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.

The full release is available at the SOASTA site as well as below:

SOASTA Announces Cloud-based Performance Certification Program for Websites and Applications

Diverse group of companies support the creation of a certification process to build confidence in website performance and reliability

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.,—July 21, 2009—SOASTA, the leader in cloud testing, today announced a Performance Certification Program designed to enable companies deploying software in the Cloud, at hosted data centers, or behind corporate firewalls to certify that their website has been tested and has met or exceeded industry benchmarks for performance at peak levels of user traffic. Whether due to cost, complexity or lack of resources, the vast majority of web applications and sites have not been tested at normal user volumes, much less for unexpected spikes in traffic. The user community has become the testers for most Web 2.0 sites, a risk that has proven very costly time and again.

“To our customers, performance matters!” said Lew Moorman, President, Rackspace Cloud. “By utilizing the SOASTA Performance Certification program our customers will have the ability to isolate performance issues before they occur by simulating real world user activity and traffic. Performance certification ensures that websites are being tested, which only leads to greater levels of reliability.”

Supporting SOASTA in this performance certification initiative are industry leaders in cloud computing including platform vendors, testing companies and independent cloud service providers. They include 3Tera, Appistry, Chegg.com, Enomaly, GoGrid, Hexaware Technologies, Intuit, JackBe, PowerTest, Rackspace, RightScale, rPath and Zephyr. Concerns over performance and reliability are consistent themes heard by each of these companies when their customers face the uncertainties of extending access to applications outside the firewall, not to mention moving those applications completely offsite. This diverse group of companies represents all aspects of the application lifecycle, from development to deployment, all supporting the need for independent, external validation of end-to-end performance.

Many companies are currently considering or have already moved their applications to the Cloud, typically to lower costs and/or to take advantage of the elasticity of the compute power offered by the Cloud. However, just as in the data center, simply adding low cost servers doesn’t solve most performance problems. Performance-related issues, such as latency or an actual website crash, are often the result of a change to the deployment environment, changes in the application itself, or the inclusion of third-party content. The only way to certify a site’s performance is by simulating both expected and potential peak traffic while monitoring the impact. With Performance Certification, this is no longer too expensive or too complex to achieve and alleviates additional strain on internal resources.

“Improving performance cannot be achieved solely by adding hardware,” said Michael Crandell, CEO, RightScale. “Web applications and deployment stacks are complex and must be tested under real world traffic conditions to assess what actual performance will be in production. Having a certification process that ensures sites are tested is an essential element of cloud computing development.”

How Performance Certification Works

SOASTA Performance Certification is designed as a turnkey process, minimizing disruption by eliminating any unnecessary impact on the existing environment. SOASTA and its partners collaborate with companies to define common use cases and then simulate those scenarios in the most accurate way possible—by using the web to test the web.

There are a number of purpose built tools to analyze the performance characteristics of individual components of a web-based application, such as web page design, application design, database implementation, or network architecture. SOASTA’s Performance Certification leverages its Global CloudTest™ Platform to provide an affordable end-to-end analysis of a site’s performance as well as measure responsiveness at normal and peak usage levels. Certified sites receive a comprehensive report on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), with a focus on response times achieved at various user loads.

Certification confirms that the site has been tested at specific traffic volume levels (1K, 10K, 25K, 50K, or 100K users) and has been measured against KPIs such as response time and error rates. In addition, as part of the certification process SOASTA and its partners provide valuable analysis of site latency to help companies improve the overall performance and responsiveness of their website.

Companies such as Chegg.com, Dell, Intuit and Vovici are just a few of the companies that have had their websites SOASTA Certified. “As traffic to our website continues to grow at record levels, we need to ensure that our site will be able to meet the demand,” said Dan Bartow, Manager of Performance Engineering, Intuit TurboTax. “SOASTA enables us to simulate every possible user scenario including massive load. Thanks to SOASTA’s Performance Certification process, we are confident that our site will be ready for almost any situation we might encounter.”

About SOASTA

SOASTA’s mission is to ensure that today’s Web applications and services perform in a high quality, scalable, and predictable manner. The company’s product, SOASTA CloudTest™, is available as an on-demand service in the Cloud or as an appliance (virtual and hardware), and enables developers to test and monitor their Web applications and services at an affordable price. SOASTA CloudTest supports Load, Performance, Functional, and Web UI/Ajax testing. SOASTA is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, California. For more information about SOASTA, please visit www.soasta.com

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

Novell will unveil the industry’s first cloud computing security service that provides identity and access management for hosted applications and hosted storage, as well as a compliance reporting suite, at the upcoming Burton Group Catalyst Conference, July 29 – 31 in San Diego. Based on more than 60 cloud-related patents and patent applications, the Novell® Cloud Security Service enables Cloud Providers and Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors to ensure their offerings meet the strict security and compliance standards required by global businesses.

Managing user access, data storage and compliance are critical capabilities that any cloud vendor needs to offer its customers. The Novell Cloud Security Service is based on “annexation” technology, which enables businesses to treat the cloud as a natural extension of their data center by delivering single sign-on capabilities using a federated enterprise identity model. With the Novell Cloud Security Service, organizations can confidently use cloud applications and assets with the assurance that their specific corporate security policies and regulatory concerns will be enforced in the cloud.

The Novell Cloud Security Service is currently in a limited private beta with select customers, including PivotLink. “As the leading provider of cloud-based SaaS business intelligence, our customers trust us with their organization’s most sensitive data,” says Dyke Hensen, Chief Marketing Officer, PivotLink. “These enterprises require a complete solution with multi-tier security that begins with synchronized and federated identity and access management. Novell’s service allows us to extend this model by integrating PivotLink’s application and data level security into the overall framework, offering security assurance and trust that is unmatched in cloud computing.”

One of the major benefits of cloud computing is its on-demand model that enables enterprises to use the cloud only when the business requires more computing power. Many enterprises could theoretically share the same physical computing capacity, using it at different time intervals. This shared resource concept presents significant security and audit challenges, as today’s compliance regulations require strict access and identity controls supported by a complete audit trail. With the Novell Cloud Security Service, organizations can annex a portion of the cloud temporarily, use it with the same security controls that they have in their existing data center, and then release the cloud capacity when they are done using it.

“In traditional IT environments, organizations control their applications, servers, and storage infrastructure. In an internal cloud environment, the architecture changes, but not the complexion of control. However, the control architecture changes profoundly for public cloud offerings such as Amazon EC2, Google Apps, or Salesforce,” said Dan Blum, senior vice president and principal analyst, Burton Group. “When it comes to putting your IT resources and sensitive data such as personal names, addresses, and phone numbers into the cloud, control and trust issues must be addressed.”

Novell is also working with GoGrid, the cloud hosting division of ServePath Dedicated Hosting, to gather more information about customer requirements for security in cloud computing.

“As a multi-tier, cloud computing platform, our commitment is to deliver ‘Control in the Cloud’ by offering startups, medium businesses, government and enterprises the ability to manage complex and robust server networks and infrastructures quickly and easily in the cloud,” says John Keagy, CEO and Co-Founder of GoGrid. “The ability to deliver this capability with the assurance that an organization’s specific security policies and regulatory-issues are being enforced and reported on is the catalyst that will accelerate the wide spread adoption of cloud computing in the industry.”

With the Novell Cloud Security Service, cloud computing providers can accept trusted identity information in many formats without having to replicate credentials at their site and manage those credentials separately. Only Novell provides both single sign-on and support for the sharing of roles, policies and workflows in a cloud computing environment.

“Cloud computing is the on-ramp to tomorrow’s transparent and trustworthy computing model, where on- and off-premise components drive the dynamic enterprise,” said Dipto Chakravarty, vice president of worldwide engineering at Novell. “Security concerns are the #1 inhibitor to enterprises adopting cloud computing. Any cloud assets used by an enterprise must be treated as an extension of the data center with the policies and procedures in place to enforce regulatory compliance and prudent business practices. Cloud computing will not be successful if it forces the enterprise to engage a separate and distinct operating environment.”

The Novell Cloud Security Service utilizes proxy technology so that critical information is never exposed. Designed with interoperability in mind, the Novell Cloud Security Service supports multiple industry standards used by both public and private clouds. This enables customers to seamlessly control security policies and industry regulations between cloud environments and an organization’s existing data center.

“Technology solution providers that enable customers to take full advantage of the flexibility and scalability of the cloud business model are well positioned in the market,” said Jeff Kaplan, cloud industry expert and managing director, Think Strategies. “Risk management issues are top-of-mind as organizations investigate cloud computing to offload IT processes. The Novell Cloud Security Service alleviates security and compliance concerns, so organizations can focus on driving core business value.”

Press and industry analysts interested in seeing an early version of the Novell Cloud Security Service should attend the Burton Catalyst Conference, where Novell will participate in an industry-wide interoperability demonstration. The Burton Group Catalyst Conference takes place on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront. Please visit www.novell.com/cloud for information.

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers the best engineered, most interoperable Linux platform and a portfolio of integrated IT management software that helps customers around the world reduce cost, complexity and risk. With our infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, Novell harmoniously integrates mixed IT environments, allowing people and technology to work as one. For more information, visit www.novell.com.

Novell is a registered trademark of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. *All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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:

GoGrid was positioned in the Visionaries quadrant for Web Hosting and Hosted Cloud System Infrastructure Services (On Demand) in Magic Quadrant

Evaluation is Based On Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute

San Francisco, CA July 8, 2009 — GoGrid, a leader in Cloud Computing Infrastructure Hosting and the Cloud Computing division of ServePath, LLC, today announced it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc., in the Visionaries quadrant in the “Magic Quadrant for Web Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure Services (On Demand)” report.

Gartner evaluated each provider against five use cases, specifically: Self-managed hosting, mainstream managed hosting, highly complex managed hosting, global solutions portfolio and enterprise applications hosting in order to produce a composite rating.

“We think our positioning in the visionaries quadrant is validation of our industry-leading cloud computing technology.  GoGrid pioneered cloud computing before any other leading hosting company was in the game. We continue to offer a more complete hybrid hosting solution consisting of on-demand cloud infrastructure and robust managed hosting environments,”
said GoGrid CEO and Co-Founder, John Keagy. “We think this will position us well to promote our technology as a standard in the field that lends itself manageability, scalability and portability of computing environments around the globe.”

The “Magic Quadrant for Web Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure Services (On Demand)” report is available currently on the GoGrid home page.

GoGrid is the only Cloud Infrastructure vendor that supports the automated instantiation of Windows Server 2003 and 2008, CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Cloud servers through a user-friendly GUI or the GoGrid API. Customers can instantly deploy servers and quickly and easily create cloudcenters (datacenters-in-the-sky) using a variety of tools and features that are included in GoGrid, including free hardware-based F5 load balancing, Cloud servers, Cloud Storage, public and private networks and Cloud Connect, which enables Cloud infrastructures to be connected to dedicated or colocated backend environments via private, dedicated megabit connections.

Cloud Connect handles database servers, transcoding and statistical analysis environments on custom, managed hardware with the power and I/O to perform well. Entire cloudcenters on GoGrid are easily controlled and managed by an industry-recognized web interface or programmatically via a REST-like API.

GoGrid offers customers including startups, small/medium businesses, government and enterprises, the ability to provision, scale and manage complex and robust server networks and infrastructures quickly and easily in the Cloud.

Parent company, ServePath, LLC was included in the list of “Cool Vendors” in the April 2009 “Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing Systems and Application Infrastructure, 2009″ report by Gartner, Inc. published April 6, 2009.

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.

About the Cool Vendor Selection Process
Gartner’s listing does not constitute an exhaustive list of vendors in any given technology area, but rather is designed to highlight interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness of a particular purpose. Gartner defines a cool vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are: Innovative, enable users to do things they couldn’t do before; Impactful, have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology); Intriguing, have caught Gartner’s interest or curiosity in approximately the past six months.

About GoGrid (http://www.gogrid.com)
GoGrid is the leading Cloud Computing, hosted, Internet provider that delivers true “Control in the Cloud™” in the form of cloudcenters. 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 propriety 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 2003, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server, and ASP.NET. GoGrid 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 the coveted 2008 LinuxWorld Expo’s 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.

We hope that you share our excitement with this strategic positioning and analyst review! If you haven’t tried GoGrid yet, I encourage you to do so. You will see why we were placed in the Visionaries Quadrant of the Magic Quadrant!

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.

Loic is the founder and CEO of video conversation site Seesmic.com. Seesmic also makes one of the most popular Twitter and social software clients – Twhirl.org.

Loic also founded and hosts the #1 tech event in Europe, LeWeb.net, with his wife Geraldine. LeWeb gathers together 2000 entrepreneurs from 40 countries in December every year.

Prior to Seesmic and LeWeb, Loic started several other businesses such as Six Apart Europe, RapidSite, a web hosting service (acquired by France Telecom in 1999), as well as B2L, an interactive agency in 1999 (acquired by BBDO).

Loic has been blogging since 2003 at http://www.loiclemeur.com and can be also found online at http://www.seesmic.com/loic and http://www.twitter.com/loic

Recently, Business Week Magazine named Loic one of The 25 Most Influential People on the Web. He advises the World Economic Forum as well as covers the Annual Summit every year in Davos. Originally from the South of France, Loic lives in San Francisco, California and has three boys.

Be sure to mark your calendars. Here are the details:

Date: June 4th, 2009 (Thursday) Time: 6-9pm Location: Microsoft, 835 Market St, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94103

DEMO COMPANIES We are pleased to announce the following demo companies will be showcasing their products and services:

Tap In Systems, Inc

URL: http://www.tapinsystem.com
Presenting: Peter Loh (Founder/CEO)
Description:
Tap In Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of systems management services for cloud-based applications. Awarded the 2009 Under the Radar Conference Judges Choice Award as the top cloud management company, Tap In Systems has developed a cloud-based systems management service to respond to the unique needs of today’s increasingly heterogeneous and virtual IT infrastructures. Tap In Systems’ Cloud Management Service (CMS) is a cloud-based, scalable monitoring service which manages both cloud and on-premises systems, providing status and performance data, alerts and reporting to keep applications running smoothly. CMS is an affordable, on-demand solution that requires no hardware or proprietary expertise, and can scale up and down as a user’s needs change. For more information, visit www.tapinsystems.com.

IDNTITI

URL: http://www.idntiti.com
Presenting: Sree Unnamatla (Founder/CEO)
Description:
IDNTITI (pronounced “Identity”) believes in putting consumer research into the hands of consumers. IDNTITI is a Web 2.0 quantitative rating tool. It provides you the power to create polls and surveys and get the community voice gathered – QUANTITATIVELY. User can analyze rating data around demographic information of the raters. It’s a fun way of understanding community feedback, friends views etc. At core of the application, users build reputation of Organizations (companies, schools, colleges, hospitals, restaurants etc.) products or people they are associated with by rating them quantitatively. We are now available as facebook app at http://apps.facebook.com/idntiti/. Quantitative feedback matters!

Eduify

URL: http://www.eduify.com/beta
Presenting: Dan Merritts (VP of Marketing)
Description:
Eduify is a cloud-based writing platform that helps high school and college students learn to research faster and write better. Eduify is like a writing coach that is always by your side. The service provides web-based applications to edit and store documents; discover, use and automatically cite research; find writing tutorials and examples; safeguard against plagiarism; receive expert writing help. Eduify’s service integrates with existing social networks, giving students everywhere the community, applications and help to immediately improve their writing.

If you are interested in being a Demo Company, please be sure to fill out the Contact form and we will evaluate your submission.

MORE DETAILS

There will be food and drink provided as well as ample time to do networking and talk to the GoGrid and BizSpark folks about programs that can help you jump-start your startup.

Tickets are now on sale. To buy them online (for $10), please visit the EventBrite ordering page. Tickets may be available at the door (for $20), however there is no guarantee that there will still be any remaining.

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:

• Amazon
• AT&T
• Enomaly
• Google
• GoGrid
• Microsoft
• NetSuite
• Rackspace
• RightScale
• Salesforce.com

The GoGrid listing is as follows:

Company name: GoGrid (a division of ServePath)

Launched: March 2008 (ServePath was founded in 2001, GoGrid development began in 2006)

Location: San Francisco

Cloud offering: The GoGrid platform offers Web-based storage and the ability to quickly deploy Windows- and Linux-based virtual servers onto the cloud, with preinstalled software including Apache, PHP, Microsoft SQL and MySQL.

Why we’re watching it: GoGrid, one of Amazon’s chief competitors in the cloud storage and compute markets, distinguishes itself from Amazon in a couple ways. GoGrid offers Windows Server 2008 instances (Amazon offers only Windows Server 2003) and 100% uptime service-level agreements (Amazon offers 99.95% for compute and 99.9% for storage).

CEO: John Keagy, the CEO and founder of ServePath, built and sold several ISPs in the decade prior to starting ServePath.

How GoGrid got its start: Executives at ServePath, a dedicated server hosting company, created GoGrid after deciding that inefficiencies within the standard hosting model could be alleviated with a self-service, pay-as-you-go infrastructure.

Who uses the service: Mostly start-ups, Web 2.0 and SaaS companies, plus a few big names like SAP and Novell who are running pilots or small test projects on the GoGrid service.

I encourage you to give this article a read and see some of the other companies mentioned.