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.
This past Wednesday night, GoGrid was the host of another StartUp SF (along with co-host Microsoft BizSpark of which we are a Hosting Partner). The guest speaker was David Weekly, founder of PBWorks, a client of GoGrid & ServePath. StartUp SF is a regular meetup in San Francisco designed to help young businesses become more successful. Each meetup has a format designed to stimulate, engage and network in a social learning environment. Each event has a guest speaker who talks about expert subject matter and how it relates to helping startups. Also, successful companies showcase their products and services in an interactive manner with product demos occurring throughout the event.
GoGrid, and parent company ServePath, are excited to announce participation in Microsoft’s new WebsiteSpark Program, specifically targeted towards Web Professionals. Using WebsiteSpark, Web Pros can drive new business opportunities through connections with partners and customers around the world.
Before jumping into the details and Q&A, if you already know that you want to participate in this program with either GoGrid or ServePath as your Hosting partner, please visit our signup pages on the GoGrid site or ServePath site.
But what does all of this mean? Trust me, I have read through all of the 19 pages of Frequently Asked Questions and Program documentation and it is a bit overwhelming. So, this blog post is really an effort to try to cull out the critical points of importance for you. However, if there are any questions that you do have after reading this, I encourage you to talk to some WebsiteSpark folks or sales reps at GoGrid or ServePath. At a high-level, this is an incredibly helpful program targeted towards Web Professionals.
Probably the best way to approach this is through a series of questions and answers.
It’s been a great 1.5 years since we originally launched the GoGrid cloud back in March of 2008. We had several market firsts during that time including:
Award-winning Graphical User Interface via any standard, modern web browser
Windows Server 2003 in the Cloud
Windows Server 2008 in the Cloud
API under a Creative Commons Share Alike license to help drive standards in the Cloud
$100 credits during the beta period
Hybrid Cloud/Dedicated Server Networks via Cloud Connect
Microsoft SQL Server Express, Workgroup & Standard as GoGrid images
Out of Beta
During our beta period, we had several thousand customers instantiate a variety of infrastructures within the GoGrid cloud, ranging from simple 1 server implementations to complex hybrid multi-server, load-balance network infrastructures. We also have customers ranging from startups/bootstrappers to SMBs to Education to Government to Enterprise. It is truly astounding to see they different types of complex infrastructures or business solutions that people are coming up with using the GoGrid cloud.
So today, we officially announced that the core GoGrid infrastructure is out of beta. As a side note, we have always fully honored our Service Level Agreement (SLA) despite the fact that it explicitly says that it does not apply to anything under the “beta” tag. We believed it to be important to our customers to provide as much professional support and peace of mind as possible. We understand that not everybody is used to diving in head first into not only a IT technology shift (of cloud computing) but also putting faith in new products (like GoGrid or EC2 or any other cloud providers). However, the market has validated what we are doing as thought-leaders in cloud computing and we have been receiving great analyst coverage (Gartner Cool Vendor and “Visionary” Magic Quadrant placement).
Our “What’s New” page on the GoGrid site outlines a few of the key features and enhancements that were part of the catalyst for removing the beta label including: (more…)
CloudWorld Expo 2009 kicks off this week in San Francisco, and GoGrid is an exhibitor. Come visit us at booth #525 and see first hand our exciting new release of GoGrid 2.0 (which you can read about here). This show was previously known as LinuxWorld. Last year, we (GoGrid) wonBest of Show and the year before that, our parent company, ServePath, won the Best Grid Solution Product Excellence Award.
We will be giving out high-value credits ($100 and up) for GoGrid at the booth so you are encouraged to drop by and meet with us. Do note that the Exhibit Hall is only open between the following hours:
However, we will be at the booth during the various speaking times so if you do not want to hear a speaker, stick around after the Expo Hall “closes” for more personal time with us.
Interested in “Cloud Testing for Real World Performance?” SOASTA is poised to become the leading provider of cloud testing of web applications. Their new CloudTest On-Demand service helps customers and businesses ensure optimal performance and end-user experience.
Today, SOASTA issued a Press Release covering this new Certification Program which allows companies to certify that their applications and websites “have been tested and meet or exceed industry benchmarks for performance at peak levels of user traffic.”GoGrid is proud to be among the industry leaders supporting this certification program.
Today, Novell issued a Press Release which discusses how Cloud Providers, like GoGrid, will enable customized security environments within their infrastructure using Novell technology. GoGrid is excited to be one of the participants in the initiative.
The full Press Release is located on the Novell site and is posted below:
Novell to Demonstrate Cloud Security Service at Burton Group Catalyst Conference
WALTHAM, Mass.
21 Jul 2009
Leveraging extensive cloud-related patent portfolio, Novell will enable cloud providers to offer customized security to their enterprise customers
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:
It’s with great pleasure that we announce the guest speaker for the StartUp SF (version 2.1) event coming on June 4th, 2009. (StartUp SF is a San Francisco Technology Meetup co-hosted by GoGrid/ServePath and Microsoft BizSpark.)
Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic, has graciously agreed to do a presentation titled “How to Launch a Product with your Community.” Learn first hand how to use various community building techniques to build your product, service or brand from the ground up.
You may have seen Loic and Seesmic Desktop mentioned in the New York Times site.
Seesmic is Loic’s 5th business so he definitely has lots of experience under his belt. Some more information about Loic:
Loic is the Seesmic CEO. He founded the company in 2007 with the goal of turning online video into a powerful medium for threaded, interactive video conversations.
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:
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.
