional SMBs. The study surveyed 2,400 IT decision makers from various industries and company sizes. Key findings include a knowledge gap in cloud terminology between traditional SMBs and enterprises, increased cloud adoption during the pandemic, and varying cloud architecture preferences among different business sizes. DigitalOcean offers simple, transparently-priced cloud solutions for SMBs worldwide.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a category of cloud computing that allows developers to use deployment platforms to build, deploy, and scale their applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. PaaS differs from Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Functions as a Service (FaaS) in terms of control, management, and usage. PaaS platforms provide and manage all the infrastructural components needed to build applications with cloud computing, allowing users to focus on developing and deploying apps in a tested and standardized environment. PaaS is popular for its speed, scalability, flexibility, and ease of use. However, it may not be suitable for those who need more visibility and control over the infrastructure or are concerned about vendor lock-in, cost, regulation, security, and data considerations. Purpose-built PaaS solutions cater to specific uses or types of applications, such as Artificial Intelligence (AiPaaS), communications platform as a service (cPaaS), integration platform as a service (iPaaS), and mobile platform as a service (mPaaS). When considering PaaS solutions, factors like user control and visibility, vendor lock-in, cost, regulation, security, and data considerations should be taken into account.

DigitalOcean has announced significant upgrades to its Load Balancer service, enabling it to handle up to one million requests per second or one million simultaneous connections. Customers can now choose the right-sized Load Balancer for their applications by selecting the appropriate number of nodes, ranging from 1 to 100. The capacity of each node is as follows: 10,000 RPS, 10,000 simultaneous connections, and 250 new SSL connections per second. DigitalOcean Load Balancers can be easily resized to meet changing traffic demands by adding or removing nodes. Pricing for the Load Balancer is based on its size, determined by the number of nodes assigned, with each node costing $12 per month (as of July 1, 2022).

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a cloud computing model that provides on-demand access to virtualized resources such as servers, storage, and networking components over the internet. It allows users to develop, scale, and manage their applications without having to invest in physical hardware or worry about maintenance. IaaS offers several benefits, including cost reduction, scalability, high availability, disaster recovery, and increased speed and flexibility. IaaS is suitable for various industries and business needs, such as website hosting, startups, testing and development, storage and backup, building web applications, and high-performance computing. However, users should consider factors like regulation, security, data loss, data persistence, vendor lock-in, user control, and visibility when choosing an IaaS provider. When selecting a provider, look for features such as excellent customer support, a variety of options, quality hardware and security, local datacenters, reliability, and scalability. Pricing models for IaaS typically include subscriptions, pay-as-you-go, or customized plans based on usage. Users should carefully evaluate the pricing model and ensure that billing details are clear and predictable.