Engine Yard

Overview

Engine Yard has evolved from a managed hosting provider of Ruby on Rails applications to a full-fledged platform for Ruby on Rails application development, deployment and mangement. Their Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings can leverage the Amazon EC2 public cloud or, can be run on the Engine Yard Private Cloud platform. Engine Yard handles the systems management and optimization of the environment, and provides in-depth software support and service for all types of Rails applications.

Engine Yard's platform is designed to provide a development platform that can be used for automating the cloud as well as for writing distributed, real-time applications. While the process of hosting, managing and maintaining servers is viable for only the largest businesses with the resources to match it, paying for a full-service vendor like Engine Yard makes sense. For example, while setting up a solid production environment can take weeks or months, with Engine Yard customers can get up and running in hours.

Ultimately, Engine Yard helps customers focus developing applications that will positively impact the business itself, while leaving the the infrastructure and platform details to Engine Yard. As they say, ‘you write it, we run it’ -- whether in a public cloud or private cloud environment. To date, they have over 400 customers and have raised $18.5 million in funding.

Value Proposition

Engine Yard's value proposition has "practical" and "strategic" elements. Their products are cost-effective, easy to use, have built-in reliability, and work with full-featured virtual machines. Engine Yard, the company, is made up of experts in both Ruby and Rails with practical experience in building some of the largest Rails sites.

Engine Yard's products have the ability to easily change application infrastructure and choose scalability parameters, implement a 2x to 5x faster development time, and, ultimately, respond to business needs rather than get bogged down in technical hurdles.

Products & Services

• Engine Yard Cloud provides Ruby on Rails application services delivered through a public cloud or private cloud. Scalability is easily managed and cost is based on usage. "Automated load-balancing, database failover replicas and full-spectrum monitoring" provide the requisite reliability needed. And it's all backed with support from the Rails experts and the battle-tested Engine Yard technology stack.
• Engine Yard Solo leverages Amazon E2 infrastructure and is geared toward smaller-scale web applications; usage is metered beyond a $25 minimum. Also using Amazon EC2 is Engine Yard Flex, currently in beta testing, that's designed for production sites and includes more support and unlimited Linux instances. Pricing starts at $349.
• Engine Yard Private Cloud Platform gives customers three private cloud options:
  • The Classic Plan "is the most common setup for existing businesses starting a new Ruby on Rails project and want the benefits of a fully-managed private cloud." Pricing starts at $399.
  • The Fractional Plan is designed for those already running a growing service and need to scale and/or those with special data retention requirements, such as HIPAA, financial compliance, or dedicated databases. Pricing starts at $599.
  • The Dedicated Plan builds a dedicated cluster for customers running large-scale Rails applications; this option is built to spec and will be priced accordingly.