This month, we tried something a bit different with our Customer Newsletter for August 2010 in that we sent the newsletter from our Service Teams. In case you didn’t already know this, every GoGrid customer is assigned a service team to help our customers manage and grow their GoGrid account and answer any questions customers may have. The teams consist of an Account Manager, a Support Specialist, a Billing Specialist, a Data Center Technician and a Network Specialist.
Even though it is the summer here, we are hard at work growing the GoGrid product and feature offering as we strive to live up to our new Unique Value Proposition: “Complex Infrastructure Made Easy™”.
Below is the full content of the August 2010 Customer Update newsletter that went out to all GoGrid customers:
Right on the heels of the GoGrid 3.0 release, we needed to be sure that we didn’t slow our momentum down. To that end, this week we have released some new features to GoGrid which are important to highlight.
We have 3 exciting features, specifically:
East Coast Load Balancers
New GoGrid Dedicated Server Images
16 GB RAM on GoGrid Cloud Servers
East Coast Load Balancers
As we work towards obtaining full feature parity within a few months in our East Coast Datacenter launch, one of the first items that we enabled was that of Load Balancing. Just like in the West Coast Datacenter, Load Balancing on the East Coast remains FREE. With the rollout of Load Balancers in the East Coast, all GoGrid users now have the ability to deploy 6 total Load Balancers for free, 3 in each Datacenter.
Yesterday, I posted an article about a webinar we held that was targeted at current GoGrid users. To round out the mix, we held another webinar geared towards users who might be new to Cloud Computing and GoGrid itself. This second webinar, titled “Complex Infrastructure Made Easy – Learn How You Can Leverage the GoGrid Cloud” was recorded on 6/29/10.
Similar to its predecessor, this webinar covered many aspects of the GoGrid 3.0 release. Presenters were Jeff Samuels, Michael Sheehan and Kole Hicks of GoGrid. The topics we discussed included:
Overview: Complex Infrastructure Made Easy
Landscape & GoGrid 3.0: What is the Cloud, GoGrid 3.0 new features
With the release of GoGrid 3.0 a few weeks ago, we held a webinar titled “Complex Infrastructure Made Easy – Learn About the GoGrid 3.0 Release & Our New East Coast Datacenter“. This webinar was primarily geared towards current GoGrid customers. We also did a webinar the next day that was targeted at people who are new to Cloud Computing and GoGrid. I will be posting that webinar shortly as well.
This webinar was recorded on June 28, 2010, the day of the official release of GoGrid 3.0. Presenters were Mario Olivarez & Justin Kitagawa of GoGrid and Ryan Holland of TrendMicro. The topics included:
Overview: Complex Infrastructure Made Easy – GoGrid’s unique value proposition
GoGrid 3.0: The latest version of the GoGrid platform – East Coast demo
GoGrid Security: New services from Cisco, Fortinet, TrendMicro & Sentrigo
PCI Compliance: PCI compliance in the GoGrid Cloud – Demo with TrendMicro
Questions & Answers
I realize that not all GoGrid customers were able to attend this webinar, so I have provided the full recording below (it is also available on our Vimeo channel):
If you are already a GoGrid user, most likely your inbox has a copy of the June 2010 GoGrid Newsletter. But for those of you who are not customers or are simply interested in receiving the latest and greatest information straight from us, below you can find the content of the newsletter. It was definitely an action-packed month for us at GoGrid as you will indubitably see from reading.
Below is the full content of the newsletter:
Hello,
It’s been a busy start to the first half of the year for us at GoGrid. We’re excited to fill you in on all of our important news and how we’ve been working to make your GoGrid cloud even better. From opening a new East Coast data center to our release of GoGrid version 3.0, you’ll find this newsletter full of information on how you can enhance and expand your GoGrid cloud.
We at GoGrid are excited to introduce you to the latest version of GoGrid! (Perhaps you already saw the “Sneak Peak” article I posted earlier.) After several months of planning, developing, implementing, testing, deploying and wiping the sweat off of our collective brows, we present to you, GoGrid 3.0.
This post will not be about the nitty-gritty details of the release as there will be several other posts that touch on all of the activities going on at GoGrid. To provide some guidance though, here’s what I’m going to briefly cover:
New GoGrid Product Site
Webinar for New GoGrid Customers
High-level Overview of GoGrid 3.0 Features
Copy of Press Release on GoGrid 3.0
There are many ways to get more information about this release and what it can do for you as someone shopping for Cloud Infrastructure or already using the GoGrid Cloud. One of the best ways is to talk to a GoGrid Sales Representative as they have great ways to choose the right GoGrid infrastructure solution for you. You can call them at: 1.877.946.4743 (US & Canada) or 1.415.869.7444 (Worldwide). Or we typically have 24×5 Live Sales Chat & Contact forms available here.
Last night, the GoGrid Engineering and Network teams toiled late into the night preparing for the launch of GoGrid version 3.0. Those of you current GoGrid users may have already noticed the updated login screen:
Well, I wanted to give everyone a small update on this upcoming release, especially those GoGrid users who have logged in and seen some slightly changed interfaces.
Note: below the “Highlights of Changes” section is information on two upcoming WEBINARS for future and current GoGrid users. I encourage you to register for one of those.
First, if you want to read a bit more about some of the features included in GoGrid v3.0, take a look at the GoGrid Software Update page. Most importantly, this update lays the groundwork for the opening of our new East Coast datacenter (US-East-1) in Ashburn, VA. To accommodate this expansion, we’ve made some now-visible changes to the following:
Billing Widget – easier to read & gives you Memory Usage at a glance
List View Panel – the network widget has been removed and is now enhanced within the List View, making it much easier to view your public and private IP address across datacenters
Workflow Changes – see below for details on this change
Since the launch of GoGrid over 2 years ago, we have provided free F5 load balancing as part of our Cloud Infrastructure offering. Being able to provide load-balanced solutions in the cloud is critical to having a scalable environment and without F5′s load balancers, our service offering would be very different.
But understanding the nitty-gritty details of how the F5′s work within GoGrid is not something that most people understand. For the most part, customers are concerned that it simply works and works well, which it does. Yesterday, Lori MacVittie, the Technical Marketing Manager at F5, posted a technical article that does a great job explaining how the magic behind the scenes works with the F5 load balancers and GoGrid.
The article is available on F5′s DevCentral as well as below:
So the cat is sort of out of the bag with the release of the May 2010 GoGrid Newsletter. We definitely have some exciting news to share with GoGrid customers and those looking to move their infrastructure into the GoGrid Cloud. If you are currently a GoGrid customer receiving our newsletter, you should have received the following:
For those of you who do not receive the Newsletter and are interested in the latest and greatest news coming from us at GoGrid, what follows is the contents of the May 2010 GoGrid Newsletter:
Hello,
Spring is upon us and the change of the season presents us with new beginnings. In this edition of the newsletter, we’ll discuss information and opportunities that can help your business with new growth.
