At GoGrid, we pride ourselves on being the world’s largest pure-play Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider. We work tirelessly to innovate the top cloud infrastructure technology available, provide the best support solutions and offer the most comprehensive Service Level Agreement (SLA) in the industry. And when an independent research group recognizes our hard work, it’s extremely validating and a little hard not to share.

This past July, Info-Tech Research Group released an extensive report entitled “Vendor Landscape: Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)”. This report is designed to help companies understand the offerings of cloud infrastructure providers so they can select a partner with solutions that best meet their needs. Each cloud IaaS vendor was scored based on their product offering and company strengths. GoGrid was one of 3 companies placed in the highest quadrant, “Champion”, and had the highest “Value Index” of every company profiled.

GoGrid topped the charts because our services had the highest value and, as Info-Tech put it, was the biggest “bang for the buck” (e.g. features, usability, stability, etc.).

The research and findings of the Info-Tech Research Group are available for download. The report highlights the purpose and methodology behind Info-Tech’s research, complete industry results and detailed analysis of GoGrid as a cloud infrastructure provider.

Learn why GoGrid was positioned as “Champion.” Please Download the Info-Tech Cloud IaaS Research Report

GoGrid continues to build out our Executive Team with the announcement that Mark Worsey has joined GoGrid as Chief Information Officer.

The following Press Release was distributed today:

GoGrid Names Mark Worsey Chief Information Officer
Infrastructure and Internet Veteran Joins Cloud Hosting leader

San Francisco, CA – July 21, 2010 – GoGrid, a leading Cloud Infrastructure and Hybrid Hosting Provider, today announced that it has appointed Mark Worsey as Chief Information Officer and Executive Vice President of Technology. Worsey brings to the GoGrid team expansive industry expertise ranging from technology platform development to world-wide network operations. Worsey will be responsible for all technological and architectural advancements as well as managing the operating strategies for GoGrid’s products and services.

We’re proud to have Mark’s leadership driving GoGrid’s innovative engineering, technology and operations departments,” said GoGrid CEO & Co-Founder, John Keagy. “We will look to Mark’s technological vision and expertise to enable GoGrid to continue to surpass the expectations of our thousands of customers every day.”

Throughout his career, Worsey has successfully scaled and led numerous technology organizations. Prior to joining GoGrid, he was responsible for worldwide technology operations, customer service and product development as CIO and VP of Technology at a Safeway subsidiary Blackhawk Network, a leading prepaid and gift card payments processing company. Worsey spent 14 years at Anderson Consulting as a leader in its Advanced Technology Group.  He has also held senior technology leadership positions at industry-changing firms including Xign Corporation and Netscape Communications. As the VP of Engineering and Operations at Netscape, Worsey successfully managed and delivered a series of pioneering online services to include MyNetscape, Netcenter and the Netscape General Store through the acquisitions of Netscape by AOL and then Time Warner.

As a CIO myself, I deeply appreciate the need for scalable infrastructure – available on demand – delivered in a way that allows me to reduce spend,” said Worsey. “GoGrid nails this ROI value proposition and feature requirements for its customers better than any other provider in the market.  I’m ecstatic to be working with a fantastic team on delivering the most innovative cloud infrastructure solutions available.”

Worsey holds a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science from Purdue University.

More information on GoGrid’s thought-leading Executive Team can be found at: http://www.gogrid.com/about/executive-bios.php

About GoGrid

GoGrid is a Global Leader in Cloud & Hybrid Infrastructure hosting. GoGrid enables sysadmins, developers, and IT professionals to create, deploy, and control free f5 load balanced cloud infrastructures and complex hosted virtual server networks with full root access/administrative server control. GoGrid physical and virtual server instances maintain industry standard specifications with no requirement to learn proprietary standards. Deploying GoGrid infrastructure takes minutes via a web control panel or GoGrid’s API. GoGrid gives users the control of a familiar datacenter environment with the flexibility and immediate scalability of the cloud. For more information, please visit: http://www.GoGrid.com.

The Press Release is available online on PRWeb as well as on the GoGrid site.

GoGrid was a sponsor and exhibitor at the recent Structure 2010, a Cloud Computing industry event that took place on June 23 & 24 in San Francisco.

The event topics covered a wide range of Cloud subjects, with many industry leaders discussing their views on the subject matter at hand. Topic titles included:

• Dealing with the Data Tsunami: The Big Data Panel
• Cloudonomics: The Value of the Cloud
• Guru Panel: Web Infrastructure for Real Time and Critical
• Hitting Reset: Reinventing Core Internet Technologies
• Analytics and Management Layers
• What Comes After the Blade? Architectures for the Cloud
• Fatter and Faster: Reducing Latency and Increasing Capacity on Broadband

There were several panel sessions as well.

GoGrid’s CEO & Co-Founder, John Keagy, was interviewed by GigaOM Pro’s Derrick Harris. John answered the following questions:

• “GoGrid is a cloud provider, can you explain the GoGrid service?”
• “Cloud computing is a hot topic right now, how is GoGrid’s business?”
• “One of the keys to GoGrid’s success is your strong Partner program. Can you talk a a little bit about your Partner program and why it is important for Cloud providers to have one?”
• “Do you find that a lot of your Partners bring a lot of business to GoGrid?”
• “Another unique thing about GoGrid is your background in managed hosting and dedicated servers. Can you talk about how that enables GoGrid to offer a hybrid cloud option?”

You can also catch up on a variety of other sessions using the GigaOM/Structure widget below:

Do you have any questions for our CEO? If you do, feel free to leave a comment on this post or you can drop me an email to: michael[at]gogrid.com.

Want to see a quick list of the top 10 Cloud Computing players in the space? (And yes, GoGrid is obviously one of those otherwise I wouldn’t be mentioning this article.) Yesterday, Jeff Vance published an article titled “Ten Cloud Computing Leaders” on Datamation where he briefly describes his thoughts on the leaders in the Cloud Computing space.

As Vance writes about each Cloud provider, he breaks down his analysis into answering a few key questions:

1. Why they are a leader today
2. Why the could be on top in years to come
3. Who the Key Executives are
4. Who their Customers are

I have always found that doing comparisons of Cloud-related companies to be quite a difficult task since products and services can vary so dramatically. And, obviously, there are other factors and metrics that simply cannot be listed in these types of “summary” articles, things like hosting experience, feature-to-feature comparisons, breadth & depth of product and services offerings, etc. However, if you are looking for an organized snapshot of the current leaders, you might want to give Vance’s article a good read.

Companies listed in this top ten are:

1. Amazon
2. Salesforce.com
3. Google
4. Microsoft
5. CA
6. Rackspace
7. Eucalyptus Systems
8. Terremark
9. GoGrid
10. Rightscale

Jeff’s description and insightful analysis of GoGrid is as follows:

Why they’re a leader today: GoGrid (formerly ServePath) provides a “multi-tier, cloud computing platform that allows you to manage your cloud hosting infrastructure completely on demand through an intuitive, web interface.” The platform integrates storage, load balancing, hourly billing and a number of other features.

GoGrid is directly positioned against Amazon EC2. It differentiates itself through broader support of various Windows and Linux operating systems, lower pricing and a 100% uptime SLA.

I’m not sure how much of a competitive advantage that extra .01% of uptime is, but as you can probably guess, GoGrid cites its customer service quality and reliability as key differentiators.

Why they could be on top in years to come: Like other hosting companies on this list, GoGrid offers a range of other services – collocation, managed hosting, CDN services – to keep the lights on as its cloud computing services ramp up. The company is pursuing a hybrid cloud strategy, which makes perfect sense in the early days of cloud adoption.

Even more promising, GoGrid has focused on interoperability as a competitive differentiator. With others trying to throw walls around their platforms and sneak vendor-lock in through the cloud, GoGrid’s efforts to integrate with a range of operating systems and its acceptance of tools from vendors that, at first glance, could be considered competitors (RightScale, Tap in Systems) means that when GoGrid mentions “interoperability,” it’s not an empty promise.

Key Executive: John Keagy, CEO and co-founder, previously founded and sold several ISPs.

Customers: GoGrid claims nearly 10,000 customers, including Novell, Macy’s and SAP.

For the most part, the description and analysis is accurate, however I would like to quickly expand on some key differentiators:

• Hybrid Hosting – GoGrid offers the ability to mix and match two different types of hosting scenarios within the same product offering. Cloud (virtual) servers accomplish the horizontal and dynamic, on-demand scalability, complete with personal server images (MyGSIs) and partner server images (PGSIs) through the GoGrid Exchange. And Dedicated (physical) servers allow for cloud-like deployments of physical servers that are dedicated to a customer (helping with compliance concerns) and without costly long-term contracts. Within the same network/IP space, physical and virtual servers and appliances (like load balancers, firewalls & storage) can each be deployed and managed within GoGrid, enabling robust n-tiered infrastructure solutions.
• Service Teams – We pride ourselves on our consultative approach to working with our customers in achieving their success. Each and every GoGrid customer receives a dedicated Service Team comprising of individuals within various departments in our organization. This approach allows us to understand our customers better and help them with infrastructure solutions that truly meet their needs.
• Customer Support – We are available 24x7x365 to assist customers with support related questions. Our Sales Team is available 24×5 as well. And, we do not charge for customer support. However, if you have a particularly complex question or solution need, we do also have a Professional Services to take your infrastructure to the next level.
• Web-based Portal – Our web portal has been recognized as one of the easiest to use in the industry and deploying on-demand infrastructure literally takes only a few clicks of the mouse. If you contact our Sales Team, you can instantly get a $100 new user service credit (or if you actually made it all the way through this article, simply use “GGMS” for the same $100 promotional credit upon signup – new users only).
• Partner Exchange – Having a wide variety of partner solutions is paramount to the success of a Cloud provider and in turn to the end users. The GoGrid Exchange is updated frequently with a variety of Partner Server Images (PGSIs) and subsequent solutions.

These are just a few key points that help people differentiate us from the competition. I encourage you to give us a try and let us know what you think.

GoGrid is pleased to announce the appointment of Jeffrey Samuels as GoGrid’s new Chief Marketing Officer.

The following press release was distributed today:

GoGrid Names Jeffrey Samuels Chief Marketing Officer
Internet Infrastructure Executive to Drive Cloud Hosting Market Adoption

San Francisco, CA – May 20, 2010 – GoGrid, a leading Cloud Infrastructure and Hybrid Hosting Provider, today announced that it has named Jeffrey Samuels as Chief Marketing Officer. Samuels brings a proven executive track record in marketing, sales and product management to GoGrid’s leadership team. In this role, Samuels will be responsible for managing and expanding GoGrid’s cloud hosting businesses and driving market adoption at a global level.

Jeff’s impressive energy, vision, and track record make him a great addition to GoGrid,” said GoGrid CEO & Co-Founder, John Keagy. “His experience is uniquely anchored in scaling cloud-based business-to-business product lines. As GoGrid continues to innovate and increase market share in the cloud infrastructure market, Jeff’s leadership will be vital.”

Samuels has spent the majority of his career in the Internet infrastructure and application arena. Prior to the GoGrid appointment, he served as GM and Vice President at Neustar (NYSE: NSR) where he was responsible for product success and achieving revenue targets in Neustar’s Internet Infrastructure Services Group, one of the fastest growing business units in the company. Samuels came to Neustar through its acquisition of UltraDNS where he was GM and EVP of Marketing – Neustar purchased UltraDNS in 2006 for $61.8M. At UltraDNS he was charged with building, educating and selling the enterprise market on what can now be regarded as one of the first commercially successful cloud-based infrastructure solutions. As a key member of the UltraDNS executive team, Samuels drove the company from pre-launch to become the number one provider of Managed DNS and traffic management solutions to thousands of customers across multiple industry verticals.

I’m very excited to be joining GoGrid,” said Samuels. “GoGrid was instrumental in creating the Cloud Infrastructure market and continues to enable businesses to deploy and manage complex infrastructure easily and securely in the cloud. GoGrid has benefited from over nine years of hosting and colocation leadership and is truly pioneering the migration to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). I look forward to working with the GoGrid team, customers and partners as we scale both this company and the market to new levels.”

Samuels earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University. He currently is a key advisor and member of the leadership group of the Learning Center Program, an initiative of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation that fosters parental involvement in low income San Francisco Bay Area school districts.

About GoGrid

GoGrid is a Global Leader in Cloud & Hybrid Infrastructure hosting. GoGrid enables sysadmins, developers, and IT professionals to create, deploy, and control free f5 load balanced cloud infrastructures and complex hosted virtual server networks with full root access/administrative server control. GoGrid physical and virtual server instances maintain industry standard specifications with no requirement to learn proprietary standards. Deploying GoGrid infrastructure takes minutes via a web control panel or GoGrid’s API. GoGrid gives users the control of a familiar datacenter environment with the flexibility and immediate scalability of the cloud. For more information, please visit: http://www.GoGrid.com.

The press release is available online on PRWeb as well as on the GoGrid product site.