San Fran Startups Given Free Managed Services

A day after LogMeIn announced the end of its free service for MSPs, Phoenix 2.0 announced an even richer set of services that are gratis – provided you are a San Francisco area startup.

Startups can qualify for a free day of consulting from a senior engineer, on-site, and a one year subscription to Puppet Enterprise, a tool from Puppet Labs.

Puppet Enterprise is an IT automation tool for managing infrastructure, deploying apps, and automating common IT jobs.

One thing to know about the Phoenix 2.0 offer is that Puppet Enterprise is already available free on the Puppet Web site, and the free version supports up to 10 nodes.

“We looked at the challenges faced by start-ups on a daily basis and realized we needed to offer a free solution that would make their lives easier, and help them focus on their core product or service,” said John Sedivy, client services director for Phoenix 2.0.

Phoenix 2.0 says its PhaseZero Start-up package has a value of some $10,000.

To qualify, companies must be registered in the San Francisco Bay Area, have an actual office, and at least four workers.

If you aren’t based in the Bay Area you may still be able to qualify based on how much support and DevOps may be needed.

The consulting revolves around advice on building systems that are reliable and automated, flexible, and at the same time can scale by exploiting cloud services.

Startups Demand Cloud

In fact, today’s venture capitalists often demand startups they fund base IT almost purely on the cloud so they can be up and running fast, and grow when the business takes off.

The idea is that entrepreneurs should focus on building the technology and business, rather installing and managing a bunch of servers and disks.

So what is Phoenix 2.0 all about? The company “provides sophisticated IT infrastructure support in the San Francisco Bay Area. We can help you bootstrap DevOps, Cloud and other infrastructure initiatives on a project basis. Our Managed IT Services will get your in-house IT to a secure and stable baseline so you don’t have to. Phoenix 2.0 delivers tangible IT improvements that drive high reliability, flexibility and cost advantages for our customers,” the firm said.

Driving much of this business is John Sedivy in client services, and his customers seem well pleased. “It's been a great experience partnering with John and his team over the years, they have a great network of resources/relationships to draw from, their ability to deal with a difficult situation or time-line is unique,” said Lisa Yamamura, group director of client services, Organic.