Why DSpace?

DSpace at AcuGIS

It’s been almost four years since AcuGIS began offering GeoServer hosting.

It began as a simple concept; make GeoServer accessible and affordable.

We created our GeoServer hosting service to allow anyone interested in GeoServer to access it without the hassle of configuring a VPS, installing JAVA, Tomcat, etc…. or the expense of having to pay someone to configure a VPS, installing JAVA, Tomcat, etc…

As the service became more popular, we began adding more and more tools to our control panel: extension installers, our shp2pgsql tool, one-click PostGIS and PgRouting installation, etc….

AcuGIS is now privileged to be providing GeoServer hosting to services to individuals, businesses, and organizations in over 40 countries worldwide.

Today, we set our sights on another service that has traditionally been too costly or too complex for many; DSpace.

Our initial DSpace hosting plans are geared towards individuals, departments, and smaller organizations, all of whom can benefit from the great features that DSpace has to offer.

Our DSpace Personal hosting package is available at the introductory price of $25 per month.  While those who enrol at that price will maintain it, the pricing will likely be raised for new customers once we have utilized the initial data centre resources we allotted for this new offering.

DSpace requires a good deal more server resources than GeoServer. It also requires more support resources to configure as it is tailored to the customer’s needs.

However, as with we have done with GeoServer, PostGIS, Neatline, and our other offerings, we will automate and tune our DSpace hosting to allow us to keep the price at a level that is accessible to as many as possible.

 

 

 

Infrastructure and Support

Renewing our Commitment

Over the past few months you may have noticed some recurring interruptions to our services due to some core infrastructure issues which although have fallen outside of our control it is not the high standard of service that we aim to offer nor the high standards that we expect from our infrastructure vendors.

Over the past 2 weeks we have made a significant investment in an entirely new infrastructure which not only brings with it a vast increase in resiliency but also in performance with execution of processes now on average 5 times faster than they were before the migration.

This infrastructure upgrade will also resolve all of the issues that have been seen in particular over the past 6 weeks that have led to services being interrupted.

As of Saturday 24th October at 5PM GMT this upgrade is now completed.

AcuGIS has also grown to be one of the most recognisable brands for GIS based services over the past few years and with that there have been growing demands on day to day support which has been difficult to keep up with at times. With our infrastructure addressed we now also thought it was the best time to address our support services and also bring them up to the high standards that we expect of ourselves.

With that being said we are pleased to announce that as of Wednesday 28th of October we will be bringing in several new support representatives to the team to improve our customer service experience.

As the last piece in the re-design of our entire infrastructure and support systems we will be deploying a new set of monitoring agents to all of our servers to not only detect current problems but to proactively detect and fix potential issues before they become active problems.

We would like to take this chance to apologise for the issues in recent months but to also make clear our commitment to you as a valued customer to restore our services in all aspects to the high standards that the company was founded on and that we expect of ourselves.

If you have any questions regarding these changes please raise a support ticket via our customer portal and we will be happy to answer them.

Kind Regards,

David Ghedini

Chief Technology Officer