GoGrid, and parent company ServePath, are excited to announce participation in Microsoft’s new WebsiteSpark Program, specifically targeted towards Web Professionals. Using WebsiteSpark, Web Pros can drive new business opportunities through connections with partners and customers around the world.

Before jumping into the details and Q&A, if you already know that you want to participate in this program with either GoGrid or ServePath as your Hosting partner, please visit our signup pages on the GoGrid site or ServePath site.

But what does all of this mean? Trust me, I have read through all of the 19 pages of Frequently Asked Questions and Program documentation and it is a bit overwhelming. So, this blog post is really an effort to try to cull out the critical points of importance for you. However, if there are any questions that you do have after reading this, I encourage you to talk to some WebsiteSpark folks or sales reps at GoGrid or ServePath. At a high-level, this is an incredibly helpful program targeted towards Web Professionals.

Probably the best way to approach this is through a series of questions and answers.

What is WebsiteSpark?

Similar to the Microsoft BizSpark program, WebsiteSpark is designed to help small companies ramp up their business, web dev and design capabilities and offerings. Those companies who qualify for WebsiteSpark can add Microsoft product and platform proficiency to their business credentials as well as help create new business opportunities by connecting them with partners (like Web Hosters) and customers via increased visibility.

What is a “Web Pro”?

Web Pro stands for Web Professional. These are individuals or small companies that specialize in web development, web-based Value-Added Providers (VAPs), web-savvy IT generalists, web design or the management or creation of web services.

How do I qualify to participate in WebsiteSpark?

The qualification is fairly simple. First, your business must primarily focus on providing Web development and/or design services or solution to your customers. Second, your company must have 10 or less members (this includes owners, employees and contractors). Those are the “hard” requirements.

Additionally, you must develop and deploy a minimum of one new website using Microsoft tools and servers within 6 months of enrollment. These websites must be logged with Microsoft. Also, you and your business must be enrolled in the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN – formerly known as the Microsoft Partner Program).

So I’m interested and I qualify, what do I get by enrolling?

The benefits abound! For starters, you get: New Business Opportunities, Support & Training, and Access to Software & Solutions. Let’s explore these a bit more:

• New Business Opportunities
  • WebsiteSpark Marketplace – be found by customers by building a web presence to showcase your capabilities, all with a simplified process to connect with qualified customers
  • Partner Recruiting Portal – if you need a partner to compliment or add to your offering or skill set, you can find them within this portal
  • Web App Gallery – find off-the-shelf Web applications and solutions to make your business even better. In the form of a gallery of offerings, you can choose applications that have been designed and built to work within the Microsoft Web platform…all without headaches.
• Support & Training
  • Receive professional support from Microsoft as well as Network Partners, Hosting Partners and other Web Pros
  • 2 professional support incidents per program membership
  • Free online training
  • Managed newsgroups on the Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN)
• Access to Software & Solutions
  • Design/Dev/Testing Tools: Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition (3 licenses), Expression Studio 2/3 (1 license), Expression Web 2/3 (2 licenses), Windows Web Server 2008 (3 licenses) and SQL Server 2008 Web (3 licenses)
  • Production & Deployment: Windows Web Server 2008 & SQL Server 2008 Web
  • Special Offers: DotNetPanel control panel to manage web site hosting parameters

What is the cost to join?

There is actually no up-front cost to join WebsiteSpark and receive the benefits. There is a Program Offering Fee of $100 (USD) when your company exits the program. Additionally, if you choose a Hosting  or Network Partner, there may be (reduced) fees associated with using their services.

Ok, that’s cool, but how does GoGrid or ServePath come into the mix?

Obviously, if you are a web application developer or designer, you need to host your or your clients’ apps, services or products somewhere. This is something where WE are experts! If you are looking for the LARGEST Windows Server 2003 and 2008 Cloud Hosting provider out there, then you should choose GoGrid or ServePath as your Hosting Partner within the WebsiteSpark program. If you want to set up a hybrid hosting solution using a combination of cloud and dedicated servers (we call it Cloud Connect) , we are one of the few hosting providers that can do this.

We have put together a robust hosting package, with discounts not available to the general public.There are 3 specific packages available: GoGrid Windows Package, GoGrid/ServePath Hybrid Windows Package and ServePath Windows Package. The details are below:

The GoGrid Windows Package offers not only GoGrid credit towards a new GoGrid account, we also want to help you move your site over to our Cloud and are providing a $100 credit to help you start.

The GoGrid/ServePath Hybrid Windows Package gives you the best of all worlds with the ability to create a hybrid infrastructure environment using both Cloud and Dedicated infrastructures.

For those interested in a dedicated hosting plan only, we provide the ServePath Windows Package which has incredibly nice discounts across the board.

(*1 year commitment required)

If you are not sure which package is the best for you, be sure to contact a GoGrid or ServePath Sales Representative. They will not only help you through your choices, but also can provide you with a GoGrid trial credit to get you going in the GoGrid Cloud.

Where can I find out more information?

Probably the best way is to talk to a GoGrid or ServePath Sales Representative (as mentioned previously). However, the Microsoft WebsiteSpark site does have a lot of helpful information including a Program Guide (note: direct link to Adobe PDF document). Also, feel free to leave any questions you may have as a comment on this post.

We hope that you sign up with WebsiteSpark with GoGrid/ServePath as your hosting partner. It’s a tremendous program that you would be foolish not to take advantage of.

It’s with great pleasure that we announce the guest speaker for the StartUp SF (version 2.1) event coming on June 4th, 2009. (StartUp SF is a San Francisco Technology Meetup co-hosted by GoGrid/ServePath and Microsoft BizSpark.)

Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic, has graciously agreed to do a presentation titled “How to Launch a Product with your Community.” Learn first hand how to use various community building techniques to build your product, service or brand from the ground up.

You may have seen Loic and Seesmic Desktop mentioned in the New York Times site.

Seesmic is Loic’s 5th business so he definitely has lots of experience under his belt. Some more information about Loic:

Loic is the Seesmic CEO. He founded the company in 2007 with the goal of turning online video into a powerful medium for threaded, interactive video conversations.

Loic is the founder and CEO of video conversation site Seesmic.com. Seesmic also makes one of the most popular Twitter and social software clients – Twhirl.org.

Loic also founded and hosts the #1 tech event in Europe, LeWeb.net, with his wife Geraldine. LeWeb gathers together 2000 entrepreneurs from 40 countries in December every year.

Prior to Seesmic and LeWeb, Loic started several other businesses such as Six Apart Europe, RapidSite, a web hosting service (acquired by France Telecom in 1999), as well as B2L, an interactive agency in 1999 (acquired by BBDO).

Loic has been blogging since 2003 at http://www.loiclemeur.com and can be also found online at http://www.seesmic.com/loic and http://www.twitter.com/loic

Recently, Business Week Magazine named Loic one of The 25 Most Influential People on the Web. He advises the World Economic Forum as well as covers the Annual Summit every year in Davos. Originally from the South of France, Loic lives in San Francisco, California and has three boys.

Be sure to mark your calendars. Here are the details:

Date: June 4th, 2009 (Thursday) Time: 6-9pm Location: Microsoft, 835 Market St, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94103

DEMO COMPANIES We are pleased to announce the following demo companies will be showcasing their products and services:

Tap In Systems, Inc

URL: http://www.tapinsystem.com
Presenting: Peter Loh (Founder/CEO)
Description:
Tap In Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of systems management services for cloud-based applications. Awarded the 2009 Under the Radar Conference Judges Choice Award as the top cloud management company, Tap In Systems has developed a cloud-based systems management service to respond to the unique needs of today’s increasingly heterogeneous and virtual IT infrastructures. Tap In Systems’ Cloud Management Service (CMS) is a cloud-based, scalable monitoring service which manages both cloud and on-premises systems, providing status and performance data, alerts and reporting to keep applications running smoothly. CMS is an affordable, on-demand solution that requires no hardware or proprietary expertise, and can scale up and down as a user’s needs change. For more information, visit www.tapinsystems.com.

IDNTITI

URL: http://www.idntiti.com
Presenting: Sree Unnamatla (Founder/CEO)
Description:
IDNTITI (pronounced “Identity”) believes in putting consumer research into the hands of consumers. IDNTITI is a Web 2.0 quantitative rating tool. It provides you the power to create polls and surveys and get the community voice gathered – QUANTITATIVELY. User can analyze rating data around demographic information of the raters. It’s a fun way of understanding community feedback, friends views etc. At core of the application, users build reputation of Organizations (companies, schools, colleges, hospitals, restaurants etc.) products or people they are associated with by rating them quantitatively. We are now available as facebook app at http://apps.facebook.com/idntiti/. Quantitative feedback matters!

Eduify

URL: http://www.eduify.com/beta
Presenting: Dan Merritts (VP of Marketing)
Description:
Eduify is a cloud-based writing platform that helps high school and college students learn to research faster and write better. Eduify is like a writing coach that is always by your side. The service provides web-based applications to edit and store documents; discover, use and automatically cite research; find writing tutorials and examples; safeguard against plagiarism; receive expert writing help. Eduify’s service integrates with existing social networks, giving students everywhere the community, applications and help to immediately improve their writing.

If you are interested in being a Demo Company, please be sure to fill out the Contact form and we will evaluate your submission.

MORE DETAILS

There will be food and drink provided as well as ample time to do networking and talk to the GoGrid and BizSpark folks about programs that can help you jump-start your startup.

Tickets are now on sale. To buy them online (for $10), please visit the EventBrite ordering page. Tickets may be available at the door (for $20), however there is no guarantee that there will still be any remaining.

The following press release came out today about GoGrid’s parent company, ServePath, and discusses how Gartner has included ServePath as a “Cool Vendor” for development done under the GoGrid brand as related to Cloud Computing.

ServePath Named “Cool Vendor” by Leading Analyst Firm

Vendors selected for the “Cool Vendor report” are innovative, impactful and intriguing

San Francisco, CA April 27, 2009 — ServePath, LLC has been included in the list of “Cool Vendors” in the April 2009 “Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing Systems and Application Infrastructure, 2009” report by Gartner, Inc.

The “Cool Vendor” report by Gartner, Inc. showcases key findings and recommendations to consider when evaluating Cloud server infrastructure services and companies. As defined by Gartner, Cloud services are divided into two general categories: infrastructure and applications. ServePath’s Cloud Computing division, GoGrid, represents excellence within both cloud categories as is evidenced through the Gartner “Cool Vendor” selection of ServePath. The report is available on the Gartner website for a limited time.

“We believe the recognition we have received by Gartner’s selection of ServePath for the ‘Cool Vendor’ Report further affirms our pioneering position within the Cloud Computing Infrastructure marketplace,” said John Keagy, CEO and Co-Founder of GoGrid and parent company, ServePath. “As innovators in the hosting industry, we firmly believe that Cloud Computing with a GoGrid cloudcenter exemplifies Cloud technology at its finest.”

GoGrid is the only Cloud Infrastructure vendor that supports the automated instantiation of Windows Server 2003 and 2008, CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Cloud servers through a user friendly GUI or the GoGrid API. Customers can instantly deploy servers and quickly and easily create cloudcenters (datacenters-in-the-sky) using a variety of tools and features that are included in GoGrid, including free hardware-based F5 load balancing, Cloud servers, Cloud Storage, public and private networks and Cloud Connect, which enables Cloud infrastructures to be connected to dedicated or colocated backend environments via private, dedicated megabit connections.

Cloud Connect handles database servers, transcoding and statistical analysis environments on custom, managed hardware with the power and I/O to perform well. Entire cloudcenters on GoGrid are easily controlled and managed by an industry-recognized web interface or programmatically via a REST-like API.

GoGrid offers customers including startups, small/medium businesses, government and enterprises, the ability to provision, scale and manage complex and robust server networks and infrastructures quickly and easily in the Cloud.

About Gartner’s Cool Vendors Selection Process

Gartner’s listing does not constitute an exhaustive list of vendors in any given technology area, but rather is designed to highlight interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness of a particular purpose.

Gartner defines a cool vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are: Innovative, enable users to do things they couldn’t do before; Impactful, have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology); Intriguing, have caught Gartner’s interest or curiosity in approximately the past six months.

The full release can be viewed here.

Last week I had the pleasure of joining Peter Silva (Technical Marketing Manager at f5) and Telemachus Luu (Director of Business Strategy at GoGrid/ServePath) in a podcast hosted by f5 on their DevCentral community site. The topic of the podcast was “Cloud Computing” (of course) but specifically how using f5 technology, ServePath and GoGrid were able to create a full spectrum of hosting solutions ranging from Dedicated and Managed Hosting (ServePath) and Colocation hosting(ColoServe), up and into the Clouds with GoGrid.

The podcast titled “Hosting in the Cloud with ServePath and F5” covers a variety of topics including:

• ServePath’s product extension from managed hosting to cloud hosting with GoGrid
• The “Cloud Pyramid” and distinctions within the various Cloud layers
• Understanding the nuances within the Cloud Infrastructure layer: “Infrastructure Web Services” & “Cloudcenters”
• How f5 was paramount in creating a Cloud Computing Infrastructure offering

I encourage you to listen to this 30 minute podcast (forgive the audio quality, we were in an empty conference room) which is available at the following locations:

• On f5′s DevCentral site
• As a downloadable MP3 file
• Play from this site (click on the graphic below)

  Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

If you have any questions about the items discussed within this podcast, please feel free to leave a comment to this post.

Well, I thought that I could get away with no more articles in 2008. I guess that I was mistaken. I just read a good article by Chuck Goolsbee on SearchDataCenter.com titled: “Don’t buy cloud computing hype: Business model will evaporate” and I figured that I would put in my 2 cents on some of the items mentioned within.

Goolsbee takes a very pragmatic approach to “slicing through” traditional datacenter hosting (using Occam’s razor to boot), so that he could evaluate each and every aspect of what is contained in a physical environment. To summarize (and I’m paraphrasing, hopefully accurately), he mentions:

1. Payment Card/eCommerce systems – hard to audit the purchased virtualized hardware within the Cloud
2. Security – this works with auditing, but is the environment physically secure? Is there “data mingling?”
3. “Fully acronym-compliant” – is the Cloud HiPAA, SOX, SAS70, GLBA, etc compliant?
4. Data retention – for legal purposes, how can you ensure data retention?
5. Cloud Computing Success Stories – pure cloud solution successes are marketing driven
6. Margins for Cloud Providers – how can a cloud provider keep a good profit margin?
7. Data Center On-Demand – that is what Cloud Computing is
8. AWS is only real “successful” cloud provider – they are selling unused capacity
9. “Buzzword overlap” – SaaS is NOT a cloud

Those are just a few points that I wanted to call out and respond to from my own perspective. First of all, I don’t disagree (completely) with the items that are listed above. Any company looking at the Cloud as the end-all solution for their IT needs may be disappointed unless they fully think it all out. To address the points above:

1. I somewhat agree with this assessment. It is impossible to fully audit what I call “disposable IT.” However, the shift from CapEx to OpEx means that auditing methods need to be re-evaluated. In the past (and currently), if you wanted to requisition hardware, there was a process for doing so. It took time and had rigorous approval processes built in. Now, with the Cloud, you can do this “on the fly” and servers in the Cloud can be created and disposed of extremely quickly. With data in general, you can never fully have “absolute certainty” with an audit. Compliance requires a “reasonable certainty”, especially since data isn’t persistent in or outside of the Cloud. So, saying that the Cloud model will fail because it isn’t compliant or can’t be audited is erroneous.
2. Physical security is left to the hosting provider or even to an outsourced 3rd party whose specific job is ensuring security and complaince therein. This is true with traditional datacenters, “cloudcenters” (a term that we at GoGrid are using to describe our Cloud Infrastructure), and even shared hosting. Just as Credit Card fraud initially got a lot of hype due to the launch of eCommerce, security in the Cloud will undergo a similar scrutiny. There is (unconfirmed) more Credit Card fraud that happens over the phone or physically at merchants than with eCommerce. When you choose a hosting provider, cloud or traditional, you need to think about data mingling anyway. Just ask your provider those questions. As standards arise and Government and Enterprise adopt Public and Private Clouds, security, as I have said previously, will be as robust if not more so than traditional centers. As in the Credit Card example, it’s probably safer to use a credit card online now than over the phone, but that depends on the site.
3. Yes, the ever-persistent acronyms are important. GoGrid and parent company, ServePath, are SAS70 Type II certified, for example. But, these regulatory organizations will ALSO have to adopt to this new business and technology model. This could prevent some traction of the Cloud for a few corporations but I don’t think it will slow down others that much. And audits like we have, like SAS70, are widely-accepted industry standards for showing reasonable assurance and allowing auditability.
4. I agree with the assessment that the Cloud will make it difficult for Law Enforcement to ensure data retention. Cloud Storage and/or backups can be used to allow for data retention to take place. However, if data retention is a requirement due to compliance or legal issues, processes can be built in to any IT infrastructure, cloudy or not. The other thing to consider here would be “hybrid solutions.” Since GoGrid is run by a traditional managed hosting provider, ServePath, we understand that there are certain items that are better fit for physically residing somewhere. To that end, we developed Cloud Connect. Corporations or businesses that are concerned about data persistence and the physicality of that data could opt for a solution like Cloud Connect to meet this need.
5. Success Stories generated by providers are great. But what is better is blog posts or end-user reviews of the service. There aren’t too many reviews on successful implementations with datacenter deployments, mainly because it takes a very long time to roll out fully within a data center. And, it’s not “sexy.” Deploying a full IT infrastructure in the cloud in a matter of hours (vs. days or weeks in a datacenter) IS sexy, and people are talking about that. Time is money. If you can reduce your time to market by using the Cloud, then you will be many steps closer to monetizing than if you took a traditional method. Again, this could be where hybrid clouds (e.g., Cloud Connect) might come into play. I don’t agree with Goolsbee’s statement that “the cloud cannot contain anything critical”. Just look at SalesForce or EC2 or GoGrid. Plenty of critical data is contained within those Clouds. I do agree that Cloud Computing IS great for start-ups, but if you stop there, you are missing many larger opportunities.
6. Margins for traditional data centers is a topic unto itself. I will only scrape the surface here. GoGrid, for example, was born from traditional managed, dedicated hosting provider experience. In order to roll out and deploy servers, there is a large capital and operating expense. When new clients come on board, servers have to be configured to their needs, hard drives formatted, memory installed, cables connected, etc. The man-hours spent to roll out a single customer is quite large. We saw these inefficiencies as well as the fact that once deployed, servers sat idle and under-utilized. GoGrid was developed to combat these internal and external cost and labor inefficiencies. Not only could more “servers” be “contained” within fewer larger physical servers (reducing datacenter footprints, power, cooling, etc. metrics), but also, automated deployment reduced the human capital needs. Coupled with the fact that the control was now in the hands of the end user (in terms of scalability and configuration, for example), time to deploy was reduced (equating to less grumbling on all sides). If you read between the lines here, there are better margins for a hosting provider to convert some internal infrastructure over to providing Cloud “services” than not. Once the technology is created, rolling out Cloud infrastructures within a hosting provider for end users to later use is better than rolling out a handful of customized dedicated servers.
7. Some Cloud Computing providers are data-centers on demand, but very few. As I mentioned, we now refer to GoGrid as a CloudCenter, the equivalent of a DataCenter but in the Cloud and using the requirements of Cloud Computing: dynamically and rapidly scalable, paying for what you use and using only what you need, programmatically controlled through an API (or web interface), and somewhat “virtualized”. To be a true “datacenter in the cloud” you must have all of the components of a datacenter (servers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, storage, multiple network pipes, internal and external networks, etc.). Only those Cloud Providers that give out Infrastructure solutions (e.g., GoGrid and potentially EC2) can be considered “data-centers on demand” and even then, EC2 doesn’t quite fit.
8. AWS had a few things going for it to get it on its way to being considered a “successful provider”: its name,  its size and the fact that it was first to market (or appeared to be). Don’t get me wrong, their entire suite is very impressive and they have a lot of extremely happy customers. Also, they have truly cut the ice for other Cloud providers to come along (to which we are thankful). I’m not sure about the accuracy of what Goolsbee says (that they are “selling unused capacity”). This may have been true initially, but I believe they are their own business unit by now and their data centers have nothing to do with their “book selling.” Also, the mention of uptime and security guarantees being lacking will change (they recently released an SLA for EC2…it’s not as robust as GoGrid, for what it’s worth). The general pessimism about AWS not being good for mission-critical IT functions is not really warranted, I don’t feel. Datacenters fail, as do servers. This is not specific to the Cloud. If you are worried about your data, back it up! That is the best practice and not something that you should only do if you are using the Cloud.
9. I agree that Cloud Computing as a general buzzword is over-used and vague, but it is here to stay until something better comes along. We are already seeing segmentation within it. It is a general encapsulation of many different things. I do think that SaaS belongs as one of the Cloud layers (Cloud Applications) provided it meets the Cloud checklist. Google IS a cloud provider (Google App Engine as a Cloud Platform; Gmail as a Cloud Application). Buying application time (specifically “hosting” your Python application within their datacenters) IS using the Cloud, but not Cloud Infrastructure but rather Cloud Platforms. In fact, you will be able to buy additional capacity on App Engine soon.

Goolsbee’s article is a definite read. Since he is an executive at Digital.Forest (a colocation provider), it does make sense that he believes the Cloud business model has some faults. I’m glad that he eloquently articulated many of the concerns that businesses, data centers and hosting providers have about the “coming of the Cloud.” I’m lucky enough to be able to visit both sides of the equation: DataCenter (ServePath & ColoServe) and CloudCenter (GoGrid). Happy New Year!