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.

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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.

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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:

• Amazon
• AT&T
• Enomaly
• Google
• GoGrid
• Microsoft
• NetSuite
• Rackspace
• RightScale
• Salesforce.com

The GoGrid listing is as follows:

Company name: GoGrid (a division of ServePath)

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This morning we announced our technology partnership with AppZero. With AppZero, GoGrid users can easily move applications within the GoGrid infrastructure and elsewhere. For a quick summary of what AppZero can do for GoGrid users, please review the AppZero partner page. The full press release is below as well as online.

GoGrid and AppZero Partner to Ease Movement of Windows Server Applications to the Cloud

Using AppZero, companies can now seamlessly move Windows Server Applications within the GoGrid cloud, enabling previously unseen efficiencies.

San Francisco, CA, May 19, 2009 – GoGrid, the Cloud Computing Division of ServePath, LLC, and AppZero, pioneer of server application virtualization today announced a technology partnership to make it easy for enterprises and independent software vendors (ISVs) to move their server-based Windows applications from the datacenter to the GoGrid cloud. The GoGrid and AppZero solution allows enterprises to instantly provision complex server-based applications to use the GoGrid cloud as a cost-effective approach for running applications. Many enterprises utilize cloud computing for provisioning and running development environments, as well as for low utilization applications and business continuity fail-over – most often in a hybrid (cloud/datacenter) model for spiky or burst- oriented applications. AppZero’s application mobility technology allows IT organizations and ISVs to move Windows server applications to the cloud risk-free and without violating Windows licensing requirements.

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Today we announced our partnership with ZacWare and their Jentla Multisite Content Management System (CMS) running in the GoGrid cloud. The full press release is below and the Press Release is available on PRWeb.

ZacWare and GoGrid Partner to Deliver the Revolutionary Jentla Multisite Content Management System in the Cloud

Managing 2 to 1,000’s of websites within the GoGrid cloud is easy with ZacWare’s Jentla Multisite CMS.

San Francisco, CA–(May 12, 2009) – Today, GoGrid, the Cloud Computing division of ServePath, LLC, and ZacWare, a leader in true multi-site CMS solutions, announced a new technology partnership to provide a product and service offering for organizations needing to host, manage and maintain 2 to over 10,000 individual websites from one central management system. Jentla, ZacWare’s best-in-class multisite CMS based on Joomla,  allows the development community to rapidly build, scale and maintain sophisticated websites, increasing profitability through efficiencies of Cloud hosting and CMS management in the process.

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I just read an article in ITworld titled “P2P bill could regulate browsers, cloud computing” by Grant Gross that got my brain churning a bit. Is Peer-to-Peer really considered “Cloud Computing?” And, if it is, how would it be classified? Cloud Application? No. Cloud Platform? Nope. Cloud Infrastructure? Uh…No.

After reading the P2P Bill, what concerns me is the extremely broad and loose definition of a “peer-to-peer sharing program”. H.R. 1319 (otherwise known as the “Informed P2P User Act”) does not seem to clearly define this term. (You can view the full text of the Bill here.) The definition of a “peer-to-peer file sharing program” is defined within the Bill as proposed as:

(2) the term ‘peer-to-peer file sharing program’ means computer software that allows the computer on which such software is installed–
(A) to designate files available for transmission to another computer;
(B) to transmit files directly to another computer; and
(C) to request the transmission of files from another computer.

In a response delivered to Representative Bono Mack, the sponsor of H.R. 1319, the CCIA (Computer & Communication Industry Association), the NetCoalition, TechAmerica and the Internet Commerce Coalition stated:

“As currently drafted, however, H.R. 1319 would broadly apply to many different applications and Web sites that appear to be beyond the intended scope of the bill.

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The recent McKinsey report “Clearing the air on cloud computing” has caused quite a bit of stir within the cloud community, and I can see why. While it definitely brings a good deal of analysis to the table, I feel it is somewhat generalized, makes assumptions and does overlook some key points.

First and foremost, this article is NOT going to be an analytical discussion of the cost of running or setting up a datacenter vs. an Amazon EC2 Windows instance. I’m not a financial analyst. Honestly, calculating the Total Cost of Assets (TCA) or Total Cost of Operations (TCO) causes my eyes to roll back into my head leaving me gasping for air. Don’t get me wrong, it seems like some good effort was made analyzing data and formulating conclusions. The problem is, I feel that they were on a jetliner, shooting through the clouds with the shades 1/2 down.

Before I start with my own analysis and commentary, I would like to reference a few responses I have read that somewhat chastise McKinsey.

Three “Rebuttal” Articles to Read

The first comes from CIO IT Drilldown’s Virtualization site. In his article “McKinsey Cloud Computing Report Conclusions Don’t Add Up,” Bernard Golden does the major lifting for me in terms of analysis. I have highlighted some key points from the article that I viewed to be particularly important (my highlighted version of the article is here). I particularly enjoyed Golden’s rebuttal to the analysis of cost calculations, namely use of EC2 Windows instances, headcounts that don’t add up and other “less visible” capital expenses for facilities and other assets. Also as Golden points out, McKinsey proposes that better efficiencies and savings can be realized through virtualization within the organization. To me, the McKinsey recommendation seems a bit counter-intuitive: “Don’t go with a vendor whose expertise IS virtualization, hardware, infrastructure, et al. Instead, DO try to do it yourself, with tremendous CapEx & OpEx expense.” Hmmm, makes sense to me, NOT! Lastly, I particularly liked Golden’s 3 recommendations (quoted from article):

1. Review your portfolio of applications to understand what cloud computing means to you.
2. Create a viable financial model for assessing the true costs of internal hosting.
3. Evaluate the potential for an internal cloud even if the numbers don’t work with an external cloud provider.

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