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.

GoGrid and Acumatica Partner to Deliver a Cloud-Based Business Management Solution

The GoGrid and Acumatica partnership significantly lowers operating costs for businesses with multiple users because the software is licensed by server, resources are paid for only when consumed, and there is no client software to maintain.

San Francisco, Ca., May 28, 2009 – GoGrid, a leading Cloud Computing Infrastructure hosting provider, and Acumatica, a provider of web-based financial and business management software, today announced a partnership to deliver a cloud-based accounting, ERP, CRM, and CMS solution to business customers.

GoGrid allows customers to quickly and easily deploy and control robust, cloud-based infrastructures on a self-service basis. GoGrid Cloud Servers can be instantly deployed and load-balanced using industry-based protocols and networking standards either through a web-based portal or programmatically through a REST-like API, allowing for incredible flexibility and ease-of-use, and completely on demand as defined by scalability requirements.

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.

Acumatica software is designed to be hosted on GoGrid’s cloud computing infrastructure in order to deliver the following benefits:

• Available from anywhere – 100% of business functionality is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week using any popular web-browser.
• Inexpensive to install – the pre-configured GoGrid environment simplifies server deployment and the software requires no PC client, so users can deploy quickly.
• Low cost of ownership – customers can scale their solution up or down and only pay for the hosting services that they use to reduce costs during initial deployment and configuration.
• Promotional period – using a special promotion code available from the Acumatica website, customers can participate in a risk-free trial before they purchase the solution.

“The partnership with GoGrid provides Acumatica customers with a reliable and cost effective way to deploy Acumatica,” said Doug Johnson, VP of Marketing and Business Development at Acumatica. “Customers only pay for services they use and can quickly scale their deployment up or down.”

“Acumatica offers a feature-rich alternative to traditional client-server ERP and CRM solutions,” said Michael Sheehan, Technology Evangelist at GoGrid. “This partnership delivers value to customers by combining a modern software platform with a modern cloud hosting platform.”

Availability
Businesses that want to deploy a hosted business management solution can purchase an Acumatica license from any Acumatica reseller and select the pre-configured service plan from the GoGrid website. Businesses who utilize the special discount code available from the Acumatica website before July 31, 2009, can take advantage of an Acumatica-GoGrid promotion to try the complete solution before purchasing a license.

About Acumatica – http://www.acumatica.com
Acumatica develops an integrated suite of web-based business management software designed to improve the productivity of businesses with complex financial requirements. Using Acumatica, clients can access accounting, customer relationship management, content management, and business management applications from anywhere using any popular web-browser. Unlike traditional ERP, CRM, and CMS systems, Acumatica is designed to be hosted on-premise, at a datacenter, or on a cloud computing platform.

About GoGrid – http://www.gogrid.com
GoGrid is the leading Cloud Computing, hosted, Internet provider that delivers true “Control in the Cloud™” in the form of cloudcenters. GoGrid enables system administrators, developers, IT professionals and SaaS (Software as a Service) vendors to create, deploy, and control load balanced cloud servers and complex hosted virtual server networks with full root access and administrative server control. GoGrid server instances maintain the industry standard specifications with no requirement to learn and adapt to propriety standards. Bringing up servers and server networks takes minutes via a unique web control panel or GoGrid’s award winning API. GoGrid delivers portal controlled servers for Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server, and ASP.NET. GoGrid hosts multiple open-source server operating systems including several Linux operating systems (Red Hat Enterprise and CentOS) and supports application environments like Ruby on Rails. Free f5 hardware load balancing and other features are included to give users the control of a familiar datacenter environment with the flexibility and immediate scalability of the cloud, a “cloudcenter.” GoGrid won the coveted 2008 LinuxWorld Expo’s Best of Show award.

Information on Acumatica and other GoGrid partners can be found on the GoGrid Partner section of the website. Features, benefits and sign-up information for Acumatica can be found here.

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.

Loic is the founder and CEO of video conversation site Seesmic.com. Seesmic also makes one of the most popular Twitter and social software clients – Twhirl.org.

Loic also founded and hosts the #1 tech event in Europe, LeWeb.net, with his wife Geraldine. LeWeb gathers together 2000 entrepreneurs from 40 countries in December every year.

Prior to Seesmic and LeWeb, Loic started several other businesses such as Six Apart Europe, RapidSite, a web hosting service (acquired by France Telecom in 1999), as well as B2L, an interactive agency in 1999 (acquired by BBDO).

Loic has been blogging since 2003 at http://www.loiclemeur.com and can be also found online at http://www.seesmic.com/loic and http://www.twitter.com/loic

Recently, Business Week Magazine named Loic one of The 25 Most Influential People on the Web. He advises the World Economic Forum as well as covers the Annual Summit every year in Davos. Originally from the South of France, Loic lives in San Francisco, California and has three boys.

Be sure to mark your calendars. Here are the details:

Date: June 4th, 2009 (Thursday) Time: 6-9pm Location: Microsoft, 835 Market St, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94103

DEMO COMPANIES We are pleased to announce the following demo companies will be showcasing their products and services:

Tap In Systems, Inc

URL: http://www.tapinsystem.com
Presenting: Peter Loh (Founder/CEO)
Description:
Tap In Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of systems management services for cloud-based applications. Awarded the 2009 Under the Radar Conference Judges Choice Award as the top cloud management company, Tap In Systems has developed a cloud-based systems management service to respond to the unique needs of today’s increasingly heterogeneous and virtual IT infrastructures. Tap In Systems’ Cloud Management Service (CMS) is a cloud-based, scalable monitoring service which manages both cloud and on-premises systems, providing status and performance data, alerts and reporting to keep applications running smoothly. CMS is an affordable, on-demand solution that requires no hardware or proprietary expertise, and can scale up and down as a user’s needs change. For more information, visit www.tapinsystems.com.

IDNTITI

URL: http://www.idntiti.com
Presenting: Sree Unnamatla (Founder/CEO)
Description:
IDNTITI (pronounced “Identity”) believes in putting consumer research into the hands of consumers. IDNTITI is a Web 2.0 quantitative rating tool. It provides you the power to create polls and surveys and get the community voice gathered – QUANTITATIVELY. User can analyze rating data around demographic information of the raters. It’s a fun way of understanding community feedback, friends views etc. At core of the application, users build reputation of Organizations (companies, schools, colleges, hospitals, restaurants etc.) products or people they are associated with by rating them quantitatively. We are now available as facebook app at http://apps.facebook.com/idntiti/. Quantitative feedback matters!

Eduify

URL: http://www.eduify.com/beta
Presenting: Dan Merritts (VP of Marketing)
Description:
Eduify is a cloud-based writing platform that helps high school and college students learn to research faster and write better. Eduify is like a writing coach that is always by your side. The service provides web-based applications to edit and store documents; discover, use and automatically cite research; find writing tutorials and examples; safeguard against plagiarism; receive expert writing help. Eduify’s service integrates with existing social networks, giving students everywhere the community, applications and help to immediately improve their writing.

If you are interested in being a Demo Company, please be sure to fill out the Contact form and we will evaluate your submission.

MORE DETAILS

There will be food and drink provided as well as ample time to do networking and talk to the GoGrid and BizSpark folks about programs that can help you jump-start your startup.

Tickets are now on sale. To buy them online (for $10), please visit the EventBrite ordering page. Tickets may be available at the door (for $20), however there is no guarantee that there will still be any remaining.

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.

At the end of the webinar, GoGrid will be giving out $100 GoGrid promotional credits for GoGrid so that you can test out how truly easy hosting in the cloud is! Hope to see you there.

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)

Launched: March 2008 (ServePath was founded in 2001, GoGrid development began in 2006)

Location: San Francisco

Cloud offering: The GoGrid platform offers Web-based storage and the ability to quickly deploy Windows- and Linux-based virtual servers onto the cloud, with preinstalled software including Apache, PHP, Microsoft SQL and MySQL.

Why we’re watching it: GoGrid, one of Amazon’s chief competitors in the cloud storage and compute markets, distinguishes itself from Amazon in a couple ways. GoGrid offers Windows Server 2008 instances (Amazon offers only Windows Server 2003) and 100% uptime service-level agreements (Amazon offers 99.95% for compute and 99.9% for storage).

CEO: John Keagy, the CEO and founder of ServePath, built and sold several ISPs in the decade prior to starting ServePath.

How GoGrid got its start: Executives at ServePath, a dedicated server hosting company, created GoGrid after deciding that inefficiencies within the standard hosting model could be alleviated with a self-service, pay-as-you-go infrastructure.

Who uses the service: Mostly start-ups, Web 2.0 and SaaS companies, plus a few big names like SAP and Novell who are running pilots or small test projects on the GoGrid service.

I encourage you to give this article a read and see some of the other companies mentioned.