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

• “Robert Scoble & FastCompany.TV Visit & Interview GoGrid” – we had some fun with Robert when he came to visit the GoGrid offices. Of course, this was a few weeks prior to him moving to a competitor of ours.
• “New Larger RAM Instances Now Available On GoGrid” – as the GoGrid infrastructure began to grow, we realized that customers wants larger instances with more persistent storage and RAM allocations.
• ““10 Obstacles To Cloud Computing” By UC Berkeley & How GoGrid Hurdles Them” – UC Berkeley came out with a comprehensive study on Cloud Computing. I didn’t agree with a lot of what was written so I posted my rebuttal.
• “Press Release: Appistry EAF Community Edition Available On GoGrid” – one of our first technology partners, Appistry, makes their product available on GoGrid.
• All February posts are here

March 2009

• “GoGrid Whitepaper: “Scaling Your Internet Business”” – Randy Bias produced a great whitepaper that discusses how web applications scale, scalability with the cloud, thinking through a choosing a scaling strategy and options available.
• “Navigating The Layers Of The Cloud Computing Pyramid” – a deeper analysis of the Cloud Pyramid, a term I coined in 2008.
• “Understanding GoGrid And Cloud Standards” – Randy Bias provides an analysis of the Cloud and standards therein, especially as related to the Open Cloud Manifesto (OCM).
• “Message From GoGrid Founders Regarding Denial Of Service Attack” – GoGrid survived heavy a DDoS attack which was targeted at a variety of hosting and internet service providers.
• All March posts are here

April 2009

• “New Feature: Job History – A Log File For GoGrid” – we continued to roll out new features and enhancements to GoGrid, including the Job History.
• “How To Set Up High Availability Web Applications In The Cloud Using GoGrid” – this was an interesting project that we undertook to showcase how to set up a redundant and resilient web application infrastructure using GoGrid.
• “Planning For The New GoGrid Feature – MyGSIs” – MyGSIs (personal server images) were just around the corner and I wanted to ensure that current GoGrid users were up-to-speed on the functionality therein.
• “Press Release: “ServePath Named ‘Cool Vendor’ By Leading Analyst Firm”” – GoGrid’s parent company, ServePath, was named “Cool Vendor” by Gartner.
• All April post are here

May 2009

• “McKinsey’s McCrazy! Flying Through The Clouds With Eyes 1/2 Closed” – McKinsey published a report “Clearing the air on cloud computing” which caused quite a stir within the cloud community. I was one of those “stirred up” readers and published my rebuttal to it.
• “Press Release: GoGrid And AppZero Partner To Ease Movement Of Windows Server Applications To The Cloud – another GoGrid technology partner, AppZero, was added to our growing list of Partners.
• “Network World Puts GoGrid In “10 Cloud Computing Companies To Watch” List” – recognition of GoGrid continued to grow within the technical press arena with Network World chiming in on GoGrid being one to watch
• “Video: GoGrid Cloud Computing Demo” – I started doing some screencasts of GoGrid in action and this was the first showcasing our award-winning GUI.
• All May posts are here

June 2009

• “Press Release: Cloud Computing Provider GoGrid Enables Highly Scalable Web Applications Using Zeus Technology” – Zeus Technology was added as a GoGrid technology partner, bringing an application traffic management solution to the GoGrid cloud.
• “Newsletter: GoGrid Customer Update V1.9” – since not all parties who were interested in GoGrid receive the GoGrid Customer Update, we started publishing it to the blog.
• “Last Chance – GoGrid Free Trial Credit Ends July 2nd!” – GoGrid was one of the only Cloud providers to offer a “free trial”. As our service matured, we decided to remove the $50 credit that all users were receiving.
• All June posts are here

July 2009

• “New Version Of GoGrid Released: Server Image Selection, RAM, API And Architecture Changes” – we revamped the Server Image Selection widget to allow for better usability.
• “Press Release: GoGrid Placed In Visionaries “Magic Quadrant”” – GoGrid was placed in the “Magic Quadrant” by Gartner, something that was very exciting for us!
• “Press Release: SOASTA Announces Cloud-Based Performance Certification Program For Websites And Applications” – GoGrid announces support for the CloudTest On-Demand service.
• All July posts are here

August 2009

• “Introducing GoGrid Version 2.0” – this was a huge accomplishment for us as we released GoGrid 2.0 to the general public which included: MyGSIs (personal server images), improved deployment times and other features & enhancements.
• “Press Release: GoGrid And Stratonomic To Enable Disaster Recovery In The Cloud” – GoGrid and Stratonomic partner to provide Disaster Recovery solutions using the GoGrid cloud.
• “GoGrid Officially Out Of Beta!” – after 1.5 years of running under a public beta (fully supported however under our SLA), we officially removed the beta tag from the GoGrid core infrastructure offering.
• “GoGrid Says: We’ll Load Your Data Into The Cloud” – we added a service to allow people to physically ship their hard drives to us for data loading to GoGrid Cloud Storage.
• All August posts are here

September 2009

• “3 GoGrid Executives Discuss Their Thoughts On VMWorld 2009, The Cloud & GoGrid” – after our recent participation in VMWorld 2009, I spent some time interviewing some of the GoGrid executives on their thoughts of the show.
• “GoGrid Updates MyGSI Features: Edit, Delete & Restore & Other Changes” – we continued to improve on the new MyGSI features and functions as well as some other infrastructure enhancements.
• “Video: Edit, Delete & Restore GoGrid’s MyGSIs & Billing Widget Explained” – another screencast showcasing some new GoGrid features related to MyGSIs.
• “Announcing Microsoft WebsiteSpark Fortified With GoGrid, ServePath & Hybrid Hosting” – GoGrid becomes a WebsiteSpark Hosting Partner.
• “Newsletter: GoGrid Customer Update – October 2009” – our newsletter to GoGrid customers discussed the recent enhancements to the service.
• All September posts are here

October 2009

• “Press Release: GoGrid & GigaSpaces Join Forces To Create An Enterprise-Grade PaaS Offering For Java And .NET” – GoGrid and GigaSpaces partner to enable GigaSpaces XAP in the GoGrid Cloud.
• “The Microsoft/Danger/T-Mobile Sidekick Fiasco Is NOT A Failure Of Cloud Computing!” – when Danger/T-Mobile had issues with their data service, people immediately started calling it a failure of the cloud. I wrote about how I disagreed with this statement.
• “Intel’s Latest Generation Microarchitecture, Codenamed “Nehalem” To Power GoGrid Cloud” – GoGrid pursues the use of Intel’s new Nehalem chipsets within the GoGrid cloud.
• All October posts are here

November 2009

• “CNN Copies GoGrid’s “Cloud Computing Explained” Video?” – CNN produced a “Cloud Computing Explained” video which was eerily similar to the one we produced (which has over 120,000 views)
• “Interviews At Sys-Con Cloud Computing Expo ‘09: F5 Networks And GoGrid” – while we were exhibiting at the Sys-Con Cloud Computing Expo, I spent some time with our partner F5 talking about the cloud.
• “Scale Your Web Presence Globally Via GoGrid Content Delivery Network (CDN)” – GoGrid announced a worldwide Content Delivery Network for GoGrid customers.
• “GoGrid Announces New Pricing & More Volume Discount Plans” – as GoGrid continued to mature, we decided to provide greater discounts and more RAM/Bandwidth allocation within each plan.
• “Newsletter: GoGrid Customer Update – November 2009” – our November newsletter was delivered to customers and we provided the update on the blog.
• “Rapidly Develop, Test & Deploy Windows Azure Applications Using The GoGrid Cloud” – GoGrid and Azure are showcased in a video demonstrating how the two can be used to work with Azure application development and testing.
• All November posts are here

December 2009

• “GoGrid Exchange: BitNami Open Source Web Applications Images Available” – GoGrid launches Partner GSIs with BitNami providing Open Source web Application images within the GoGrid cloud.
• “GoGrid Exchange: GigaSpaces XAP On GoGrid Enterprise Cloud Now Available” – GigaSpaces XAP becomes available within the GoGrid Exchange.
• All December posts are here

Whew! If you made it all the way to the end of this post, I congratulate you! If you have read all of the linked articles, you deserve an award or are truly a GoGrid Fan (by the way, be sure to become a fan of GoGrid on our Facebook page).

I hope that 2009 was as outstanding for you as it was for us!

Full details from the 12/02/09 event are on the StartUp SF page.

Below is the video of David’s talk titled “Give Your Ideas Ex-Lax“:

David Weekly (PBWorks) Speaks at StartUp SF v2.2 from HighTechDad on Vimeo.

His presentation is also available on SlideShare and is below:

GoGrid regularly hosts StartUp SF and we look to bring you many more in 2010!

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.

What is WebsiteSpark?

Similar to the Microsoft BizSpark program, WebsiteSpark is designed to help small companies ramp up their business, web dev and design capabilities and offerings. Those companies who qualify for WebsiteSpark can add Microsoft product and platform proficiency to their business credentials as well as help create new business opportunities by connecting them with partners (like Web Hosters) and customers via increased visibility.

What is a “Web Pro”?

Web Pro stands for Web Professional. These are individuals or small companies that specialize in web development, web-based Value-Added Providers (VAPs), web-savvy IT generalists, web design or the management or creation of web services.

How do I qualify to participate in WebsiteSpark?

The qualification is fairly simple. First, your business must primarily focus on providing Web development and/or design services or solution to your customers. Second, your company must have 10 or less members (this includes owners, employees and contractors). Those are the “hard” requirements.

Additionally, you must develop and deploy a minimum of one new website using Microsoft tools and servers within 6 months of enrollment. These websites must be logged with Microsoft. Also, you and your business must be enrolled in the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN – formerly known as the Microsoft Partner Program).

So I’m interested and I qualify, what do I get by enrolling?

The benefits abound! For starters, you get: New Business Opportunities, Support & Training, and Access to Software & Solutions. Let’s explore these a bit more:

• New Business Opportunities
  • WebsiteSpark Marketplace – be found by customers by building a web presence to showcase your capabilities, all with a simplified process to connect with qualified customers
  • Partner Recruiting Portal – if you need a partner to compliment or add to your offering or skill set, you can find them within this portal
  • Web App Gallery – find off-the-shelf Web applications and solutions to make your business even better. In the form of a gallery of offerings, you can choose applications that have been designed and built to work within the Microsoft Web platform…all without headaches.
• Support & Training
  • Receive professional support from Microsoft as well as Network Partners, Hosting Partners and other Web Pros
  • 2 professional support incidents per program membership
  • Free online training
  • Managed newsgroups on the Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN)
• Access to Software & Solutions
  • Design/Dev/Testing Tools: Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition (3 licenses), Expression Studio 2/3 (1 license), Expression Web 2/3 (2 licenses), Windows Web Server 2008 (3 licenses) and SQL Server 2008 Web (3 licenses)
  • Production & Deployment: Windows Web Server 2008 & SQL Server 2008 Web
  • Special Offers: DotNetPanel control panel to manage web site hosting parameters

What is the cost to join?

There is actually no up-front cost to join WebsiteSpark and receive the benefits. There is a Program Offering Fee of $100 (USD) when your company exits the program. Additionally, if you choose a Hosting  or Network Partner, there may be (reduced) fees associated with using their services.

Ok, that’s cool, but how does GoGrid or ServePath come into the mix?

Obviously, if you are a web application developer or designer, you need to host your or your clients’ apps, services or products somewhere. This is something where WE are experts! If you are looking for the LARGEST Windows Server 2003 and 2008 Cloud Hosting provider out there, then you should choose GoGrid or ServePath as your Hosting Partner within the WebsiteSpark program. If you want to set up a hybrid hosting solution using a combination of cloud and dedicated servers (we call it Cloud Connect) , we are one of the few hosting providers that can do this.

We have put together a robust hosting package, with discounts not available to the general public.There are 3 specific packages available: GoGrid Windows Package, GoGrid/ServePath Hybrid Windows Package and ServePath Windows Package. The details are below:

The GoGrid Windows Package offers not only GoGrid credit towards a new GoGrid account, we also want to help you move your site over to our Cloud and are providing a $100 credit to help you start.

The GoGrid/ServePath Hybrid Windows Package gives you the best of all worlds with the ability to create a hybrid infrastructure environment using both Cloud and Dedicated infrastructures.

For those interested in a dedicated hosting plan only, we provide the ServePath Windows Package which has incredibly nice discounts across the board.

(*1 year commitment required)

If you are not sure which package is the best for you, be sure to contact a GoGrid or ServePath Sales Representative. They will not only help you through your choices, but also can provide you with a GoGrid trial credit to get you going in the GoGrid Cloud.

Where can I find out more information?

Probably the best way is to talk to a GoGrid or ServePath Sales Representative (as mentioned previously). However, the Microsoft WebsiteSpark site does have a lot of helpful information including a Program Guide (note: direct link to Adobe PDF document). Also, feel free to leave any questions you may have as a comment on this post.

We hope that you sign up with WebsiteSpark with GoGrid/ServePath as your hosting partner. It’s a tremendous program that you would be foolish not to take advantage of.

• 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:

• MyGSI – an easy and semi-automated process for creating, editing, deploying, and managing a repository of Golden Images. (Details on this blog post.)
• Faster Server Deployments – Linux deployments average < 2 minutes; Windows in < 5 minutes (depending on overall system load)
• 99.99% uptime achieved since the beginning of Q2 2009

Webinars

We will be hosting 2 webinars to further introduce you to the new MyGSI feature.

• Wednesday, August 19th @ 2pm PST – Register
• Thursday, August 20th @ 10am PST – Register

Please register and bring your questions about MyGSI, GoGrid or Cloud Computing in general.

Press Release

The following press release was issued today about GoGrid leaving beta.

GoGrid Officially Comes Out of Beta with Performance and Feature Enhancements

New features, infrastructure refinements and cloud computing thought-leadership propel GoGrid to new heights, leaving the “beta” tag far behind.

San Francisco, CA August 19, 2009—Today GoGrid, the Cloud Computing service from ServePath, officially announced that its core cloud computing infrastructure hosting product is out of beta. GoGrid version 2.0 was released on August 6th, 2009, which included the important MyGSI feature that gives users the ability to create personal server images for rapid server cloning or parking.

With over a year and a half of innovation, development and engineering refinements, coupled with thousands of live customers running both Windows and Linux server infrastructure, GoGrid is clearly a leader within the cloud infrastructure hosting marketplace. Recently positioned in the “visionary” quadrant by a leading analyst firm, GoGrid enables IT professionals to have an alternative to costly dedicated, colocated or private datacenters by hosting that infrastructure in the GoGrid cloud.

Some notable points of GoGrid 2.0 and GoGrid in general:

• Ability to create, save, store and deploy custom server images (MyGSIs) – NEW
• 99.99% uptime achieved since the start of Q2 2009 – NEW
• Dramatic reduction in server deployment times – NEW
• Award-winning management web portal – NEW UI enhancements
• Programmatic control using REST-like API under Creative Commons Share Alike license – UPDATED
• Windows Server 2008 & 2003 – UPDATED
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 & 5.1 – UPDATED
• CentOS Linux 4.4, 4.5 & 5.1 – UPDATED
• PHP 5, mySQL 5, PostgreSQL 8.1.1, Apache 2.2 – UPDATED
• IIS 6 & 7, ASP.NET – UPDATED
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express, Workgroup & Standard – UPDATED
• Persistent storage on all GoGrid Cloud Storage
• Cloud Storage with 10 GB free
• Free f5 load balancing
• Cloud Connect feature to privately link the GoGrid cloud to dedicated or colocated environments within ServePath for hybrid infrastructure
• Free, static, contiguous blocks of public IP addresses
• Public and private networking within GoGrid Cloud
• Free 24/7/365 support

“Coming out of beta is an important achievement for GoGrid,” said John Keagy, CEO and Co-Founder of GoGrid and ServePath. “This notable event further affirms our commitment to providing our customers with an enterprise-ready product, complete with the product and support infrastructure that our customers demand.”

GoGrid Version 2.0, complete with the new MyGSI functionality, is currently available to all GoGrid customers, and also includes a number of feature enhancements as well as improved server deployment speeds. Details of these and other new features in this important release can be found at the GoGrid’s What’s New page, the GoGrid blog, the GoGrid Wiki and GoGrid User Forums. For details or to sign up for GoGrid Cloud Hosting, please contact a Sales Representative at: www.GoGrid.com.

About GoGrid – http://www.GoGrid.com
GoGrid is a leading Cloud Infrastructure Hosting provider that delivers true “Control in the Cloud™”. GoGrid enables system administrators, developers, IT professionals and SaaS (Software as a Service) vendors to create, deploy, and control load balanced cloud servers and complex hosted virtual server networks with full root access and administrative server control. GoGrid server instances maintain the industry standard specifications with no requirement to learn and adapt to proprietary standards. Bringing up servers and server networks takes minutes via a unique web control panel or GoGrid’s award winning API. GoGrid delivers portal controlled servers for Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, SQL Server, and ASP.NET. GoGrid also hosts multiple open-source server operating systems including several Linux operating systems (Red Hat Enterprise and CentOS) and supports application environments like Ruby on Rails. Free f5 hardware load balancing and other features are included to give users the control of a familiar datacenter environment with the flexibility and immediate scalability of the cloud, a “cloudcenter.” GoGrid won LinuxWorld Expo’s 2008 Best of Show award.

About ServePath – http://www.servepath.com
ServePath, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, is the leading managed and dedicated hosted server provider, delivering custom solutions and managed services to businesses that require powerful Internet hosting platforms for their production environments. Thousands of companies worldwide look to ServePath for its reliability, customization, and speed. ServePath has a Keynote-rated A+ network and guarantees uptime with a 10,000% guaranteed™ Service Level Agreement. The employee-owned company has been in business for nine years and operates its own San Francisco data center and is SAS70 Type II certified. ServePath uniquely delivers server infrastructures optimized for complex databases with cloud front-ends and application servers with Cloud Connect.

The full press release is also available online.

Moving Forward

We have many exciting new features and enhancements coming. Unfortunately I can’t go into the details because it would spoil the surprise! But stay tuned, subscribe to our blog feed, follow us on Twitter and become a fan of the new GoGrid Facebook Fan Page!

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:

Wednesday August 12, 2009
12:00 PM 1:15 PM
4:30 PM 6:30 PM

Thursday August 13, 2009
12:00 PM 1:15 PM
4:00 PM 6:00 PM

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.

Speaker

Also, GoGrid CEO and Co-Founder, John Keagy, will be presenting “How To Get Started in the Cloud” which is on Wednesday, August 12th from 2:00-2:45pm. (Note: John’s presentation is under the Cloud Platform section but GoGrid is Cloud Infrastructure.)

Here is the abstract from John’s presentation:

The Cloud Computing phenomenon is happening NOW – it’s a reality and can provide more flexibility for your web hosting – faster, easier and at a lower cost. Companies do not need to own their own server hardware or network infrastructure anymore. The ease of scaling up or out when the need arises, the speed which new web applications can be designed, prototyped, tested, and deployed, and the inherent cost savings (CapEx to OpEx) are truly attractive. Cloud Computing is not just a buzz term we are hearing more and more, but the next wave of hosting infrastructure. As the Cloud continues to gain acceptance, developers, designers, sysadmins and IT professionals need to understand the advantages, best practices and how to get started using Cloud Computing.

In this session, John Keagy, founder and CEO of GoGrid will discuss:

• What is Cloud Computing – The Cloud Pyramid
• The Benefits of Cloud Computing & Hybrid Hosting
• What can Cloud Computing do for me and my business
• The Competitive Landscape & Key Differentiators
• Cost Savings of Cloud Computing – pay only for what you need
• How to determine when to utilize Cloud Computing
• How should you get started using the Cloud?
• How to identify what to put in the cloud first

We hope to see you at CloudWorld!