Sometimes it is important to reflect back on activities and achievements of the past year in order to focus on the road ahead. 2009 was a year full of “firsts” and exciting announcements for GoGrid and I thought that I would quickly summarize and highlight a some blog posts of interest.

I have personally enjoyed documenting our achievements, analyzing trends, reviewing opportunities, showcasing new clients and partners as well as musing about Cloud Computing in general. Much of the writing on the GoGrid blog during 2009 was my own, however, the people who have helped provide me inspiration are countless, ranging from those within GoGrid to others creating the cloud community at large.

The journey through 2009 has definitely been an exciting one. Looking back on 2009 should make all users, creators and consumers of the cloud very proud. We have done a tremendous amount in 2009! So without further ado, below are a few selected posts of interest from the GoGrid blog for each month during 2009.

January 2009

• “Cloudcenters Are Datacenters In The Sky” – in this post, Randy Bias outlines his vision of what the “cloudcenter” meme truly is and how it is unique
• “Building A House In The Cloud – Cloudcenters Vs. Infrastructure Web Services” – in this post, I tried to simplify some of the differences between our new term of “cloudcenter” and “infrastructure web services” using a comparison to building a house.
• “GoGrid Releases API Specification To The Cloud Computing Community Under Creative Commons License” – GoGrid released our Application Programming Interface (API) under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 License which allows users to share, distribute, display and make derivative works based on our API
• “New Windows Server 2003 & 2008 Images Added To GoGrid” – we continued to build out our Windows Server 2003 and 2008 image offering as the first to market with Windows Server 2008 in the Cloud
• All January posts are here

February 2009 (more…)

CloudWorld Expo 2009 kicks off this week in San Francisco, and GoGrid is an exhibitor. Come visit us at booth #525 and see first hand our exciting new release of GoGrid 2.0 (which you can read about here). This show was previously known as LinuxWorld. Last year, we (GoGrid) won Best of Show and the year before that, our parent company, ServePath, won the Best Grid Solution Product Excellence Award.

We will be giving out high-value credits ($100 and up) for GoGrid at the booth so you are encouraged to drop by and meet with us. Do note that the Exhibit Hall is only open between the following hours:

Wednesday August 12, 2009
12:00 PM 1:15 PM
4:30 PM 6:30 PM

Thursday August 13, 2009
12:00 PM 1:15 PM
4:00 PM 6:00 PM

However, we will be at the booth during the various speaking times so if you do not want to hear a speaker, stick around after the Expo Hall “closes” for more personal time with us.

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Today we had some very exciting news. GoGrid has been positioned in Gartner’s Visionaries Quadrant for Web Hosting and Hosted Cloud System Infrastructure Services (On Demand) in the Magic Quadrant.

About the Magic Quadrant
The Gartner Magic Quadrant is copyrighted July 2009 by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

For a limited time, the full Gartner Magic Quadrant study is available on the GoGrid home page. Simply look for this graphic and click through for the full report:

The report is only available until October 7th, 2009 so get it now!

The press release is available online and the full text is provided below:

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C|net and Webware have announced their list of user-submitted nominations for the 2009 Webware 100. Of the numerous nominations, GoGrid was then later selected by the Webware editors as one of the final 100 in the list. This is a “People’s Choice” type of award around the best Web 2.0 applications and services. More information about the Webware 100 can be found here.

To jump right to the voting for GoGrid, under the Infrastructure & Storage category, please click here or click the logo below.

There are 10 categories that users can vote on, as well as an 11th category where the Webware editors select an additional winner. The categories are:

• Audio and music: Music streaming and download, podcasting, audio book services, recommendation systems.
• Browsing: Tools to access online content, including browsers, start pages, RSS readers, widgets, and runtime engines
• Commerce: Retail, auctions, marketplaces, travel, event tickets, and real estate
• Communications: E-mail, chat, voice
• Infrastructure and storage: Web app platforms and tools; online storage and synchronization products
• Location-based services: Mapping, friend finders, business locators, geographic services (new category for 2009)
• Photo and video: Photo storage, sharing, and editing; video storage, playback, streaming, editing, and animation
• Productivity: Tools for work and organization
• Search and reference: Data and ways to find it; search tools and knowledge repositories like wikis
• Social and publishing: Social networking, shared online environments, content management, blogging, and micro-blogging
• Editors’ awards: To be announced, but these will include awards for up-and-coming products, design, innovative use of technology, and so on.

GoGrid was nominated under the “Infrastructure and storage” category and we couldn’t be happier. We have been providing Infrastructure “in the Cloud” since our launch at the beginning of 2008. Others have already “seen the light” as evidenced by our Linux World 2008 Product Excellence Award of “BEST OF SHOW.”

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2008 was an action-packed year for us here at GoGrid and ServePath and we have many accomplishments to be proud of. I thought it would make sense to reflect back on what major things we did over the year as well as a few other notables that happened within the industry. The easiest way for me to do this is through a blog post Chronology (not every post is highlighted):

1st Quarter 2008

• 01.03.08 – GoGrid Blog was launched
• 01.29.08 – “Sneak Peak” at GoGrid
• 02.01.08 – Twitter and Joyent go different ways
• 02.05.08 – Understanding “Clouded” Computer Terms – a post that made a 1st attempt to explain Cloud, Utility, Grid and other Computing terms.
• 02.13.08 – Dilbert does a series on Virtualization (here, here and here)
• 02.15.08 – Amazon’s S3 has major outage (my comments)
• 02.21.08 – GoGrid launches a new public website in anticipation of the product launch
• 03.11.08 – GoGrid Public Beta LAUNCH! After over 2 years of development, GoGrid hits the streets with many Cloud Computing firsts:
  • 1st Cloud Infrastructure provider with a Web GUI
  • 1st to offer Windows Server 2003 in the Cloud
  • 1st to offer Microsoft SQL Server in the Cloud
  • 1st with free Inbound Transfer
  • 1st with free f5 Load Balancing
  • 1st with free 24×7 Support
  • 1st with Persistent Storage
  • 1st with free managed DNS
  • 1st with 100% Uptime SLA
  • 1st with public and private VLANs
• 03.17.08 – Drilling down on the details of new GoGrid accounts
• 03.18.08 – Even I wasn’t initially on board with the whole “Cloud Computing” term. My thoughts have changed obviously.
• 03.28.08 – The initial GoGrid FAQ’s start rolling out.

2nd Quarter 2008 (more…)

A few weeks ago, the folks over at Google, specifically the Google Code division, asked us if we wanted to be a showcase example of Google Web Toolkit (GWT). For those who are not familiar with GWT, it allows you to write your AJAX front-end in the Java programming language which GWT then cross-compiles into optimized JavaScript. The benefits of this are that you when you make changes to your code, once it is complied, it is automatically compatible cross-browsers. If you need more details on GWT, I suggest you read through their Product Overview page.

If you have interacted with the GoGrid web portal, then you have seen our implementation of GWT. It helped us provide an extremely rich experience of server-side code while preserving the speed of client-side code. The end result has been our award-winning interface (winner of LinuxWorld 2008 Best of Show).

The Google Code group interviewed Justin Kitagawa, Technical Product Manager and lead on the GoGrid project about his usage of GWT within the GoGrid framework. Below is the full video, which even shows some of our new GoGrid features.

The video can also be viewed on the Google Code Developer Videos section of their site.

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Today (Wednesday) there were a flurry of announcements about Microsoft Windows suddenly being available in the Cloud, first by Amazon Web Services and then by 3tera. (Oh, and now since the writing of the first draft of this post, Steve Ballmer just revealed the “Windows Cloud.”) It made me scratch my head a bit. If you are a regular reader of this blog or are familiar with GoGrid in general, you would know by now that GoGrid has been offering Windows Server 2003 (and more recently Windows Server 2008) in the Cloud since the public launch at the beginning of 2008. So why is this suddenly “breaking news” in the industry? Probably because the Goliath in the Cloud industry, Amazon, has thrown its weight behind this.

Being the “David” though has its definite advantages. Having the ability to introduce new and different Operating Systems and features quickly (weeks as opposed to quarters or years) is a clear plus. And being able to offer a “complete” package is another. One thing that Amazon EC2 users are used to is using a command line to control their EC2 server instances. Many of those users are Linux programmers and developers – those who are well versed “in the command line.” Windows users are a very different breed. For them, the GUI is very important. Users want to see icons, click on them, use menus, etc. to “make things happen.”

When we started developing GoGrid over 3 years ago, the user experience was a huge factor in determining the feature set. We settled on using Google’s Web Toolkit (GWT) because it provided the structure to create a rich experience without compromising performance. We won awards (Linux World 2008’s Best of Show) for our implementation. The rich web portal won the hearts of many for its ease of use and the eye candy.

GoGrid users wanted to also control their infrastructure programmatically as well. We responded with a public API for full “control in the cloud.” The GoGrid API is a huge untapped resource for any developer. Add the rich experience of a graphical web interface with the programmatic power of an API; GoGrid provides the full control spectrum for all types of users. 

So, before you run off spawning a bunch of EC2 Windows servers (oh wait, you can’t yet), remember that GoGrid has already almost a year of proven experience providing Windows Server 2003/2008 to end users… we are also a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.

Regardless, it is important for Cloud Users to have a choice. Making the proper one is the challenge however, which means that (as I have mentioned before) one has to look beyond the Cloud itself and also at the ancillary services (SLA, Support, Industry knowledge, etc.) when making the choice.

At LinuxWorld 2008, Linux Journal’s Associate Editor, Shawn Powers, interviewed Mario Olivarez, the GoGrid Director of Product Management about Cloud Computing and how GoGrid is taking the technology and Cloud Computing movement to the next level. Obviously the LinuxWorld 2008 judges couldn’t agree with us more as they awarded GoGrid the high recognition of Best of Show. Below you can watch the Linux Journal interview in its entirety.

We will definitely have more interviews with various GoGrid champions in the future as well as some other exciting videos floating out there “in the wild.” Stay tuned!

ServePath’s Cloud Computing service, GoGrid was nominated this year for the LinuxWorld Expo 2008 Product Excellence Award of Best Virtualization Solution. Unfortunately, we did not win the award even though we were a finalist in the category. 

We did, however win the LinuxWorld 2008 BEST OF SHOW which is an incredible honor for us! Last year, at LinuxWorld 2007, ServePath won Best Grid Solution Product Excellence award. Winning the Best of Show this year was the icing on the cake for us.

GoGrid Wins LinuxWorld 2008 Best of Show

All of the award winners can be seen in the official press release on the winners of the Expo. Congratulations to all who were nominated as well as won.

Justin Kitagawa, Paul Lappas & Jeff Carr

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There is plenty of excitement among the GoGrid Development team. They were just recognized by the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) team as a showcase example of GWT. GWT is an open-source Java development framework that is the driving force behind GoGrid’s quick, responsive and interactive Graphical User Interface (GUI).

The Google Web Toolkit was critical to the success of GoGrid’s front-end interface. It helped our developers code, debug and test while also providing a “thick client feel but with the performance of a thin client,” said lead GoGrid software engineer, Justin Kitagawa. “We were heavily influenced by Google Maps, the new Yahoo! Mail client and several other state-of-the-art AJAX applications,” says Kitagawa.

The video below illustrates how the GWT enables the GoGrid interface to quickly redraw regions, scale icons, and provide “flashy” effects, among other things. More information can be found here.

To experience the GoGrid interface first-hand, simply sign up for a GoGrid account. Let us know what you think!