Cranium Solutions’ flagship product, ASAP™ (Automated Security Assessment Program), is the first fully automated end-to-end network security testing solution that runs as a Cloud Based Service. Businesses can perform simple and automated Vulnerability Assessments and Penetration Tests of any systems they have deployed on the GoGrid Cloud. Furthermore, the Cranium Solutions ASAP Service is a GSI based service that can be setup in minutes and requires no configuration by the customer unless they are performing assessments of servers that do not have external IP addresses.
Cranium Solutions on the GoGrid Exchange
There is currently 1 image live on the GoGrid Exchange for Cranium Solutions. It is on a CentOS 5.3 (64 bit) image:
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):
Following the announcement yesterday of the launch of GoGrid 3.0, today we officially announced the opening and availability of a new GoGrid datacenter presence on the East Coast in Ashburn, VA. We have partnered with Equinix (Nasdaq: EQIX), a premier provider of global data center services. GoGrid users now the the ability to provision infrastructure in both the West Coast and East Coast. This was a frequent request from our customers so we are excited to now have this ability within GoGrid.
More information about the new datacenter can be found here.
Below is the Press Release that we sent out about the new datacenter:
GoGrid Continues Expansion with New East Coast Data Center
We at GoGrid are excited to introduce you to the latest version of GoGrid! (Perhaps you already saw the “Sneak Peak” article I posted earlier.) After several months of planning, developing, implementing, testing, deploying and wiping the sweat off of our collective brows, we present to you, GoGrid 3.0.
This post will not be about the nitty-gritty details of the release as there will be several other posts that touch on all of the activities going on at GoGrid. To provide some guidance though, here’s what I’m going to briefly cover:
New GoGrid Product Site
Webinar for New GoGrid Customers
High-level Overview of GoGrid 3.0 Features
Copy of Press Release on GoGrid 3.0
There are many ways to get more information about this release and what it can do for you as someone shopping for Cloud Infrastructure or already using the GoGrid Cloud. One of the best ways is to talk to a GoGrid Sales Representative as they have great ways to choose the right GoGrid infrastructure solution for you. You can call them at: 1.877.946.4743 (US & Canada) or 1.415.869.7444 (Worldwide). Or we typically have 24×5 Live Sales Chat & Contact forms available here.
Last night, the GoGrid Engineering and Network teams toiled late into the night preparing for the launch of GoGrid version 3.0. Those of you current GoGrid users may have already noticed the updated login screen:
Well, I wanted to give everyone a small update on this upcoming release, especially those GoGrid users who have logged in and seen some slightly changed interfaces.
Note: below the “Highlights of Changes” section is information on two upcoming WEBINARS for future and current GoGrid users. I encourage you to register for one of those.
First, if you want to read a bit more about some of the features included in GoGrid v3.0, take a look at the GoGrid Software Update page. Most importantly, this update lays the groundwork for the opening of our new East Coast datacenter (US-East-1) in Ashburn, VA. To accommodate this expansion, we’ve made some now-visible changes to the following:
Billing Widget – easier to read & gives you Memory Usage at a glance
List View Panel – the network widget has been removed and is now enhanced within the List View, making it much easier to view your public and private IP address across datacenters
Workflow Changes – see below for details on this change
GoGrid pushes ahead with new Intel-based technology, specifically, the new Intel Xeon Processor 5600 series, code named “Westmere”.
The following Press Release was distributed today:
GoGrid Announces Cloud Services Powered by New Intel® Xeon® Processor 5600 series The 32-nm processor provides an incredible 50% savings in power consumption
San Francisco, CA – June 15, 2010 – Today GoGrid, a leading cloud infrastructure hosting provider, announced they will be deploying cloud services based on the powerful new Intel® Xeon® Processor 5600 series, formerly codenamed “Westmere”.
GoGrid cloud services have always provided superior CPU performance, which means faster response times and improved productivity for our customers,” said John Keagy, GoGrid CEO. “With the latest Intel Xeon processor technology, we will be able to deliver an even better experience to our customers at a lower cost.”
GoGrid is pleased to announce a new Cloud Management option using enStratus as a management service for GoGrid. The following Press Release describing the new offering was issued by GoGrid Partner, enStratus. enStratus is a cloud infrastructure management platform that allows for the deployment, operation and management of enterprise-class application in public and private clouds. Its multi-cloud architecture is focused on the security and high-availability of mission-critical web applications.
enStratus enables enterprises to run applications that operate with sensitive data all within a cloud infrastructure environment.
Webinar – June 23rd
enStratus is hosting a webinar on June 23rd titled: Cloud Security Best Practices from 11:30PM to 12:15 PM Central Time where you can learn how enStratus and GoGrid work together to ensure your security policies and procedures are met for your cloud computing infrastructure. Topics include:
How can I best manage my keys for the cloud?
Can I encrypt my data?
If lawyers subpoena my cloud provider, can they get access to my data?
Can I have users with varying levels of access to my infrastructure?
At GoGrid, we firmly believe that having a rich and developing Partner ecosystem is critical to not only our success but also our customers. GoGrid Partners bring an incredible amount of value-added tools and services in the form of what we call PGSIs (Partner GoGrid Server Images) and we work with them closely to ensure that our joint offerings provide as much value as possible. If you haven’t explored the GoGrid Exchange, I encourage you to do so as we have a variety of tailored solutions to meet a wide variety of needs.
Categories for PGSIs currently include: Software & Applications, Development & Testing, Disaster Recovery & Backup, Cloud Management, Security, Monitoring & Reporting and more. Also, we are actively looking for new technology-enablers in the form of Partners so if you have a SaaS or PaaS offering that you would like to potentially be included in the GoGrid Exchange, simply fill out this form and we will start you on your way. All of our current partners are listed here.
Have you used a Partner GSI? If so, every Partner Server Image has a rating and comments section so that you can Review any of the images that you use. We hope that you will provide feedback as it helps us and our partners better evaluate the usefulness of their images on GoGrid.
Want to see a quick list of the top 10 Cloud Computing players in the space? (And yes, GoGrid is obviously one of those otherwise I wouldn’t be mentioning this article.) Yesterday, Jeff Vance published an article titled “Ten Cloud Computing Leaders” on Datamation where he briefly describes his thoughts on the leaders in the Cloud Computing space.
As Vance writes about each Cloud provider, he breaks down his analysis into answering a few key questions:
Why they are a leader today
Why the could be on top in years to come
Who the Key Executives are
Who their Customers are
I have always found that doing comparisons of Cloud-related companies to be quite a difficult task since products and services can vary so dramatically. And, obviously, there are other factors and metrics that simply cannot be listed in these types of “summary” articles, things like hosting experience, feature-to-feature comparisons, breadth & depth of product and services offerings, etc. However, if you are looking for an organized snapshot of the current leaders, you might want to give Vance’s article a good read.
