Fragile connection - hold tight

If you’ve tried to visit this blog in the last few weeks, sorry.

My hosting provider underwent a series of upgrades somewhere back around May 26th, and ever since then you’ve had about a 50/50 chance of getting either no response at all or a “database connection error” page. Things seem (knocking wood) relatively stable now, so I’m hoping all the demons have been exorcised and the host will find solid ground - if not, I’m going to have to shop for a new host (again).

This coincided (luckily or unluckily, depending on your point of view) with two weeks vacation in England (London, the Costwolds) and Ireland (Dublin, counties Kerry and Cork), so for the first half of the “troubles” I was blissfully unaware. (That’s right, I spent 12 days with no internet access - didn’t even bring my laptop, and turned off the data connection on my phone.)

I’ll be blogging some more about the trip itself (and vegan eats we had along the way) over on Goatless, but I’ve also got a backlog of stuff to talk about here - so stay tuned, and sorry for the interruption(s).

Tips for ASPs

One of my Optaros colleagues in Austin, Erik Smartt, recently posted 8 “Tips for ASPs.”

He’s put together a great list which should be required reading for any application service provider. It’s amazing to me how many managed service providers and large software companies make it terribly difficult to engage with them.

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Gartner Open Source Summit

Gartner Open Source Summit

Theme: Understanding the True Costs, Optimizing the Rewards

Begins: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 at 11:00 AM

Ends: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 at 12:15 PM

Location:

JW Marriott Desert Ridge Hotel

Phoenix, AZ

United States

Registration fee: US $1595

Last date for registration: Fri, 22 Sep 2006

Last date for paper submission: Fri, 22 Sep 2006

Link: Gartner Open Source Summit

Next week I will be at the Gartner Open Source Summit in Phoenix. Looking forward to their predictions about the size of the Open Source IT Services market, and Optaros’ place within it.

Optaros is a sponsor and will have a booth - stop by and say hello!.

“By 2010, most IT organizations will have formal Open Source management and acquisition strategies” Mark Driver, Open Source Summit Chair. Will you be ready?

As this new software model merges into more everyday applications, the second Gartner Open Source Summit is an opportunity to fully explore the challenges of adopting it - as well as a chance to meet the vendors at the forefront of the movement.

Open source is, and will continue to be, at the head of a sea-change in the world of information technology. With some 50% of IT personnel calling themselves “beginners” when it comes to open source, the Summit offers a rare chance to go from “zero to 60″ in critical Open Source IT know-how. Attend the Summit and position yourself as a leader as you examine how to deliver the benefits of Open Source technology to your organization.

Did you miss me?

Turns out my hosting provider had a multi-day DNS problem last week, so OpenParenthesis was closed from Thursday am through late Saturday.

(My wife’s site came back faster - its DNS service was restored by Friday afternoon, but that’s still long enough for email to start bouncing to clients).
What’s the average blogger to do?

Either

• you host with one of the blogging services (blogger, wordpress.com, etc), in which case you are more-or-less at their mercy, and you’re down when they are, or
• you host with an independant hosting facility, in which case you’re at their mercy, or
• you run your own server at home, in which case you’re at the mercy of the cable company, telco, or whatever else connects you to the ‘net.

In any case, if you’re just another toiler in the vineyard of the blogosphere, and not a blog superstar, how do you cost-effectively get reasonable uptime?

How do you get them to listen to puny old you while the clients who really spend $$$ are complaining?
If you’ve got recommendations for solid hosting facilities (PHP and MySQL a must, Rails perhaps) let ‘em rip.