As you probably know by now, GoGrid released a series of new enhancements to our Cloud Computing Infrastructure Hosting service. You can read more about what was included in this latest release in this blog post. Some of the highlighted new features and improvements include:
GoGrid Dedicated Servers
List View of GoGrid Objects
Edit f5 Load Balancers
New Login Page
Self-Service Support Links
We also sent out a newsletter highlighting some of the changes in the January/February 2010 timeframe.
As with previous releases, I wanted to spend some time with our VP of Products, Mario Olivarez, and discuss some of these items and what they mean to GoGrid customers. (YouTube direct link.)
As always, if you have any questions about any of the items you heard in this video or about GoGrid in general, please leave a comment on this post or ask us on Twitter (@GoGrid). Stay tuned for more updates and videos.
Last week, I published the November 2009 GoGrid Customer Update newsletter on the GoGrid blog. In it, I highlighted the important changes that were included in the recent deployment of GoGrid, including our new GoGrid CDN, the GoGrid Exchange, new RAM Hour & Bandwidth plans, new Windows Server base images and some other items.
To follow up with that newsletter, which was sent to GoGrid customers by Mario Olivarez (VP of Products), I thought that it would be useful for those interested in GoGrid to learn a bit more. So, I spent a few minutes interviewing Mario about these recent changes and what they mean to our customers.
If you have any questions about what you heard or saw on the video or GoGrid in general, please leave a comment on this post or ask us on Twitter (@GoGrid). Stay tuned for more updates and videos coming your way.
I had the pleasure of not only attending the Cloud Computing Expo in Santa Clara, CA this week, staffing the booth and generally enjoying talking to a wide range of developers, technologists, vendors, partners and others, but I also was able to do a couple of interviews with Peter Silva, Technical Marketing Manager of f5 Networks. If you don’t already know, free f5 load balancing has been built in to GoGrid since its launch in March 2008.
Below are pair of interviews that appear here as well as on the f5 DevCentral site. We hope you enjoy them!
First is the one with Peter as “interviewer” (also available at f5 DevCentral):
Then the one where I interview Peter about the Expo:
Last week, VMWorld 2009 Expo took center stage in San Francisco at the Moscone Center. With 3+ days of VMWare sessions and exhibits, there was a lot of buzz about VMWare, but also about Cloud Computing in general. GoGrid was an exhibitor at the show, in the Innovators Pavilion, and we found that many of the attendees were looking not solely at VMWare but at other Cloud Computing vendors as well (like GoGrid).
Several of our executives spent time at the show, not only staffing our booth, but also attending sessions as well as talking to vendors and other companies on the expo floor.
During and after the show, I interviewed three GoGrid executives to get their impression of what they saw and heard, as well as their thoughts on what the announcements meant to them and to GoGrid. I interviewed:
It’s important to us to clarify GoGrid’s position with regard to cloud computing standards and the Open Cloud Manifesto (OCM). There has been a fair bit of controversy in the ‘blogosphere’ recently over the OCM, which is to be released on Monday.
In particular, myself and Steve Gillmor (of TechCrunch IT fame among others), had a somewhat heated, but friendly exchange over his scathing assessment of the situation. Steve invited me to a “News Gang” podcast of the Gillmor Gang on Friday, which was posted here. During that live podcast he asked us to clarify GoGrid’s position.
This post is really about making sure everyone is on the same page and understands how GoGrid views the OCM and cloud computing standards in general.
Background
It’s unnecessary to recap everything in detail. I think James Urquhart handled this fairly succinctly. Geva Perry also has a nice summary including a link to the draft document. In a nut:
Some folks tried to lay down some guiding principles for “open” cloud computing in the Open Cloud Manifesto
Some folks reacted badly feeling that the process wasn’t actually “open”
This week, we had the privilege of having Robert Scoble and FastCompany.TV visit the GoGrid offices here in San Francisco. (Believe it or not, it was actually the second time they visited within a month, but due to some lost footage, the interviews and demos had to be re-shot.) FastCompany.tv is a Business Video Network that not only brings business video content to viewers solely via the Internet, but the content itself is raw and very dynamic (more about FastCompany.TV here). In his interviews, Robert brings a meld of technology and personalities. His videos frequently are with key players of prominent businesses and corporations as well as startups and Web 2.0-ers, and he really seems to enjoy showcasing the technology and the people and ideas behind the technology.
In our interview, we really wanted Robert to understand the power of Cloud Computing and the GoGrid vision therein, especially from the perspective of a Cloud Infrastructure provider. As expected, Robert was well versed and up-to-speed on “all things Cloud” and had hands-on experience setting up datacenters so grasping our concept of the “cloudcenter” was extremely easy (as you can see in the video).
Below is the interview between Robert, John Keagy (CEO – GoGrid) and Randy Bias (VP of Technology Strategy – GoGrid). The video is also available on the FastCompany.TV site.
Be sure to watch through the video for a challenge that we are having with Robert!
I also took some pictures from the original filming a few weeks ago.
A few weeks ago, the folks over at Google, specifically the Google Code division, asked us if we wanted to be a showcase example of Google Web Toolkit (GWT). For those who are not familiar with GWT, it allows you to write your AJAX front-end in the Java programming language which GWT then cross-compiles into optimized JavaScript. The benefits of this are that you when you make changes to your code, once it is complied, it is automatically compatible cross-browsers. If you need more details on GWT, I suggest you read through their Product Overview page.
If you have interacted with the GoGrid web portal, then you have seen our implementation of GWT. It helped us provide an extremely rich experience of server-side code while preserving the speed of client-side code. The end result has been our award-winning interface (winner of LinuxWorld 2008 Best of Show).
The Google Code group interviewed Justin Kitagawa, Technical Product Manager and lead on the GoGrid project about his usage of GWT within the GoGrid framework. Below is the full video, which even shows some of our new GoGrid features.
The video can also be viewed on the Google Code Developer Videos section of their site.
At LinuxWorld 2008, Linux Journal’s Associate Editor, Shawn Powers, interviewed Mario Olivarez, the GoGrid Director of Product Management about Cloud Computing and how GoGrid is taking the technology and Cloud Computing movement to the next level. Obviously the LinuxWorld 2008 judges couldn’t agree with us more as they awarded GoGrid the high recognition of Best of Show. Below you can watch the Linux Journal interview in its entirety.
We will definitely have more interviews with various GoGrid champions in the future as well as some other exciting videos floating out there “in the wild.” Stay tuned!
15-year-old Daniel Brusilovsky spent some time with me at GigaOM’s Structure ‘08. Below is an interview that I did with Daniel where we discussed GoGrid and Cloud Computing.
Daniel is the founder and CEO of TeensinTech.com, an organization working to create “a community for teenagers who want to start podcasting, blogging, video-casting and producting all types of new media.” See an interview with Daniel here.
The dust is still settling from Structure08 put on by GigaOM but the general vibe is that it was a solid event. With well over 600 people in attendance, Structure08 lived up to its promise of delivering timely information to businesses on how they could plan their future computing infrastructure needs.
Here’s a quick round up of GoGrid at Structure08.
GoGrid in Webware
Rafe Needleman, editor for Webware.com, spoke at length with GoGrid CEO, John Keagy, and within hours posted the results of his interview this article titled “Tiny (comparatively) GoGrid takes on Amazon Web Services“. Rafe actually summarized GoGrid as compared to Amazon’s EC2 into something that could even be written multiple time in a single Twitter message (within the 140 character limit): “The GoGrid pitch: We’re cheaper. And easier.”
