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Backplane is shutting down

backplane.io

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Re: Backplane is shutting down

#41

Post by pizza »

gobengo wrote: post #9
all2 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Backplane is a service that unifies discovery, routing, and load balancing for web servers written in any language, running in any cloud or datacenter. Traffic shaping, request enrichment, blue/green deploys, and other difficult to implement networking operations become trivial when using Backplane's combination of hosted and on-premise software. From their docs page here: https://www.backplane.io/docs

In the last ten years I have also seen 'backplane' be: * A protocol for helping web widgets on a page communicate and share data https://openid.net/wg/bp/ . We used to support it at Livefyre to interop with certain Janrain products, but the ecosystem wasn't so big at the time. It wasn't under OpenID at the time. * This roller coaster of a social network startup https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/06/the-backplane-black-bo…

I remember being at a hackathon of theirs (the Lady Gaga backplane) years back and seeing dozens of what looked like Herman-Miller Aeron chairs all over the office. Maybe they got them for cheap, maybe they weren't actually Aerons, but also maybe this pretty small (I don't actually know how many employees they had..) startup had a couple tens of thousands of dollars worth of office chairs

Re: Backplane is shutting down

#42

Post by insomniacity »

irl_zebra wrote: post #32
zalmoxes wrote: post #28

I'm neither an employee nor a customer, just someone who was following the project on twitter because it looked very intriguing. I just want to say that the comments on this thread are absolutely ridiculous and I expected better. Does anyone actually think the customers would find out at the last minute? That the company would leave its users without any support? It's baseless speculation and my guess is it's totally…

The customers did find out at the last minute. Weeks notice is last minute.

I think zalmoxes' point was that they may have found out through direct contact from the founders, or a customer-only email 2 weeks ago - rather than just by loading up the homepage today.

Re: Backplane is shutting down

#43

Post by VectorLock »

bertjk wrote: post #25

I like the basic technical idea behind Backplane, which is that your backend servers "dial-out" and connect to the edge load balancers. Does anyone know why this technique is not used more? Or is it actually common but I just haven't heard of it? If so who/where is it actually done this way?

I like it as well. It seems like it would provide significant improvements in latency and failing-faster.

Re: Backplane is shutting down

#44

Post by dragonwriter »

irl_zebra wrote: post #32
zalmoxes wrote: post #28

I'm neither an employee nor a customer, just someone who was following the project on twitter because it looked very intriguing. I just want to say that the comments on this thread are absolutely ridiculous and I expected better. Does anyone actually think the customers would find out at the last minute? That the company would leave its users without any support? It's baseless speculation and my guess is it's totally…

The customers did find out at the last minute. Weeks notice is last minute.

> Weeks notice is last minute.

Well, no, it's literally not. It's actually a reasonably long lead time for “going out of business”, which basically no one ever announces before essentially all hope of finding a way to keep the business running is exhausted, which intrinsically means there is little runway left.

Re: Backplane is shutting down

#45

Post by ithkuil »

bertjk wrote: post #25

I like the basic technical idea behind Backplane, which is that your backend servers "dial-out" and connect to the edge load balancers. Does anyone know why this technique is not used more? Or is it actually common but I just haven't heard of it? If so who/where is it actually done this way?

(shameless plug) you might find this interesting: https://github.com/bitnami-labs/udig

It focuses on Zero configuration by skipping the account creation and hostname selection (and long term state) by using the hash of the tunnel destination public key as hostname.

Re: Backplane is shutting down

#47

Post by tzar »

zalmoxes wrote: post #28

I'm neither an employee nor a customer, just someone who was following the project on twitter because it looked very intriguing. I just want to say that the comments on this thread are absolutely ridiculous and I expected better. Does anyone actually think the customers would find out at the last minute? That the company would leave its users without any support? It's baseless speculation and my guess is it's totally…

> I just want to say that the comments on this thread are absolutely ridiculous and I expected better. Does anyone actually think the customers would find out at the last minute? That the company would leave its users without any support? It's baseless speculation and my guess is it's totally wrong.

Well, it's their baseless speculation and your guess, so a level playing field. You can make the same point without baiting other commenters—in fact you just make your point without baiting other commenters, that's how.

Re: Backplane is shutting down

#48

Post by driverdan »

pizza wrote: post #41
gobengo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last ten years I have also seen 'backplane' be: * A protocol for helping web widgets on a page communicate and share data https://openid.net/wg/bp/ . We used to support it at Livefyre to interop with certain Janrain products, but the ecosystem wasn't so big at the time. It wasn't under OpenID at the time. * This roller coaster of a social network startup https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/06/the-backplane-black-bo…

I remember being at a hackathon of theirs (the Lady Gaga backplane) years back and seeing dozens of what looked like Herman-Miller Aeron chairs all over the office. Maybe they got them for cheap, maybe they weren't actually Aerons, but also maybe this pretty small (I don't actually know how many employees they had..) startup had a couple tens of thousands of dollars worth of office chairs

The cost of a good chair is nothing compared to other expenses like salaries. Aerons aren't my favorite chair but I sure as hell don't want to work for a company that makes me sit in a terrible $50 Office Depot chair.

Besides, you can get Aerons for much cheaper than retail if you look.

Re: Backplane is shutting down

#50

Post by IMTDb »

jwr wrote: post #34
nine_k wrote: post #23

Cases like this make me always think very hard before admitting a closed-source / SaaS solution into the critical path of my stack. In this regard, large established players have the benefit of the doubt when using a proprietary SaaS service: they are unlikely to fold, and if they sunset a product, they will likely give ample warning well ahead of time. (But not always even so: I see any new Google consumer product a…

As a SaaS author: I would also suggest taking into account the business model of the SaaS you are looking at. The old way of thinking was that a Serious Company is safer than a one- or two-founder operation. But Serious VC-funded Companies are unprofitable most of the time and burn through VC money, subsidizing their business. Even if they don't crash, a "successful outcome" is an acquisition, which most of the time…

> A self-funded slow-growth profitable startup can be a much more stable bet, even though it seems counter-intuitive.

It's not counter intuitive, it's just that it's really hard to guess which company is doing OK, getting slow steady and profitable growth and which does not. Additionally, the slow and steady company can still be acquired / decide to "bet big" / ... . So we are back to Google and co.

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