With the March 2010 GoGrid newsletter, we welcome and introduce a new name to our communications, that of Maria Gallegos who has joined us as a Product Marketing Coordinator for GoGrid. Maria comes from a marketing background (from financial services to non-profits) and will be producing the GoGrid newsletter as well as managing other customer experience programs. One of her first tasks has been the March 2010 Customer Update Newsletter.

For those who are not current GoGrid users, we provide the full newsletter on our blog, just so that you can see what you are missing out on! If any of the items that are mentioned here interest you, or if you want to get started on GoGrid right away (remember, we provide a full range of hosted infrastructure solutions ranging from Cloud Servers to Dedicated Servers to Cloud Storage, all within a Load Balanced network), I encourage you to speak with a GoGrid Sales Representative. They can provide you with answers to many of your infrastructure hosting questions. Just tell them that I sent you!

Here is the full March 2010 GoGrid Customer Update newsletter:

Hello,

As 2010 continues to progress, so does GoGrid. From system enhancements to new partners, you’ll find this edition of the newsletter full of information to better help you manage your cloud hosting infrastructure. Specific topics include: (more…)

We are excited to announce a new event for GoGrid and WebsiteSpark which will be taking place on Tuesday, March 30 from 10am to 6pm Pacific Time in the San Francisco Bay Area. For those of you who are new to WebsiteSpark, it is a powerful program designed to help Web Designers and Developers drive new business opportunities through connections and customers around the world. I posted some detailed information about the WebsiteSpark program and how GoGrid can be your preferred hosting partner in this program.

In order to help educate you on this outstanding business opportunity that can save your startup or small business literally thousands of dollars in licensing & hosting costs, Microsoft and GoGrid have teamed up with an event called “WIN with GoGrid & Microsoft WebsiteSpark” that will be taking place on the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus. Wondering if you should attend? Please take a look at the bullet points below to help determine if this is a good event for you:

Are you a Web Professional…

• Interested in free software and support to grow your web development business?
• Who needs help getting your customers’ websites to the top of the search rankings?
• Looking for tips and tricks to design and develop next generation web experiences?
• Looking to make your web development business more profitable?
• Looking to streamline the way you design, build and deploy websites?
• Looking to mix the best of Open Source with the best of Microsoft in your customer’s websites?
• Questions on how to deploy Microsoft infrastructure in the Cloud?
• Learn about Windows Azure Application Lifecycle Management on GoGrid!

But wait! There’s more! All attendees of this event are entered into a drawing to win one of the following: (more…)

On Wednesday February 24, 2010, GoGrid hosted a webinar for new and existing GoGrid users designed to discuss the recent February 2010 Feature updates to GoGrid. There is a blog post that details all of the new features included in the release as well as a screencast which walks through these features and important changes. The webinar covered the following information:

• What is our view of Cloud Computing
• What is GoGrid
• New feature: GoGrid Dedicated Servers
• What is Hybrid Infrastructure
• A GoGrid Portal Demo
• Deploying a GoGrid Dedicated Server
• The new GoGrid List View
• Walk-through of other Interface Enhancements & Links
• Question & Answer Session

The entire Webinar is below and is broken into two parts:

• Part One – Overview presentation, discussion of Cloud & GoGrid, demonstration of the GoGrid Portal & GoGrid Dedicated Server Deployments (30 minutes in length)
• Part Two – Question & Answer session from the audience and Additional Information (19 minutes in length)

Also included later on in this post is the stand-alone presentation (without audio, demo walk-through or question and answers).

GoGrid Feature Webinar – Part 1

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A couple of weeks ago we released a new version of GoGrid which included a variety of exciting enhancements and features. Most notable are:

• GoGrid Dedicated Servers
• List View of GoGrid Objects
• Edit F5 Load Balancers via the API
• New Login Page
• Self Service Support Links

More details about these features can be found on the following GoGrid blog post. For a quick overview of the new features in the form of a screencast, please watch the video below. I quickly cover many of the items listed above including:

• Walking through the new login page
• Deploying a GoGrid Dedicated Server
• Overview of the new GoGrid List View
• Dedicated Servers showing in the Jobs Tab
• Showing of Self-Service Links in the portal
• Editing Load Balancers using the GoGrid API

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Today, the team at GoGrid is pleased to announce several new enhancements and features to our Cloud Infrastructure Hosting service. With us, it is all about trying to make our Cloud offering as powerful as possible. To that end, we have released our latest version of GoGrid, available now! Some highlights include (each of which I will go into further details later on in this post):

• GoGrid Dedicated Servers
• List View of GoGrid Objects
• Edit f5 Load Balancers
• New Login Page
• Self-Service Support Links
• Other Items

We hope that you share our excitement about this release! Now, let’s get into the details. Also be sure to see our video that talks about many of the items listed here (Available on GoGrid YouTube channel and the GoGrid Facebook Fan Page as well.)

GoGrid Dedicated Servers

Let’s face it, we have been doing dedicated hosting for over 8 years so we do know a little bit about it. Last year, we introduced a first-to-market service that we internally called “Hybrid Hosting” which allowed users to connect GoGrid cloud infrastructure with a separate dedicated infrastructure, all within a private network. This proved to be incredibly successful, and something that many of our customers had desired. So, we decided to take it to the next level by offering Dedicated Servers within the GoGrid infrastructure.

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As you probably know by now, GoGrid released a series of new enhancements to our Cloud Computing Infrastructure Hosting service. You can read more about what was included in this latest release in this blog post. Some of the highlighted new features and improvements include:

• GoGrid Dedicated Servers
• List View of GoGrid Objects
• Edit f5 Load Balancers
• New Login Page
• Self-Service Support Links

We also sent out a newsletter highlighting some of the changes in the January/February 2010 timeframe.

As with previous releases, I wanted to spend some time with our VP of Products, Mario Olivarez, and discuss some of these items and what they mean to GoGrid customers. (YouTube direct link.)

This video is also available on the GoGrid Facebook page as well as our GoGrid YouTube Channel.

As always, if you have any questions about any of the items you heard in this video or about GoGrid in general, please leave a comment on this post or ask us on Twitter (@GoGrid). Stay tuned for more updates and videos.

This week, ChannelWeb/CRN published their editorial teams’ choices for the 100 Coolest Cloud Vendors. The lists will also appear in the next printed issue of CRN. Each of these “coolest” lists are broken down into a few vendor subcategories including:

• Cloud Platform
• Cloud Security
• Cloud Infrastructure
• Cloud Productivity Applications
• Cloud Storage

We are pleased to announce that GoGrid is listed under the “20 Coolest Cloud Platform Vendors“:

The other vendors mentioned include: Amazon EC2, Appistry (a GoGrid partner), AppScale, AT&T, Engine Yard, Enomaly, Flexiscale, GCloud3,  Gizmox, Google, LongJump, Microsoft, OrangeScape, RackSpace, Salesforce.com, Terremark, Ubuntu, VMware and Verizon.

While we typically categorize ourselves as Cloud Infrastructure (along with AWS and Rackspace), we truly appreciate the inclusion in the “Coolest Cloud Platform Vendors”.

As all of you know, a devastating series of earthquakes rocked the Haiti region on January 12th, 2010, crippling the infrastructure, killing thousands and leaving even more people utterly homeless. While relief efforts are currently underway, the recovery and assistance effort is an on-going uphill battle with little or no relief in sight. Countries from around the world have rushed people, medical supplies and other humanitarian aid, but as aftershocks continue (today there was a 6.1 registered aftershock, for example), the fragile and brittle stability is being further shattered.

The bottom line, the Haitian people need assistance of ANY TYPE immediately and in an on-going basis, whether it be in the form of time, money or other types of support. Doing absolutely nothing is the worst thing that you can do. Even if you cannot afford to donate time or money, there are other activities that you can do to assist in the relief efforts (one example is listed later in this post).

The outpouring of relief efforts thus far is impressive, however, as a worldly community living under the same “roof”, we all need to put aside our differences and work together to help the Haitians in their time of need.

Hosting for Haiti Initiative

Officially launching today is an initiative comprised of a group of Hosting Providers who normally compete head-to-head. The initiative brings together several hosting providers including Rackspace, Peer1, GoGrid, The Planet and ServInt, in an effort to create a consolidated and organized front to provide monetary assistance to the Haitian Relief Efforts. HostingForHaiti.com is a site designed to provide support from the hosting industry, because through a unified effort, more gains can be realized.

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I guess that I’m a bit late in the game here to throw my predictions into the clouds but late is better than never, right? It has been an exciting year for us here at GoGrid. We had many stellar and innovative announcements which you can read about here. Before I quickly go into some of my thoughts for 2010, it makes sense to see how well I did for 2009. My original predictions were here and were as follows (coupled with a quick analysis).

1. Cloud Reduce the Effect of the Recession – Businesses definitely did not spend as much last year, however, the interest in the cloud as a financially viable way to “survive” gained traction throughout the year. All major cloud providers (including GoGrid) showed growth during the year despite the recession.
2. Broader Depth of Clouds – the cloud continued to grow throughout the year. More smaller and larger players jumped into the mix. The relative “unknown” of the cloud began to become much clearer.
3. VC’s, Money & Long Term Viability – hard to gauge this one without knowing what VC’s were investing in. But given the strength of leaders like AWS, Rackspace and GoGrid and the continued development therein, the long term viability seemed solid.
4. Partnerships Galore & Weeding Out of Providers – As is evident with GoGrid’s growing partner list, this is really where the marketplace was expanding. Partners bring subject-matter expertise to the cloud, allowing for medium to large providers to focus on their core competencies. There were not big failures of providers during 2009 but the shakeout may start in 2010.
5. Hybrid Solutions – we continued to lead the way with robust hybrid solutions in the form of cloud front-ends coupled with physical back-end server. Not too many other providers announced things similar, but I believe these will materialize this year.
6. Web 3.0 – the “social web” definitely took off this year, as did the whole (vague) concept of data being “in the cloud”. Web 3.0 wasn’t officially announced but there were definitely lots of companies mashing up their services/data in unique, new offerings.
7. Standards and Interoperability – many separate groups continued to work towards open standards and interoperability with definite progress being made. Unfortunately, these groups are still splintered with individuals and companies working towards their own agenda.
8. Staggered Growth within the Cloud – the big players continued to get bigger, leaving some of the smaller or non-visionary thinkers a bit behind. More users started looking away from shared hosting and more towards the cloud for solutions. Smaller startups continued to advance using the cloud to power their infrastructure with the enterprise still testing the waters or using the cloud sporadically.
9. Technology Advances at the Cloud Molecular Level – chip manufacturers and computer/server vendors did announce chipsets and systems optimized for the cloud.
10. Larger Adoption – still not as fast as I expected, but the fact that the Federal (and State) governments were (and are) putting some serious thought and development work around cloud computing shows that adoption is growing across the board.

Just quickly scanning through my “results” shows that I wasn’t too off track. Some items faired a bit better than others but for the most part my “predictions” were fairly close. So what about 2010? Here’s what I’m thinking:

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.
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.
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.
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.”)
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.

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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…)