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Backplane is shutting down
- williamstein 8y agoWhat is Backplane? Why is it shutting down?
- all2 8y ago> Backplane is a service that unifies discovery, routing, and load balancing for web servers written in any language, running in any cloud or datacenter. Traffic shaping, request enrichment, blue/green deploys, and other difficult to implement networking operations become trivial when using Backplane's combination of hosted and on-premise software. From their docs page here: https://www.backplane.io/docs https://www.backplane.io/docs
- gobengo 8y agoIn the last ten years I have also seen 'backplane' be: * A protocol for helping web widgets on a page communicate and share data https://openid.net/wg/bp/ https://openid.net/wg/bp/ . We used to support it at Livefyre to interop with certain Janrain products, but the ecosystem wasn't so big at the time. It wasn't under OpenID at the time. * This roller coaster of a social network startup https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/06/the-backplane-black-box/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/06/the-backplane-black-box/
- HEHENE 8y agoBackplane the social roller coaster was a different company.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cpeterso 8y agoBackplane was also an internet services company founded by FreeBSD and DragonFly BSD developer Matt Dillon: http://backplane.com/ http://backplane.com/
- pizza 8y agoI remember being at a hackathon of theirs (the Lady Gaga backplane) years back and seeing dozens of what looked like Herman-Miller Aeron chairs all over the office. Maybe they got them for cheap, maybe they weren't actually Aerons, but also maybe this pretty small (I don't actually know how many employees they had..) startup had a couple tens of thousands of dollars worth of office chairs
- driverdan 8y agoThe cost of a good chair is nothing compared to other expenses like salaries. Aerons aren't my favorite chair but I sure as hell don't want to work for a company that makes me sit in a terrible $50 Office Depot chair. Besides, you can get Aerons for much cheaper than retail if you look.
- xnyan 8y agoEven if you give zero shits about your employees, the $50 office max is going to fall apart fast with daily use. HM sells somewhat stripped-down cheaper versions of certain models specifically for the bulk office drone employee market and in bulk the pricing is competitive with other makers.
- pizza 8y agoI don't disagree, I just somehow got the impression they had way more chairs than employees
- raverbashing 8y agoSo cause of death is "Eaten by Amzn"?
- martinald 8y agoWow. What a nightmare to shut down just before Christmas.
- acroback 8y agoSo basically what ZeroMQ does at far better speeds with better latencies and reliability with a fraction of cost and it doesn't crash or stops operation out of nowhere. Why is everything SaaS, when it is fairly easy to use existing proven solutions? Is it just money?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cordite 8y agoI tried looking for their landing page on the wayback machine, but every snapshot I tried just shows a 404 page for some reason.
- marcinzm 8y agoTwo week notice during the holiday season seems pretty sudden and painful for users. I feel bad for those who now have to scramble and probably miss time with their families as a result.
- tmikaeld 8y agoThis seems like an all-in-one solution and quite complex, I highly doubt that this can be exchanged in a short time or maybe even at all... I really feel bad for those who committed their company to this company.
- marcinzm 8y agoYeah, definitely not fun for those impacted. In my eyes it's evidence that you definitely shouldn't bet your company on a startup unless you have a backup plan that you can implement quickly or the benefits are massive (ie: the reward is worth potentially losing your business). Larger companies also kill products but they tend to give a lot more heads up.
- tmikaeld 8y agoThe company I work for was heavily invested in Adobe BusinessCatalyst, which Adobe shut down. The difference is that Adobe have money, so it's not a two weeks notice, but two years notice - which is reasonable! Unfortunately, new customers where still annoyed and chose alternatives.
- ddoran 8y agoCustomers have options, scramble or not. My sympathy is with the staff, sorry "teammates" (per the webpage). It's a lousy time of year to be out of work.
- carimura 8y agoI'm willing to bet the team worked with customers ahead of the announcement in good faith. Hacker News threads aren't always looking behind the curtain at what's really going on.
- kodablah 8y agoI understand not wanting to appear on "our incredible journey" blog or whatever with a bunch of sap, but surely more information can be made public without everyone emailing? Why shutting down? Why only a couple of weeks? Will the code be open sourced?
- dboreham 8y agoOpen source would be very interesting to me (at least). Looking at their GitHub, it appears only some minor components are currently open : https://github.com/backplane https://github.com/backplane
- mrkurt 8y agoCustomers got emails a few days before this, and they're getting a lot of help. It's easy to criticize but I think they're handling it pretty well.
- smalter 8y agoyou're the kind person helping me move from backplane to fly.io!
- mrkurt 8y agoThat's me!
- ineedasername 8y ago"A few days before this" really isn't "handling this pretty well". It's great that they (you?) are offering some assistance in transitioning to an alternative, but it's still a very crappy situation for customers during the holiday season with many people taking extra time off.
- lallysingh 8y agoConsidering the fact that they're going out of business, I wonder how many customers that is? Still a shitty time of year to do it, and a horribly small time window.
- goobynight 8y agoWow. If I were a user, I'd hate to have this dropped on me today. Christmas eve is in 10 days and your traffic is about to stop routing in 15 days.
- VectorLock 8y agoYeah I think in certain circles this is known as a "dick move."
- beckler 8y agomaybe they're doing it before the new year for tax reasons. still done in poor taste though.
- maybeiambatman 8y agoIs this the same company that at one point was making social networks for celebrities? https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/03/backplane/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/03/backplane/
- HEHENE 8y agoNo, different people entirely. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/backplane https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/backplane https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/backplane-io https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/backplane-io
- jakelazaroff 8y agoNo. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/backplane https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/backplane vs. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/backplane-io https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/backplane-io
- sotojuan 8y agoThey couldn't wait till after new years to do this?
- bdibs 8y agoThey're probably doing it now for tax reasons.
- nine_k 8y agoCases like this make me always think very hard before admitting a closed-source / SaaS solution into the critical path of my stack. In this regard, large established players have the benefit of the doubt when using a proprietary SaaS service: they are unlikely to fold, and if they sunset a product, they will likely give ample warning well ahead of time. (But not always even so: I see any new Google consumer product as a "while supplies last" sale.)
- jwr 8y agoAs a SaaS author: I would also suggest taking into account the business model of the SaaS you are looking at. The old way of thinking was that a Serious Company is safer than a one- or two-founder operation. But Serious VC-funded Companies are unprofitable most of the time and burn through VC money, subsidizing their business. Even if they don't crash, a "successful outcome" is an acquisition, which most of the time results in shutting down the product and a post about what a "wonderful journey" this was. And don't forget all the products that Google just shut down over the years. A self-funded slow-growth profitable startup can be a much more stable bet, even though it seems counter-intuitive.
- bilbo0s 8y ago>A self-funded slow-growth profitable startup can be a much more stable bet... I think his point is that Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are even safer.
- Signez 8y agoI may be mad, but I'm at a point where I would trust a self-funded slow-growth profitable startup waaaay more than Google to run a service in the long run. Decades of "quickly started, even more quickly deprecated" services have taken their toll.
- marcinzm 8y agoSure Google can and does shut down products but they tend to give more than two weeks notice during the holidays.
- bertjk 8y agoI like the basic technical idea behind Backplane, which is that your backend servers "dial-out" and connect to the edge load balancers. Does anyone know why this technique is not used more? Or is it actually common but I just haven't heard of it? If so who/where is it actually done this way?
- mrkurt 8y agoI love the idea of app servers tunneling out (we have an OSS project that does similar: https://github.com/superfly/wormhole https://github.com/superfly/wormhole). I really hope we get to where that's the default.
- tonyztan 8y ago> "your backend servers 'dial-out' and connect to the edge load balancers" I believe Cloudflare offers this as an option: https://www.cloudflare.com/products/argo-tunnel/ https://www.cloudflare.com/products/argo-tunnel/
- VectorLock 8y agoI like it as well. It seems like it would provide significant improvements in latency and failing-faster.
- ithkuil 8y ago(shameless plug) you might find this interesting: https://github.com/bitnami-labs/udig https://github.com/bitnami-labs/udig It focuses on Zero configuration by skipping the account creation and hostname selection (and long term state) by using the hash of the tunnel destination public key as hostname.
- germainelong 8y agoWhy not just use nginx and zerotier?
- zalmoxes 8y agoI'm neither an employee nor a customer, just someone who was following the project on twitter because it looked very intriguing. I just want to say that the comments on this thread are absolutely ridiculous and I expected better. Does anyone actually think the customers would find out at the last minute? That the company would leave its users without any support? It's baseless speculation and my guess is it's totally wrong. - The company is founded by Blake Mizerany https://twitter.com/bmizerany?lang=en https://twitter.com/bmizerany?lang=en an engineer known for Sinatra and a bunch of other well respected projects. - The users adopting an early stage startup's product are likely friends/former colleagues who are putting personal trust into the team. Does anyone really think nobody got a heads up, or possible support deals while they migrate? Second, Backplane really looked like great tech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43wFJBRTHG0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43wFJBRTHG0
- tzar 8y ago> I just want to say that the comments on this thread are absolutely ridiculous and I expected better. Does anyone actually think the customers would find out at the last minute? That the company would leave its users without any support? It's baseless speculation and my guess is it's totally wrong. Well, it's their baseless speculation and your guess, so a level playing field. You can make the same point without baiting other commenters—in fact you just make your point without baiting other commenters, that's how.
- irl_zebra 8y agoThe customers did find out at the last minute. Weeks notice is last minute.
- insomniacity 8y agoI think zalmoxes' point was that they may have found out through direct contact from the founders, or a customer-only email 2 weeks ago - rather than just by loading up the homepage today.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Weeks notice is last minute. Well, no, it's literally not. It's actually a reasonably long lead time for “going out of business”, which basically no one ever announces before essentially all hope of finding a way to keep the business running is exhausted, which intrinsically means there is little runway left.
- rostasteve 8y ago2 year old seed round company with <10 employees. I don't imagine they have a whole lot of customers, and hopefully no customers that rely solely on them.
- 0898 8y agoNot to be confused with Backblaze, in case anybody else made that mistake.
- ksajadi 8y agoI've been bitten by service shut downs like this and over the years, here is the "rulebook" I've made for myself to reduce the risk: - Don't use products from startups with unknown, dubious business models that are clearly subsidised by VC money until they "figure out how to monetize". (recently I saw a company saying "our business model is still firming up, whatever that means). - Open source doesn't mean it's safe. Very few open source companies have solid business models and if the vast majority of the contrinbutors to the project come from the same company, then if they go down or get aquihired reviving the project and its community is not always guaranteed or simple. OSS projects need major adoption to be safe from this sort of damage. - I sometimes even research the VCs backing the founders as well. I have seen companies founded by associates in VC firms leaving the firm to start a company because they know 1. they can get funding from their old pals in the firm, 2. they are going to be selling the company quickly to X because of some insider information about X's need or an internal project to find a company to buy in the space. Some founders are serial "build and flip"ers and I avoid using their products. I feel much safer buying crtical services from a bootstrapped and profitable startup than a well funded one that doesn't have a clear business model.
- germainelong 8y ago2. Open Source is relatively safe when you are able to self-host it. It is good to setup an environment and test the features on your own machines and also check how easy is to extract the data. 1-3 is a roulette. Unless they have a technology that you cannot substitute with an open source solution then it is difficult to justify using it. There must be a solid extraction plan available so that you can move your data to an alternative solution in reasonable time. Sometimes it is better to hire a team and expand existing open source solution with necessary features. Sometimes this could lead to a side product and another stream of revenue.
- oliwarner 8y agoHaving source and license to run something, and being willing and able to self-support the software through (eg) security issues are two very different prospects. This is network infrastructure stuff. Not the kind of thing you leave to fester.
- closeparen 8y ago“Backplane” refers to the rear interior surface of an equipment cabinet, where there’s often a maze of electrical conductors for routing power/data around the various rack units or cards it can hold. Examples include blade servers, very serious routers, and theatrical lighting dimmer racks. The system can be expanded and serviced (without interruption) by installing and removing modules, but the backplane is forever. A hot SaaS startup purporting to be your backplane is about as backwards as it gets. Smart companies are using cloud services in exactly the opposite way: as temporary, interchangeable capacity slotted into a backplane they own.
- jiveturkey 8y ago> rear interior surface of an equipment cabinet. it refers to a component interconnect backplane, an electrical / signal bus. not the rear interior surface of a cabinet.
- v1k0d3n 8y agoso i'm curious then... considering that this is displayed on the CNCF interactive landscape page, does it mean that backplane will be quickly removed from the service proxy group, or does anyone think that CNCF is already aware? i reaalize it's not backed project or anything, but it clearly made it there somehow. considering how hot CNCF is right now, made even more apparent by the 8K+ sized crowd this week, i would imagine that the CNCF website brings a nice bit of traffic to these small companies. it's too bad...backplane's vision seemed promising albeit lofty, and against some heavy odds (with some big players in the space).
- dankohn1 8y agoThanks for the mention. I updated https://landscape.cncf.io/format=landscape https://landscape.cncf.io/format=landscape to remove them. If I miss the initial announcement, we would remove them when they don't tweet for 3 months: https://github.com/cncf/landscape#non-updated-items https://github.com/cncf/landscape#non-updated-items (Disclosure: I maintain the landscape.)
- JoshLedgard 8y agoAt KickoffLabs we used them to handle a bunch of routing on behalf of our hosted customers. The timing was less than ideal for sure. However they arranged a good support system with the folks at Fly.io. We’ve already transitioned new customers to it and they are helping to migrate existing sites and certs next week. I think it’s a risk you just have to take, but we learned a lesson that for things that are dependancies for your business it’s good to have a couple of alternatives lined up or working side by side. :)
- mooreds 8y agoIf, like me, you asked "what is backplane?" Here you go: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/backplane https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/backplane