When you purchase a car, you obviously think a lot about its performance before you buy. How much horsepower does it have? Is the car safe? How does it handle? Is the gas mileage going to break the bank or will you be saving the environment? Is the vehicle flexible enough to meet all your needs or just suitable for one activity like off-roading?

When you think about cloud computing, specifically cloud infrastructure, performance matters as well. And there are many factors to consider when shopping for a cloud provider or partner. How’s their VM performance? Does their network provide multiple high-bandwidth pipes to support your network-hungry application or service? Are there any I/O bottlenecks? If your website comes under heavy load, can you burst to support it and then scale back when demand subsides?

These are important considerations. Would you want a car that has no acceleration when getting on a highway? Probably not. That’s the same reason you wouldn’t want a cloud that is over-subscribed or doesn’t have the architecture to support your business needs.

Speaking of “performance,” this is our third year sponsoring the Under the Radar (UTR) conference and marks the second year that our CMO, Jeffrey Samuels, being a judge there. This year, Jeff will be on the panel for the Performance Monitoring session. Here are the companies presenting in this session:

• Fabric Engine – lets developers write high-performance application using dynamic languages
• Iron.io – provides elastic products for cloud messaging and background processing
• Sumo Logic – gives real-time Big Data and IT insights of log intelligence and analytics
• Tracelytics – provides insights into the performance of web applications

Tuning your application or infrastructure for the best performance possible is a critical check-box when moving into production. And monitoring how everything performs once it’s released is another. One quick and easy way to get a jump-start on these two items is to choose a cloud provider with a reputation as a solid performer. As the Technology Evangelist of GoGrid, I’m particularly proud of our performance over the past years. We’ve been independently benchmarked as providing market-leading I/O performance and also lead the pack in uptime from an SLA standpoint. Our network availability and performance remain unparalleled. And we craft unique infrastructure solutions to ensure performance is there when you need it, whether it’s with a completely public cloud solution, a hybrid infrastructure (mixture of cloud and physical servers), or a private cloud instance. And our recently announced Big Data solution couples performance with the scalability that developers, analytics firms, advertisers, and social media companies are demanding.

I look forward to seeing the innovations companies are presenting at UTR this year, and can’t wait to meet many of you personally. Best of luck to all the presenters. May you truly “perform!”

Earlier this month, we had had the distinguished pleasure of celebrating GoGrid’s international expansion to EMEA by hosting a party with Equinix in Amsterdam. Europe has been more than hospitable to our new European team, and this event was no exception.

This was my 4th visit to our Amsterdam HQ and data center and I’m truly excited to see the traction within the European community and the adoption by those European companies seeing value in multiple global points of presences.

The location of the event was at a converted auto shop which is now a cool new restaurant and lounge, it still had some stylish remnants of its past – including an actual Ferrari in the center of the room! This venue turned out to be the ideal location for our welcoming party.

The turnout to the event was great. GoGrid received a warm welcome from over 100 different partners and customers as well as some of the top international companies who also have expanded to Europe. Having a casual atmosphere in which to discuss technology services, the importance and adoption of cloud computing within Europe and the direction it is going globally definitely set the stage for some powerful conversations.

But, it wouldn’t have been a party if we didn’t have a guest speaker. Comedian, Greg Shapiro, was perfect for the event. Shapiro is also from the US but now makes a living in the Netherlands. His antics and insights on transitioning cultures made for a fun and enjoyable evening. Greg Shapiro is top notch and we highly recommend him to anybody looking for a sharp speaker who understands both a US and European audience.

With two large TV screens displaying pictures and words to illustrate the differences in cultures and languages, Shapiro kept the audience engaged while balancing cultural and language nuances.

It’s important for me to see the results of our hard work over the past year developing not only an EMEA HQ but also firmly establishing a cloud data center presence. As our global reach continues to expand, I hope to meet more of our overseas customers and get to know how they are utilizing our cloud services.

It’s always difficult to be self-congratulatory, but when two distinct organizations post articles putting GoGrid in the limelight, I feel that they have to be mentioned. The two sites, CRN and OnDemand, both posted articles that we, as a company, are proud of. If you are a current customer of GoGrid, you should be proud as well, as it is a recognition of your selection process in making GoGrid your cloud partner.

The first to appear was on CRN, a website providing news, analysis and perspectives for VARs and technology integrators. In his article, author Andrew Hickey, lists out “The 20 Coolest Cloud Infrastructure Vendors” of which GoGrid is one of the 20.

As Hickey describes:

If you want to be in the cloud business, these are some of the cloud infrastructure companies that will help you get there. These are the providers that will host your customers’ business applications and provision them on-demand as Software-as-a-Service. They will store customers’ data in the cloud and secure it there as well. Whether customers want to use a private cloud, a public cloud or a hybrid mixture of both, these companies can help make it happen. And they can even help your customers exchange their expensive legacy hardware for a simple monthly payment plan.

(The others mentioned are, alphabetically: Amazon Web Services, AT&T, Bluelock, Cisco, Dell, Eucalyptus Systems, Gale Technologies, GoGrid, HP, Nebula, NephoScale, OpenStack, Opscode, OpSource, Rackspace, Savvis, SoftLayer, SunGard Availability Services, Terremark, and Verizon. Congrats to the other companies in the list!)

The second article of recognition comes from AlwaysOn (“Networking the Global Silicon Valley”) OnDemand. OnDemand is an event “where top Internet companies disrupt the enterprise and square off with the incumbent players pioneering cloud computing and SaaS.” This month, they posted their “2012 OnDemand 100 Top Private Companies“.

The editors describe this list as such:

This year’s 100 top, private on-demand and SaaS companies-plus 20 to watch-are creating a complex world of interconnected business intelligence, merging valuable legacy data and systems with new, vital streams of information. AlwaysOn is proud introduce the third annual OnDemand 100-the top emerging Internet companies disrupting the established enterprise, reinventing legacy data streams, and pioneering cloud computing and SaaS.

This year’s OnDemand 100 companies are true leaders, developing game-changing approaches and technologies that are pushing outside the bounds of existing markets and away from entrenched institutions. Companies were selected based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

(Companies in the “Cloud-Infrastructure” space include: Actifio, AlienVault, Box.net, Centrify, CloudShare, Coraid, Delphix, Dropbox, Evolve IP, GoGrid, IntelePeer, LiveOps, Mu Dynamics, Opscode, Plantir Technologies, RainStor, RingCentral, Skytap, Sonian, Spiceworks, Syncplicity, Veracode and WhiteHat Security. Great job to all those companies!)

Again, thanks for being a GoGrid customer and making us even stronger and better as a company. We look forward to providing you with industry-leading technologies and services! For those who are not yet GoGrid customers, please be sure to contact us to find out why we are a recognized leader in the cloud industry.

I recently celebrated my 5-year anniversary with GoGrid! That’s me holding the service award we hand out to employees who celebrate 3 and 5-year anniversaries. It was 5 years ago that I implemented the idea of handing out these gems, gems that GoGrid employees proudly display at their desks.

I remember my first interview with, then, ServePath, and interviewing in a very small office down the street from our current corporate office. The office was so small my interview was conducted in the break area/lobby surrounded by cubes. 5 years later GoGrid’s corporate office occupies the second floor in the Hills Plaza complex that overlooks the Bay Bridge. Talk about an upgrade!

Image source: www.noehill.com

My first tour of our San Francisco Data Center was amazing. Back then the data center shared the floor with cubes and offices, housing our small engineering and support teams. Now the data center is so big, with only servers and more servers lining pretty much every inch of our space, that I get lost on the occasional tours I give to my vendors and employees.

Although I have witnessed many changes over the last 5 years what hasn’t changed are the people that work for GoGrid. We are still that group of people I saw on the Craigslist posting for my job 5 years ago but better. We still work hard and like to have fun. This is what makes GoGrid a great place to work and why there are quite a few of us who have been here for a very long time.

So now that I have been inducted to the unofficial (still working on internal marketing) “Old School” club I join the ranks of 14% of the company who have been here for 5 years or more and another 12% that will hit their 5 years sometime this year! This means as an Old School member I get one week to Take a Break this year- that’s GoGrid’s way of saying thanks for your continued years of service and that’s in addition to the 25 other days I get for PTO. Thoughts on where I should vacation would be appreciated!

I’m looking forward to more years to come with GoGrid!

In January, we announced the opening of GoGrid’s new EMEA Headquarters and deployment of our cloud infrastructure in Equinix’s International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. To mark this collaboration, we’re pleased to announce an upcoming event jointly hosted with our friends at Equinix. The “Heads in the Cloud” happy hour will take place Thursday, 15 March, 2012, from 16:30–19:00 at De Goudfazant, Amsterdam (Noord). If you’re in the area, we’d be delighted to have you join us for the celebration.

The highlight of the evening will definitely be the comedy of Greg Shapiro, our guest speaker. If you haven’t heard Shapiro perform, check out his website and learn how this Chicago native ended up in Amsterdam and why his humor helps make everyday business bearable. We expect it to be a terrific event, so make sure to block the date out in your calendar.

After Shapiro’s performance, relax over drinks and chat with your peers—partners, suppliers, and customers—as well as the GoGrid and Equinix teams. We’ll be happy to answer your questions about our plans for the region moving forward. And for those who’ve never visited De Goudfazant before, ”Heads in the Cloud” provides the perfect complement to the stylish waterfront location and unique atmosphere.

If you’re interested in attending, we encourage you to register ahead of time via email to Geesje.Duis-Bakker[AT]eu.equinix.com. We look forward to seeing you on the 15^th!