Our year in retrospect: UpCloud’s 2021 highlights

The past year kept us busy developing new features, forming exciting partnerships, and welcoming new talent to our continuously growing team at UpCloud. Luckily, even in the middle of the globally rocky circumstances, we were able to launch multiple services and, therefore, make things a bit simpler for our users, who, just like us, are still adapting to operating in the work-from-home environment from all around the world.

All the great things over the year wouldn’t have been possible without the generous support of our users and partners. So, in this post, we want to recap what we’ve accomplished together in 2021!

Managed Databases

One of the biggest releases of the year was the introduction of UpCloud Managed Databases. Managed Databases is a highly available and scalable database solution. It is perfect for users who want to deploy professional-grade database services without manual installation and maintenance. By taking away the burden of database maintenance, Managed Databases makes complex tasks simple for our users who can now fully focus on developing their business.

The first version included MySQL and PostgreSQL services. Furthermore, we’ve kept developing Managed Databases during the year and launched some new features, such as the statistic view and query history, to help our users optimise their application performance and end-user service.

Verified Terraform provider

We released a major update for our UpCloud Terraform module in January and kept improving it throughout the year. Our Terraform provider module was also verified by HashiCorp and added to the Terraform Registry, making it really simple to start using.

Terraform makes it easier for users to take complete control of their cloud infrastructure using declarative configuration files to manage services and resources. We love Terraform since it is an open-source software tool that allows users to define infrastructure as code using a simple, human-readable language in its wide adoption across cloud services and providers. 

With the updates to our Terraform module, it is now possible to deploy UpCloud Object Storage (tutorial) and Simple Backups. To improve the process of setting up infrastructure using the Terraform provider, we also unveiled a new UpCloud Ansible collection. It opens up new possibilities in provisioning automation, such as better server filtering by zone, state of the server, and network tags. 

Command-Line Interface

At the beginning of the year, we also launched UpCloud Command-Line Interface. With our CLI, we now offer a time-saving way to interact securely with UpCloud services aimed at power users. 

UpCloud Command-Line Interface is a text-based user interface to our IaaS. It provides a fast command-line tool for accessing and managing UpCloud resources. It allows our users to control their Cloud Servers, storage, and networking from their local command-line with simple and intuitive commands. 

The idea was to combine the ease-of-use of the UpCloud Control Panel with the speed and efficiency of the UpCloud API. Now, months after the first launch, UpCloud CLI serves as a trusted tool for developers, system admins, and others.

AU-SYD1 data centre in Sydney, Australia

We continued our expansion to the world in March, when we announced the opening of a brand new data centre in Sydney, Australia. The AU-SYD1 is our 12th data centre in the world but the first one in Oceania, improving infrastructure accessibility for our local customers.

In addition to launching the new data centre, we have been developing our SDN Private Networking to allow interconnecting of all UpCloud Cloud Servers across data centres all over the world.

New partners in the cloud

In addition to the new services and features, 2021 was full of great new partnerships, and we aim to continue on that road in 2022! Here are some highlights of the new, like-minded partners who helped us provide even better solutions in 2021.

We were really excited about our partnership with a Nordic software company NerdCloud. The cooperation allows UpCloud users to leverage NerdCloud’s excellent software development services. With NerdCloud, we can provide our customers with the added value of task-based software development.

We also partnered with GridPane to offer an effortless WaaS-service, especially for digital agencies. As a result, our users can create their own managed WordPress hosting service and get the best performing cloud and ease of management for their WaaS-service.

We didn’t forget our eCommerce customers either. This year we partnered with Bunnyshell, bringing our users everything they need to handle eCommerce infrastructure efficiently. Zero downtime and worry-free infrastructure maintenance – check!

Our partnership with SimpleBackups, an all-in-one website & database backup automation service, added plenty of tools for our users to back up databases securely in UpCloud Object Storage. Tutorial on storing your backups here.

PS Have you checked our Partner Program? It is full of excellent benefits, such as dedicated personal contact, 24/7 live support, and custom pricing. 

New experts, new friends

Furthermore, we welcomed many new wonderful colleagues to our team throughout the year. Such as the new head of sales Erik Rehn, who now leads our sales and business development strategy towards UpCloud key user segments among SMEs. 

We were also happy to announce Steve Midgley as our new Chair of the Board. His appointment was great news for our customers, as he is playing a significant part in our transformation becoming a partner for more scaling and growing online businesses.

We also continued the series of interviews with our fellow UpCloudians on our blog. If you haven’t read the interviews yet, have a look at the one with our CEO Antti Vilpponen or perhaps with Timothy Ho, a Technical Support Specialist. 

Onwards and upwards to 2022!

The year 2021 was certainly eventful in all regards, and we are already looking forwards to 2022! If you would like to stay up-to-date on the latest from UpCloud, we highly suggest you subscribe to our regular monthly newsletter and make sure you never miss a thing!