October 2022 Summaries

DigitalOcean has launched its new partner program called Partner Pod, which offers a flexible approach for partners to choose their benefits such as discounts, credits, or Market Development Funds. The company aims to support small and medium businesses (SMBs) by working closely with partners like digital agencies, consultants, DevOps providers, hosting providers, managed service providers, and platform builders. Partner Pod offers unparalleled support, free training, co-marketing opportunities, and Market Development Funds. The program has three business tracks - Advisory Partner, Business Partner, and Technology Partner - and is structured with three levels: Registered, Engaged, and Strategic. Partners can choose from various sales rewards and utilize the new Partner Experience Platform for useful information, simplified processes, and networking opportunities.

DigitalOcean introduces new Kubernetes operators to automate and manage its resources. The company's Database operator uses Kubernetes to automate the deployment and management of DigitalOcean Managed Databases, while the Egress gateway solution blueprint helps developers define outbound connections from their pods for static IP addresses. Both the Database operator and the egress gateway solution blueprint are free, with users only billed for Droplets created as NAT Gateways and any resources consumed by their DigitalOcean Kubernetes cluster.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings have gained popularity for enabling developers to build and deploy applications without managing the underlying infrastructure, with Heroku being a notable early player. However, Heroku's high costs and limited flexibility have prompted many users to consider alternatives, such as DigitalOcean's App Platform. DigitalOcean offers a cost-effective and flexible PaaS solution that provides similar ease of use while allowing for smooth migration to more advanced infrastructure solutions like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) when needed. The App Platform supports a range of computing tiers and configurations, offering more granular control and scalability than Heroku, which benefits startups and SMBs that require predictable pricing and minimal complexity. DigitalOcean's focus on simplicity and serving entrepreneurial ventures is reflected in its straightforward pricing, lack of long-term contracts, and support for open-source projects, making it an appealing option for businesses looking to optimize their cloud computing needs.

DigitalOcean Hatch is an online founder program designed to help startups grow and scale by providing access to cloud infrastructure credits, technical advice, mentorship opportunities, and discounts on critical business services from leading SaaS providers. Since its launch in 2016, the program has supported over 8,000 startups with up to $50,000 of DigitalOcean credit. Hatch survey results show that early-stage startups benefit significantly from the program, and a vast majority of participants choose to stay with DigitalOcean even after the program ends. The future of Hatch includes plans for technical or DigitalOcean-specific training, more webinars, networking opportunities, connections to funding opportunities, and other improvements based on user feedback.

The holiday season brings increased traffic to eCommerce websites and mobile applications, making it crucial for development teams to optimize their sites to handle peak traffic times. To prepare infrastructure for the holiday season, teams should understand traffic distribution at peak times, test to find breakpoints, work with marketing or use past data to anticipate potential traffic loads, keep testing until they can support the anticipated load, and be prepared for worst-case scenarios by identifying pain points in their architecture and building redundancy into their stack.

DigitalOcean has been recognized on Newsweek's 2022 Most Loved Workplaces List for the second consecutive year, ranking 32nd among top 100 companies based on employee sentiment. The company received high scores in trust, inclusivity, and positive vision of the future. DigitalOcean fosters a culture of love by prioritizing transparency, open communication, inclusivity, and innovation. With a strong "positive vision of the future," 95.8% of employees would recommend their workplace to friends and family.

DigitalOcean has announced new enhancements to its App Platform and the introduction of a new monitoring tool called DigitalOcean Uptime. The App Platform now builds apps in nearly half the time and supports local builds that are faster than building remote. It also offers enhanced security for PostgreSQL databases through trusted sources for connection pools. DigitalOcean Uptime enables users to determine if their services are available and responsive from an external user's perspective, alerting them when assets are slow, down, or vulnerable to SSL attacks. Additionally, the company has added a CPU-Optimized Droplet plan with 48 vCPUs of dedicated computing power and 96 GB of memory, which is also available for DigitalOcean Kubernetes nodes.

The Deploy Conference by DigitalOcean on November 15th and 16th aims to help global development teams remove complexities in their infrastructure for faster growth and innovation. Experts will share practical takeaways and personal experiences on achieving scale with simplicity, covering topics such as architecture for different stages of growth, implementing Kubernetes, migrating legacy software, and building for scale. The event also offers opportunities for attendees to connect and collaborate with builders worldwide through the DO Community Discord server.