Last night we release a new version of GoGrid that has a few notable changes, specifically:
Server Image Selection Widget
Smart selection of RAM allocations (and 8 GB RAM options in web GUI)
Updates to GoGrid API
Enhancements to underlying Architecture
Server Image Selection Widget
The biggest visual change in this release is to how Windows and LinuxDatabase, Web and Applicationsserver images are selected within the GoGrid web interface. This is essentially the framework that will be used for the upcoming MyGSI feature. Since we continue to add new images to the GoGrid image repository, and we will be enabling your own personal server images to be stored within GoGrid, we realized that the current selection process of Application & Database servers doesn’t scale very well.
Our software engineering team has come up with an elegant image selection widget that will allow you to quickly drill-down to the image type you wish. Instead of trying to articulate what the new selector looks like, here are some screenshots of what to expect.
After you click on the Add Web/Application Server Icon, you are presented with a list of all available images:
You can see that the list shows the Name, Operating System (OS), Architecture type (32/64-bit), Type of server (Web/DB), Price (e.g., MS SQL, for example, shows a charge – see below) and the Date the image was Updated.
For those of you waiting to try out Cloud Computing or GoGrid, I wanted to be sure that you were all aware that the $50 Free GoGrid Trial Credit program will be ending on July 2nd, 2009! We recently sent out an email to all of those people who had expressed some interest in GoGrid Cloud Computing Hosting and Infrastructure. However, that was just limited to people that we knew about. I wanted to make sure that others who are not on our mailing lists are informed about this important change.
Below are the contents of the email:
If you have been considering trying GoGrid’s award winning cloud computing platform, you don’t want to miss out on your free trial. Sign up via the website before July 2, 2009 to redeem your credit. http://www.gogrid.com/signUp/?promocode=GOGOTRIAL50
With GoGrid you get the most control out of your cloud computing infrastructure. Included with every account at no additional cost are the following:
For those of you who are not currently GoGrid customers, I thought that it might be good to provide our latest GoGrid Newsletter online. Moving forward, I will be doing this every time the newsletter comes out. First, a little heads up. The current $50 Free GoGrid Trialwill be expiring soon, so if you haven’t tried GoGrid out yet, I encourage you to do so…NOW! Simply visit this page to get started.
Below is the GoGrid newsletter (v1.9):
Hello,
I want to reach out and give you an update on the software projects currently in-flight and their associated release dates. Our software engineers are working hard preparing some exciting new features and services and I wanted to keep you appraised of our progress. Some of the new features are exciting because they will help you better manage and scale your GoGrid cloud infrastructure. Here are some important highlights:
New release date for MyGSI (My GoGrid Server Image)
Enhancements to server deployments via the portal (8 GB RAM and faster server deployment time)
Ubuntu support
Prepaid pricing plans that can save you cash
AppZero partnership that allows you to easily move Windows apps to and from the GoGrid cloud
GoGrid is pleased to announce today our technology partnership with Zeus Technology. This strategic partnership brings Zeus’ leadership in software-based application traffic management to GoGrid’s Cloud Hosting infrastructure. Using Zeus’ ZXTM VA (Virtual Appliance), GoGrid customers can now add robust traffic management capabilities like traffic shaping and prioritization, content compression and service level monitoring, among others.
Other benefits of using Zeus’ ZXTM include:
TrafficScript—the most intuitive traffic routing language available
Java Extensions for sophisticated traffic processing needs
Server Load Balancing providing Layer 7 traffic management for all applications
TrafficCluster Scalability to grow capacity and prevent compound failures
Application Acceleration for enhanced ROI on new and existing deployments
Control API for tight integration between ZXTM and other devices
Event Handling for automated alerting and resolution of key events
Last week GoGrid held a joint webinar with AppZero titled “Moving Windows Server Applications to the Cloud in Three Easy Steps.” Over 70 people attended and many others have requested that we publish the webinar and presentation.
For your convenience, we have the full webinar available below:
Today we announced our partnership with Acumatica. Using Acumatica on GoGrid, businesses can access an integrated suite of business software using any common web browser to streamline business tasks such as accounting, financial reporting, business reporting, customer management, customer invoicing, vendor payments, expense reporting, inventory management, and much more using a single integrated system.
Some of the benefits to customers of this partnership include:
Access from anywhere using any common browser
Low cost of ownership due to no client software
Priced by server so you are not limited by seat licensing
Cloud-ready so you can pay-as-you-go for hosting
Zero IT hassles when deployed at GoGrid
Additional information can be found on the Acumatica partner page on the GoGrid site.
The full press release is below as well as available online. (more…)
Today I uploaded a screencast of GoGrid in action. In the video, you can see how quickly and easily an entire Cloud Computing infrastructure can be deployed using GoGrid’s rich web interface. In this video (located here on YouTube), I show the creation and instantiation of:
Windows & Linux Web & Application servers
Database servers
Load Balancer
Cloud Storage
I hope that you find this video helpful and useful in understanding how truly easy it is to deploy a robust infrastructure in the Cloud using GoGrid. I would love to get comments and suggestion for a next round of videos as well. What would you like to see in action?
It’s with great pleasure that we announce the guest speaker for the StartUp SF (version 2.1) event coming on June 4th, 2009. (StartUp SF is a San Francisco Technology Meetup co-hosted by GoGrid/ServePath and Microsoft BizSpark.)
Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic, has graciously agreed to do a presentation titled “How to Launch a Product with your Community.” Learn first hand how to use various community building techniques to build your product, service or brand from the ground up.
You may have seen Loic and Seesmic Desktop mentioned in the New York Times site.
Seesmic is Loic’s 5th business so he definitely has lots of experience under his belt. Some more information about Loic:
Loic is the Seesmic CEO. He founded the company in 2007 with the goal of turning online video into a powerful medium for threaded, interactive video conversations.
GoGrid and AppZero will be conducting a webinar titled “Moving Windows Server Apps to the Cloud in 3 Easy Steps” on May 28, 2009 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM EDT. To register for the webinar, please go here.
Wondering if you should attend? If you answer “YES” to any of the following questions, you probably should:
Are you are interested in learning about the cost-effective flexibility of Cloud Computing?
Do you develop Windows Server Applications?
Are you hosting with other Cloud Computing providers?
Do you want to migrate your Windows Applications from a different cloud or data center?
Are you an Enterprise customer looking to test your application in the cloud?
Are you afraid of having to re-engineer all of your Applications because you have been told you must move to the cloud?
Do you want to learn 3 easy steps to move Windows server applications to the cloud?
Are you afraid of vendor lock-in?
Come and hear Greg O’Connor (CEO of AppZero) and Paul Lancaster (Business Development Manager of GoGrid) speak about how our two companies are working together to take the headaches and heartaches out of Windows Server Application hosting and migration. To register for the webinar, please go here.
Jon Brodkin of Network World pulled together a list of 10 Cloud Computing companies that they deemed important enough to watch this year. Brodkin’s list is a solid one, with each company profile containing:
Name
Founded Date
Location
Cloud Offering
Why we’re watching it
CEO
How the company got into cloud computing
Who uses the service
The 10 Cloud Computing Companies that they list (in order of appearance in the article) are: