San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) May 03, 2011
GoGrid, a leading cloud infrastructure company, today announced its new Image Rights Management (IRM) technology, now available for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) participating in the companys partner exchange program. Enhancing the value GoGrids Exchange marketplace provides to ISVs, the company's new IRM technology delivers an innovative license protection system that enables partners to safeguard their intellectual property and effectively monetize their existing software solutions using cloud-based subscription models.
Once a partner application is live in the GoGrid Exchange marketplace and available for GoGrid's customers to deploy through value-added subscription plans, the IRM system automatically tracks instances where the application is actually running within the GoGrid cloud. The system then authenticates whether or not the application is operating on a validly deployed cloud server for which GoGrid is collecting the required subscription fees on behalf of the partner. If the proper authentication requirements are not met for an application in use, partners can protect their intellectual property and take appropriate actions such as shutting the application down, delivering a light version of the software, or instructing the customer to purchase a valid license from an external website.
"Architecting cloud computing infrastructure involves a variety of different technology solutions and our customers need a simple process to access, adopt and implement industry-leading applications for critical functions such as internet security, backup, monitoring, load balancing and compliance," said Jeff Samuels, chief marketing officer, GoGrid. "The GoGrid Exchange featuring our IRM system brings new opportunities for software providers to expand their reach by connecting with our customer community in the GoGrid cloud. Enabling independent solutions providers to easily share and offer their existing software with licensing models that support the elasticity of a cloud environment is an important factor in driving cloud adoption and fueling industry innovation."
The GoGrid Exchange A Cloud Solution Ecosystem
The GoGrid Exchange is a multi-dimensional marketplace of cloud solutions where Partner-created "golden server images" are sold, bought or shared across the GoGrid community. In the Exchange, solutions partners can sell or share GoGrid server images that are preinstalled and preconfigured with their software and documentation. In turn, GoGrid customers provision virtual machines based on any selected golden server image. These include GoGrid Server Images (GSIs), Partner GoGrid Server Images (PGSIs that partners have built) or Community GoGrid Server Images (CGSIs that community members have built). Customers purchase monthly subscriptions or simply use server images that are free. Customers can also share personalized GoGrid Server Images (MyGSIs) they create themselves for their own specific cloud usage.
Featuring its new IRM system, the GoGrid Exchange provides ISVs with a simple process for cloud-enabling their existing software applications while also protecting their intellectual property. With the GoGrid Exchange, customized Partner GSIs are listed in a catalog located on the GoGrid portal that customers can browse and select the value-added server images they want to include when provisioning their virtual machines. Because Partner GSIs can be provisioned in minutes, customers can drastically reduce the time it takes to get new applications and solutions up and running in the cloud. As a partner's server image is deployed, the IRM system tracks where the application is running and authenticates whether or not it is operating on a valid server. If proper license authentication is not confirmed, the application can take appropriate actions such as shutting itself down as well as notify the vendor. GoGrid manages the Exchange payment process and provides customers with one monthly bill that includes GoGrid's infrastructure fees and any additional Partner GSI fees. The collected value-added fees are then reimbursed to the partner on a quarterly basis.
In GoGrid's environment, customers can also contribute their cloud expertise to the broader community. GoGrid encourages collaboration throughout the ecosystem and offers a new feature that allows customers to quickly and easily share the customized GoGrid Server Images they create. Customers simply customize a GoGrid Server Image with the applications, settings and tools they need and then access the sharing feature to make their images publicly available to the entire GoGrid community by one click of a button. Customers can use this feature, knows as Community GSIs, to quickly transfer images from one account to another, share unique images with office locations in other regions, increase adoption of open source code, save time by leveraging the work of other community members and stay on top of cutting edge applications and trends.
CloudPassage, Gazzang, Zeus Adopt GoGrid IRM
GoGrid today announced that three of its Exchange partners, CloudPassage, Gazzang and Zeus Technology, have adopted the GoGrid IRM system to authenticate the licensing rights for their cloud solutions available in the GoGrid Exchange.
CloudPassage is now offering its software-as-a-service security as a Partner GSI within the GoGrid cloud. With CloudPassage, GoGrid's public and hybrid IaaS customers can manage their own cloud security by leveraging a single solution that is purpose-built for the cloud and delivers multiple layers of defense for cloud servers. CloudPassage and GoGrid joint customers benefit from greatly reduced attack surfaces, lower risk of compromise and improved compliance.
"As a SaaS provider, CloudPassage views the Image Rights Management technology as critical enabler of the cloud ecosystem. GoGrid recognized our need to protect licensed VMs and innovated around that need," said Carson Sweet, co-founder and CEO of CloudPassage. "This has made it much faster and easier for us to pursue an even broader set of SaaS distribution and delivery channels."
Gazzang is making its transparent data encryption solution for MySQL databases available on GoGrid as a Partner GSI. Gazzang ezNcrypt encrypts and protects data a rest for MySQL databases using industry-standard encryption algorithms and patent-pending advanced encryption key management. By joining the GoGrid Exchange, Gazzang helps GoGrid's customers secure their data at rest to meet internal and regulated data security requirements. The solution is available as a GoGrid Partner GSI on Ubuntu, RedHat, CentOS and Debian Linux distributions. Now GoGrid customers can select and launch Gazzang ezNcrypt server images with ease using the GoGrid console and within minutes have a MySQL server with encrypted databases using strong encryption and secure key management.
"Gazzang's ezNcrypt as a GoGrid Server Image combines the security of data encryption at rest and key management with the ease of use of GoGrid to deliver a cost-effective security software as a service," said Eddie Garcia, vice president of development. "Our GoGrid pre-configured images make it easy for anyone to deploy secured servers running transparent database encryption for MySQL. With GoGrid's partner GSI and IRM technology, Gazzang will continue to expand its product line of GoGrid-enabled solutions."
Also available on GoGrid, Zeus Technology has released its application traffic management software as a Partner GSI. With its participation in the GoGrid Exchange, Zeus provides GoGrid's customers with access to its affordable and easily deployed load balancing technology, enabling them to deliver fast, secure and available web applications. The combination of Zeus and GoGrid allows customers to easily apply business rules to the behavior of their online applications within the GoGrid cloud. The Zeus software solution deploys with ju
