Here at GoGrid, we recently released our new Hosted Private Cloud service. Hosted Private Cloud is the first cloud solution that is housed in a datacenter (hosted) with each client having their own dedicated nodes containing their private cloud (private). This single-tenant implementation addresses many of the security concerns had by cloud skeptics and maintains the ease and flexibility of public cloud solutions.

Hosted Private Cloud is not only technically different from other Private cloud implementations, but the costs are also significantly different (and substantially less!). Let’s break down the cost comparisons between GoGrid’s offering and other solutions.

Other private cloud solutions include several more costs and require in-house hardware with a significant amount of capital expenditure. Hosted Private Cloud, on the other hand, has no capital expenditure and solely charges operating costs. And the solution is completely managed and operated by GoGrid (pure OPEX).

In a case study between GoGrid’s Hosted Private Cloud and VMware’s collocated private cloud, it was found that VMware’s solution cost 2.25x more than Hosted Private Cloud and had CAPEX of 42% while GoGrid had a CAPEX of 0.

We are very proud of technology behind Hosted Private Cloud and the considerable savings it brings our users.

Wish to learn more about Hosted Private Cloud? Contact us or download: TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) Advantage of GoGrid’s Hosted Private Cloud

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.

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!

Today we released a new Whitepaper written by Randy Bias, GoGrid’s VP of Technology Strategy titled “Scaling Your Internet Business.” If you are a Web Application Developer or interested in learning about scalability, specific to how it relates to Web Applications in or outside of the Cloud, I encourage you to give this whitepaper a read.

The whitepaper can be downloaded here from the GoGrid site.

Scalability is critical to the success of many organizations currently involved in doing business on the Web or who are providing information that may suddenly become heavily demanded. While there are many strategies that IT organizations can undertake, the way they are designed and implemented can make or break these businesses.

The GoGrid whitepaper discusses the following topics:

• How web applications scale
• Cloud Computing and scalability therein
• Thinking through and choosing a scaling strategy
• GoGrid & ServePath scalability options

Scalability can come in all shapes, sizes and flavors. You can scale “up” (vertically) or “out” (horizontally). Choosing the right option can be tricky, if not daunting. Depending on what you want your strategy to be, you can choose “cloud-only”, “dedicated/colocated-only” or a “hybrid” approach.

A Cloud-only environment.

A “Hybrid” environment using Cloud Connect.

A “Hybrid” environment using Dedicated and Colocated servers in conjunction with a Cloud front-end using Cloud Connect.

“Businesses need more than just cloud computing to solve their scalability problems,“ says the whitepaper author Randy Bias. “Web operators and developers want to use the best tool for the job and, right now, cloud computing is one tool in their arsenal. GoGrid has pioneered the concept of cloudcenters, datacenters-in-the-cloud, which provide the full range of scalability tools needed for a growing business including cloud servers, managed dedicated database servers, private VLANs, VPNs, and even co-location for those who need their own hardware. This whitepaper describes how a growing business can use vertical and horizontal scaling techniques to the most advantage to save money and never miss a prospect, customer, reader or interaction.”

Companies interested in learning about Web Application Scalability, Cloud Infrastructure, hybrid hosting and scaling solutions available from GoGrid or ServePath are encouraged to download this whitepaper from either the GoGrid site or ServePath site.