The fact of calling this launching "beta testing" does not refer to the intellectual capacity of your servants (at least, we hope not!). No. Simply, it is because we are careful people, and we want to underline the fact that we want to gradually increase the load of the truly new product that has been the result of the hard work and talents of all involved.

As with every project of this type, which does not involve reselling solutions that already exist and have been tested (or 90% of the market), we are going to go through difficult periods. We will come out for the better because we will be - as we have always been - reactive and passionate about what we do. We will also need your patience and indulgence: We would like to thank you and your teams in advance, who will help make this possible.

As you have been able to see in the previous blog entries on our hosting service, we have tried to create the product that we would like to have as a customer, with the principal criteria being flexibility (at all levels) and quality. The product that you have under your eyes today is only the first version of an even larger project, and we will everything possible to assure that we can write the rest of the adventure with you.

Adventure? In my eyes, yes. To dare to create a product, in France, that is for customers around the world, at the cutting-edge of technology in the field, while nobody has been expecting this from us, all the while restructuring a company in difficulty and solidifying its core metier, was not without periods of concern during the past three years. But here we are, many of our customers have been asking us to move in this direction, and it was something of a wild dream; Or perhaps simply we had confidence in our vision, persisting until we have transformed it to something tangible.

It is therefore with immense pride that I would like to thank everyone at Gandi who has made this possible, I know - because I have shared this with you - all the effort that you have put into this project, for your company, and am confident in our ability to fulfil our promises.


I would also like to thank all of those in advance, and those - you, who are reading this - that will allow us to continue our journey in this new direction by buying hosting server shares, and in spreading the word to your friends and colleagues the same way to have a presence on the internet :D. One that will last!

I will let you discover this new service for yourself, and even if it is not the objective of this entry to explain how it works in detail, let me share with you a few useful links to:
  • The Wiki of the new Gandi community (Gandi Wi) http://wiki.gandi.net/ which will allow you to post all the problems that you might happen to come across, or even to start to contribute your own knowledge to enrich this community. You may connect to the Wiki via your usual Gandi handle and password.
  • The blog of the same community, which is a sort of copy of the Bar, but devoted entirely to hosting, and which is located at the following URL: http://hosting.gandibar.net/.
  • The IRC chat channel, where we will be happy to welcome you and try to be available to answer your questions. This may be found on the freenode network (irc.freenode.net) and in the channel #gandi-hosting.
  • The Gandi newsgroup/forum via your newsgroup reader on the server groups.gandi.net or on the web at http://groups.gandi.net. For information, a new version of the Gandi groups is being prepared and will be released next week at the latest.

The team at Gandi joins me in wishing you a happy new year 2008!!!