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Our Farewell and Advice to Tacoma

Posted 5 months ago

With our announced departure from Tacoma, I wanted to write to clarify our feelings for the city. We love Tacoma and continue to believe that it is a great city to live and work in! I was raised in Tacoma through Jr. High School and came back to the city for college. It provided a fantastic incubator for Blue Box Group with its aggressively priced rent and ample services. For the last 6 years, Tacoma provided a solid foundation that allowed Blue Box Group to grow into the success story that we’ve become. Between our offices on 6th Ave, to our various locations in downtown, we’ve enjoyed everything that Tacoma has to offer.

So why are we moving?

We’ve experienced incredible growth rates over the last 4 years, which have in turn prompted rapid job growth within our organization. We’ve had the patience to go through very long interview cycles to be able to find the right candidates to staff these positions. In spite of these unusually long cycles, we have been fortunate to find what I believe are the most amazing staff I could ask for. However, as our growth has continued, our patience and ability to wait through these long interview time lines has impacted our ability to grow at the accelerated rate we see as our business opportunity.

In addition to this, we found that the recent economic environment has put enough pressure on price of commercial space in Seattle to be very competitive to what we were finding in Tacoma. As we looked at our business goals, challenges and expectations over the next several years, we felt like taking advantage of these discounted real estate pricing would be an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.

For a technology company experiencing extreme growth, Tacoma is a city that today presents some challenges. Regardless of the city wide fiber of Click Network or the access to the University of Washington branch office, or any of the other number of amenities offered, the limited number of high-level technology candidates is a big problem. With the regional mass transit system in a bit of disarray, it is terribly difficult to convince potential employees from outside Tacoma to brave the commute into town. Waiting for the right person to become unemployed isn’t a good strategy either. At the end of the day, our need to be able to quickly recruit talented staff is our primary motivation for this move, and is something I believe will continue to be a challenge for Tacoma unless action is taken.

This is an opportunity for Tacoma.

The departure of Russell, while unfortunate, does create a unique opportunity for the city to re-invent itself. Tacoma now has a chance to make a new name for itself in the financial and technological fields, and work to attract new businesses and new industries. Just as much of the downtown core has undergone a physical transformation, city leaders should be determining what they can do to attract and nurture the next generation of technology companies. This in turn will allow UW Tacoma to place its graduates in local technology jobs, and will then provide the candidate pool that future technology companies can pull from.

I’ve been amazed at the online conversation this move has created, and I think there’s an opportunity to engage in a conversation about our experiences, and what decisions we faced as a business. I am happy to share with any entrepreneur, or members of the community as to what some of the elements we felt were important for running and growing our business.

We’re sad to go and there’s much we will miss from such a great town. But we’re also very excited at the possibility that Seattle now holds for us.

- Jesse Proudman
CEO
Blue Box Group

Seeking Another Systems Admin

Posted about 1 year ago

Here we go again! Blue Box Group has once again reached that point where we need another talented systems guru to join our team: If you like solving challenging technical problems, are looking for a job where your contributions make a noticable impact on the business, and need to find an outlet for your extreme awesomeness, we want to hear from you! Take a look at our job posting to find out more.

- Stephen Balukoff
Blue Box Group, LLC

Hot off the presses, News For Rails Conf!

Posted about 1 year ago

Howdy!

It’s been a busy quarter for us at Blue Box Group. Beyond moving into our new office space in Tacoma, WA, we’ve been hard at work on our shared hosting product, building out our new Box Panel control panel, and designing our new branding. Check out our latest news below to get all the latest on what’s new!

New Look For Our Website!
We’ve recently redesigned our primary website in what is the first of a series of visual updates that we will be making across all our customer facing content. This is the first major step in our series of branding improvements that we hope will truly express the unique products and services we offer and make us a stand out in the crowd of hosting providers. We will continue to build out our site in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

New Product Offering – Shared Rails Hosting!
Just in time for Rails Conf, we’re happy to announce we now are offering Shared Rails Hosting using Mod_Rails under Apache. This is the final piece of the puzzle in our full spectrum of services, allowing us to provide affordable and reliable hosting to every potential customer. With an entry price of $9.99 / month, this Shared Hosting package allows people without the need for large virtual servers or dedicated servers to enjoy a high level of service. This product is still in beta, so there may be quirks.

Rails Conf Sponsorship!
Speaking of Rails Conf, we were again a sponsor of the event. We did forgo doing a booth this year. But don’t fret, we took that energy and poured it into the above releases. Either way, we’re proud to continue our tradition of giving back the community.

Blue Box Group CEO Jesse Proudman will be attending the Five Runs Happy Hour at Rails Conf Friday evening. Stop by and say hi, grab a business card and some swag, and collect a discount off our services.


(Click to Enlarge)

Blue Box Group Appoints Stephen Balukoff as CTO

Posted over 2 years ago

Tacoma, WA January 16th, 2007 – Blue Box Group, LLC, a provider of scalable ruby on rails hosting for businesses of all sizes is excited to announce the appointment of Stephen Balukoff to the role of Chief Technology Officer. Stephen comes to Blue Box Group with over 10 years’ experience working in the Information Technology industry. In previous roles, he has been a key engineer designing and implementing computer security, high-availability, and high-performance server and cluster solutions for both private and public organizations using a variety of hardware, operating systems, and other technologies. Most recently, Stephen joined Blue Box Group as a Senior Systems Administrator in October, and has been a driving force in the streamlining and optimization of numerous internal systems. In his free time, Stephen enjoys astronomy, fishing, computer games, and piloting small aircraft.

Under Stephen’s leadership, Blue Box Group expects to launch a flurry of new products and services designed to help businesses of all sizes deploy, manage and grow their online presences. Stephen will also be overseeing our existing technical staff and implementing systems and processes to maintain and improve network reliability, security and performance. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for additional announcements!

System Administrator Position Open

Posted over 2 years ago

Our amazing growth has continued non stop driving our need for more talented individuals to join our team. We’re looking for individuals with strong skills and innovative ideas to help bring our company to the next level. Think you’ve got what it takes? Take a look at our job posting to find out more.

Additionally, expect some new and exciting services being offered in early quarter one of next year!

- Jesse Proudman
Blue Box Group, LLC

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