GoGrid Blog

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

John Keagy, CEO and Co-Founder of ServePath (GoGrid’s parent company) said “We are super excited to win the LinuxWorld 2008 Best of Show.  GoGrid Cloud Computing is making such broad impact on the field of computing that I’m glad we’re being recognized as more than just a novel approach in a single discipline such as hardware, storage or networking.”

Today, IDG World Expo announced the finalists for the 2008 LinuxWorld Product Excellence Awards. These awards will be presented at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo next week in San Francisco. The LinuxWorld Product Excellence Awards recognizes product and services innovations. GoGrid is a Finalist for Best Virtualization Solution. (I would think that next year’s Awards would include a Best Cloud Computing Solution, but alas, this year’s did not. We probably would have won that one hands down!)

ServePath, the parent company of GoGrid, won the 2007 LinuxWorld Product Excellence award for Best Grid Computing Solution, and given the tremendous press and public uptake of GoGrid, is well on the way toward winning other awards in the future.

A full list of companies and product nominated for the various 2008 LinuxWorld Product Excellence awards can be found here.

GoGrid is an exhibitor at 2008 LinuxWorld and can be found at Booth #900 which is located directly inside one of the entrances of the Expo. The Conference runs from August 4th through August 7th 2008 (Exhibit Hall is open August 5th-7th from 10am to 5pm) in Moscone Center North.

If you would like a complimentary Exhibit Hall Pass, please contact me with your mailing information.

15-year-old Daniel Brusilovsky spent some time with me at GigaOM’s Structure ‘08. Below is an interview that I did with Daniel where we discussed GoGrid and Cloud Computing.

Daniel is the founder and CEO of TeensinTech.com, an organization working to create “a community for teenagers who want to start podcasting, blogging, video-casting and producting all types of new media.” See an interview with Daniel here.

The dust is still settling from Structure08 put on by GigaOM but the general vibe is that it was a solid event. With well over 600 people in attendance, Structure08 lived up to its promise of delivering timely information to businesses on how they could plan their future computing infrastructure needs.

Here’s a quick round up of GoGrid at Structure08.

GoGrid in Webware

Rafe Needleman, editor for Webware.com,  spoke at length with GoGrid CEO, John Keagy, and within hours posted the results of his interview this article titled “Tiny (comparatively) GoGrid takes on Amazon Web Services“. Rafe actually summarized GoGrid as compared to Amazon’s EC2 into something that could even be written multiple time in a single Twitter message (within the 140 character limit): “The GoGrid pitch: We’re cheaper. And easier.”

Rafe writes:

“I can’t do a hands-on with these two cloud services, but there are a few other points that I found interesting. First, GoGrid offers virtual Windows services, as well as Linux, and about 50 percent of its installations are for Windows processes. Some popular Web 2.0 services, like CommunityServer, are still Windows-only.

Also, GoGrid has never had a system-wide outage, as Amazon has. Keagy is realistic, though: “We’re in beta. It will happen to us too.” But, he says, with well-designed systems, recovery can be swift.”

Be sure to give Rafe’s article a read.

John Keagy Structure08 Interview

Our CEO John spent a few minute in front of the camera discussing what was important about Structure08 and how GoGrid fit perfectly into the mix.

This video and others from Structure08 are also available at the Mogulus Structure08 channel.

Photos from Structure08

More photos from this event can be found on the ServePath Flickr account.

Following Structure08 on Twitter (via Hashtags)

For those interested in reading the “real-time” stream coming from people who use Twitter and flag their Tweets with Hashtags, you can see the Structure08 Hashtag stream here. (Follow me on Twitter here.)

Tomorrow is SF New Tech and GoGrid will be there handing out “free servers!” The theme of tomorrow night’s event is “Wine, Women and a Whole Lot More!” Companies doing the 5 Minute Demos are: Nirvino, Zivity, Razz, MyMeemz/Skollar and Ribbit.

The event is at Mighty (119 Utah Street @ 15th) from 6:30pm to 11:00 pm PT. Tickets are $15 in advance or $20 at the door. The schedule of events is as follows:

6:30 pm - Doors open
6:30 -7:30 pm - Schmooze
7:30 - 9:00 pm - Demos
9:00 - 11:00 pm Schmooze

GoGrid will have a table at this event so be sure to come by and ask us questions about GoGrid. You will walk away pleasantly surprised!

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area tomorrow (April 30th) we hope that you can attend StartUp SF, a meetup designed to help you “kickstart your startup.”

Speaker and Demo tables

Jonathan Cobb - Founder/CTO of Kiptronic (http://www.kiptronic.com)

Topic - “Genesis of a Startup: from Concept to Company”

• Early Validation — Before you start in earnest, you might wonder — What makes a good idea? Is yours worth pursuing? How do you size your opportunity?
• Covering the Basics — A handful of best-practices recommendations for general company administration: corporate formation, capital structure, legal, accounting, etc.
• Building the Core Team — How do you attract talent at this very early stage? What kinds of players will you need pre-funding? Post-funding?
• Market Validation — How do you execute to prove you have a winning idea? What milestones make sense for your business?
• Fund Raising — When should you raise money? Who should be your target funding sources? How much should you raise? What are common investment terms?

Demo table companies: Triggit, Askpedia and MotivePath. Also come see a demo of GoGrid, a definite “must have” for any startup.

Every attendee will receive:

• $100 GoGrid service credit which enables you to deploy, scale and load balance server networks instantaneously - More info about GoGrid

• Orrick’s Startup Kit CD which includes legal documents critical to every startup Venture - More info about Orrick

Quick Details:

When: April 30th, 2008 from 6pm to 9pm
Where: Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe, 405 Howard St, SF at the 8th Floor Cafe
Who: Technologists, Entrepreneurs, Startups, Web 2.0-ers (over 21 years of age)
Bring: Business cards, elevator pitch, curiosity, legal dilemmas and hosting needs
Cost: $10 in advance / $20 at the door (all proceeds go to charity)

Register at: http://startupsf0408.eventbrite.com/

Hope to see you there!

Last Friday, we wrapped up our exhibit at the Web2.0Expo in San Francisco. For being a late Expo entrant, we have had a resounding success, with some people saying that GoGrid was among the “best at the show.” Not bad for signing up on the Friday before and having our booth together on Tuesday. We also tried to think creatively and do some “stunts” that were a bit out-side the box.

Here’s a photo-rundown of a few of the “stunts” we did:

Giving Away “Free” Servers

Since we are a 7-year old Internet hosting provider, GoGrid almost competes against our own parent company, ServePath. So, we took a stack of our old rack-mount servers and hand-drew a sign that said “Free Servers, they are useless now that GoGrid is live.”

This generated a bunch of questions and at the end of the show, a few of the servers “walked out the door.” People loved the concept and couldn’t believe that we would be giving them away. (We also gave away $99 promo codes for GoGrid!)

GoGrid Motorcycle

Another last-minute addition was the “guy on the motorcycle.” One of our colleagues has a friend who drove his 6 cylinder, 1540 cc Honda motorcycle around Moscone with a GoGrid banner unfurled behind him (a bigger engine than a Scion Xb). Mike Loskutoff, the cyclist, is a leftover hippy, trained arborist, and champion chess and pool player. Several people saw him and commented to us at our booth about it.

Riding such a big bike in circles does take its toll. The circuit was described as “similar to riding up to Lake Tahoe at 5 mph.” I wouldn’t want to do it!

GoGrid Bicycles

Going “green” is very important to us. GoGrid save on carbon emissions (virtualization helps with that) and motorcycle advertising certainly is better than hiring a truck to pull a banner. So, continuing with that, we strategically placed “GoGrid bicycle advertising” around the Web2.0Expo entrance.

Take a look at the custom bell on that first picture! The “Bell Bike” is a 40 year old Motobecane 10-speed converted many years ago to upright handlebars for night commuting.

All in all, these stunts proved successful! Drop a note if you saw them in action and what you thought! We have also posted more images on our Flickr photostream for the Expo.

With the bubble-wrap just coming off of the public beta of GoGrid, we were able to get a last-minute booth at the upcoming Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Those of you going to the Web 2.0 Expo are encouraged to come by our table located in the Long Tail Pavilion (table 22). (If you are heading to get food, we are right on your way to get there.)

At our table, we will be doing product demonstrations of GoGrid, answering questions, and giving away $$$ towards a GoGrid account. Come loaded with your questions and ideas on how you can use GoGrid to better your business. Also learn about the new GoGrid QuickStart Facebook Servers that are now a hot template within your GoGrid server deployment UI.

Web 2.0 Expo runs from April 22 through April 25 at Moscone West located at 747 Howard Street in San Francisco. The Exhibit Hall is open: Weds 10:30am - 4:00pm, Thursday 10:30am - 6:00pm and Friday 10:30am - 3:00pm.

If you…

• …have ever wondered how to get your application on the Facebook network quickly…
• …need to rapidly scale a server environment…
• …want a sandbox, QA or demo environment that you can turn on and off at will…
• …are tired of paying for dedicated or shared hosting…
• …want to deploy real Windows servers in minutes…
• …are a LAMP or Ruby-on-Rails or Linux developer and a looking for a hosting provider…
• …want to experience an extremely slick and elegant web-based UI used for deploying and load balancing servers…

…then you should definitely come by our table and/or give GoGrid a try!

See you at the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo!