O3 Labs has introduced the neod network which is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering that aims to offer “a secure, fast, reliable and scalable gateway to the NEO network.” The ultimate goal of the service is to allow dApp developers to focus on building their product, “rather than knowing the ins and outs of blockchain technology.”

The neod network will allow developers to connect to a “TLS-enabled endpoint,” which seeks to reduce the barriers accessing the information on the NEO blockchain. Currently, the only two options available to developers are to connect to a reliable public node, or manage a personal node. Both of these methods can be cumbersome, as O3 Labs states “public nodes have no guarantees for uptime or data consistency, and managing your own can require long syncs, reboots, logging, and monitoring.”

The neod network will provide private node infrastructure on behalf of the project that uses the service and aims to support the NEO MainNet, TestNet, and private networks for local development. O3 Labs also notes it will support the NEO 3.0 preview when it has launched. 

The current backed infrastructure behind the O3 platform is claimed to be “serving roughly 3 million requests per day feeding data into several traditional and decentralized applications.” O3 Labs notes it is the result of a years worth of development ensuring it can serve its growing user base.

An official launch date has yet to be announced, although pricing is already available. Four plans will be available and vary from a free version that allows for standard RPC methods, all standard plugins, and 5,000 requests, to a “serious business” plan that also offers customized plugins and 1,000,000 requests for $599 per month.

More information about the neod network can be found below:
https://medium.com/o3-labs/managing-a-neo-cli-node-aint-nobody-got-time-for-that-7361adf1cf5e