On May 25th, GoGrid and partner Equinix will be educating you on why we call 2011 the “Year of the Hosted Private Cloud.” If you are doing business that requires technology, in order to increase profitability and productivity, you frequently need to lower your total cost of ownership of that technology. Cloud Computing has been great for this as we see with the 10s of thousands of active GoGrid customers currently. As corporations and enterprises expand their technology footprints, they need to carefully weigh the various infrastructure solutions available to them. But be forewarned, some of the antiquated options are expensive and can consume huge amounts of human capital in the process. For many, a Hosted Private Cloud is a much better option.

While public clouds offer incredible advantages over traditional, dare I say, old fashioned (physical) infrastructure implementations, sometimes corporations need to be able to leverage the benefits and technology of a state-of-the-art public cloud, but within a non-shared environment. This is where GoGrid’s Hosted Private Cloud comes in to play.

On Wednesday, May 25th from 11:00am to 11:30am PST, GoGrid and Equinix will be providing an educational webinar to discuss a variety of topics surrounding public and private clouds, including:

• Distinguishing between a Public vs. Hosted Private Cloud
• Determining which type of cloud is right for your business
• How enterprises are leveraging the private cloud

Additionally, the webinar will provide attendees various Resources on how to get started as well as answer questions from the audience.

Panelists for this webinar are:

• Lou Najzdin – Lou is a Subject Matter Expert with Equinix’s Cloud and IT Services vertical. In this role Lou consults with both Cloud companies and Enterprises on deploying and utilizing cloud technologies. Lou is in the unique position to see Cloud the subject from both the provider and user perspectives.
• Mario Olivarez – Mario is GoGrid’s Vice President of Product Management and leads all aspects of product strategy, development and execution; including product roadmap planning and management, product marketing initiatives and is a key member of the executive team that took GoGrid to market.

Register now at: http://go.gogrid.com/equinix

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ve seen me ask (and answer) the question “what is cloud computing?” I continually focus on this question because “cloud” has become a buzzword that means many different things to different people – even in the IT industry. Many people have asked that question. And the answers 2-3 years ago were vague. But it does seem that people are fine-tuning their thoughts on what it means nowadays.

(image source: pyramid.GoGrid.com)

A few weeks ago, I set out to clear up this cloud confusion, at the Cloud Connect conference in Santa Clara, CA., by asking several experts “what is cloud computing?” Hear what they had to say in the video or read highlights below:

Martin Tantow – President of Amiro Consulting

Martin Tantow reminds us that cloud computing is a concept we’ve been familiar with for well over a decade. Hotmail, founded in 1996, was a web-based e-mail service that could easily be referred to as one of the original cloud services. Martin believes cloud is a movement where businesses are moving their data storage to the Web and removing the need to store data centrally.

Sven Hammar – CEO of Apica

Sven Hammar contrasts the differences between cloud infrastructure and hosting your own physical servers. Some of the benefits he listed were:

• No upfront capital expenditure
• Scaling on demand without worrying about physical dependencies
• Creating elasticity by circumventing server failure by switching backup data centers

Siddhartha Agarwal – VP of Americas Field Operations, Zend Technologies

Siddhartha Agarwal shares what cloud means for the developer community. Siddhartha points out that developers are not infrastructure people. Cloud computing is valuable because it enables developers to test and deploy their applications quickly without having to worry about infrastructure. Using cloud gives developers peace of mind and let’s them focus on what they are best at.

George Reese – CTO enStratus

George Reese states that cloud computing is on-demand self provisioning of IT resources (virtual, hardware, software, platforms, etc.). He believes that this evolution alters the way we use IT and foresees that this technology will completely change the way businesses use infrastructure.

I believe that it is important to continually ask this question and track the evolution. From 3 years ago, definitions were more nebulous – now, they are much more defined and people can truly articulate what they believe the cloud to be.

What is your definition of cloud computing? Leave a comment!

Starting on Sunday, May 8th, 2011 and going until May 12th, cloud computing, virtualization, security, mobility and other data center experts will converge on Las Vegas for Interop, a conference that brings all of these leaders together. Interop bills itself as “the leading business technology event, driving technology adoption by providing knowledge and insight to help IT and corporate decision-makers achieve business success.”

GoGrid CEO and Founder, John Keagy will be at Interop, delivering a presentation “The False Cloud Debate” on May 9th. Similarly, GoGrid’s Manager of Cloud Ecosystems, Paul Lancaster, will be doing a “deep dive” about GoGrid’s Cloud Computing offerings.

Details on the sessions are below:

Interop

• Speaker: John Keagy, CEO
• Session: The False Cloud Debate
• When: May 9, 2011 – 11:00 AM – 11:45 AM
• Location: South Seas B, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, NV
• Event Website: http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/

Abstract: Are private clouds clouds? Or is the third-party business model inherent in what makes a cloud a cloud? As the FUD flies on both sides, everyone’s got a different opinion of what defines cloud computing. We’re going to see if we can get to the bottom of it, sitting public cloud providers across from private cloud toolmakers.

Interop – Enterprise Cloud Summit

• Speaker: Paul Lancaster
• Session: Under the Covers: GoGrid in 10 minutes
• When: May 8, 2011 – 3:25 PM – 3:35 PM
• Location: South Seas B, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, NV
• Event Website: http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/conference/enterprise-cloud-summit-public-clouds.php

Abstract: Major public clouds will respond to our shortlist questionnaire, giving attendees a practical, side-by-side comparison of public cloud offerings. Hear GoGrid answer our shortlist questions on pricing, capacity, service levels, data location, and architecture.

We hope to see many of you at Interop! Please be sure to check our Events page for more upcoming Shows and Webinars.

Some pretty big things are happening at GoGrid. Today we announced the release of our Image Rights Management (IRM) service for GoGrid Partners, a very powerful technology that assists with the software and licensing management in the cloud, specifically within the GoGrid Exchange. As many of you may know, GoGrid Exchange is a catalogue of software server images and solutions from Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that are available on-demand for those who use GoGrid cloud infrastructure. IRM adds several benefits for ISVs and, in turn, customers.

To better explain IRM technology and why it is so important, I sat down with Raja Srinivasan, VP of Cloud Computing at Zeus Technologies, and our very own Paul Lancaster, Manager of Cloud Ecosystems at GoGrid. They discuss how IRM is the solution to licensing software in the cloud and what the GoGrid Exchange means for partners and customers.

Raja and Paul highlight many of the benefits of the GoGrid Exchange as well as focus on our new IRM technology. They break them down into two main areas.

Benefits for Partners:

• License Management – IRM technology automatically verifies if the software is correctly licensed to run within the GoGrid cloud, and will automatically take pre-defined actions should the licensing be invalid.
• Software Management – Simply update your software on the GoGrid Exchange and it is automatically made available to your customers.
• Easier to Deliver Support – When a customer has a support need, the ISV can quickly understand exactly what kind of infrastructure the software is running on so they can identify the support issue faster.
• Easy Payments – GoGrid handles the invoicing of customers for both Partner Image licensing and infrastructure usage, and then pays the Partner for the Partner Service Image usage.

Benefits for GoGrid Customers:

• Single-Button Install – Customers can find the software solution they want on exchange.gogrid.com and instantly install it with little to no configuration.
• Software Management – Users are automatically kept up to date with the latest versions of the software they installed from the Exchange.
• Unified Invoicing – GoGrid handles the billing for Exchange Partner server images as well as infrastructure costs within a single invoice. Customers can manage their software and infrastructure payments from a single portal on a single bill.
• Flexibility & Scalability – the GoGrid Exchange allows customers to get the software they want when they want it. Also, customers aren’t locked into any multi-year licensing deals. The Exchange makes software solutions in the cloud highly efficient and ready to scale with your company.

We’re very excited about the release of IRM what this means for our customers and the cloud computing industry.

For more information, please read our Press Release titled “GoGrid Enhances Partner Exchange Platform with New Image Rights Management Technology” which is available in the Press Release section of the GoGrid site.

For more information, please visit http://exchange.gogrid.com