Helping educators put Joomla in the hands of thousands of students worldwide

This article was originally published in the March 2013 edition of the Michigan Cyber Initiative Newsletter. The actual newsletter is embedded at the bottom of this blog. The Michigan Cyber Initiative is the state of Michigan's official "action plan that offers clear approaches for safeguarding our families, protecting Michigan's infrastructure and shielding our economy." Because of our work with PCI cloud hosting environments, we were chosen to write the feature article in this newsletter. DevOps team members Christopher Ecklesdafer and Pawel Panek played a big role in the content of this article as did Jonathan Gafill, CloudAccess.net Project Manager.

To protect highly sensitive cardholder data, the Payment Card Industry Security Standard Council (PCI SSC) released 12 Top Level Data Security Standards (DSS). Financial organizations are required to validate their adherence to certain DSS requirements. Below is an overview of the 12 PCI DSS requirements.

There are over 130 Approved Scanning Vendors (ASVs) that can be used to detect vulnerabilities found in a public cloud. CloudAccess.net, a Michigan-based Platform as a Service (PaaS), used McAfee and Comodo to perform security scans on targeted hosting environments. Using the results, the company adjusted server specifications to pass subsequent scans, ultimately helping several clients validate the security of their content including Reliance Bank, a full service bank with twenty branches in the St. Louis metropolitan region, and CIMA (the Center for Information Management and Assurance), an organization that aims to elevate the information security community. CloudAccess.net is helping clients pass ASV scans on an individual basis, but the company is developing an automated PCI-DSS hosting layer that can be applied to any environment with a click of a mouse.

Last week the 400,000th demo trial of Joomla was launched through the CloudAccess.net platform, less than three years after we became the official host of demo.joomla.org. Open Source Matters awarded us the contract to host demo.joomla.org in April of 2010, and we're very grateful to be able to provide such a valuable service to the entire Joomla community. We're also fortunate to have been able to put Joomla at the heart of our company and build around it. Read more about the history of CloudAccess.net.

Our platform wasn't perfect at first. There were some bumps in the road, but over time we've dramatically improved the automated provisioning process, scaling our servers for faster Joomla sites all while keeping up with each new version of the CMS as it was released. We've also developed an industry-leading Joomla support system in the process - clients can submit a support ticket, use our live chat feature or call us directly to get answers to core Joomla questions.

Earlier this year, CloudAccess.net acquired a 50,000 square foot structure in Cheboygan, Michigan. The structure was formerly Cheboygan Middle School. Easily one of the company's 2012 highlights, CloudAccess.net worked closely with the Cheboygan Economic Development Group (CEDG), local business leaders and Cheboygan Area Schools to purchase the structure at 504 Division Street in the heart of the beautiful downtown area.

CloudAccess.net was chosen to purchase the building from a number of potential candidates because we’re a growing Northern Michigan company with the potential to expand even more and to offer additional employment opportunities in Cheboygan. We were also chosen because we are good stewards of the community. We pledged to use the structure to promote education and various other community-based endeavors in the Cheboygan area.

CloudAccess.net recently competed in the 2012 Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition, “an international business plan competition designed to highlight Michigan as a robust and vibrant venue for innovation and business opportunity.” The competition was managed by Ann Arbor Spark and sponsored by Automation Alley, TechTown and Macomb-OU INCubator. With $1 million in prizes, the Detroit Free Press has called the competition “the biggest business plan competition of its kind.”

Charlie Hague, CFO, and Ryan "The Professor" Bernstein made the trip to Detroit to represent the company and deliver the pitch. They practiced for weeks leading up to the event and felt really good about making the final round of the competition after the initial 10 minute presentation. Ryan gave the pitch and both Ryan and Charlie answered questions for the judges for 15 minutes following the presentation. 

J!Day España (Spain) 2012 took place recently in the ancient Roman city of Mérida, and our own Saurabh Shah, a CloudAccess.net front end developer, lead a presentation & workshop at the event. Saurabh’s session was titled “Create & Modify Joomla! Templates” and his goal was to teach people how to create their own Joomla! templates through one of the following ways:

• by copying and modifying an existing template
• by installing and modifying an existing theme
• by creating a template from scratch using the Gantry Framework

View Saurabh’s Presentation Here

CloudAccess.net recently gave new meaning to the phrase cloud computing as we literally took to the sky with 4 CloudAccess.net servers. We moved the servers from our Traverse City data center to a new & improved facility that offers increased Internet connectivity in addition to an ultra-secure physical structure.

Two CloudAccess.net server administrators, Chris Ecklesdafer and Motaz, made the flight from Traverse City to the Metro Detroit area. We chartered a private plane to fly the servers to the new facility instead of driving them there because it decreased the overall downtime that our clients experienced. Below is a timeline of events:

We don’t like being too presumptuous here at CloudAccess.net. Our company is comprised of many smart, hard working folks and we know a thing or two about the hosting and storage industry, but we don’t like to boast about it. As we constructed the Joomla! VPMC, as we do with all our products, we chose the best technology so we could, in turn, offer the best product available. That’s why we went with Texas Memory System and their RamSan® SSD solution - a flash-based Storage Area Network (SAN), which is coveted as being “The World's Fastest Storage®”.

Great minds must think alike, because IBM also thought that TMS had created something quite unique. IT was announced today that they have “entered into a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire TMS”. Good idea, IBM. We like the way you think, but, we bought into TMS first (na na na boo boo).

The Joomla Content Management System is coming to the heart of America, CHICAGO! Come to the windy city and hang out with a whole bunch of Joomla users and experts. Learn the business of Joomla and more about what the world’s most amazing CMS has to offer.

Register Today! 

Props to Pawel Borowicz, our lead graphic artist, for designing this incredible infographic now featured at joomla.org. The infographic displays a variety of information about the six year history of Joomla (2006-2012). Included in the infographic are statistics about the rise in monthly traffic at Joomla.org, the growing JED, the expanding Joomla multilingual capabilities, JCM submissions, Joomla Forum visitors and posts, and worldwide Joomla! Day events.

Joomla! contacted Pawel about creating the infographic around the most central statistic: the 30 millionth download. The numbers speak for themselves, but the infographic combines the stats to capture just how popular Joomla! has become. Pawel worked closely with the Joomla! Marketing Team to develop this and when I spoke with him about it he said “they [the marketing team] sent me the statistics and I made them pretty.”