I'm curious to figure out how your strategy is relevant when put next to the existing solutions, especially the Open Source ones; Rundeck [1] & ControlTier [2] or SaltStack [3] are all directly targeting this space (and can be really powerful). Less specific, and at the same time more powerful, are tools like Chef or Puppet.

What would Commando.io would do better than existing alternatives? I would assume that you'd have to provide a compelling argument for any client to hand over SSH access to his infrastructure, no?

I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts on that.

[1] http://rundeck.org/ [2] http://doc36.controltier.org/wiki/Main_Page [3] http://saltstack.org/

Howdy, so I will try and answer your questions, but at the same time, we haven't officially launched, so can't give away too much strategy. :)

We are attacking developers, and smaller startup companies that don't have any existing automation or orchestration solutions in place to start. You'd be surprised at the number of companies that are still SSH'in manually, and cowboy coding. RunDeck is nice, good piece of open source software, but since its not a service, there is still that barrier to entry, and lack of a "wow" factor.

I argue that Chef and Puppet are for companies that are further along, however I personally know many people who use them with two or three servers, but again these are certainly more technical people, and not the market focus for us to start with.

When do you think you guys will launch? Anything you've already started sharing with alpha testers?

PS: who is "we"?

This is too bad, but I'm glad to see Justin's efforts continue with Commando.io - he is a smart and ambitious guy.

less than a month of notice for a platform company does not encourage people to rely on your infrastructure in the next company

Great pivot. Looking forward to...going Commando!

Good luck with Commando.io J!

sad..