Now that I have reflected on what transpired in Cloud Computing during 2010, it’s time to do some skywriting and list out some of my thoughts for 2011 and what clouds will blow our way. Do note, these are my personal opinions and thoughts and may not reflect the views of others at GoGrid. That being said, let’s get on to the predictions and what clouds are on the horizon…

1. IT Procurement Includes Cloud Requisitioning – there is definitely a movement within IT organizations to think “outside of the box” as well as optimize expenditures and resources when it comes to developing new infrastructure environments. I dare say that the paper trail of purchase orders and approval forms may start to vaporize somewhat as businesses work to make their internal processes more efficient. Weeks or months to requisition new hardware or repurpose older hardware will become an unacceptable timeframe. We live in the world of instant gratification and “being in the now” and cloud computing is yet another example of how business processes can be re-tooled to be more efficient. Requisitioning cloud environments (publically or privately) will become line items in the procurement process, and perhaps in many organizations will become the de facto choice by IT departments as they attempt to retain control over their kingdom. They still want to be (and need to be) involved in the process and by accepting public (or private) clouds as a primary IT resource, these organizations can stay in front of the curve.
2. Private Clouds and Public Cloud Act to Catalyze Each Other – many analysts have stated that private clouds will be a stepping stone to public clouds (adoption, usage, acceptance, etc.). However, I don’t believe this to be a uni-directional type of process. For many organizations, testing the waters within a public cloud allows for investigation, due diligence, education and understanding of what cloud computing can do for that organization. That is to say, doing a project within a public cloud can potentially make those self-same businesses pursue a similar strategy internally. However, I predict that many will realize that developing their own internal cloud or private cloud may be cost and time prohibitive and those efforts to do so will meet considerable internal resistance. Cloud computing is flexible, however, and there are ways to achieve similar results through a careful architecting of ones IT environment using a combination of public, hybrid and internal resources. On the flipside, organizations who have repurposed some of their internal IT resources to craft private or internal clouds will soon realize that their efforts are inefficient from a cost and human capital perspective and will then begin outsourcing their IT services for projects or business units to a public cloud.
3. “Cloud Washing” Backlash Begins – for those unfamiliar with the term “cloud washing” it essentially means when a vendor or ISP repackages their legacy or older service offerings into something that they slap a “cloud” label to. We saw plenty of this begin happening over the past year or so as everyone wants to jump on the cloud bandwagon, especially from a marketing perspective. But merely stating that their product or service is “cloud” or “cloud-like” or “cloud-enabled” does injustice to cloud computing in general and may actually cause end-users to have a bad initial experience with supposed cloud services. As businesses evaluate the growing number of cloud providers in the marketplace, they will need to become savvy at reading between the lines in understanding what a purported cloud vendor provides as their “cloud” service. Buyer beware! Luckily, those investigating cloud solutions, reading the trade journals and vetting the vendors out there are becoming more vocal about and educated in their decision-making process. Those vendors with “cloud washed” services will soon see an erosion of customers as these users move to more proven, established public clouds.
4. Cracks Show with Internal Clouds as Hosted Private Clouds Emerge – as corporations begin the deep dive into their internal IT infrastructure, attempting to breath life into aging servers, out of date software and costly data center maintenance, they will start realizing that pursuing an “internal cloud” strategy might not be the most effective use of their time and money. Those companies who have chosen the path of bringing the cloud in-house will be renewing licensing agreements, crunching numbers as they amortize the cost of hardware associated with keeping their internal cloud up and running, and ensuring their IT staff is properly utilized, while still maintaining a lean and mean organization. The cracks and flaws of this “old school” philosophy will show as CFO’s and budget managers demand a higher ROI and the internal “customers” demand more features and services from their aging internal IT environments. As this internal battle heats up, the hosted private cloud solution will become much more attractive and will move from being simply “an alternative” to “a requirement.”
5. Community & Sharing Of and Within the Cloud – with the coming mainstream establishment of cloud computing within the workforce, now the innovations truly start to materialize. Several cloud management vendors produced marked customer adoption over the past couple of years, offering services built on top of or designed to help manage clouds, but the clouds that they managed were fairly disparate. As these 3rd parties evolve their products and services, expect to see creation of multi-cloud infrastructures that leverage the best of each cloud and the concocted shared cloud environments will represent a further hybridization of the cloud computing movement. When I say “hybrid”, in this case, I’m not talking about the combining of physical and virtual appliances within a single cloud, but rather a richer fabric of interwoven distinct clouds. These could be public and hosted private clouds, multiple public clouds or even mixtures of internal and public infrastructures (e.g., cloud bursting). Also, I expect to see some cloud providers looking to build out the sharing and community aspects within their cloud offerings, meaning that infrastructure designs can be shared and potentially distributed between users, creating efficiencies of design and faster time to market.
6. Breaking Down International Cloud Borders – the growth of the Internet has made the world smaller. Data, transactions and information are sent at the speed of light across the globe. Users expect this immediacy and Internet services in general are helping to shrink the world as we know it. Internet protocols, infrastructures and IT in general is a common language that citizens of the Internet speak not only fluently but share as well. There is still some debate as to whether Europe or the US is leading the “cloud race” but regardless, cloud computing is becoming borderless. Sure there are still data privacy, ownership and warehousing issues, as well as countries that continue to maintain rigid controls over what data and information is delivered to whom and where, but for those countries that are more open to innovation, the political and economic walls are rapidly being torn down. Cloud Computing is a catalyst to this blurring of these borders and we can expect to see not only innovations from other countries and regions of the globe, we will also see cooperation between business, foreign and domestic. Infrastructure being the international language, cloud computing will be the vessel to bring cooperation between countries, companies and organizations around the globe.
7. Cloud Standards Battle Heats Up – as the cloud evolves, interoperability will become increasingly important. Over the past years, multiple organizations have jockeyed to position themselves as the de facto standards governance body. Some are more accepted than others while others have simply died out. I expect the emergence of new groups, some comprised of big businesses lumping their names together is a sort of coalition while others more of a grass-roots natures (e.g., top down and bottom up). I feel that governments will provide an important push driving this movement to meet compliance and auditing requirements and concerns. Transparency will be a core driver here as customers dive deeper into the interoperability of clouds with other clouds as well as their own infrastructures. Those vendors who remain isolated, following proprietary tracts may find themselves losing ground to coalitions of providers who have either loosely coupled their offerings or who provide import/export or integration services.

I could probably go on with several other forward-looking cloud computing ideas. The point being that Cloud Computing allows innovations and ideas to truly surface and be built upon. Others in the space will have different as well as similar perspectives and I encourage you to read and contemplate on those ideas. Nobody has a magical crystal ball that can truly look into the future, but remember, all of the images of those magical fortune-telling globes seem to have one thing in common, they start with clouds!

Happy New Year and may your 2011 be filled with Clouds!

As 2010 draws to a close, I thought that I would take a look back at some predictions about Cloud Computing that I made at the beginning of the year, but with a bit of an added spin. This reflection could be pretty lengthy so I will focus mainly on how GoGrid matched up to the predictions. While that can be perceived as a bit one sided, I believe that it is important for the Cloud Computing community to contemplate on what they did for the Cloud from a “personal” perspective and how they are driving this evolutionary movement forward.

Here were my predictions from January 2010:

1. Cloud Outages – There will be several Cloud Outages that get high visibility this year. As complexity and associated infrastructure grows and more users turn toward the cloud, any hiccups therein will receive quick and broad media coverage, with naysayers quickly stating “I told you so”. Unfortunately, any type of outage may be perceived as a “cloud failure”, resulting in the masses becoming increasingly doubtful in the reliability of the cloud. This “F.U.D. Factor” will be a steep hurdle that cloud providers and partners will have to overcome. Those companies with sound IT strategies and best practices in place will be able to weather any outages well, assuming they employ Disaster Recovery (DR) solutions and have them implemented.
   
   End of Year Update: Yes, there were outages in the cloud but the term “cloud” expanded to include a variety of items that were indirectly related to the Cloud Pyramid. No hosting service or data center is fully immune to outages or disruptions. Several SaaS providers had disruptions of service that were pretty high profile (most recently Tumblr, a micro-blogging platform, affected countless customers across the globe). ReadWriteWeb has a good listing of significant disruptions that occurred including Wikipedia, WordPress, Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, and yes, even WikiLeaks.
   GoGrid Update: I’m happy to say (knock on wood), that GoGrid has maintained a 99.99% uptime throughout the year which means that customers who have implemented their infrastructure solutions within our cloud offerings have made an important choice. With our rollouts of new service offerings as well as an East Coast data center, our customers now have a choice on the type of infrastructure to provision and where they want it to reside.
2. The Rise of Hybrid Hosting Solutions – While relatively new in 2009, more providers will consider implementing the ability to have the “best of all worlds” hosting solutions. Whether this be the combination of physical and cloud environments or, cloud bursting, or private and public clouds working congruently, there will definitely be a blurring of lines between what hosting is.
   
   End of Year Update: There was definitely some significant movement in this arena, with a couple providers announcing “Cloud Connect” or “Hybrid Connect” features that cross-connect physical and virtual environments. This is an important item for corporations looking to have flexible network topologies.
   GoGrid Update: We first launched Cloud Connect back in November of 2008 as we understood this need by businesses to have hybrid environments. Coincidentally, it was released using the “Cloud Connect” name which other providers seem to have attempted to capitalize on. However, back in February 2010, we released our GoGrid Dedicated Servers offering that effectively integrates physical and virtual infrastructure within the GoGrid Cloud. More recently (December 2010), we announced that GoGrid Dedicated Servers and our Hybrid Hosting environment was available within our East Coast data center as well, thus providing these hybrid solutions in multiple locations. The important take-away here is that 2 years ago we realized that this would be an important service that enterprises, businesses and corporations would desire, so our products and engineering teams ensured that the physical and virtual components that comprise our offering were tightly integrated and easy to use, all within the same web portal and private network.
3. Security Concerns, Vulnerabilities and Malware – this is an only logical prediction. As the number of cloud or virtualized environments increase due to their ease of use and lower cost, the possibility of environments being created and left unattended also increases. Also because of the ease of use, with “average” users deploying environments that are not hardened or at least audited from a security standpoint, there are more possibilities for hackers or users to unintentionally open their systems up to malware, botnets or other malicious code.
   
   End of Year Update: With the exception of DDoS attacks which any hosting provider is susceptible to (and which are typically targeted at a specific site, not a provider), and with the obvious exception of the WikiLeaks attacks, cloud “hacks” or vulnerabilities seemed to remain fairly low. There is still obviously the FUD factor (fear, uncertainty and doubt) but since cloud computing has really seemed to have hit mainstream IT, companies are doing their due diligence when selecting a cloud hosting provider, obviously looking toward robustness and security as core requirements for IT implementations.
   GoGrid Update: We have strengthened our DDoS mitigation services, engaged with new technology partners and service providers, and continue to provide robust support should malicious activities occur. GoGrid has been conducting regular educational webinars (including some with our partners) to help our customers reduce risks associated with technology as well as develop redundant, N-level architectures designed for fault tolerance and resiliency.
4. A “Cloud” for Everyone – Towards the end of last year, we started to see a blurring of the definition of “cloud” and “cloud computing”. The mainstream media is to blame for much of this confusion. To that end, people seem to be ubiquitously interchanging the word “cloud” and “cloud computing” where they are actually quite different. Most people are simply using the word “cloud” to describe anything where the data is stored somewhere else, whether it be truly using a “cloud computing” environment or simply a cluster of servers somewhere. I predict that this confusion will get worse long before it gets better. People will continue to interchangeably use “cloud” and “cloud computing” thus forcing those of us in the industry to (re)define what “cloud computing” truly is. However, as the word “cloud” becomes incredibly mainstream, it will grow to mean anything that is delivered via the web, regardless of if it is applications, services, infrastructure, data or what have you. (In fact, I used “cloud” interchangeably throughout this post…for me, I’m talking about “cloud computing.”)
   
   End of Year Update: Unfortunately to those of us in the Cloud Computing industry, the term “cloud” continues to morph into an encompassing of anything related to “stored on the Internet somewhere”. Recent advertising campaigns now throw the term “cloud” around extremely loosely, polluting the true definition. We believe that Gartner’s definition of Cloud Computing is one of the best in the space currently: “A style of computing where scalable and elastic IT-related capabilities are provided ‘as a service’ to customers using Internet Technologies.”
   GoGrid Update: At GoGrid, we make it our mission to adhere to the important qualities of cloud computing: self-service, scalable, on-demand, pay-as-you-go and as a service. While we may use the term “cloud” loosely, our core competency is “cloud computing”, being the largest “pure play” provider in the space. What I mean by pure play is that our business is devoted to providing infrastructure services entirely, not diluted by other add-on services or products or physical items. This year we developed our Unique Value Proposition (UVP) – “Complex Infrastructure Made Easy™” which we live and breath by. So while the term “cloud” continues to become fractured, representing many things that it wasn’t initially supposed to, we fully believe in ensuring that our “cloud” represents industry definitions and standards.
5. Analysts will Shorten their “Coming of Age” Stories – Many of the big name players predicted that cloud computing wouldn’t really be adopted by the mainstream for another few years. I believe that they will retract or refine their statements to show how much closer to mainstream cloud computing really is. While Fortune100 companies may still be slow to adopt, the “rest of us” will get on the cloud a lot faster than analysts originally predicted.
   
   End of Year Update: Cloud Computing continues to “infiltrate” corporations and enterprises as these companies look to alternatives to traditional IT requisitioning. While corporate entities as a whole might not fully throw themselves at replacing their existing infrastructure with cloud infrastructure, business units and other departments therein are seeing the advantages and embracing them. I still believe that the adoption curve is moving a lot faster than what analysts are predicting.
   GoGrid Update: Our increase in corporate and enterprise customers clearly indicates that there is a significant uptake in interest as well as implementation of cloud and hybrid scenarios and solutions. Also, our ever-growing numbers of SMB and Web 2.0 customers reflect an even healthier adoption of cloud computing as outsourcing of IT services remains a critical component of financial savings, human resource optimization and other unrealized IT rearchitecture.

So there you have it. A quick look back at my predictions for 2010 and how the market and GoGrid faired. What are your thoughts on the past year and how Cloud Computing did therein? What about 2011? Would love to get your read! And Happy Holidays from all of us at GoGrid.

GoGrid‘s Channel, Partner and Reseller Programs have already received notable recognition and today we released news of our participation in the new Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace (http://www.ingrammicrocloud.com).

The following Press Release was released today and is available online here and here as well:

GoGrid to deliver Cloud Hosting Solutions through new Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace

Infrastructure-as-a-Service Leader to Enable Ingram Micro Channel Partners with Pioneering Cloud Computing Capabilities

San Francisco, CA – November 22, 2010 – GoGrid, a leading cloud infrastructure provider, today announced a strategic marketing alliance with Ingram Micro (NSYE: IM), the world’s largest technology distributor . GoGrid is among the first cloud service providers to be featured within the Ingram Micro Cloud, a new reseller enablement platform and online Cloud Marketplace (http://www.ingrammicrocloud.com) from Ingram Micro. GoGrid is committed to providing best-of-breed cloud infrastructure solutions, resources and enablement tools to Ingram Micro’s extensive and growing network of IT Value Added Resellers (VARs) and Managed Service Providers (MSPs).

GoGrid is focused on delivering innovative infrastructure solutions in the cloud and doing it second-to-none,” said Jack Duffy, Senior EVP of Sales and Business Development at GoGrid. “We are committed to investing in our partners in this early stage of adoption and we truly value the role and importance that Ingram Micro and their channel ecosystem bring to the market. We are confident that working together, GoGrid and Ingram Micro will further drive cloud adoption and enhance partner profitability.”

GoGrid’s award-winning reseller programs will support Ingram Micro VARs and MSPs through two significant industry transitions:

1.    Fulfilling the strong demand to migrate customers’ on-premise IT environments to the cloud and create financial and technological efficiencies
2.    Helping resellers adapt their business models and support mechanism to ensure scale and sustained profitability

Ingram Micro has proven itself to be the leader in cloud offerings and the new partnership with GoGrid is further confirmation of the distributor’s commitment to identifying leading cloud vendors that understand and thrive around the channel partner community,” said Patrick Ciccarelli, President & CEO of Varsity Technologies and Ingram Micro reseller. “GoGrid’s cloud technology and service to the channel will enable Ingram Micro’s partners to find new opportunities with existing and new customers.”

GoGrid is providing channel partners essential resources and educational information through the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace. For many channel partners, this site is both the initial introduction to cloud solutions and an ongoing destination for cloud computing research. The Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace provides Ingram Micro’s VARs and MSPs throughout the U.S. and Canada access to an aggregated group of cloud-based computing and communications services providers.

The GoGrid Partner Program is well designed for cloud-centric MSPs who want to provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service, leverage free cloud demonstration accounts in a ‘try before you buy’ sales model, and meet their own profitability goals,” said Ed Becker, President of BeckITSystems.  “The GoGrid Partner Program definitely helps MSPs who want to grow their business and who are willing to contribute to success through mutual participation in demand generation activities with GoGrid.”

GoGrid’s participation in the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace exposes customers to best-of-breed technology, infrastructure and cloud solutions. With over 10 years delivering solutions within the infrastructure space as well leveraging historical insights from over 10,000 customers worldwide, GoGrid has created a winning formula for channel success.

GoGrid has a great focus on the channel,” said Eric Adkins, President of Adkins Technologies. “And from a purely technical perspective, as rated by an independent 3rd party, GoGrid performs faster than other leading cloud infrastructure and platform players. In short, GoGrid’s support is better, their pricing is better, their hardware is better, their ease of use is better, their channel program is better, and my business is better for it.”

For more information about becoming a GoGrid Partner or Reseller, please visit: http://www.gogrid.com/partners/

About GoGrid
Thousands of leading IT experts choose and rely on GoGrid’s Cloud infrastructure services. GoGrid enables sysadmins, developers, and IT professionals to create, deploy, and control cloud environments and complex virtual and physical server networks with full administrative control. GoGrid’s industry standard specifications and robust service offerings are powering thousands of businesses globally to achieve previously unrealized efficiencies. Deploying a GoGrid infrastructure solution using a Standard or Partner Server Image, free hardware F5 load balancing, Cloud Storage, private VLANs and much more takes minutes via a web interface, API, or iPhone application. GoGrid provides users the control and advanced capabilities of a data center environment with the flexibility and immediate scalability of the cloud. www.GoGrid.com
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If you would like to get more information about GoGrid’s Partner Network and the various programs available to VARs, MSPs, Resellers, SaaS, PaaS, Infrastructure Resellers and the like, please visit our Partner Section.

A few months ago we submitted a nomination for the UP 2010 Cloud Computing Awards, and a few weeks ago GoGrid was selected as a finalist for the “Efficiency in Technology” Award!

The UP 2010 conference is a hybrid conference with a combination of virtual and physical elements that cover the latest trends and innovations in the world of cloud computing. There are panels and workshops as well as virtual sessions and the Awards recognition event is being held on November 15, 2010. Other nominees for the “Efficiency in Technology” Award include: Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Salesforce, SAS and VMware. More information about the conference can be found at: http://up-con.com/.

Below is the Press Release that GoGrid issued about the nomination:

GoGrid Named Finalist in UP 2010 Cloud Computing Awards

Infrastructure-as-a- Service Leader honored for technical achievements

San Francisco, CA – November 2, 2010 – GoGrid, a leading Cloud Infrastructure and Hybrid Hosting Provider, has been recognized as a Finalist in the UP 2010 Cloud Computing Awards program in the “Efficiency in Technology” Award category. The UP 2010 conference, produced by Cloudcor, is a “hybrid” conference held both physically and virtually that covers the latest trends and innovation in the world of cloud computing.

As a finalist, GoGrid CEO and co-founder, John Keagy, will be presenting an overview of GoGrid’s impressive leadership in the Cloud Infrastructure Hosting marketplace. GoGrid has been a pioneer in Cloud and Infrastructure-as-a-Service industry introducing powerful cloud computing market-firsts such cloud-based Windows Server 2003 and 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server as well as being the first provider to offer hybrid hosting solutions within the same environment.

“We are honored to be a finalist in this important category along with such a fine list of industry front-runners,” says John Keagy, “This recognition is further confirmation of GoGrid’s technology and product innovation leadership. GoGrid is committed to providing the highest level cloud infrastructure solutions to the thousands of global customers that choose GoGrid every day.”

With over 10 years’ experience hosting business’ complex infrastructure, GoGrid has skyrocketed in popularity, making it one of the top Cloud Infrastructure Service providers in the world. Tens of thousands of GoGrid customers worldwide have successfully and easily deployed robust customized cloud infrastructures leveraging the multifaceted features and services that make up the GoGrid cloud. Customers can deploy cloud servers, on-demand dedicated servers, F5 hardware-based load balancers, and cloud storage — all using the award-winning GoGrid portal, REST-like API or iPhone application.

The UP 2010 Cloud Computing Awards recognition event will be held November 15, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency Airport Hotel; San Francisco on the first day of the UP 2010 Cloud Computing Conference.

The full list of UP 2010 Cloud Award finalists can be viewed at http://www.up-con.com/awards

About UP 2010 Cloud Awards

The UP 2010 – Cloud Awards – part of the UP 2010 Cloud Computing Conference – Produced by Cloudcor (and Sponsored by PwC), is an event which will showcase the leading technology innovators in cloud computing, providing a forum for business and technology leaders to learn more about how cloud computing can enable growth and innovation for companies across all industries. The UP 2010 Cloud Awards takes place on November 15th at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Burlingame, California USA. Full details on the UP 2010 Cloud Awards can be located at http://www.up-con.com/awards

About UP 2010

UP 2010™ (15 – 19 November 2010), is the world’s first truly “hybrid” cloud computing conference for business leaders, IT professionals and investors. UP 2010 is an affordable “hybrid” conference with both physical locations and full virtual deployment. The conference agenda can be viewed at http://www.up-con.com/agenda. Full details about UP 2010 can be viewed at http://www.up-con.com.

About GoGrid

Thousands of leading IT experts choose and rely on GoGrid’s Cloud infrastructure services. GoGrid’s award winning technology enables sysadmins, developers, and IT professionals to create, deploy, and control cloud environments and complex virtual and physical server networks with full administrative control. GoGrid’s industry standard specifications and robust service offerings are powering thousands of businesses globally to achieve previously unrealized efficiencies. Deploying a GoGrid infrastructure solution using a Standard or Partner Server Image, free hardware F5 load balancing, Cloud Storage, private VLANs and much more takes minutes via a web interface, API, or iPhone application. GoGrid provides users the control and advanced capabilities of a data center environment with the flexibility and immediate scalability of the cloud.  For more information, please visit: http://www.GoGrid.com.

It is truly an honor to be nominated with a great list of industry leaders. We wish all nominees the best of luck!

I think that we may have broken a record in having one of the most news-filled newsletters in GoGrid history. And, I don’t think we were able to put everything in there. One feature of particular note is that of RAM Scaling. Now, within GoGrid, you can scale your cloud servers up or down as you need. This month’s newsletter has information about this important feature and a whole lot more, so for those of you who are not currently receiving the GoGrid newsletter, the full content is below.

Below is a copy of the October 2010 Customer Update newsletter that went out to all GoGrid customers:

Hello,

All of us at GoGrid have been working on providing more and more value to you not only in our feature and system enhancements, but also with educational webinars and trainings. In this issue of the GoGrid newsletter, you’ll discover ways in which we can form a partnership to help you leverage more from your GoGrid cloud.

This edition includes:

New Features and System Enhancements

• RAM Scaling Now Live
• API Enhancements
• GoGrid Firewall Enhancement
• Performance Boost with Intel’s Westmere Chipset
• New Terms of Service

Partner News

• New Partner Images for the GoGrid Exchange
• Updated Partner Images

Webinars

• Live GoGrid Training Session
• Cloud Hosting 101
• Load Balancing in the GoGrid Cloud
• Capture Your Share of the Cloud Market: Learn How With GoGrid’s Channel Program
• BuycPanel (title pending)
• Deploying NOSQL in the Cloud
• Scale Your Applications in the Cloud Without Downtime or the Headache

Events and Other News

• FailCon
• SYS-CON Cloud Expo

New Features and System Enhancements

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RAM Scaling

The ability to scale your RAM up or down is now available! Our RAM scaling feature allows you to upgrade to the maximum amount of RAM available for your operating system on your Cloud servers. RAM scaling only applies to RAM, so your core and disk allocations remain untouched. Also, all your settings and configurations (except RAM of course) remain the same when you scale your RAM.

Changing the RAM of any cloud server is easy. Use the API to programmatically change your RAM allocation or simply log in to the portal my.gogrid.com and follow these four steps:

1. Select the cloud server you wish to scale up or down
2. Click the Upgrade button.
3. Choose your desired RAM allocation.
4. Click Submit.
Note: the minimum amount of RAM available for downgrade is equal to the amount allocated when you originally provisioned that particular cloud server.
Read more on our blog.

FREE Live Training! Sign-up for our live training session on October 26 at 11:00 a.m. PDT, where a GoGrid Technical Account Manager will walk you through our new features and provide some use cases and best practices.

Register now: go.gogrid.com/webinar/20101026

API Enhancements

You now have even more control over your cloud servers via the API. Check out the new enhancements:

• Edit Server Description via API – using a simple API call, you can now fully edit the description of your GoGrid Cloud Server. See the API documentation on how to do this.

• Change Cloud Server Classification via API – you can now change the server classification via the GoGrid API. Options are: Web/App Server or Database Server. This will affect where your Cloud Server appears in both the Grid and List views. See the API documentation on how to do this.

The GoGrid Customer Portal and API now also present the number of Cores and Disk Space allocated to your servers. Read more about RAM Scaling and API enhancements on our blog.

GoGrid Firewall Enhancement

We are now accepting pre-sale sign-ups for our enhanced Fortinet Hardware Firewall. This new configuration now supports your existing public IP addresses, our free F5 load balancers and will be available directly in GoGrid’s networking infrastructure. Confidently secure your GoGrid cloud or hybrid infrastructure behind Fortinet’s enterprise-grade hardware firewall. Contact your Account Manager to add this essential security component to your infrastructure.
The Fortinet hardware firewall is $200/month, which includes one type of VPN.

Performance Boost with Intel’s Westmere Chipset

To continue improving GoGrid performance, as well as build an internal foundation for growth while upgrading our infrastructure with cutting edge technology, we’ve changed a few things:

1. We’ve upgraded our hardware, including outfitting our host machines with Intel’s Westmere chipset and fast SAS drives. As a result, you should see even greater I/O performance and in some cases greater CPU performance, an improvement upon our existing hardware, which is already rated the best in the industry. It will take us 4-6 months to completely build out enough Westmere capacity to handle 100% of new server adds. As a result, it is possible for new servers to be provisioned on non-Westmere nodes.
2. In order to achieve this performance boost, there will be a change to the cloud server disk allotment. As of September 15, all cloud servers will receive 50 GB of local storage for every 1 GB of RAM, a reduction of 17% compared with the 60:1 ratio we offered on the older hardware. As always, please note that the amount of usable storage presented by your cloud server’s OS may be slightly less than 50 GB.

Terms of Service

Please note that section 10 (g) of our terms of service has changed. Essentially, we have made improvements to the way we communication terms of service with you. We will now be notifying you via the GoGrid website and a written notice.

Please see www.gogrid.com/legal/terms-service for more information.

Partner News

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The GoGrid Exchange continues to grow with new and exciting partners.  Check out the new and updated Partner GoGrid Server Images (PGSIs) available in the GoGrid catalog.

NEW to the GoGrid Exchange:

• Genero: a platform-independent application development and deployment environment, optimized for data-intensive business applications suitable for businesses of all sizes. Genero applications work well in enterprise environments, interoperate with other languages and platforms, scale well, and lend themselves to Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs).

• Genero DB: a high-performance, fully transactional, ACID and SQL Compliant RDBMS optimized for modern computer architectures, designed for high throughput in high-content many-user, high-workload environments. Available both as part of the Genero GSI and on a stand-alone basis for use with other programming languages, Genero DB’s scalability makes it an ideal data management infrastructure product for cloud-based applications.

• Toad® for MySQL is a freeware development tool that improves the productivity of developers and administrators running MySQL on Windows.

• BitNami Alfresco is an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system featuring document management, Web Content Management, Collaboration Management, Records Management, and Image Management.

• BitNami Opina is a web management tool for poll management. The application is designed so any user is able to create questionnaires, publish them to obtain responses, and process results.

• BitNami EnanoCMS is a content management system that strives to have less bloat and more float than other solutions. It includes powerful administrative capabilities and a variety of plug-ins to add portals, forums, blogs, and other functionality.

• BitNami Moodle is a Course Management System that is designed using sound pedagogical principles to help educators create effective online learning communities. It can scale from one computer to a 50,000-student university and is used in 175 countries around the world.

• Aneka is an integrated middleware package that allows you to seamlessly build and manage an interconnected network in addition to accelerating development, deployment, and management of distributed applications using Microsoft .NET frameworks on these networks.

• ZPanel is a free-to-download Web hosting control panel written to work effortlessly with Microsoft(R) Windows(TM)-based servers or computers. This solution can turn a home or professional server into a fully fledged, easy-to-use, and easy-to-manage web hosting server.

UPDATES to the GoGrid Exchange:

• OpenVPN™ Access Server enables secure and granular remote access to your private cloud network resources.

• BitNami Redmine Stack greatly simplifies the deployment of Redmine and its required dependencies. It can be launched via the GoGrid Customer Portal by selecting the BitNami Redmine image when deploying a new cloud server.

• BitNami SugarCRM Stack greatly simplifies the deployment of SugarCRM and its required dependencies. It can be launched via the GoGrid Portal by selecting the BitNami SugarCRM image when deploying a new cloud server.

• BitNami Joomla! Stack greatly simplifies the deployment of Joomla! and its required dependencies. It can be launched via the GoGrid Portal by selecting the BitNami Joomla! server image when deploying a new cloud server.

• BitNami Drupal WordPress 2.8 preinstalled and preconfigured out of the box.

• BitNami Drupal 6.15 preinstalled and preconfigured out of the box.

• BitNami MediaWiki Stack greatly simplifies the deployment of MediaWiki and its required dependencies. MediaWiki is a wiki package originally written for Wikipedia.

Webinars

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GoGrid Live Training Session

Would you like to have a little more hands-on training? Sign-up for our free live training session where a GoGrid Technical Account Manager will show you the advantages of our new features and provide some use cases and best practices.
Date: October 26
Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT
Register: go.gogrid.com/webinars/20101026

Upcoming Webinars

Cloud Hosting 101

Do you know anyone who would like to equip themselves with the information needed to take their company into the cloud? Suggest our Cloud Hosting 101 educational webinar. With this educational webinar, we’ll present the basics of cloud hosting, discuss how companies can benefit from the cloud, and what steps to take to get started.
Date: Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT – 12:00 p.m. PDT
Register: go.gogrid.com/webinars/20101110

Load Balancing in the GoGrid Cloud: Manage Traffic Spikes and Uptime

Join GoGrid’s Sales Engineer for a presentation and discussion on the top use cases and best practices for load balancing in the cloud.
Date: Thursday, October 28, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT – 12:00 p.m. PDT
Register: go.gogrid.com/webinars/20101028

Capture Your Share of the Cloud Market: Learn How With GoGrid’s Channel Program

Interested in becoming a GoGrid Reseller? Learn more about the available opportunities with our channel program.
Date: Wednesday, October 27, 2010 or Thursday, November 18, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT – 12:00 p.m. PDT
Register: go.gogrid.com/webinars/reseller/upcoming

Joint GoGrid and Partner Webinars

Become a Hosting Provider with cPanel and GoGrid

Need to automate and offer competitive hosting services? cPanel is the industry standard for turning servers into a fully automated point-and-click hosting platform. By combining GoGrid and cPanel you get a one-stop shop for your hosting and platform administration needs allowing you to instantly license cPanel and deploy infrastructure in the GoGrid cloud.
Date: Thursday, November 4, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT – 12:00 p.m. PDT
Register: go.gogrid.com/webinars/20101104

Deploy NOSQL in the Cloud

Building a Web 3.0 application? Planning to leverage socially connected data, location based data or web analytics? Looking for alternatives to SQL data bases? Join InfiniteGraph and GoGrid for an educational webinar where we’ll provide you with a powerful data management system to help you build better applications.
Date: Thursday, November 9, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT – 12:00 p.m. PDT
Register: go.gogrid.com/webinars/20101109

Scale Your Applications in the Cloud Without Downtime or the Headache

Are you ready to scale your applications and business but aren’t sure how to move forward? Join our Cloud experts from GoGrid and Cloudkick for an educational webinar where they’ll present best practices for scaling in the GoGrid cloud.

Date: Thursday, November 11, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT – 12:00 p.m. PDT
Register: go.gogrid.com/webinars/20101111

Events and Other News

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FailCon 2010

GoGrid will be sponsoring FailCon on October 25. FailCon is the premier conference on start-up failures and how to prepare and recover from them. From their site: “You aren’t a real entrepreneur until you’ve had to deal with failure, and recovering from it – financially, emotionally and practically – can be challenging. Hear how major players in the industry have dealt with failure, recovered from it, and kept a positive, tenacious, and energetic attitude through it all.”

SYS-CON 7th International Cloud Expo

Cloud Expo Silicon Valley will feature 200+ technical breakout sessions and General Sessions across four days from the leading Cloud industry players in the world. All the main layers of the Cloud pyramid (see: http://pyramid.gogridcom) will be represented in the 7th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo – the infrastructure players, the platform providers, and those offering applications. This event is a must-attend for senior technologists including CIOs, CTOs, directors of infrastructure, VPs of technology, IT directors and managers, network and storage managers, network engineers, enterprise architects, and communications and networking specialists.

GoGrid will be exhibiting at booth #510 as well as presenting a few sessions throughout the conference.

As always, you can find more information about GoGrid by visiting the following links:

• GoGrid Product Site – www.gogrid.com
• GoGrid Blog – blog.gogrid.com
• GoGrid Wiki – wiki.gogrid.com
• GoGrid Forums – forums.gogrid.com

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me directly at maria[at]gogrid.com.

Thank you,

Maria Gallegos

Stay tuned for more exciting announcements coming from GoGrid!