October 27, 2008
We Couldn't Call It "MTV"...
Just over a month ago, we released Virtual Movable Type, which gives you all the power of Movable Type Pro on any machine, with no installation in just a few clicks. It's a completely virtualized version of Movable Type that includes not just the application, but all of the infrastructure needed to keep a site running great, from the operating system to the web server to MT itself. We've been excited about it and proud to see it join the MT family.
Of course, part of the process of planning such a release is basic tasks like picking out a name. The allure of "Movable Type Virtual" or something like that was almost too great — just think of all the awesome "I Want My MTV!" badges we could have made!
Of course, part of the process of planning such a release is basic tasks like picking out a name. The allure of "Movable Type Virtual" or something like that was almost too great — just think of all the awesome "I Want My MTV!" badges we could have made!Fortunately (or unfortunately) we are blessed with a competent lawyer, and while our corporate counsel is a really nice guy and has a great sense of humor, he pointed out that there might be some issues with a brand conflict around the name "MTV". (Maybe we can use that name when we release Movable Type 5?)
The good news is, none of this has slowed down adoption of Virtual Movable Type at all: It's a hit! We frankly worried that it might be a little bit early to release a completely virtualized web application onto the market because, while virtualization has started to see adoption in enterprise data centers, it's less common to find regular web hosts who support it as an option. We wanted to take the opportunity, though, because we have one of the best scaling and infrastructure teams in the world and a virtual platform lets us build their expertise right into the MT product itself.
And the MT community has always been full of early adopters who love new technology. We know tons of you are on Macs that run Parallels or VMWare Fusion, or on Windows servers that can run the free VMWare Player. We've also been keeping a close eye on our good friends at Amazon's web services team, because they host their blog on our TypePad platform and we'd love to return the favor by having lots of our customers host their Movable Type communities on the Amazon EC2 platform.
The result: We're regularly seeing 5% to 10% or more of all downloads of MT being for Virtual Movable Type. Considering that many estimates say that fewer than 5% of all servers are virtualized so far, we think that shows tremendous progress. (Of course, these statistics have to be taken with a grain of salt, because anybody can redistribute MT under its open source license, and people can use one download for multiple installations.)
Best of all, we've been able to support all these different virtualization platforms while offering a great experience thanks to the expertise of our friends at JumpBox, who've partnered with us on Virtual MT. ChannelWeb offered up a great video introduction to the platform, which shows in just under two minutes how easy it is to get started.
ChannelWeb also offers up a detailed written review of Virtual MT as well, and it reaches the same conclusion as the video: There's never been an easier way to get started blogging. They sum up the benefits pretty well:
For solution providers, Virtual Movable Type offers several options. Customers wanting a blog but lacking physical infrastructure will appreciate the simple and straightforward solution. Because of its low requirements, this would be a good introductory application to move to a virtual environment for customers a little nervous about the whole "virtualization thing." And for solution providers, there's the option to set up a hosting farm for Movable Type blogs using these virtual machines. And that's only to name a few.
Of course, the best way to evaluate Virtual Movable Type is to get it for yourself. Whether you're interested in MT Pro for running a robust community, or just evaluating MT to learn more about how the platform works, get Virtual Movable Type and you'll be able to see for yourself just how easy MT can be.
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