Happy New Year everyone! Are you feeling the pinch yet? Most of us remember only too vividly the last time we had an economic slump - and the IT sector got hit pretty hard. While things seem to be holding up right now, has there never been a better time to be cost conscious? On that note, Gert Franz will be introducing us to Railo at the next user group meeting.

I've heard a lot of buzz about Railo, but never knew the details. I heard it was a "CFML engine", "free and open source", but that's about it. So, I sent an e-mail to Gert asking "Why Railo"? (with some smart ass references to Blue Dragon thrown in for good measure ;-)

The answer:

• 2-3 times faster than ColdFusion (with debugging turned on!)
  
• Video conversions with the Tag CFVIDEO
• Using virtual file systems
• Open Source
• Amazon EC2 deployment

Gert, you had me at "Hello" (well, "EC2 deployment", actually). Is this the real deal? I know I first heard about Railo when Ben Forta had some glowing things to say about it, recently. So, the question is: can it help you when marketing your CF based services to cost conscious clients? Gert Franz is one of the founders of Railo Technologies GmbH and accompanied the development from when it started back in 2001.

Please RSVP, dinner will be served as usual.

Cheers,

David