For the last year we’ve been building our automated Web Performance Optimization (WPO) service and testing it with beta customers. We are pleased to announce that we’ve successfully competed our beta testing and are formally launching our commercial service today.
When designing the Blaze service we evaluated three options for how to deliver the solution: a software product, a hardware appliance and a hosted service. After discussions with customers it became clear that the hosted service was by far the preferred approach. It’s the simplest and cheapest option to deploy and manage. It can be deployed in less than an hour. No software, no hardware and no code changes required.
The other benefit of a hosted service is that it’s easier to update. We have launched the service with a core set of optimizations that will offer significant speed improvements and bandwidth savings for most sites. The Blaze development team is already hard at work at the next round of optimizations that will be available on a regular basis for all subscribers at no extra cost. To learn more about how Blaze works, have a look at the recently updated video here.
If you want to try out what Blaze and see what WPO optimizations can do for your site, try submitting your site into our test form. The test form applies most (but not all) of our optimizations. If you want to see the full potential, you can sign up for a trial account that will create a Blazed, mirrored version of your site. This allows you to test Blaze without impacting your production environment.
Thanks again to all our Beta customers for all their time and feedback. I would also like to thank and congratulate our development team for many long days (and nights) of effort to get the service launched on time.
