ServePath Blog

ServePath is excited to announce participation in Microsoft’s new WebsiteSpark Program, specifically targeted towards Web Professionals. Both our dedicated, managed hosting brand (ServePath) and our Cloud Computing hosting brand (GoGrid) are members of the WebsiteSpark program. 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 ServePath site or GoGrid 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 ServePath or GoGrid. 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 ServePath or GoGrid 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: ServePath Windows Package, GoGrid/ServePath Hybrid Windows Package and GoGrid Windows Package. The details are below:

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

(*1 year commitment required)

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.

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.

If you are not sure which package is the best for you, be sure to contact a ServePath or GoGrid 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.

If you answered NO to the question in the title of this article, then you run the risk of not being able to handle traffic loads as well as not have application or server redundancy with your architecture. Believe it or not, your customers DO have a requirement that your site or application be resilient or highly available…they just want it to work whenever they access it. To that end, your infrastructure must scale as well as be redundant, especially should your infrastructure encounter an issue rendering a server as unavailable.

With a properly architected load-balanced network, your site can handle spikes of load more elegantly, minimizing performance issues when the demand peaks. Similarly, if you want to maintain a high-availability website, server outages or issues should be minimized or hidden away from the end user. A correctly set up load-balanced network will automatically route traffic away from hardware that is having issues or not responding, thus preventing your users from seeing sluggishness or down-time.

At ServePath, we recognize the importance of providing solid and robust load balanced architecture offerings, part of the reason why we have chosen f5 to be our load balancing solution of choice.

We have recently revamped the Load Balancing page on the ServePath site in order to better explain the options available to you as well as provide some examples on how load balancing can (and should) be used. Some of the questions we answer are:

• What is a Load Balanced Server Network?
• How does a load balancer work?
• Who needs a Load Balanced Server Network?
• What are some examples of a Load Balanced Server Network?
• Why host your Load Balanced Network with ServePath?

What I like best about this updated section of the site are the different examples of Load Balanced Server Networks:

Simple Load Balanced Network

• F5 Load Balancing
• Web servers distributed across public switches

Load Balanced Network With a Firewall

Hybrid Load Balanced Network

• F5 Load Balancing Across ServePath & GoGrid Servers
• Cloud Connect
• Cloud Storage

Highly Available Load Balanced Network

• F5 Load Balancing
• High Availability Via Redundancy
• Gigabit Private VLAN

Remember, having a Load Balanced Network is only part of a “high availability” hosting solution. Frequently, you need to utilize other services (like backup & recovery, firewalling or replication) to ensure redundancy and resiliency of your server environment. You can even set up hybrid infrastructure environments that use Cloud Computing (with GoGrid) as your Web & Application environment and Managed Dedicated Servers (with ServePath) as your back-end database and high-I/O infrastructure.

We offer a variety of packaged or individual solutions to meet your hosting needs. Just ask one of our Sales Reps and they can definitely help you out.

Last week, we had some very exciting news. Our Cloud Computing Hosting Division, GoGrid, has been positioned in Gartner’s Visionaries Quadrant for Web Hosting and Hosted Cloud System Infrastructure Services (On Demand) in the Magic Quadrant.

About the Magic Quadrant
The Gartner Magic Quadrant is copyrighted July 2009 by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

For a limited time, the full Gartner Magic Quadrant study is available on the ServePath home page. Simply look for this graphic and click through for the full report:

The report is only available until October 7th, 2009 so get it now!

The press release is available online and the full text is provided below:

GoGrid was positioned in the Visionaries quadrant for Web Hosting and Hosted Cloud System Infrastructure Services (On Demand) in Magic Quadrant

Evaluation is Based On Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute

San Francisco, CA July 8, 2009 — GoGrid, a leader in Cloud Computing Infrastructure Hosting and the Cloud Computing division of ServePath, LLC, today announced it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc., in the Visionaries quadrant in the “Magic Quadrant for Web Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure Services (On Demand)” report.

Gartner evaluated each provider against five use cases, specifically: Self-managed hosting, mainstream managed hosting, highly complex managed hosting, global solutions portfolio and enterprise applications hosting in order to produce a composite rating.

“We think our positioning in the visionaries quadrant is validation of our industry-leading cloud computing technology.  GoGrid pioneered cloud computing before any other leading hosting company was in the game. We continue to offer a more complete hybrid hosting solution consisting of on-demand cloud infrastructure and robust managed hosting environments,”
said GoGrid CEO and Co-Founder, John Keagy. “We think this will position us well to promote our technology as a standard in the field that lends itself manageability, scalability and portability of computing environments around the globe.”

The “Magic Quadrant for Web Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure Services (On Demand)” report is available currently on the GoGrid home page.

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.

Parent company, ServePath, LLC was 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. published April 6, 2009.

About the Magic Quadrant
The Gartner Magic Quadrant is copyrighted July 2009 by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About the Cool Vendor 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.

About GoGrid (http://www.gogrid.com)
GoGrid is the leading Cloud Computing, hosted, Internet provider that delivers true “Control in the Cloud™” in the form of cloudcenters. GoGrid enables system administrators, developers, IT professionals and SaaS (Software as a Service) vendors to create, deploy, and control load balanced cloud servers and complex hosted virtual server networks with full root access and administrative server control. GoGrid server instances maintain the industry standard specifications with no requirement to learn and adapt to propriety standards. Bringing up servers and server networks takes minutes via a unique web control panel or GoGrid’s award winning API. GoGrid delivers portal controlled servers for Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server, and ASP.NET. GoGrid hosts multiple open-source server operating systems including several Linux operating systems (Red Hat Enterprise and CentOS) and supports application environments like Ruby on Rails. Free f5 hardware load balancing and other features are included to give users the control of a familiar datacenter environment with the flexibility and immediate scalability of the cloud, a “cloudcenter.” GoGrid won the coveted 2008 LinuxWorld Expo’s Best of Show award.

About ServePath (http://www.servepath.com)
ServePath, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, is the leading managed and dedicated hosted server provider, delivering custom solutions and managed services to businesses that require powerful Internet hosting platforms for their production environments. Thousands of companies worldwide look to ServePath for its reliability, customization, and speed. ServePath has a Keynote-rated A+ network and guarantees uptime with a 10,000% guaranteed™ Service Level Agreement. The employee-owned company has been in business for nine years and operates its own San Francisco data center and is SAS70 Type II certified. ServePath uniquely delivers server infrastructures optimized for complex databases with cloud front-ends and application servers with Cloud Connect.

If you haven’t given GoGrid a try, what are you waiting for? Find out for yourself why we were placed in the Visionaries Magic Quadrant!

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.

Today, ServePath released the following press release related to our selection by Gartner as a “Cool Vendor” in the April 2009 “Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing Systems and Application Infrastructure, 2009″ report. The report covers ServePath’s Cloud Computing product, GoGrid, as well as discusses other Cloud Computing key findings. The press release is as follows:

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 gigabit 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 press release can be viewed here.

This week we rolled out a new graphic on the ServePath homepage that when I thought about it, really shows a change in mindset. ServePath has been doing managed, dedicated hosting for over 9 years and will continue to do so in the years to come. However, what has changed is the mainstream adoption of Cloud Computing and Cloud Hosting. Our Cloud division, GoGrid, has been providing Cloud infrastructure for well over a year now and has seen tremendous adoption by the likes of Web 2.0-ers, SMBs, Government Agencies and the Enterprise.

One feature that we were first to market with, is Cloud Connect. Other terms that we have been using is “Hybrid Hosting” or “Hybrid Networks”. Essentially, it enables you to combine the dynamic scalability of a Cloud-based front-end (on GoGrid) with a traditional managed backend of dedicated high-performance servers (with ServePath). The two hosting environments are combined via secure, gigabit private networks, thus enabling best-of-breed solutions to meet any infrastructure requirements.

As always, a picture is worth a thousand words…

If you have any questions about these new hosting strategies and infrastructure possibilities, I encourage you to contact a ServePath Sales Representative. There are many scenarios and opportunities available with this incredible flexibility of hosting, but we want you to surprise us with your ideas and designs. You shouldn’t wait to start planning out your Hybrid hosting solutions, we can get you there now!

Today we released a new Whitepaper written by Randy Bias, ServePath’s VP of Technology Strategy titled “Scaling Your Internet Business.” If you are a Web Application Developer or interested in learning about scalability, specific to how it relates to Web Applications in the Cloud, Dedicated, or Colocation environments, I recommend you download and read this whitepaper.

The whitepaper can be obtained here from the ServePath site.

Scalability is critical to the success of many organizations currently involved in doing business on the Web or who are providing information that may suddenly become heavily demanded. While there are many strategies that IT organizations can undertake, the way they are designed and implemented can make or break these businesses.

The ServePath whitepaper discusses the following topics:

• How web applications scale
• Scalability within different hosting scenarios
• Thinking through and choosing a scaling strategy
• GoGrid & ServePath scalability options

Scalability can come in all shapes, sizes and flavors. You can scale “up” (vertically) or “out” (horizontally). Choosing the right option can be tricky, if not daunting. Depending on what you want your strategy to be, you can choose “cloud-only”, “dedicated/colocated-only” or a “hybrid” approach.

If you are currently using dedicated or colocated hosting, you should potentially re-evaluate your current hosting strategy and architecture to see if it makes sense to use Cloud Computing or a combination of Dedicated and Cloud as a scalability option.

A “Hybrid” environment using Dedicated and Colocated servers in conjunction with a Cloud front-end using Cloud Connect.

“Businesses need more than just cloud computing to solve their scalability problems,“ says the whitepaper author Randy Bias. “Web operators and developers want to use the best tool for the job and, right now, cloud computing is one tool in their arsenal. GoGrid has pioneered the concept of cloudcenters, datacenters-in-the-cloud, which provide the full range of scalability tools needed for a growing business including cloud servers, managed dedicated database servers, private VLANs, VPNs, and even co-location for those who need their own hardware. This whitepaper describes how a growing business can use vertical and horizontal scaling techniques to the most advantage to save money and never miss a prospect, customer, reader or interaction.”

Companies interested in learning about Web Application Scalability, Cloud Infrastructure, hybrid hosting and scaling solutions available from GoGrid or ServePath are encouraged to download this whitepaper from either the GoGrid site or ServePath site.

Chances are, if you are reading this post on the ServePath Blog, that you are a Managed Hosting customer of ours or simply interested in Managed Dedicated Hosting. But, you probably have also been hearing about Cloud Computing (if you haven’t, you should probably take a look at our Cloud Computing product, GoGrid or read some of the posts on the GoGrid blog). Cloud Computing isn’t the solution to every hosting dilemma. There are some hosting requirements that simply cannot be handled within “the Cloud.” High-end, data intensively or highly transactional database servers are a good example. Also, if your product offering requires some eCommerce transactions and associated compliance therein, you may want to opt for a  dedicated environment for that sensitive data.

Back in November 2008, we announced a new product that is a hybrid hosting solution called “Cloud Connect.” The idea behind Cloud Connect is fairly basic. It is essentially a dedicated connection between a Cloud Computing front-end infrastructure (with GoGrid) and a Managed Hosting back-end server (with ServePath). This is a “World’s First” product offering!

When you configure a hybrid infrastructure, you are enabling the “best of both worlds” between Managed Hosting and Cloud Computing. Not only do you get the configurability and high-performance of a dedicated server, you also get the elasticity and scalability of Cloud Computing. In our press release and on our product page, we outlined some possible uses of Cloud Connect:

• Hybrid Load Balanced Server Network – hybrid infrastructure lets you combine cloud and dedicated servers to build a hosted load-balanced server network allowing you to harness the elasticity and low CapEx of cloud computing while getting the hardware control you need from dedicated hardware.
• Development and staging environment – build a development and staging environment in the cloud and conveniently connect to your dedicated server production environment.
• Sandbox –build a sandbox development area in the cloud to test websites, website operations, and untested code in an isolated manner.
• Spikes/surge – deploy servers in minutes to handle seasonal or sudden spikes of internet traffic and pay only for what you use. Avoid long-term contracts for the servers required to handle short-term internet traffic fluctuations.
• Database-intensive applications – deploy large databases with lots of bandwidth, processing power and persistent storage needs with very flexible front-end web servers that interact very efficiently with the database.

You can add a variety of ServePath services to your dedicated back-end environment including:

• Unified Security & Backup
• Managed Server Security & Hardware Firewall
• ProActive Monitoring
• Managed Data Backup & Storage Area Network (SAN)

Cloud Connect uses secure gigabit private networks to “cross connect” GoGrid Cloud Servers with custom-built, managed and dedicated ServePath servers. The gigabit private networks, the GoGrid Cloud and ServePath dedicated servers are all located in the same data center with hard-wired  connections to ensure high performance.

If you are interested in setting up a Cloud Connect solution using GoGrid Cloud Servers and ServePath Dedicated Servers, please contact a ServePath sales representative at 1-977-946-4743 or via the Live Chat on the ServePath site.

Once again it’s time for SF New Tech, a meetup in San Francisco for technologists, VCs, geeks, social media pundits and other interested peoples. To quote: “Come on down to Mighty, grab a drink, meet cool people, see live demos from great companies, ask questions, grab the mic, have fun… and geek out!”

GoGrid and ServePath are sponsors of this event. Be sure to come by our table and learn about Cloud Computing. With all the recent hype around Windows in the Cloud…it’s important to remember that GoGrid has been providing Windows in the Cloud (both Windows Server 2003 & 2008) for over 1/2 year now and that we are a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Drop by our table and get $100 off your next GoGrid server!

The format has not changed. Each of the companies below get 5 minutes to showcase their product or service. Be the first person in the audience to ask the famous questions “How are your monetizing?” This question is especially important in these trying times. If you are a struggling startup, I recommend reading this post for some tips and tricks on how to survive this recession.

Demo Companies

Apture
Tristan Harris, CEO
Apture helps bloggers and publishers turn flat web pages into rich, multimedia experiences by empowering them with a point & click interface to create deep links to media from a wealth of different sources.
http://www.apture.com

Lefora
Vincent Lauria, Co-Founder & Product Guy
Lefora is forums made easy and has been called the “Blogger for forums”.
http://www.lefora.com

chi.mp
Anthony Eden, Co-Founder & CTO
chi.mp gives you ownership and control of your digital life on your very own domain.
http://chi.mp

Reframe It
Brian McKinney, Founder & CTO
Reframe It lets you comment in the margins of the web as easily as you can write in the margins of a book.
http://reframeit.com

Goldmail
Tom Hakel, Co-founder
Goldmail lets you create powerful messages in just minutes, combining audio and visuals.
http://www.goldmail.com

Snappr.net
Philip Stehlik, CEO
Snappr.net allows mobile interaction with 1D and 2D Barcodes.
http://www.snappr.net

PBwiki
Brian Klug, Director of Engineering
PBwiki is the world’s largest provider of hosted business and educational wikis.
http://www.pbwiki.com

After the demos …

• Grab the microphone and speak to the room on the famous 60-Second Soapbox. Express that need, want or desire in 60 seconds — GO! (Each one is logged online so people can find you later!)
• Stick around to see who won the solar powered cell phone charger from Sun Startup Essentials. (Register online or at the door!) All attendees are eligible to win — but you must be there to claim your prize.
• Hang out and keep the conversation going… meet you at the bar for shots!

Tickets:

$15.00 online here and now
$20.00 at the door, if not sold out

Mighty is a 21+ venue.

Schedule:
6:30 pm – Doors open
6:30 -7:30 pm – Schmooze
7:30 – 9:00 pm – Demos
9:00 – 11:00 pm Schmooze

“Don’t Panic!” These are two words (made popular by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) that every day become more appropriate and valid. Credit has dried up as has funding by Venture Capitalists, Angel Funders and the like. If you are a bootstrapped company, a startup or a company in “stealth mode,” right now you might be wishing that you had taken a more stable job at a large corporation (hopefully not in the Financial sector) or that you had planned better for another bubble to burst. Well fear not…there is always a way to survive, through careful planning and management.

I would like to offer the following “Guide” of my own to those small companies or startups that are struggling now, on the verge of closing shop or just ready to give up. First, let me restate Adams’ words: “Don’t Panic!” There are methods to keep your company and vision moving forward, maybe in a different direction or perhaps a bit more slowly.

Here are a few things that you may want to consider as you re-architect your survival strategy:

1. Start Now – don’t take a “wait and see” attitude. If you have a great idea, keep moving forward, but DO start your cash conservation immediately. The mere fact that you are searching for information and reading this post is a great sign that you are being active!
2. Outsource – sure, doing things in-house can save you some cash, but only part of the time. Truly evaluate what makes sense (cents) in your day-to-day operations. If it takes your developer a week to do something and an outside “specialist” a day or two, evaluate the costs of both actions. If you aren’t paying your employees and they are doing work in their free time, try to factor in the time-to-market of that approach. While you may save money in up-front costs, you may lose it in terms of beating your competitors to market. Here are a couple factors within “outsourcing” to consider:
   • Human Capital – frequently small boutiques who are experts in a particular field can do things faster and better than you can in-house. They, too, might be effected by the economic downturn and may be willing to cut some of their costs just to have your business.
   • Operations – this can be both on the technical or just the basic company operations side. If you are providing healthcare benefits, see if you can change your plans or even ask your employees if they have other means to get healthcare (e.g., through a spouse).
3. Avoid Capital Expenditures (CapEx) – hardware costs money, lots of it. Of course this all depends on what stage your company is at. If you are just starting, you may be able to get away with repurposing old computers and sharing bandwidth, but as you grow and get closer to having to “prove your value proposition” to investors or even end-users, you do need some sort of infrastructure. Consider using Cloud Computing (e.g., GoGrid) to host your infrastructure, whether it be a development environment or eventually your production infrastructure. By using “the Cloud” you have zero CapEx, no monthly/yearly contracts and are billed by your usage. This is a great way to control your costs and scale only on-demand. You can easily control your capacity, and avoid having your infrastructure sitting around unused or idle.
4. Simplify/Set Realistic Goals – The more complex you make things, the harder they are to undo. Figure out what you really want to do with your business. Is it a hobby or your life work? Do you want to be the next Google? If so, you probably want to rethink that. While it is good to have lofty goals, keep them closer to earth. Did you hire someone who sold you on reaching something unattainable? You may want to reconsider that, hard as it may be, and let those people go. Re-architect your strategies. Clearly identify the most fundamental and basic goals you want to achieve. Sometimes through simplification, you can find a niche that others haven’t. That makes you more viable and attractive. If you are doing something that everyone else is gunning for, and you are struggling, it probably isn’t worth it. You don’t need to throw it all away, but you might want to evaluate what you want to do and choose 1-2 things that are (somewhat) unique. Remember K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple, Stupid).
5. Remain Flexible – the worst thing that you can do in these trying times is not move or be rigid. Being a startup or small company has definite advantages. You have the ability to move much more quickly than larger companies. Look to be flexibility in many areas: strategic direction, product or service feature set, tools and infrastructures and even work ethic. Keep your employees happy by finding out what works best for them. I’m reminded of a story I heard about a hair dresser who was looking for a change. After some soul searching and help from some personality profiles, they became a landscape architect: similar ideas of grooming but in a completely different field (literally). So stay flexible in your own thinking as well.
6. Network & Socialize – as you start to panic, the worst thing you can do is do it alone. Trust me, there are many people and business who are sharing your same concerns. Some may be further down the process of recovery or re-architecting and may be willing to share with you their experiences and what to or not to do. There are so many ways to connect with people nowadays. There is the obvious Social Media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc.) and I’m a big proponent of these methods. However, in this case, you may really need to just “get out” and talk to people face-to-face. If you live near a big metropolitan area, there is most likely some sort of meetup (check MeetUp.com for example – their video really is great!) or event that meets your needs. Go to them. Start talking to people. (If you are in San Francisco, check out an event I host called StartUpSF.) You may be surprised as to how many great ideas you may get and even how many people really want to help. New strategic partnerships are frequently started at events like this. It’s important to listen to new ideas and see how they apply to your own. Some of the things you hear may influence how you attack other points on this list. Remember too that you can socialize your Public Relations very easily now. Read some experts’ tips and you may save costs and time there too.
7. Conserve Expenses – this is obvious enough. Watch your energy expenditure especially. I mentioned the Cloud before; by outsourcing your IT infrastructure, you can save tremendous costs, especially if you are doing it yourself through your own server rack in your closet. Don’t travel if you don’t need to. With large bandwidth pipes, it’s easy to have video conferencing with almost the same result as a face-to-face. Save the face-to-face for closing the deal. Oh, and pack your own lunch.
8. Don’t Ignore the Rest of the World – the US economy may be seeing some hard times, but there are other markets out there that may want to spend their money with you. Invest some time in reviewing these other markets. Their currency may be a lot stronger than the US dollar, so they may be more willing to pay for your product or service, or even invest in your business. Don’t ignore the fact that with advances in technologies, the world is a much smaller place than we actually realize.
9. Cash Flow Management – this is true on both billables and receivables. If you have existing vendor contracts and they are part of your lifeblood, see if you can renegotiate them. As I mentioned before, you are not alone in this economic crunch and many vendors (and even lenders) would rather renegotiate than lose your business. If your own business model is not getting the traction that you desired, you might want to try to tweak it a bit. Consider offering pre-payment discounts (e.g., have people commit for a longer amount of time but discount it against a monthly or smaller cycle rate). ServePath does this type of thing with managed hosting, by offering “server specials” at a lower cost. Old inventory may be sitting around so leverage it through discounts as well.
10. Keep your Day Job – I had to end with some humor. If your startup is your life-long passion, it is your day job so take these tips to heart. If it isn’t, remember you have to pay your bills somehow.

Do you have any other ideas, tips or suggestions? If so, I would love to hear them. And remember, “Don’t Panic!”

[This was originally posted on the GoGrid blog.]