According to Manicka Babu, vice president of engineering at Martini Media, precise, timely ad targeting requires effective algorithms, huge quantities of data, and fast processing. "We capture and process more than 250 million online events each day," he explains. "As you might imagine, our platform requires a substantial amount of processing power. My team focuses on continuously improving our service, and GoGrid delivers the fast, scalable, reliable infrastructure we need. It's a formula that keeps us ahead of the competition."

Martini Media's goal is to serve ads within 150 to 200 milliseconds no matter where the recipient is located within the United States. Based on two identical infrastructures hosted at GoGrid's East and West Coast data centers, Martini Media's solution delivers. In setting up its multi-data-center solution, Martini Media worked closely with GoGrid solutions architects to develop a highly effective hybrid hosting infrastructure. Hybrid hosting uses single-tenant hardware to run processing-intensive functions, such as Hadoop and Cassandra databases, and cloud servers to handle the platform front-end.

"Hybrid is optimal for Big Data," says Babu. "We considered four providers, and only GoGrid offered everything we wanted for a reasonable price. Most important was the hybrid architecture. GoGrid allowed us to use virtualized cloud servers for non-database functions and single-tenant hardware to run our Cassandra databases."

Martini Media's successful Big Data implementation using Cassandra prompted it to expand to incorporate Hadoop as well, making it one of the first customers to deploy GoGrid's Big Data Solution.

"As Martini Media's success demonstrates, Big Data is a powerful tool for building insights and innovative business models," said Jeffrey Samuels, chief marketing officer for GoGrid. "We're proud that innovators like Martini Media choose GoGrid for their infrastructure. GoGrid supports Big Data with best practices architectures that deliver the scalability of the cloud. Our new Big Data Solution is uniquely tailored to meet the power and flexibility demands of compute-intensive applications. So when it comes to Big Data, we're confident that no one beats GoGrid for performance."

To learn more, read the full Martini Media Big Data case study: http://go.gogrid.com/case-study/martini-media

GoGrid's new Big Data Solution bundle includes pre-configured hardware to match requirements for running Cloudera's Distribution of Hadoop (CDH) as an introduction to Hadoop or proof of concept. The bundle consists of 1 Name Node and 3 Data Nodes in a multi-rack architecture plus GoGrid's Professional Cloud plan. With this solution, GoGrid customers leverage cloud servers to quickly scale on-demand to meet sudden spikes in traffic while leveraging single-tenant infrastructure specially designed for analytical use cases.

"The GoGrid cloud is about automation and allowing customers to scale efficiently," said Jeffrey Samuels, chief marketing officer, GoGrid. "With the introduction of the new Big Data Solution, GoGrid provides businesses with a reliable, high-performance hybrid cloud infrastructure specifically designed for Big Data workloads in the cloud. We're excited that we've already helped many customers optimize their Hadoop clusters on GoGrid and created this flexible hybrid solution to deliver the performance and scalability they require."

"Organizations of all sizes are embracing the use of Big Data analytics tools like Hadoop as well as incorporating cloud transaction processing principles into applications that need massive scale, including the use of NoSQL databases such as Cassandra," said Lydia Leong, research vice president at Gartner. "Because these technologies are new to many organizations, customers may seek assistance from service providers - whether cloud IaaS providers with strong customer support and managed services capabilities around these technologies or consultancies that specialize in these technologies - to ensure they implement an architecture that will be stable in production and flexibly and dynamically scale."

Martini Media, the leading digital advertising platform for reaching affluent U.S. consumers, has already deployed GoGrid's Big Data Solution. Martini's platform requires substantial processing power to handle more than 250 million online events each day. "We considered four providers, and only GoGrid offered everything we wanted," said Manicka Babu, VP of engineering at Martini Media. "Most important was the hybrid architecture. We're very pleased with the performance we receive using GoGrid. The improvements in Cassandra replication and latency are impressive."

Availability & Pricing

GoGrid's Big Data Solution is now available as a bundle for $3,800 per month. For a limited time, GoGrid is offering a special promotion for all customers that sign up for a 12-month commitment. The promotion offers a 20% discount off the regular monthly charge. For complete specifications and terms, review our Big Data Solution packages.

GoGrid was recognized by the AlwaysOn editorial team, partners from leading venture-capital firms, and industry experts across the globe based on its innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz. The 3-month selection process scours the entrepreneurial community to identify the top 100 private companies that are re-creating data management, customer relationships, and infrastructure by building industry-disruptive solutions.

"For more than a decade we've been pushing the technology envelope when it comes to on-demand infrastructure," said John Keagy, founder and CEO of GoGrid. "As one of the first movers in the cloud infrastructure space, we've been helping companies overcome infrastructure challenges in innovative and ground-breaking ways. AlwaysOn's recognition is a testament to our commitment to ongoing innovation and customer service."

"Digital information has expanded during the past year. As the emergence of robust, innovative apps needed to manage this information continues, a complex world of interconnected business intelligence and ideas is being created at a new macro level," says Tony Perkins, founder and editor of AlwaysOn. "This year's OnDemand 100 winners are continuing to use disruptive technology and ideas to merge valuable legacy data and systems with new, vital streams of information. The results are being deployed in the cloud by any number of SaaS products and services, changing the way all business coexist. The OnDemand 100 continues to represent some of the highest-growth opportunities in the private company marketplace."

GoGrid and the other OnDemand Top 100 companies will be honored at AlwaysOn's OnDemand 2012 event on April 4, 2012, at the HP Executive Briefing Center in Cupertino, CA. A full list of this year's OnDemand 100 winners is available on the AlwaysOn website.

About AlwaysOn

AlwaysOn is the leading business media brand networking the Global Silicon Valley. AlwaysOn helped ignite the social media revolution in early 2003 when it launched the AlwaysOn network. In 2004, it became the first media brand to socially network its online readers and event attendees. AlwaysOn's preeminent executive event series includes the Silicon Valley Innovation Summit, OnMedia, OnHollywood, IMPACT Venture Summit Mid-Atlantic, Venture Summit East, OnDemand, Venture Summit Silicon Valley, OnMobile, and GoingGreen Silicon Valley. The AlwaysOn network and live event series continue to lead the industry by empowering its readers, event participants, sponsors, and advertisers like no other media brand.

"For more than a decade, GoGrid has been challenging traditional hosting, introducing impactful innovations that have allowed business to embrace automation in provisioning and managing complex infrastructure," said Jeffrey Samuels, GoGrid's CMO. "Gartner's positioning of GoGrid reaffirms how our model is transforming the industry's view of the cloud. Instead of providing labor-intensive cookie-cutter options, our services let each customer automate and tailor a solution that's as unique as its business."

According to the report, "Managed hosting solutions can be offered on both physical and virtualized infrastructures, including cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Managed hosting bundles Internet data center facilities together with provider managed servers, network, storage, and computing services. The infrastructure components may be physical or virtual, and may be dedicated or shared. This Magic Quadrant is focused on the enterprise-class, managed hosting market, regardless of whether the hosting is done on physical servers or a virtualized infrastructure."

To download a PDF of the "Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting," please visit http://go.gogrid.com/gartner-magic-quadrant-managed-hosting.

About the Magic Quadrant

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

"Successfully completing the SSAE 16 audit demonstrates that we are committed to cloud infrastructure best practices and continually ensure our process management meets the highest industry standards," said John Keagy, GoGrid's CEO. "Businesses continue to choose GoGrid because we embrace the changing compliance landscape. Our ability to successfully pass this rigorous, in-depth audit verifies GoGrid has the proper controls and processes in place to deliver the high-quality services our customers expect."

SSAE 16 defines all the requirements applicable to data centers and other hosting providers. To better protect customers that rely on its cloud infrastructure services, GoGrid was among the first cloud providers to adopt the new SSAE 16 standard. One of the top audit firms in the US conducted the audit review of GoGrid's infrastructure, security processes, data management policies, and recovery procedures.

SSAE is adopted from and closely aligned with the International Standards for Assurance Engagements (ISAE) No. 3402, the new international audit standard for service providers. ISAE 3402, introduced in June 2011, creates the first global assurance standard for reporting on controls at a service organization. SSAE 16 extends ISAE 3402 in several important areas, including additional diligence required by auditors when performing audits of service agencies. SSAE 16 also ensures that companies can compete on a true international level because customers worldwide confidently entrust their business to those that are compliant.

GoGrid's customers can obtain a copy of this external audit report upon request. Audits are conducted semi-annually in June and December. GoGrid has received SAS 70 Type II assessments every year since 2006, and was one of the first cloud services providers to pass that important audit.

"2011 was another banner year for GoGrid, with excellent growth in revenue and profit and exciting new technology and services," said Keagy. "With the successful launch of our new EMEA Headquarters and data center in Amsterdam, we're well on the way to fulfilling our long-term vision of bringing the GoGrid cloud to all major markets worldwide. For more than 10 years, GoGrid has brought global efficiencies to infrastructure deployment and management, and I'm excited to drive our business forward in solving our customers' complex cloud challenges."

A recognized Internet infrastructure pioneer, Keagy has built and sold several successful Internet service providers (ISPs) since 1991 and holds key technology patents.

"With the help of GoGrid, we've expanded our service offering to include website hosting and management," said Brett Nagy, technical director for Microgroove. "Using GoGrid's hybrid infrastructure as our hosting environment, we're able to focus on growth and continually enhancing our services - without worrying about hardware."

For the first eight years of Microgroove's existence, customers had to host the company's platform themselves. More than 500 sites have been launched with customers choosing the self-hosting path, with some managing the solution at their own data centers and others using traditional hosting and co-location services. Today, Microgroove powers more than 100 music customer sites on GoGrid. Cloud servers connect site visitors to music and other content. Dedicated hardware powers the SQL-database and open source NoSQL-database portions of the Microgroove Platform. The GoGrid content delivery network (CDN) accelerates the delivery of media, including streaming content, to points of presence all over the world.

Prior to deploying GoGrid, Microgroove found it was too expensive and time-consuming to roll out an installation of the Microgroove Platform for just a few artists. After leveraging GoGrid as the infrastructure driving the Microgroove Platform, the company realized it could serve a broader customer base. Being able to work with - and host - more customers has increased the number of websites the Microgroove Platform delivers. Also, Microgroove has been able to maintain its focus on platform innovation and service.

"Now we can work with customers of virtually any size," explains Nagy. "Developing and adding one site, even a smaller site, is easy. GoGrid has allowed us to be far more nimble and agile, and this benefit helps us serve individual artists and managers, not just large record labels. As we've expanded our customer base, we haven't needed to add a single employee to administer sites. GoGrid is that reliable and easy to use."

"When technology pioneers like Microgroove make the decision to leverage the GoGrid platform, they want a cloud service that doesn't limit them," says Jeffrey Samuels, chief marketing officer at GoGrid. "We're proud to offer our customers flexible cloud solutions that support multiple, unique infrastructure architectures. In the case of Microgroove, the company can now combine SQL and open source database technology seamlessly. It's a big win for Microgroove and the customers they serve."

To learn more, read the full case study: http://go.gogrid.com/case-study/microgroove.

Microgroove to Present at Cloud Connect 2012

Microgroove will be presenting its GoGrid success story at the Cloud Connect 2012 Expo in Santa Clara, CA on Wednesday, February 15th at 1:15pm Pacific. Learn first-hand how Microgroove leveraged physical and virtual infrastructure components in creating a high-performance, cost-effective cloud environment for the music industry. The Cloud Connect Expo is the defining conference and expo for IT professionals, developers and cloud providers. GoGrid (booth #709) is a Platinum Sponsor at the event.

About Microgroove

Microgroove provides the planet's leading entertainment companies with software to power their online presence. With over 500 sites created on the Microgroove Platform, millions of users have conducted billions of data transactions. Microgroove's global clients and licensees rely on its unique enterprise development and hosting services. A creative engineering company at the core, privately held Microgroove offers tailored solutions to achieve their clients' business objectives. For more information, please visit www.microgroove.com.

"Our experience with GoGrid pretty much rocked our world in terms of infrastructure, and the GoGrid team established a very high level of trust and reliability," said Matthew Scalf, co-founder and co-owner, Izoox. "GoGrid sets the gold standard in terms of SLAs, performance, and design. Additionally, GoGrid's support and service is better than anything we have ever experienced. GoGrid is a true partner in our ongoing fight to deliver a pain-free web experience to our customers."

The GoGrid partnership has been very successful for Izoox, which now is experiencing dramatic growth and currently supports 500 customers. Izoox leverages GoGrid's cloud services to improve time-to-market and support its business expansion. Izoox also acknowledges the strength of the GoGrid partnership in helping to close deals: the company credits GoGrid for an increase in sales. Additionally, Izoox experiences a lower TCO for both itself (GoGrid reduced Izoox's infrastructure costs by 50 percent) and its customers (GoGrid eliminated the need for customers to pay infrastructure start-up purchase costs). Lastly, Izoox has received numerous customer accolades for improved performance and reliability since migrating to GoGrid.

"GoGrid's mission is to enable customers like Izoox to provide best-of-class solutions to their customers through the use of our flexible and adaptable cloud infrastructure services," said Jeff Samuels, chief marketing officer at GoGrid. "It's important that businesses around the world embrace cloud computing as a catalyst for success, and Izoox clearly demonstrates how to do just that."

Download the full Izoox case study at: http://go.gogrid.com/case-study/izoox .

GoGrid at MSPWorld

GoGrid is a Silver Sponsor of MSPWorld 2012, a large and influential cloud and managed services conference and exposition. For more than a decade, MSPWorld has helped executives from the managed services industry to network, collaborate, share ideas, and identify ground-breaking new technologies, all in an environment specific to the managed services profession. The show is in Miami, FL, on February 1-3, 2012. To learn more about GoGrid customers and partners like Izoox that are enhancing their business with the GoGrid cloud, please visit our booth 1110 in the MSPWorld section at the ITEXPO.

"Two things are absolutely essential to our success: costs and quality," said Hans Teske, chief technology officer at Condé Nast Digital Germany. "We provide our web visitors so much more than just magazine articles, and that keeps them on our sites longer. GoGrid's cost-efficiency benefits let us focus on doing more strategic things like continually enhancing our offering and expanding to new or mobile devices."

Impressed by GoGrid's proven uptime, reliability, and high standards for data security, Condé Nast Digital Germany started by moving one publication, Glamour, to the hybrid infrastructure. The solution quickly earned the company's trust, and Condé Nast Digital Germany began the process of transitioning GQ and Vogue over to GoGrid as well. Today, all three of the company's most popular titles run on GoGrid, and the company plans to move a fourth publication, Myself, to GoGrid in the future.

One of the biggest concerns for Condé Nast Digital Germany was data security. Many Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers use virtualized systems that store data on machines used by other customers, and this setup didn't meet Condé Nast Digital Germany's high standards. With GoGrid's hybrid architecture, cloud servers provide the cost and efficiency advantages of virtualized hardware, while dedicated machines store data and run database functions, enabling the use of security best practices. The dedicated machines also natively run the MySQL database required by Condé Nast Digital Germany's content management system.

"Condé Nast Digital Germany provides a great example of how leading brands are seeing tangible benefits from moving to the cloud," said Jeffery Samuels, chief marketing officer at GoGrid. "GoGrid's hybrid architecture offers the flexible, cost-effective infrastructure that companies like Condé Nast Digital Germany require to scale and be successful in the cloud. We are proud to be Condé Nast's trusted infrastructure partner." To learn more, read the full case study.

Uniquely architected for seamless, scalable, worldwide customer infrastructure deployments, GoGrid leverages a common architectural footprint that ensures consistent functionality and performance across all regions. GoGrid's EMEA cloud infrastructure services will deliver full-featured solutions via a single management portal. Customers throughout the globe can create, manage, and deploy robust cloud or complex solutions in any of GoGrid's data centers, including the new Amsterdam location as well as San Francisco, CA, and Ashburn, VA.

"Ringing in 2012 with the launch of our EMEA Headquarters is a terrific way to start the new year," said Warren Heffelfinger, CEO of GoGrid. "We're particularly excited about our customer momentum, which shows that we're well-positioned to gain traction as the cloud computing market accelerates. 2011 was a banner year for GoGrid, with strong execution across the board. Our focus this year will continue to be on customer success, technology innovation, ecosystem development, and global expansion."

"International markets are currently driving more than 40% of GoGrid's business," said Jeffrey Samuels, GoGrid's chief marketing officer. "Because EMEA represents a significant growth opportunity, our priority has been finding the right location and building the team to successfully launch our European operations. We've extended GoGrid's world-class cloud computing technologies to address the specific customer and infrastructure needs of the broader region."

To support its EMEA expansion, GoGrid is deploying its cloud infrastructure in Equinix's International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center in Amsterdam. With Platform Equinix, GoGrid can directly connect to enterprise customers and strategic partners in multiple business ecosystems as well as access high-performance connectivity options via Equinix's ecosystem of more than 680 network suppliers. GoGrid is also leveraging the Equinix Marketplace™ to promote and sell its cloud infrastructure services to the more than 4,000 ecosystem participants that are a simple cross-connect away in Equinix data centers.

"We are delighted GoGrid has chosen Equinix to support its new European operations. Today's data center is a high-performance business exchange where companies connect and do business with their ecosystem of customers, suppliers, and partners," said Vince DiMemmo, general manager, global cloud and IT services at Equinix. "With Platform Equinix, cloud services companies like GoGrid gain a powerful foundation to deploy cloud solutions with the speed, performance, and security that customers demand. At the same time, the Equinix Marketplace opens up new business opportunities so that cloud providers can truly turn their data centers into revenue centers."

EMEA customers interested in pre-ordering GoGrid's services should contact GoGrid's new European Headquarters at emea-sales@gogrid.com. More information about GoGrid's new EMEA cloud infrastructure services is available at http://go.gogrid.com/amsterdam_launch/.

GoGrid at Cloud Expo Europe

To celebrate the official opening of its EMEA Headquarters, GoGrid is participating in Cloud Expo Europe for the first time. Two GoGrid customers will be featured in sessions at the Cloud and Virtualization Infrastructure and Platforms Theatre: Condé Nast Digital Germany and Martini Media. GoGrid cloud experts are available at booth 1013 for private consultations and will host hourly mini-sessions on cloud computing basics, hybrid cloud, and hosted private cloud solutions.