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:
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”.
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.
I came across an interesting article in the CNN Tech section of CNN titled “A trip into the secret, online ‘cloud’” written by John Sutter. The article itself, takes a unique approach as the author “searches” for his data in the “cloud.” As Stacey Higginbotham of GigaOmpoints out, the goal of the article is to “explain cloud computing to the masses” however, she continues by saying that the premise behind the CNN article is not quite on target. The example that is given in the article is that of uploading a picture to an image sharing site like Flickr or Picasa, and that once you do that, you just “started using Cloud Computing.”
The problem that I have been having with mainstream media is that now putting stuff “into the cloud” seems to be synonymous with “using Cloud Computing.” It is not. Simply uploading data or files to a service that stores it is just that, storing data on someone’s server. Cloud Computing is much more, especially when you factor in the different types of Cloud Computing layers (Infrastructure – like GoGrid or AWS, Platform – like Google App Engine or Force.com, or Software – like SalesForce). Some would say, myself included, that Gmail is a type of Cloud Application, however I’m starting to view SaaS or Cloud Applications almost in a class of their own since the boundaries or somewhat blurred and the characteristics of Cloud Computing (on-demand, scalable, utility billing, elastic, self-service and even virtualized) might not be fully present with the SaaS space. That is a different topic entirely.
While the author, John Sutter, of the CNN article brings up some good points, he is obviously frustrated by the lack of visibility within the cloud and of the vendors that provide Cloud Services of one sort or another. I personally extend an open invitation to John to visit the GoGrid offices where he can fully explore our offering (yes, we too will have to put some things under NDA or “off the record” but we are always fairly forthcoming on our direction and thought-leadership in the Cloud Computing space).
Back to the title of this article. John’s story on the CNN site opens with the following video called “Cloud Computing Explained” and discusses, in a friendly format, how his picture travels into the Cloud. Its a somewhat good attempt at explaining how “the cloud” works, but misses much of the true benefits and features of Cloud Computing. Watch it below and read on.
Over a year ago, I conceived and scripted a video ALSO called “Cloud Computing Explained.” It was produced in-house with our web development team and simply uploaded to YouTube without any real hype. As of this writing, it has over 100,000 views, a 5-star rating (almost 300 ratings) and over 150 (mainly positive) comments about it. Of course, we took the approach of explaining the Cloud Infrastructure layer, because that is what GoGrid provides, Cloud Infrastructure Hosting as a Service.
Today we had some very exciting news. GoGrid has been positioned in Gartner’s Visionaries Quadrant for Web Hosting and Hosted Cloud System Infrastructure Services (On Demand) in the Magic Quadrant.
About the Magic Quadrant
The Gartner Magic Quadrant is copyrighted July 2009 by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
For a limited time, the full Gartner Magic Quadrant study is available on the GoGrid home page. Simply look for this graphic and click through for the full report:
The report is only available until October 7th, 2009 so get it now!
The press release is available online and the full text is provided below:
Jon Brodkin of Network World pulled together a list of 10 Cloud Computing companies that they deemed important enough to watch this year. Brodkin’s list is a solid one, with each company profile containing:
Name
Founded Date
Location
Cloud Offering
Why we’re watching it
CEO
How the company got into cloud computing
Who uses the service
The 10 Cloud Computing Companies that they list (in order of appearance in the article) are:
This week, we had the privilege of having Robert Scoble and FastCompany.TV visit the GoGrid offices here in San Francisco. (Believe it or not, it was actually the second time they visited within a month, but due to some lost footage, the interviews and demos had to be re-shot.) FastCompany.tv is a Business Video Network that not only brings business video content to viewers solely via the Internet, but the content itself is raw and very dynamic (more about FastCompany.TV here). In his interviews, Robert brings a meld of technology and personalities. His videos frequently are with key players of prominent businesses and corporations as well as startups and Web 2.0-ers, and he really seems to enjoy showcasing the technology and the people and ideas behind the technology.
In our interview, we really wanted Robert to understand the power of Cloud Computing and the GoGrid vision therein, especially from the perspective of a Cloud Infrastructure provider. As expected, Robert was well versed and up-to-speed on “all things Cloud” and had hands-on experience setting up datacenters so grasping our concept of the “cloudcenter” was extremely easy (as you can see in the video).
Below is the interview between Robert, John Keagy (CEO – GoGrid) and Randy Bias (VP of Technology Strategy – GoGrid). The video is also available on the FastCompany.TV site.
Be sure to watch through the video for a challenge that we are having with Robert!
I also took some pictures from the original filming a few weeks ago.
Well, I thought that I could get away with no more articles in 2008. I guess that I was mistaken. I just read a good article by Chuck Goolsbee on SearchDataCenter.com titled: “Don’t buy cloud computing hype: Business model will evaporate” and I figured that I would put in my 2 cents on some of the items mentioned within.
Goolsbee takes a very pragmatic approach to “slicing through” traditional datacenter hosting (using Occam’s razor to boot), so that he could evaluate each and every aspect of what is contained in a physical environment. To summarize (and I’m paraphrasing, hopefully accurately), he mentions:
Payment Card/eCommerce systems – hard to audit the purchased virtualized hardware within the Cloud
Security – this works with auditing, but is the environment physically secure? Is there “data mingling?”
“Fully acronym-compliant” – is the Cloud HiPAA, SOX, SAS70, GLBA, etc compliant?
Data retention – for legal purposes, how can you ensure data retention?
Cloud Computing Success Stories – pure cloud solution successes are marketing driven
Margins for Cloud Providers – how can a cloud provider keep a good profit margin?
Data Center On-Demand – that is what Cloud Computing is
AWS is only real “successful” cloud provider – they are selling unused capacity
“Buzzword overlap” – SaaS is NOT a cloud
Those are just a few points that I wanted to call out and respond to from my own perspective. First of all, I don’t disagree (completely) with the items that are listed above. Any company looking at the Cloud as the end-all solution for their IT needs may be disappointed unless they fully think it all out. To address the points above:
I somewhat agree with this assessment. It is impossible to fully audit what I call “disposable IT.” However, the shift from CapEx to OpEx means that auditing methods need to be re-evaluated. In the past (and currently), if you wanted to requisition hardware, there was a process for doing so. It took time and had rigorous approval processes built in. Now, with the Cloud, you can do this “on the fly” and servers in the Cloud can be created and disposed of extremely quickly. With data in general, you can never fully have “absolute certainty” with an audit. Compliance requires a “reasonable certainty”, especially since data isn’t persistent in or outside of the Cloud. So, saying that the Cloud model will fail because it isn’t compliant or can’t be audited is erroneous.
Physical security is left to the hosting provider or even to an outsourced 3rd party whose specific job is ensuring security and complaince therein. This is true with traditional datacenters, “cloudcenters” (a term that we at GoGrid are using to describe our Cloud Infrastructure), and even shared hosting. Just as Credit Card fraud initially got a lot of hype due to the launch of eCommerce, security in the Cloud will undergo a similar scrutiny. There is (unconfirmed) more Credit Card fraud that happens over the phone or physically at merchants than with eCommerce. When you choose a hosting provider, cloud or traditional, you need to think about data mingling anyway. Just ask your provider those questions. As standards arise and Government and Enterprise adopt Public and Private Clouds, security, as I have said previously, will be as robust if not more so than traditional centers. As in the Credit Card example, it’s probably safer to use a credit card online now than over the phone, but that depends on the site.
Yes, the ever-persistent acronyms are important. GoGrid and parent company, ServePath, are SAS70 Type II certified, for example. But, these regulatory organizations will ALSO have to adopt to this new business and technology model. This could prevent some traction of the Cloud for a few corporations but I don’t think it will slow down others that much. And audits like we have, like SAS70, are widely-accepted industry standards for showing reasonable assurance and allowing auditability.
I agree with the assessment that the Cloud will make it difficult for Law Enforcement to ensure data retention. Cloud Storage and/or backups can be used to allow for data retention to take place. However, if data retention is a requirement due to compliance or legal issues, processes can be built in to any IT infrastructure, cloudy or not. The other thing to consider here would be “hybrid solutions.” Since GoGrid is run by a traditional managed hosting provider, ServePath, we understand that there are certain items that are better fit for physically residing somewhere. To that end, we developed Cloud Connect. Corporations or businesses that are concerned about data persistence and the physicality of that data could opt for a solution like Cloud Connect to meet this need.
Success Stories generated by providers are great. But what is better is blog posts or end-user reviews of the service. There aren’t too many reviews on successful implementations with datacenter deployments, mainly because it takes a very long time to roll out fully within a data center. And, it’s not “sexy.” Deploying a full IT infrastructure in the cloud in a matter of hours (vs. days or weeks in a datacenter) IS sexy, and people are talking about that. Time is money. If you can reduce your time to market by using the Cloud, then you will be many steps closer to monetizing than if you took a traditional method. Again, this could be where hybrid clouds (e.g., Cloud Connect) might come into play. I don’t agree with Goolsbee’s statement that “the cloud cannot contain anything critical”. Just look at SalesForce or EC2 or GoGrid. Plenty of critical data is contained within those Clouds. I do agree that Cloud Computing IS great for start-ups, but if you stop there, you are missing many larger opportunities.
Margins for traditional data centers is a topic unto itself. I will only scrape the surface here. GoGrid, for example, was born from traditional managed, dedicated hosting provider experience. In order to roll out and deploy servers, there is a large capital and operating expense. When new clients come on board, servers have to be configured to their needs, hard drives formatted, memory installed, cables connected, etc. The man-hours spent to roll out a single customer is quite large. We saw these inefficiencies as well as the fact that once deployed, servers sat idle and under-utilized. GoGrid was developed to combat these internal and external cost and labor inefficiencies. Not only could more “servers” be “contained” within fewer larger physical servers (reducing datacenter footprints, power, cooling, etc. metrics), but also, automated deployment reduced the human capital needs. Coupled with the fact that the control was now in the hands of the end user (in terms of scalability and configuration, for example), time to deploy was reduced (equating to less grumbling on all sides). If you read between the lines here, there are better margins for a hosting provider to convert some internal infrastructure over to providing Cloud “services” than not. Once the technology is created, rolling out Cloud infrastructures within a hosting provider for end users to later use is better than rolling out a handful of customized dedicated servers.
Some Cloud Computing providers are data-centers on demand, but very few. As I mentioned, we now refer to GoGrid as a CloudCenter, the equivalent of a DataCenter but in the Cloud and using the requirements of Cloud Computing: dynamically and rapidly scalable, paying for what you use and using only what you need, programmatically controlled through an API (or web interface), and somewhat “virtualized”. To be a true “datacenter in the cloud” you must have all of the components of a datacenter (servers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, storage, multiple network pipes, internal and external networks, etc.). Only those Cloud Providers that give out Infrastructure solutions (e.g., GoGrid and potentially EC2) can be considered “data-centers on demand” and even then, EC2 doesn’t quite fit.
AWS had a few things going for it to get it on its way to being considered a “successful provider”: its name, its size and the fact that it was first to market (or appeared to be). Don’t get me wrong, their entire suite is very impressive and they have a lot of extremely happy customers. Also, they have truly cut the ice for other Cloud providers to come along (to which we are thankful). I’m not sure about the accuracy of what Goolsbee says (that they are “selling unused capacity”). This may have been true initially, but I believe they are their own business unit by now and their data centers have nothing to do with their “book selling.” Also, the mention of uptime and security guarantees being lacking will change (they recently released an SLA for EC2…it’s not as robust as GoGrid, for what it’s worth). The general pessimism about AWS not being good for mission-critical IT functions is not really warranted, I don’t feel. Datacenters fail, as do servers. This is not specific to the Cloud. If you are worried about your data, back it up! That is the best practice and not something that you should only do if you are using the Cloud.
I agree that Cloud Computing as a general buzzword is over-used and vague, but it is here to stay until something better comes along. We are already seeing segmentation within it. It is a general encapsulation of many different things. I do think that SaaS belongs as one of the Cloud layers (Cloud Applications) provided it meets the Cloud checklist. Google IS a cloud provider (Google App Engine as a Cloud Platform; Gmail as a Cloud Application). Buying application time (specifically “hosting” your Python application within their datacenters) IS using the Cloud, but not Cloud Infrastructure but rather Cloud Platforms. In fact, you will be able to buy additional capacity on App Engine soon.
2008 was an action-packed year for us here at GoGrid and ServePath and we have many accomplishments to be proud of. I thought it would make sense to reflect back on what major things we did over the year as well as a few other notables that happened within the industry. The easiest way for me to do this is through a blog post Chronology (not every post is highlighted):
Yesterday, GoGrid and GigaSpaces announced the launch of an enterprise-grade Cloud Computing Solution. The full press release follows:
GigaSpaces and GoGrid Launch Enterprise-Grade Cloud Computing Solution
Joint Offering Enables Java, .Net and C++ Applications to Scale On-Demand
San Francisco, CA – October 6, 2008 -GigaSpaces Technologies and GoGrid announced today the availability of the GigaSpaces eXtreme Application Platform (XAP), the leading scale-out application server for the cloud, on GoGrid’s enterprise-grade cloud computing service for Windows and Linux. The two companies’ joint offering enables enterprises to migrate existing and new Java, J2EE, .Net and C++ applications to a cloud computing infrastructure with an hourly pay-per-use pricing model.
Increasingly, enterprises are looking to reduce costs and shorten time-to-market by running their applications on public cloud computing services, such as GoGrid. However, traditional application platforms and middleware do not allow applications to truly take advantage of the cloud, as they are built for static environments. GigaSpaces XAP addresses these challenges by allowing Java, .Net and C++ applications to grow and shrink on-demand with complete reliability and high performance.
By building their applications with GigaSpaces and running them in the GoGrid cloud, enterprises can realize what many consider the ‘holy grail’ of IT,” said John Keagy, chief executive officer at GoGrid. “Executives can sleep well at night knowing that if there is a spike in demand, the GigaSpaces platform will be able to scale-out on the cloud with complete fault-tolerance. And the beauty of it is they only pay for what they use.
“A common challenge enterprise customers face is that many of the current cloud offerings lack basic features required by large organizations. The GoGrid cloud is particularly appealing to our enterprise customers who wish to run their applications on the cloud,” said Geva Perry, general manager of the cloud computing business unit at GigaSpaces. “GoGrid offers SLAs, advanced security features, 24×7 support and volume discounts – all of which are must-haves for large companies.”
In addition to the robust Linux systems provided by GoGrid and the powerful Java capabilities offered by GigaSpaces, the joint solution is unique in its offering for running .Net applications on the cloud by combining GoGrid’s Windows-based cloud with GigaSpaces’ .NET API.
Today, GoGrid and Appistry announced a new partnership initiative. The full press release is below:
Appistry Extends Cloud Computing Reach
New Partnerships and Pricing Simplify the Delivery of Critical Applications Via Third-Party Clouds
ST. LOUIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Appistry, a provider of cloud application platform software, today announced a new partnership initiative and pricing that makes it easier for enterprises to deliver highly scalable and reliable applications via third-party “public clouds.” The announcement extends the reach of the company’s flagship product, Appistry Enterprise Application Fabric (EAF), which powers cloud-based applications for Global 2000 companies, high-profile government agencies and software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers.
The announcement is part of the company’s strategy to address the complex challenges enterprises face developing, deploying and managing applications in both public and private clouds. Appistry’s cloud application platform simplifies cloud computing and allows enterprises to more easily realize its full promise — elastic scalability, solid reliability and automated management.
Leading analyst firms and industry experts have said better tools are required to help enterprises successfully make the move to the cloud-based architectures popularized by firms such as Yahoo and eBay.
According to Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst Frank Gillett, “Vendors such as Appistry… offer various versions of software tools and architecture to enable firms to build cloud IT architectures without the handcrafting that Web giants resort to.” (December 2007,“There are Three IT Architectures, Not One”)
As part of a new partnership initiative, Appistry is extending the availability of its application platform to a number of leading cloud infrastructure providers. Through the program, these providers will allow customers to:
Access pre-configured versions of its Appistry EAF Community Edition on Microsoft Windows or Linux;
Create new Appistry-powered virtual machines on-demand, to scale-out applications with a simple mouse click;
Purchase full Appistry EAF licenses directly through each partner via direct end-user billing, when and where available.
