Yesterday, I posted an article about a webinar we held that was targeted at current GoGrid users. To round out the mix, we held another webinar geared towards users who might be new to Cloud Computing and GoGrid itself. This second webinar, titled “Complex Infrastructure Made Easy – Learn How You Can Leverage the GoGrid Cloud” was recorded on 6/29/10.
Similar to its predecessor, this webinar covered many aspects of the GoGrid 3.0 release. Presenters were Jeff Samuels, Michael Sheehan and Kole Hicks of GoGrid. The topics we discussed included:
Overview: Complex Infrastructure Made Easy
Landscape & GoGrid 3.0: What is the Cloud, GoGrid 3.0 new features
With the release of GoGrid 3.0 a few weeks ago, we held a webinar titled “Complex Infrastructure Made Easy – Learn About the GoGrid 3.0 Release & Our New East Coast Datacenter“. This webinar was primarily geared towards current GoGrid customers. We also did a webinar the next day that was targeted at people who are new to Cloud Computing and GoGrid. I will be posting that webinar shortly as well.
This webinar was recorded on June 28, 2010, the day of the official release of GoGrid 3.0. Presenters were Mario Olivarez & Justin Kitagawa of GoGrid and Ryan Holland of TrendMicro. The topics included:
Overview: Complex Infrastructure Made Easy – GoGrid’s unique value proposition
GoGrid 3.0: The latest version of the GoGrid platform – East Coast demo
GoGrid Security: New services from Cisco, Fortinet, TrendMicro & Sentrigo
PCI Compliance: PCI compliance in the GoGrid Cloud – Demo with TrendMicro
Questions & Answers
I realize that not all GoGrid customers were able to attend this webinar, so I have provided the full recording below (it is also available on our Vimeo channel):
GoGrid was a sponsor and exhibitor at the recent Structure 2010, a Cloud Computing industry event that took place on June 23 & 24 in San Francisco.
The event topics covered a wide range of Cloud subjects, with many industry leaders discussing their views on the subject matter at hand. Topic titles included:
Dealing with the Data Tsunami: The Big Data Panel
Cloudonomics: The Value of the Cloud
Guru Panel: Web Infrastructure for Real Time and Critical
Hitting Reset: Reinventing Core Internet Technologies
Analytics and Management Layers
What Comes After the Blade? Architectures for the Cloud
Fatter and Faster: Reducing Latency and Increasing Capacity on Broadband
There were several panel sessions as well.
GoGrid’s CEO & Co-Founder, John Keagy, was interviewed by GigaOM Pro’s Derrick Harris. John answered the following questions:
“GoGrid is a cloud provider, can you explain the GoGrid service?”
“Cloud computing is a hot topic right now, how is GoGrid’s business?”
“One of the keys to GoGrid’s success is your strong Partner program. Can you talk a a little bit about your Partner program and why it is important for Cloud providers to have one?”
“Do you find that a lot of your Partners bring a lot of business to GoGrid?”
“Another unique thing about GoGrid is your background in managed hosting and dedicated servers. Can you talk about how that enables GoGrid to offer a hybrid cloud option?”
A couple of weeks ago, I posted an article about an ad campaign GoGrid is running on CNET’s Buzz Out Loud podcast. Be sure to read that article first and watch the video there before you watch this one! And because of the comments from the BOL chatroom and the hosts, we in the GoGrid Marketing department decided to keep running with the “Mafia” meme. With only a few days left in the campaign, we produced another ad which went live yesterday and I thought it might be fun to share it. So here it is:
Since the campaign is drawing to a close, I wanted to provide some “behind the scenes” details about it. Specifically:
It was conceived, scripted and produced entirely in-house in the Marketing/WebDev department
All of the Voices and Actors are GoGrid employees
Equipment that we used consisted of: a bunch of Macs, Audacity, Flash CS3, Photoshop CS3, iMovie, a Sennheiser mic, an Mbox pre-amp, and some blood, sweat & tears (well, mainly sweat)
Despite the themes of both NoHardware.com and The GoGrid Mafia, we are NOT violent people
No animals or humans were harmed in the production (aside from that one guy “swimming with the fishes”)
The GoGrid People who contributed directly or appeared in the ads are as follows:
Dr. GoGrid – if you haven’t seen NoHardware.com and the videos there, be sure to check it out. Dr. GoGrid is none other than the GoGrid CEO John Keagy
The GoGrid Godfather – Jack Duffy, GoGrid’s EVP of Sales, was actually born and raised in New Jersey – that is his actual accent! (And that’s actually him in the ad!)
“Blondie” – is played by GoGrid’s HR Manager, Jeryn Carlise, who is actually, not blonde!
The “Movie Announcer” – was yours truly, after some audio mixing, all accentuation and phrasing emphasis is mine though
Audio – Dale Conboy, Web Developer at GoGrid, plays drums in a band and handled our audio recordings and processing
Animation & Video – Sean Slinsky, Lead Web Developer at GoGrid and avid photographer, brought an artistic eye to the video creation & production process
Advertising – Alex de Boni, GoGrid’s Online Marketing and Communication Specialist, or resident Brazilian made sure that the i’s were dotted and t’s were crossed around the business side of the campaign
Who says that Marketing can’t be fun! Last month, we decided to sponsor CNETs Buzz Out Loud podcast “of indeterminate length” and set out to create a simple video promotion that would run within the podcast. After the sponsorship ad had been running for a week or so and us monitoring the progress, we noticed a funny trend. It actually had a following and had pointed out a “theme”. To that end, we put our creative hats on and decided to simply run with it and produced a follow-up video.
Instead of trying to write about the evolution of the ad, I decided to put together a quick video that explains it all:
For the creation of this ad, we did everything in-house. We would love to get some comments on this! And share it with others.
And there is more to come so be sure to stay tuned…
This week, GoGrid was not only an exhibitor and Silver Sponsor of theCloud Connect Event 2010 in Santa Clara, CA, but also our Lead Senior Software Engineer, Justin Kitagawa, was part of a panel titled “Writing Code for Many Clouds“.
The panel was moderated by Shlomo Swidler (Founder, Orchestratus) and the members included:
Shashi Mysore, Product Specialist, Eucalyptus Systems
Adrian Cole, Founder, jClouds
George Reese, CTO, enStratus
Michael Mayo, Rackspace
Mitch Garnaat, President, CloudRight
Justin Kitagawa, Lead Senior Software Engineer, GoGrid
Sam Ramji, Vice President of Strategy, Sonoa Systems
Each panel member was allowed a few minutes to discuss how their service can be controlled programmatically via an API or other method. This is an important discussion point because many companies and developers are looking to build applications that span clouds. However prior to doing this, these developers must fully understand how a cloud is architected and can be utilized. Obviously, when building a cloud as a vendor, there are challenges and hurdles that must be overcome in the process. Each of the panelists discussed their design decisions and then answered questions presented to them by the moderator as well as by audience members.
As an attendee of this panel, I thought it important to present GoGrid’s thoughts on our own API and how we came to make the decisions behind its development. Below is a video of Justin’s presentation which covers: (more…)
With the March 2010 GoGrid newsletter, we welcome and introduce a new name to our communications, that of Maria Gallegos who has joined us as a Product Marketing Coordinator for GoGrid. Maria comes from a marketing background (from financial services to non-profits) and will be producing the GoGrid newsletter as well as managing other customer experience programs. One of her first tasks has been the March 2010 Customer Update Newsletter.
For those who are not current GoGrid users, we provide the full newsletter on our blog, just so that you can see what you are missing out on! If any of the items that are mentioned here interest you, or if you want to get started on GoGrid right away (remember, we provide a full range of hosted infrastructure solutions ranging from Cloud Servers to Dedicated Servers to Cloud Storage, all within a Load Balanced network), I encourage you to speak with a GoGrid Sales Representative. They can provide you with answers to many of your infrastructure hosting questions. Just tell them that I sent you!
Here is the full March 2010 GoGrid Customer Update newsletter:
Hello,
As 2010 continues to progress, so does GoGrid. From system enhancements to new partners, you’ll find this edition of the newsletter full of information to better help you manage your cloud hosting infrastructure. Specific topics include: (more…)
On Wednesday February 24, 2010, GoGrid hosted a webinar for new and existing GoGrid users designed to discuss the recent February 2010 Feature updates to GoGrid. There is a blog post that details all of the new features included in the release as well as a screencast which walks through these features and important changes. The webinar covered the following information:
What is our view of Cloud Computing
What is GoGrid
New feature: GoGrid Dedicated Servers
What is Hybrid Infrastructure
A GoGrid Portal Demo
Deploying a GoGrid Dedicated Server
The new GoGrid List View
Walk-through of other Interface Enhancements & Links
Question & Answer Session
The entire Webinar is below and is broken into two parts:
Part One – Overview presentation, discussion of Cloud & GoGrid, demonstration of the GoGrid Portal & GoGrid Dedicated Server Deployments (30 minutes in length)
Part Two – Question & Answer session from the audience and Additional Information (19 minutes in length)
Also included later on in this post is the stand-alone presentation (without audio, demo walk-through or question and answers).
A couple of weeks ago we released a new version of GoGrid which included a variety of exciting enhancements and features. Most notable are:
GoGrid Dedicated Servers
List View of GoGrid Objects
Edit F5 Load Balancers via the API
New Login Page
Self Service Support Links
More details about these features can be found on the following GoGrid blog post. For a quick overview of the new features in the form of a screencast, please watch the video below. I quickly cover many of the items listed above including:
