Top 10 things we accomplished in 2012

This year went by fast!  At the end of every year, I try to reflect back on the things we accomplished in the current year and when I look at it – it always amazes me. If you want to check out our previous Top 10 lists, here they are for 2011, 2010, 2009, and 2008.

1. Windows 2012 Hosting

This year was a big one for Microsoft. After much delay, they finally launched their Windows 8 operating system. Along with it they launched the new Windows Server 2012 and IIS 8 which were generally available on September 4, 2012. As always, we engaged with Microsoft as early as we could and I believe we were the first host to offer a shared hosting solution on Windows 2012. 

With our Windows 2012 hosting platform launch we increased the memory allocation to 300 MB. In addition, to make it easier for our customers to migrate to the new platform, we developed an automated migration system and made it available in our control panel. I believe we are the only host to have such a tool for customer site migration.

2. SQL 2012 Hosting

Microsoft launched SQL 2012 in April and we launched SQL 2012 hosting at General Availability (GA) as a new optional add-on to our base hosting plan. We increased the SQL disk space to 1000 MB as well. With our SQL 2012 implementation we support partially contained databases as described by Dimitri.

3. Shared TFS 2012 Hosting and Managed TFS 2012 Hosting

Microsoft released a new version of Visual Studio on September 12, 2012 and with this product they launched Team Foundation Server 2012. Because we engage early with Microsoft, we were able to launch shared TFS 2012 hosting a week earlier than general availability and then we subsequently launched Managed TFS 2012 hosting a month later in our USA-based data center. We are working on getting Managed TFS 2012 in our UK-based data center, and that will be a future announcement. Michael posted a new getting started video on TFS 2012.

4. FREE TFS Proxy Servers Around the World

With our TFS hosting service we know that we host customers with development teams that are located in different parts of the world. So to help them, we set up TFS Proxy servers in five global locations and made them available to all our TFS hosting customers for FREE!

Joe posted on his results from some personal tests that show how TFS Proxy speeds up connectivity.

5. Hosting support for ASP.NET 4.5, MVC 4, and Web API

Microsoft released ASP.NET 4.5 this year and we chose to launch ASP.NET 4.5 hosting on our Windows 2012 hosting platform.

We also launched support for MVC 4 and Web API.

We could have upgraded the existing Windows 2008 servers with ASP.NET 4.5 but since this was an in-place upgrade (meaning no rollback) we thought it was too risky since our customer’s applications could potentially break without a safety net. There is no way for us to test every application out there, so we went with our experience and gut on this one and we called it right. Sure enough, we started to see reports about incompatibilities coming in from other hosts who unfortunately went through with the upgrade and messed up customer sites.

6. Hosting support for node.js

What it means to be a .NET developer is evolving.  So we are constantly evolving our hosting platform. We launched support for node.js on our Windows 2008 and Windows 2012 hosting platforms. Raymond posted on getting started with node.js.

7. WebSockets Support

With our Windows 2012 launch, we also added support for WebSockets. Michael did a blog post for his Presedential Dial-o-Meter powered with WebSockets. Check it out and the post has all the source code too.

8. Internet Infrastructure Coalition Charter Membership

Remember when the Internet went dark over SOPA and PIPA legislation in January? DiscountASP.NET did our part along with other hosting organizations that came together with the Save Hosting group.

We know that this is not the first time legislation will be considered that affects the hosting industry and which will in turn affect hosting customers. So when the originators of the Save Hosting group founded the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, we joined as an early charter member. The i2Coalition organization provides a public policy voice for companies like us who make up the Internet’s infrastructure.

9. Microsoft Gold Partner Renewal and Visual Studio Partner Program Membership

We successfully renewed our Microsoft Gold Partner status this year and I mention this because it is not trivial to keep Gold Partner status. Last year Microsoft toughened the requirements making it much more difficult to maintain Gold status and many hosts lost their status as a result. We’ve updated the Gold Partner logo on our site and you can check our status at the Microsoft PinPoint site.

DiscountASP.NET also joined the Visual Studio Partner program this year. With our acceptance into the VSP program, we join a group of about 200 elite partners who develop components, controls, Visual Studio plug-ins that help developers and development teams be more productive. We are proud to be the first TFS hosting and web hosting provider to join the VSP program.

10. More Participation at Code Camps and other events

Every year we do our part to help out Code Camps and many other events by sponsoring them. This year we made more effort to try to have a table at some of these events so that we can meet the attendees. This year we manned tables at all three of the SoCal Code Camps and I was at the Arizona Day of Scott. We also were at the Silicon Valley Code Camp and the first JavaScript Saturday event. We basically focused on the events in California and those in nearby states.

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

So that’s my Top 10 for 2012 and I want to end it with a BIG THANK YOU! Thanks for reading through this rather long post and thank you to all of our hosting customers – thanks for trusting and investing in us.

As you can see from our Top 10 list, we work hard to provide cutting-edge hosting solutions that empower the Microsoft developer and we try to do this as quickly as possible. We also do our best to give back to the community. We promise to continue these efforts in the next year.

Have a great holiday and we will definitely have some exciting stuff to announce in 2013! Please stay tuned…