Hello everybody,

We are very pleased to announce that today we are closing up the ~okeanos alpha phase. This means we will not be activating any more users at this point, as we will be getting ready for the official ~okeanos public beta, which will open up ~okeanos to the whole Greek academic and research community.

We are very happy that the ~okeanos alpha ends successfully. Additionally, we are content, since demand more than exceeded what we initially expected and had originally planned for. Watching the software behind ~okeanos scale to meet such high demand was also a pleasure.

So, here are some indicative numbers for the alpha phase:

* More than 4000 alpha users
* More than 5000 active VMs today
* More than 50000 VMs created/destroyed since the beginning of alpha
* More than 300 active Private Virtual Networks today

We would really like to thank all our alpha users for the extensive feedback they provided, all the little details and bugs they pointed out during this period, their suggestions and feature requests. Your reaction to the service has been amazing and your comments catalytic. Without them, ~okeanos wouldn't have come to this point today.

So, now what?

As said above, we are now heading full throttle towards the official ~okeanos public beta. Everyone in the Greek research and academic community will gain access using his/her academic or organizational credentials. Furthermore, even more features will be coming on beta!

All alpha users, please stay tuned, since we will be making various announcements before opening to beta (via our blog, twitter and email) that will be of great interest to you, if you wish to continue using the service during its beta phase too.

Again, thanks a lot for your support and interest,
the ~okeanos team