A couple of weeks ago we released a new version of GoGrid which included a variety of exciting enhancements and features. Most notable are:
GoGrid Dedicated Servers
List View of GoGrid Objects
Edit F5 Load Balancers via the API
New Login Page
Self Service Support Links
More details about these features can be found on the following GoGrid blog post. For a quick overview of the new features in the form of a screencast, please watch the video below. I quickly cover many of the items listed above including:
Microsoft Azure, Server teams form new cloud division
“In a much anticipated move, Microsoft announced the combination of the Windows Azure group with the Windows Server and Solutions group into a new organization, titled the Server and Cloud Division. The new division, headed by Senior Vice President Amitabh Srivastava, will be a part of the Servers and Tools Business, headed by Bob Muglia.” (source: cnet – the Wisdom of Clouds)
Commentary: As always, James Urquhart breaks the news on his great blog, the Wisdom of Clouds. While it seems that this announcement has been some time in the making, it is good to see it materialize. It only makes sense to me that Microsoft blend the Server/Cloud environments. It’s important that synergies exist from the get-go since many of the features can be leveraged cross-departmentally and should be views as a “single solution.” I’ve mentioned this numerous times before but this is why we at GoGrid developed Cloud Connect which is a Hybrid Hosting solution of physical and cloud servers all connected via private dedicated physical connections. Buried in James’ article is the mention that CTO Ray Ozzie is no longer in charge of the Azure team which signifies Microsoft’s move toward making Azure an important part of their business offerings.
Microsoft, Cisco, IBM and Others Form Cloud Computing Group
“A group of companies is starting up an Enterprise Cloud Buyers Council in hopes of removing barriers to enterprise use of hosted cloud computing. Initial members include companies that offer hosted cloud computing as well as enterprises that use such services, including Microsoft, IBM, HP, Cisco, AT&T, BT, EMC, Deutsche Bank, Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs, CA, Nokia Siemens Networks, Telecom Italia and Telstra. Two industry organizations, Distributed Management Task Force and the IT Service Management Forum, are also involved. The TM Forum, an industry association that helps information and communications companies create profitable services, came up with the idea of the council.” (source: PCWorld)
Commentary: It’s great to see so many big names joining together to form a “Council.” My only fear is that egos within each of the organizations will come into play as each company tries to promote their own agenda. I can only hope that this (and other similar organizations that have been set up) will actually do something constructive with their efforts. Working on avoiding “vendor lock-in” and “standards-based solutions” is great and all, but these are overly hyped buzz-words that have been discussed throughout 2009 (and back some). Perhaps by throwing some big names behind a council will help to mitigate the fear that so many enterprises have about the cloud (e.g., security, reliability, compliance, standards, etc.) Time will tell if this new organization will produce any effects or results whatsoever. I’m a bit skeptical myself.
Top 5 cloud computing predictions for 2010
“Cloud computing standards and major cloud computing outages top Linthicum’s list. Evidently it’s a requirement that all of those in the cloud computing world must chime in with their cloud computing predictions for 2010, so here are mine…” (source: InfoWorld)
Commentary: Oh boy, I’m already behind on my predictions. Guess I need to start on that really soon! David’s Linthicum’s top 5 is a pretty sensical list actually, although numbers 4 and 5 might indirectly go hand-in-hand. Hint, if you are thinking about a successful new-business to start, do a cloud computing startup since you will be snapped up by a large player once you are mildly successful. Well, that is a dramatic oversimplification of #’s 4 and 5. Read through his list though as they are distinct and good thoughts.
Okay, let’s face it. I know at least one Enterprise organization that has migrated their traditional infrastructure to one based on Cloud Computing. That would be The North Pole. Their CEO is none other than Santa Claus (Saint Nicolas, Kris Kringle & Father Christmas are some of the other aliases he goes by). He runs an incredibly efficient organization with Mrs. Claus as CFO and the Head Elf as CIO. They have a very predictable business cycle, which includes global, year-round information gathering and management that catalogs the “naughty” and “nice” people world-wide coupled with a robust transportation and distribution system active only one day annually. How is this all accomplished so efficiently year after year?
I recently spent some time with Santa and had the opportunity to ask him a few questions about his organization. Below is a transcript of our discussion:
Me: Hello Mr. Claus.
Santa: Ho ho, please call me Kris.
Me: Ok Kris. Thanks for spending some time with me today and granting me some insight into your traditionally “closed” organization.
Santa: But of course. Transparency seems to be quite important nowadays. Obviously I can’t disclose all of my secrets; that would take away my magic!
I spent some time analyzing search trends of different computing keywords to try to put everything in perspective. Google trends is a nice too that gives insight into broad search patterns.
We all know that the term “Cloud Computing” is relatively new to the Technology buzz. But just how new is it? For starters, I ran a quick comparison of “Cloud Computing,” “Grid Computing” and “Utility Computing”.
The term Grid Computing has been around for a while (even before Google Trends tracking shows it). But as you can see from the graphic above, it is trending downwards. Utility Computing has pretty much remained below the radar in comparison. But, the newcomer Cloud Computing, which made its full entrance into this trend analysis around 2007 is rapidly gaining momentum. 2008 seems to be a pivotal time where it surpassed Grid Computing (and continues to grow).
Cloud computing is relatively new as a server hosting term. People are starting to loosely associate it with traditional hosted server solutions. So to put this all in perspective as well as add some other “hot” keywords in to the mix, I trended the following:
Yesterday we rolled out a new feature for GoGrid that should make the creation of Servers and Load Balancers even easier and faster. We call it “IP Suggest” and it is extremely easy to use. As you are creating a new Server or Load Balancer and you come to the IP Address field, just start typing in the beginning digits of your IP addresses. The network “widget” shows you a list of all of your Public IP addresses, used or unused.
For the Application/Web/Database servers, only the UNUSED IP addresses are presented within the IP address field.
The Load Balancer acts a bit differently. For the Virtual IP field, only the UNUSED IP addresses are displayed, however on the Real IPs field (these would be the IP addresses of the application/web/database server where you want the Load Balancer to direct traffic), ALL IP addresses are displayed.
As part of our regular updates to GoGrid code and functionality, we have released several new Web/Application and Database Sever Templates to GoGrid. This is part of a two set release with the next round coming tomorrow. (More information on the second set of templates in a subsequent blog post.)
One of the great features of GoGrid is the ability to instantly create new servers based on precompiled and tested templates. Our goal is to provide a significant number of templates to match many different development needs and do so in a timely manner.
Yesterday, we released the following templates:
Web/Application Servers:
CentOS 4.5 (32-bit) with LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (32-bit) with LAMP stack
Windows 2003 Server (32-bit) with IIS, ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express
From today’s Dilbert cartoon (published on 2/12/08):
Will Dilbert be able to save the day? Our software engineers already have! Obviously, Dilbert hasn’t heard of GoGridwhere you can deploy virtualized servers within minutes! I sure hope that Scott Adams builds this theme out. It might prove to be interesting.
