Last week, the 4th annual GigaOM Structure conference was held in Northern California and GoGrid was part of the show in many ways not only as a sponsor but also active in a variety of panels. This was our 4th Structure conference that we attended and 3rd that we have sponsored…so I guess you can say that we have been there from the start and support the efforts of the GigaOM team. Structure is GigaOM’s “flagship conference on Cloud Computing and Internet Infrastructure” and we have seen the conference grow from a single day to this year’s two day sold-out conference.

What struck me and my colleagues most about this show is the professional and technical level of the attendees. This was not a show of cloud or IaaS “tire kickers”, these were people and businesses who knew their stuff about cloud computing and who were bringing value to the cloud (not diluting the term “cloud” like we are seeing in the mainstream media, in TV commercials and elsewhere). This was a partnership-making event. You could just feel the deals being drafted out in the hallways between sessions.

(image source: GigaOM)

But Structure 2011 was also an educational event, with carefully chosen speakers and panels providing thought-leadership ideas and commentary to a captive audience. I’m not going to discuss each and every session in this article, simply because GigaOM already has that covered. However, because GoGrid was an active in the event, I did want to provide a brief recap of two sessions that we were part of:

• “Dedicated, In More Ways Than One: The IaaS Panel”
• “The What, How and Why of Secure SaaS Delivery – GoGrid and Orange Business Services Discuss the Hosted Private Cloud as the Enabler”

The IaaS Panel was hosted by Paul Miller, Founder of Cloud of Data. On the panel with Paul was our very on John Keagy, Executive Chair and Founder of GoGrid; Chris Pinkham, Co-Founder and CEO of Nimbula; and Duke Skarda, CTO of SoftLayer. You can watch the full panel discussion in the video below.

More businesses are demanding dedicated infrastructure (not sharing hardware with other tenants) on the grounds that it is more secure and offers better performance. The panel discusses the merits of this reasoning and highlight the fact that you aren’t getting the true benefits of cloud computing using solely dedicated hardware. While public clouds, as multi-tenant environments, may make more sense financially, it’s still met with trepidation from “hardware huggers”. The speakers all believe that dedicated infrastructure will grow over the next 5 years, but will ultimately serve as a gateway to public and private cloud infrastructures.

The panel also talks about the mentality towards applications. For so long, developers were adamant about which hardware and operating systems they built their applications on. Now the types of cloud and OS aren’t as important as they used to be. The experts claim that cloud computing users should focus on the application and need to find solutions that best meet the needs of that application.

Finally, the video highlights and discusses the current trend away from virtualization – John Keagy even declares that, “The party is over for virtualization,” essentially, that cloud computing is not virtualization alone. As John states, the type of virtualization software that is used by a cloud provider usually doesn’t matter (unless it is costly to the vendor and that mark-up is passed on to the end-user – my side note) when the customer is shopping for a cloud and it will matter even less in the future. (For those interested, GoGrid uses opensource Xen and a proprietary management layer.)

The GoGrid and Orange Business Services Workshop was a question and answer panel moderated by Paul Miller. Panelists were: Lee Cardona – Director, Orange Business Services, Michael Mascia – Director, Technology Partners, Platform Engineering and Development, Orange Business Services, Mario Olivarez – VP of Products, GoGrid and Jeffrey Samuels – CMO, GoGrid. GoGrid and Orange recently implemented a private cloud using GoGrid’s Hosted Private Cloud service. Soon, GoGrid will be releasing the Orange Case Study which goes into more details of the reasoning behind Orange choosing GoGrid as their solution provider.

Did you attend or watch the livestream or recorded videos of Structure 2011? I would love to know what you thought of the event, the content, the speakers, the sessions and what you gained from it.

With so many different types of cloud infrastructure available – public, private, internal – and with so many conflicting opinions in the industry, finding the right cloud for your business can be a confusing and frustrating process.

In order to bring clarity and understanding, we recorded a new educational webinar, hosted by GoGrid, where guest speaker James Staten, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research Inc., and Mario Olivarez, VP of Product Management of GoGrid share new research and discuss the status and direction of the Cloud infrastructure landscape.

These cloud experts discuss:

• The 4 characteristics of cloud computing
• Why are companies using the Cloud?
• What is the difference between Public and Private Cloud?
• Why is 2011 the Year of the Hosted Private Cloud?
• What is the ROI of the Cloud?

The recorded webinar also includes all the answers to the questions submitted by the live audience.

So if you are interested in learning more about the cloud industry or want to have a greater understanding of how cloud computing technology can help your business The Future of the Cloud will be well worth viewing. Starting today, this webinar is now available as a free download (.wmv and .mov versions available).

Please download the webinar by clicking the download link and leave your thoughts in comment section on this blog post.

Download “The Future of the Cloud – Why 2011 is the Year of Hosted Private Cloud”

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ve seen me ask (and answer) the question “what is cloud computing?” I continually focus on this question because “cloud” has become a buzzword that means many different things to different people – even in the IT industry. Many people have asked that question. And the answers 2-3 years ago were vague. But it does seem that people are fine-tuning their thoughts on what it means nowadays.

(image source: pyramid.GoGrid.com)

A few weeks ago, I set out to clear up this cloud confusion, at the Cloud Connect conference in Santa Clara, CA., by asking several experts “what is cloud computing?” Hear what they had to say in the video or read highlights below:

Martin Tantow – President of Amiro Consulting

Martin Tantow reminds us that cloud computing is a concept we’ve been familiar with for well over a decade. Hotmail, founded in 1996, was a web-based e-mail service that could easily be referred to as one of the original cloud services. Martin believes cloud is a movement where businesses are moving their data storage to the Web and removing the need to store data centrally.

Sven Hammar – CEO of Apica

Sven Hammar contrasts the differences between cloud infrastructure and hosting your own physical servers. Some of the benefits he listed were:

• No upfront capital expenditure
• Scaling on demand without worrying about physical dependencies
• Creating elasticity by circumventing server failure by switching backup data centers

Siddhartha Agarwal – VP of Americas Field Operations, Zend Technologies

Siddhartha Agarwal shares what cloud means for the developer community. Siddhartha points out that developers are not infrastructure people. Cloud computing is valuable because it enables developers to test and deploy their applications quickly without having to worry about infrastructure. Using cloud gives developers peace of mind and let’s them focus on what they are best at.

George Reese – CTO enStratus

George Reese states that cloud computing is on-demand self provisioning of IT resources (virtual, hardware, software, platforms, etc.). He believes that this evolution alters the way we use IT and foresees that this technology will completely change the way businesses use infrastructure.

I believe that it is important to continually ask this question and track the evolution. From 3 years ago, definitions were more nebulous – now, they are much more defined and people can truly articulate what they believe the cloud to be.

What is your definition of cloud computing? Leave a comment!

Some pretty big things are happening at GoGrid. Today we announced the release of our Image Rights Management (IRM) service for GoGrid Partners, a very powerful technology that assists with the software and licensing management in the cloud, specifically within the GoGrid Exchange. As many of you may know, GoGrid Exchange is a catalogue of software server images and solutions from Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that are available on-demand for those who use GoGrid cloud infrastructure. IRM adds several benefits for ISVs and, in turn, customers.

To better explain IRM technology and why it is so important, I sat down with Raja Srinivasan, VP of Cloud Computing at Zeus Technologies, and our very own Paul Lancaster, Manager of Cloud Ecosystems at GoGrid. They discuss how IRM is the solution to licensing software in the cloud and what the GoGrid Exchange means for partners and customers.

Raja and Paul highlight many of the benefits of the GoGrid Exchange as well as focus on our new IRM technology. They break them down into two main areas.

Benefits for Partners:

• License Management – IRM technology automatically verifies if the software is correctly licensed to run within the GoGrid cloud, and will automatically take pre-defined actions should the licensing be invalid.
• Software Management – Simply update your software on the GoGrid Exchange and it is automatically made available to your customers.
• Easier to Deliver Support – When a customer has a support need, the ISV can quickly understand exactly what kind of infrastructure the software is running on so they can identify the support issue faster.
• Easy Payments – GoGrid handles the invoicing of customers for both Partner Image licensing and infrastructure usage, and then pays the Partner for the Partner Service Image usage.

Benefits for GoGrid Customers:

• Single-Button Install – Customers can find the software solution they want on exchange.gogrid.com and instantly install it with little to no configuration.
• Software Management – Users are automatically kept up to date with the latest versions of the software they installed from the Exchange.
• Unified Invoicing – GoGrid handles the billing for Exchange Partner server images as well as infrastructure costs within a single invoice. Customers can manage their software and infrastructure payments from a single portal on a single bill.
• Flexibility & Scalability – the GoGrid Exchange allows customers to get the software they want when they want it. Also, customers aren’t locked into any multi-year licensing deals. The Exchange makes software solutions in the cloud highly efficient and ready to scale with your company.

We’re very excited about the release of IRM what this means for our customers and the cloud computing industry.

For more information, please read our Press Release titled “GoGrid Enhances Partner Exchange Platform with New Image Rights Management Technology” which is available in the Press Release section of the GoGrid site.

For more information, please visit http://exchange.gogrid.com

We recently hosted a joint webinar with Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu project, and discussed Ubuntu in the GoGrid cloud. I had the privilege of hosting this webinar with Nick Barcet, Canonical Cloud Solution Lead, and Zane Williamson, GoGrid Key Accounts System Administrator.

This webinar focuses on the relationship between Ubuntu and cloud infrastructure, how open-source software is fueling innovation and some examples of an Ubuntu environment on GoGrid.

If you weren’t able to make the live webinar, don’t worry because we recorded and it’s available on demand!

This is a really educational webinar that covers a lot of content. Ubuntu in the GoGrid cloud discusses the following topics:

• An overview of the cloud landscape
• A Ubuntu retrospective
• Ubuntu server adoption statistics
• Benefits of Ubuntu in the GoGrid Cloud
• Use cases – applications best suited for Ubuntu
• Q&A

Whether you’re a Linux expert or just getting started with open-source software, we’re sure you’ll enjoy this recorded webinar.

Click here to view the webinar.