Last week GoGrid officially launched our new European headquarters as well as opened our Amsterdam data center. We are already in the process of granting early access to select VIP GoGrid customers as well as opening up access to new GoGrid customers. If you are interested in using our new European data center, you can find out more information on the early access program in this blog post.

Podcast Interview with GoGrid

As part of the launch event, we were also sponsors of Cloud Expo 2012 which took place in London. During the show, GoGrid CMO Jeff Samuels and Senior Product Manager Rupert Tagnipes participated in a podcast interview with the MHF Tech Network.

The following topics were covered in the podcast (“MHF Specials Episode 5: Cloud Expo Europe 2012 Part 1″):

• Partnerships and services that GoGrid provides
• Out-of-the-box solutions and services from GoGrid
• What differentiates GoGrid from other vendors in the marketplace
• Thoughts on the future of cloud computing in 5-10 years
• Ideas on what the “next great thing” will be in the cloud hosting marketplace
• What the future will bring for GoGrid

The podcast can be played directly below and is also available on iTunes.
Note that the GoGrid interview begins around timestamp 3:45 and ends around 11:25.

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We would like to thank the MHF Tech Network team for spending the time to let us discuss cloud computing, the current and future state of GoGrid and how we view the marketplace. If you have any questions about any of the commentary in the podcast, please feel free to leave a comment on this article.

CloudLink, a dedicated, private connection between GoGrid data centers, is GoGrid’s newest product that comes with some exciting new features. After being in private beta for several months, is now available to all GoGrid customers via the GoGrid portal. Customers who purchase it will have the ability to link servers from our US-West-1 Data Center to our US-East-1 Data Center via a dedicated, secure and redundant line. Customers are now be able to easily connect their servers via the private network between our Data Centers.

How do I get it?

The first step is to purchase the product. We have added a link within the GoGrid portal where you can click to order CloudLink. After clicking on the link, you will be presented with a form where you can select the desired bandwidth. It will take at least 2 business days to activate CloudLink on your account – once it is ready, you will get a message from GoGrid with a CloudLink welcome letter.

There are 3 product options to select :

• 10 Mbps for $99/month
• 100 Mbps for $699/month
• 1 Gbps for $4999 (requires a 1 year commit)

You also have the option of pre-paying for a year of the product in advance at a discount. Note that you will need to contact a GoGrid account representative if you are interested in the 1 Gbps option – this level requires a 1 year commitment. Your account representative can work with you on the required documents and will also need to verify capacity. You can also ask your representative for other available capacities.

Once you have received the welcome letter, then you are good to go!

What is it?

CloudLink is a data center interconnect product. It sits on a redundant 10 Gbp pipe that will only contain GoGrid traffic. This means fewer hops and less interference since only GoGrid customers will be on the line. Unlike a public line traversing the internet, you will not need to compete with a large amount of unrelated traffic.

Customers can use their private interface on one data center to connect to the private interface of their servers in our other data centers. For example, customers can send traffic from servers in US-West-1 to servers in US-East-1. Since this is using the private network, this also means no bandwidth costs. CloudLink is designed to be easy, so we allow unlimited traffic through the pipe – you will only be limited by the bandwidth rate that you select.

What can I do with it?

CloudLink is an enabling technology. Customers will most likely find multiple uses cases for this product – two that are a natural fit are disaster recovery and data replication.

Disaster Recovery

Customers who run production systems out of US-West-1 will now have the option of transferring their data and files to US-East-1 via CloudLink. In the event of a failure in the West Data Center, all their data and files will exist on US-East-1, safely stored and isolated from issues in the West. Customers can configure this to be an automated failover solution (leveraging technology like Global Load Balancing) so that traffic fails over to their up-to-date backup server in the East or as a simple store of data so that there will be a complete recovery of files when the West data center is brought back up.

Data Replication

This can be conducted in two flavors, big data replication using products like Cassandra or Hadoop or relational database replication using products like MySQL or Postgres. A scenario that I can envision customers using this solution would be an app company that has customers on the West and East coast. For latency reasons, it would be preferable for customers to be routed to either US-West-1 or US-East-1 servers depending on their location. As customers interact with the app, the local databases store their information. Unless the data is replicated between the two local databases, they can quickly get out of sync.

Customers can leverage CloudLink to ensure that data is replicated on the fly, ensuring the information in one database is quickly and securely replicated in the other. Since the data travels only over the private network, bad actors outside the network will have no way to access this traffic.

Users of this customer’s service will now have updated information whether they are routed to either the East or West coast data centers.

See how one of our customer’s, Martini Media used CloudLink to enhance their Big Data solution.

Sign-on today!

CloudLink is an important strategic technology that broadens the capabilities of the GoGrid cloud, bridging the gap between data centers. Click here to learn more about CloudLink. Shortly, we will be posting an article that discusses how to configure CloudLink once you are ordered it. Sign-up on the portal or contact your GoGrid Sales Representative to start using it today!

As you may have seen, last week we announced the opening of GoGrid’s European Headquarters in Amsterdam. This is an exciting milestone for GoGrid since it means that GoGrid’s cloud infrastructure is now available in even more locations across the globe and with a European data center, sales and account support. Talk is cheap though, so we wanted to provide new and existing GoGrid customers the opportunity to gain “early access” to our European cloud so that it can be experienced first-hand.

Whether you are new to GoGrid or an existing customer, we can grant you early access to the GoGrid Amsterdam data center easily. Choose one of the options below:

• New GoGrid Users – Please visit the GoGrid signup page: https://securesignup.GoGrid.com and use promocode: AMSGG100. The promocode will grant you access to deploy infrastructure within the new Amsterdam data center as well as provide you with a $100 service credit.
• Existing GoGrid Users – Please contact your GoGrid Account Representative about VIP early access and pricing.

Please note, for new users, the promo code can only be used between January 30^th, 2012 and February 13^th, 2012 and will last through February 29^th, 2012 or when the $100 cap is reached, whichever comes first).

We look forward to your feedback on our new data center and should you want to learn more about European presence and to download our Cloud Computing 101 Toolkit, which is a collection of white papers, industry research, analyst reports, case studies and videos, please visit: http://go.gogrid.com/amsterdam_launch/ .

A few days ago, I published some 2012 Cloud Computing predictions from Warren Heffelfinger (CEO – GoGrid), James Urquhart (Cloud Writer for GigaOm & VP of Product Strategies at enStratus) and Larry Warnock (CEO of Gazzang). The beginning of any year is critical to not only reflect back on what transpired, but also to gaze into the future to see what is to come. With Cloud Computing, to quote an over-used phrase, “the sky’s the limit” and while there are some similarity within these and the previous predictions, there are also some distinct opinions as to where we are all headed in the cloud.

In this article, I have compiled more insightful predictions from another stellar list of cloud experts, namely:

• John Keagy (Chairman & Founder – GoGrid)
• Carson Sweet (CEO – CloudPassage)
• Antonio Piraino (CTO – ScienceLogic)

Below are their predictions so read on to see how they stack up!

John Keagy (Chairman & Founder – GoGrid)

1. There will be less use of the word “cloud” generically and more of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS or “cloud infrastructure, cloud platforms, and cloud software.” Folks are starting to understand the difference between Salesforce.com and GoGrid / Amazon. In fact, folks that really know IT are starting to cringe at folks that talk about cloud computing without understanding that Salesforce and GoGrid are quite different. We can expect some more specific dialog even from the mainstream media.
2. More vendors will be called out for “cloud washing.” Duh. No longer can you confuse outsourcing with on-demand.
3. The market will become more educated to the differences in VMware vs. XEN clouds. XEN offerings will emerge as more differentiated and cost-effective and equally secure.
4. On-prem / off-prem cloud bursting will be debunked as a primary use case. Although we may actually see cloud bursting in the wild 2012, the network costs and latency will not make it compelling. Lots of pundits will theorize boldly about how great it is from their blogger pulpits but the folks living in reality won’t see success.
5. Amazon will shine brighter than ever as the beacon of the future of computing. Thank goodness for Amazon. They are defining a new future and giving it credibility. Trouble is, other than GoGrid, no other service provider takes responsibility for building the technology of the future. And cloud = service. Hmmm.

Carson Sweet (CEO – CloudPassage/GoGrid Partner)

1. Delivery of SaaS via virtual appliance (a.k.a. privately hosted cloud instances) will take hold.
   As mid-market and large enterprises consider the pros and cons of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, a large contingent with be dis-satisfied with the level of transparency and control provided by SaaS providers. At the same time, they will seek the ease of ownership, instant access and low effort offered by SaaS. Concerns about multi-tenancy will also continue to hold back a large contingent of potential cloud users, especially for more sensitive applications. Software delivery using hosted virtual appliances will strike an attractive balance for these potential users, offering on-demand access and scale while delivering superior control and reducing concerns about multi-tenancy. The demand for virtual appliance software delivery will drive IaaS providers to migrate towards (but not into) a PaaS model. Conversely, SaaS and PaaS providers will offer more flexibility and control over how their service offerings are deployed.
2. IaaS services will continue to coalesce around combinations of managed hardware, pure cloud infrastructure, and in-line access to software and services.
   As cloud deployments continue to grow, large cloud enterprises will hit scalability issues. IaaS providers will suffer migrations from the cloud back to collocated hardware, and IaaS providers will respond to protect the large enterprise business. Established infrastructure providers will leverage their legacies of large-scale, heterogeneous infrastructure management to offer access to combinations of multi-tenant cloud, dedicated private cloud, and traditional collocated hardware environments. Through acquisition or heavy investment in R&D, providers will leverage highly automated virtual infrastructure provisioning and delivery. The most successful will deliver a very wide variety of cloud infrastructure and virtual appliance services in a high-margin, self-service format. This will enable them to retain large-scale cloud enterprises while continuing to capture the large population of self-service, mid-market/business unit customers in a self-service approach. As the total field of cloud-hosted SaaS and consumer startups grows dramatically, IaaS providers’ ability to capture and service smaller customers at scale and grow some portion into hybrid hardware/software cloud environments will be a differentiation and competitive advantage.
3. IaaS providers will seek to differentiate and diversify to become “one-stop-shops”, and some will reach the critical mass needed to capture the emerging large-enterprise cloud services market.
   IaaS providers will seek to differentiate through partnership ecosystems that allow customers integrated access to supporting services (e.g. security, domain naming services, directory services) and application deployments (e.g. WordPress, Hadoop, Apache). The best providers will offer integrated orchestration of infrastructure, supporting services and applications (e.g. RightScale, Chef, Puppet). Providers will quickly move to increase market penetration and retention through the addition of integration, customization, training and management services. Some providers will establish stronger positions in vertical markets by packaging infrastructure, services and software to meet the needs of specific industries (e.g. regulatory requirements, specialized computing use cases, workload variability). Those providers that build the critical mass needed to obtain and retain cloud infrastructure services with large enterprises will become dominant market players; others will follow with focus on the mid-markets, and will rely more heavily on cloud broker / aggregation channels.

Antonio Piraino (CTO – ScienceLogic/GoGrid Customer)

1. Cloud management rules – Logistics usually trump management when it comes to new technologies, and the cloud is no different. Now that cloud providers have brought their platforms to market, having visibility into and control of those cloud resources will be paramount in 2012: A centralized view into performance across physical, virtual and cloud-based resources is a requirement for delivering optimal business services.
2. Security gets serious – Security breaches are nothing new but in 2012, cloud’s relative immaturity and high profile will likely motivate a serious attack. The silver lining will be that cloud computing service providers and their customers will come away stronger. Security and disaster recovery plans will be taken more seriously.
3. Acquisitions will be horizontal – Acquisitions in 2012 will be based more on the technologies needed to round out portfolios rather than simply buying smaller firms to boost market share. Look for telcos, social media firms, large system integrators and managed service providers to partner or buy out the cloud onramp providers, orchestration technologies, security technologies and IT monitoring/management firms.
4. Cloud defies the laws of demand – Cloud will act as a “Giffen Good” in 2012, meaning that people will consume more of it even as the price rises. Lower budgets make cloud’s ability to break down costs into smaller increments a more attractive prospect. As cloud service prices increase, it will take a larger portion of the already cut budget, which will mean there is less budget remaining, further driving the cost-cutting measures of cloud computing adoption. Cloud service providers tempted to decrease prices should take note.
5. Cloud wars commence – The most renowned consumer cloud environments such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Salesforce.com will start cloud wars based on price and economies of scale. And, since these companies are bringing enterprise grade services to federal and local government institutions as well as corporations of all sizes, the wars will pull in the managed hosting and data center collocation providers too. The majority will only be successful when they identify niche markets where they can deliver new services. Cloud wars will create coalitions leading to more holistic and innovative cloud solutions and differentiated service catalogs rather than traditional price wars.

Be sure to read Part 1 of this series on 2012 Cloud Computing Predictions.

What are your predictions for Cloud Computing in 2012? Any thoughts on the ones from our cloud experts above? Leave a comment and let us know.

As is customary with the passing of an old year and the exciting entrance into a new one, people try to make their best predictions as to what the future holds within their area of expertise. For GoGrid, this is obviously around Cloud Computing. This year, instead of making my own prediction list (as I have done in the past), I thought it would be important to get some other expert voices from the GoGrid and cloud community to do this task.

The important thing to always remember here, especially when dealing with the cloud, is that it changes quickly. It’s similar to buying the latest technology, the moment you buy it (or make the prediction, in this case), it’s instantly outdated. But still, the process is fun if not, educational.

Below is a compilation of 2012 cloud computing predictions from a variety of subject matter experts and thought-leaders in the field of cloud infrastructure, security and services. The contributors are:

• Warren Heffelfinger (CEO – GoGrid)
• James Urquhart (Cloud Writer – GigaOm/VP of Product Strategies – enStratus/GoGrid Partner)
• Larry Warnock (CEO – Gazzang/GoGrid Partner)
• John Keagy (Chairman & Founder – GoGrid)
• Carson Sweet (CEO – CloudPassage/GoGrid Partner)
• Antonio Piraino (CTO – ScienceLogic/GoGrid Customer)

Because of the wealth of knowledge coming from this group, I have actually broken this article out into a series of 2 posts. Without further ado, onto the first set of predictions!

Warren Heffelfinger (CEO – GoGrid)

1. At Amazon, the tail becomes the dog and the dog loses the tail. In 2012, I expect to see greater visibility on the success Amazon is seeing with AWS, to the point where they will report actual results in preparation for a spinoff in late 2012 / early 2013. Let’s face it . . . selling books online is not much different from selling TVs or flowers online, but selling raw compute and storage is radically different and deserves its own publicly-traded vehicle.
2. Telco’s continue to acquire cloud service providers . . . and competitors cheer! Having made a career out of competing with Ma Bell, this is a no brainer. Anyone with an entrepreneurial bone in their body will absolutely implode within one week of operations at a major global telco. Their primary skill set is stifling innovation. Unfortunately in 2012, we will start to see some formerly great companies fade into the sunset after being acquired and dismantled.
3. Big-Brand hardware in Big-Time trouble. Remember the last Internet boom? There were 25 year old kids making $1m selling commodity servers, routers, and PCs. Silicon Valley was littered with these sales reps. Last Fall, I was speaking with a friend in the industry who is located in The SV. Guess what . . . those sales jobs no longer exist. Why? Because getting a server shipped to you in 2 days with a “<insert big brand name here>” label no longer cuts it when you can spin up the same thing in 3 minutes with any number of cloud infrastructure providers. If you are still buying gear from “<insert big brand names here> et al you are probably also dancing the Macarena.
4. “Cloud” loses its sex appeal. Remember when “The Web” was a cool term? Ok, I’m dating myself but you get the point. We expect cloud services (SaaS, PaaS and IaaS) to grow exponentially for the next 5-7 years, but let’s face it, the term “Cloud” is getting old. By the end of 2012, the rest of the IT world will find the term passé (just as industry insiders do right now). Cloud will just be “the obvious way we consume software and hardware”.
5. Big Data gets BIGGER. From our vantage point, Big Data is gaining a lot of momentum. Adoption trends within our own customer base are clearly accelerating, creating a unique circumstance where reality actually outpaces hype. We love this area because the combination of Big Data running on GoGrid’s complex infrastructure is a powerful solution for our customers.

James Urquhart (GigaOm Contributing Author/VP of Product Strategy – enStratus/GoGrid Partner)

1. The complexity of operating application systems in the cloud will become increasingly apparent. The cloud is changing something fundamental about application architectures; they are becoming increasingly small-grained and componentized, in part due to the distributed nature of cloud computing, but mostly because of the business opportunities and work savings such an approach affords. However, as organizations deploy more and more such applications, the volume and interconnected nature of these applications will make the problem of managing them in large numbers increasingly apparent.
2. New hardware architectures will be tried. Many will fail. We are already seeing this trend, but as the needs of new IT services systems (for the most part, cloud services) are discovered, new server, storage and networking products will appear to address them. Unfortunately, most will fail to recognize the scale, consistency and dynamics of so-called “resource pooling”, and will fail to find significant market share. On the other hand, the few that survive will be a big, big deal.
3. Big data and consumer-scale web applications will continue to dominate the cloud–but change is in the air. While there will be increasing signs of enterprises addressing new classes of applications in the cloud, most of them will be applications that are already successful running in cloud services, namely big data and web applications. However, a small number of new approaches–centered on PaaS and “PaaS on SaaS” (e.g. Force.com) development technologies–will make “departmental applications” cost effective in the cloud. In fact, sometime in 2013, the new agility found in the cloud might actually lead to an explosion of “departmental apps”, which create a new operational headache for the IT department.
4. The legal needs of cloud computing are increasingly debated. SOPA, DCMA, EU privacy policy, and so on are only warning shots across our bows with respect to the challenges cloud computing will have on our legal system. There is good news and bad news here. The good news is that most developed countries will see increasing structure placed around how cloud can and can’t be used. The bad news is that many special interests (including those with political power, in some cases) will find ways to bend this law to their own benefit. This is expected, as the real challenge to the legal status of cloud computing won’t be expected for a couple of years or more.
5. Agile companies will increasingly move to the cloud, staid companies will not. This may seem obvious, but there is more at work here than just conservative company cultures. One of the primary benefits of cloud computing is that it makes trying new software a much smaller risk than it was in more traditional client-server models. If a new application fails to find value, you just shut it down and stop incurring expense for the thing. There is no capital outlay to account for after the fact. Companies that have new software to try will flock to the cloud. Those that don’t change their software often will avoid it—for now.

Larry Warnock (CEO – Gazzang/GoGrid Partner)

1. Storage Capacity concerns will increase driving greater demand for compression technologies. Recent natural disasters in Asia have created a shortage of disk drive production that is now causing a ripple effect in cloud storage costs. Compression technologies will come to the rescue for many organizations.
2. OpenSource will continue to gain momentum and OpenStack will receive increased support and become a compelling option for organizations of all sizes. We’ll see high profile use cases turn to open source databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and particularly NoSQL (MongoDB, Cassandra, Hadoop and others) due to their reduced cost, increased flexibility and extreme scalability. And being Linux based, they will continue to pull market share from UNIX and Windows Server based products, especially as enterprises move apps to the cloud or SaaS delivery model.
3. Encryption will no longer be optional, it will become a must have. This applies to all data including email addresses and student records, not just credit card information or HIPAA. The cloud will be a significant driver for encryption, especially for multi-tenant applications in the cloud, and within SaaS and PaaS.
4. Telcos will lead the way in moving enterprises to the cloud. They understand how to deliver “carrier-grade” services and are ready to take the next step.
5. Mobile device security will reach a new peak. While the cost of devices is decreasing, the cost of losing one is increasing. With every new app that is created, it opens new doors for hackers to break through – and they will.
6. Security breaches are going to happen at a faster pace than we saw in 2011 and that’s saying a lot when you consider RSA, Lockheed Martin, Epsilon, the Fox broadcast network, PBS and Citibank to name just a few – it’s only going to get worse. Enterprises need to assess their security controls and prepare accordingly before it is too late.

You can now view Part 2 of the 2012 Cloud Computing Predictions where John Keagy (Founder & Chairman of GoGrid), Carson Sweet (CEO of Cloud Passage) and Antonio Piraino (CTO of ScienceLogic) weigh in with their predictions.

What are your predictions for Cloud Computing in 2012? Any thoughts on the ones from our cloud experts above? Leave a comment and let us know.