Know of a Django / Rails enterprise level support services?

Question

I am starting a new project for a client from the academic sector. We are trying to choose the right technology for the project and I am interested in hiring Django or Rails developers to work on it (as there will be some custom module development involved). The client wants to be able to sign up with a reliable service package after launch to make sure they have someone to call when things go bad.

Being the information architecture / design consultant on the project, that person cannot be me, nor could it be the in-house developers we will hire for the job. We will need someone reliable that is good at these things. This need from my clients make options like Alfresco and LifeRay seem appealing even though they don't really fit the project requirements.

Are there any companies that give reliable high end Django or Rails based services? Or maybe using a framework with Amazon's cloud services setup might help me with that (or am I getting it wrong)?

Thanks

Answer 1

MediaTemple's grid containers seem to be the biggest and most supported django hosting environment around: http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/gs/features/containers.php#django

That may take away a bunch of head aches but when things go wrong you need somebody with expertise to pick it up anyway. I'd ask anybody taking on the project if they know others to pass on maintenance to (there should be a bunch of midsized shops doing django these days, there are in the Netherlands).

Ask for details of those companies and work out a way to hand over support and maintenance for a set monthly fee or whatever cost structure works for both of you.

You may also want to get the maintaining company to come in early in the project to accept the code as it is being produced though code acceptance problems should not be nearly as prevalent as they are with for instance PHP.

Answer 2

EngineYard is a full service Rails deployment support service. They handle management, scaling, etc. Don't think they handle maintenance though. I have only heard good things about them, but I'm not a customer personally.