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Announcing Microsoft WebsiteSpark Enhanced with ServePath, GoGrid & Hybrid Hosting 09/28/2009
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.
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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.
| Special Price | Normal Price | |
| ServePath Windows Package | $ 799.92/mo | $2,259.90/mo |
| BusinessPath Core 2 Duo 2.13, 4GB RAM 80GB | $ 99.99/mo | $ 199.99/mo |
| BusinessPath Core 2 Duo 2.13, 4GB RAM 80GB | $ 99.99/mo | $ 199.99/mo |
| Windows Server 2008 Web or Windows Server 2008 or 2003 Standard Ed. (WebsiteSpark Startup Program) (x2 servers) | FREE | $129.99/mo |
| UltraPath 2 x Quad core 12GB RAM 5×73 SAS RD5 | $ 349.99/mo | $ 599.99/mo |
| SQL Server 2008 Web or SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition (WebsiteSpark Startup Program) | FREE | $499.99/mo |
| Private Network | $ 24.99/mo | $ 49.99/mo |
| Fortinet HW Firewall w/ VPN & Antivirus | $ 39.99/mo | $ 99.99/mo |
| Managed Backup & Disaster Recovery | $ 39.99/mo | $ 99.99/mo |
| Add servers to Backup Package (x2) | $ 19.99 | $ 79.99 |
| SSL VPN Included | $ - | $ - |
| Managed Load Balancing Service (x3) | $ 124.99/mo | $ 299.99/mo |
| 25 GBs NAS | FREE | FREE |
| BizSpark Membership | FREE | FREE |
| Setup Fee |
$399.99 | $1,399.99 |
(*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.
| Special Price | Normal Price | |
| GoGrid / ServePath Hybrid Windows Package | $499.96/mo + $100 credit |
$1,499.93/mo |
| GoGrid Business Cloud Package | $ 99.99/mo | $ 99.99/mo |
| $100 WebsiteSpark GoGrid Service Credit | $100 credit | N/A |
| GoGrid Cloud Connect (connect GoGrid cloud to dedicated servers) | FREE | $ 49.99 |
| Cloud Server DMZ | FREE | $ 49.99 |
| F5 Hardware Load Balancing Service (GoGrid cloud servers only) | FREE | FREE |
| 10 GB Cloud Storage | FREE | FREE |
| UltraPath 2 x Quad core 12GB RAM 5×73 SAS RD5 | $ 299.99/mo | $ 599.99/mo |
| SQL Server 2008 Web or SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition (WebsiteSpark Startup Program) | FREE | $499.99/mo |
| Fortinet HW Firewall w/ VPN & Antivirus | $ 49.99/mo | $ 99.99/mo |
| Managed Backup & Disaster Recovery | $ 49.99/mo | $ 99.99/mo |
| 25 GBs NAS | FREE | FREE |
| WebsiteSpark Membership | FREE | FREE |
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.
| Special Price | Normal Price | |
| GoGrid Windows Package | $ 99.99/mo + $ 200 credit |
$ 349.98/mo |
| GoGrid Business Cloud Package | $ 99.99/mo | $ 99.99/mo |
| F5 Hardware Load Balancing Service | FREE | FREE |
| 10 GB Cloud Storage | FREE | FREE |
| $100 WebsiteSpark GoGrid Service Credit | $100 credit | N/A |
| $100 Professional Services Credit (for migration) | $100 credit | N/A |
| Windows Server 2003 or Server 2008 | FREE | FREE |
| SQL Server 2008, Web Edition or SQL Server 2005 Standard (WebsiteSpark Startup Program) | FREE | Web – $99.99/mo Standard – $249.99/mo |
| WebsiteSpark Membership | FREE | FREE |
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.
New Contact Management Module on My.ServePath.com Portal 08/26/2009
Yesterday we pushed out a new feature, called My Contacts, to the my.ServePath.com portal that allows you to define contact information in order to ensure that proper contacts are notified at the appropriate times. Often certain types of communications need to go to specific individuals, finance to a Billing User, technical to a System User and perhaps the CEO wants to receive all types of information. The new Contact Management module is located in the main dashboard of the ServePath portal.
Our goal with creating this feature is to ensure accurate, targeted and timely dispersal of critical messaging coming from ServePath.
The Details
There are 4 roles that can be assigned to contacts now:
- Super User – Super Users are contacted for all forms of communication. Every account must contain at least one Super User.
- System User – System Users are contacted for technical support, maintenance and other technical issues. We recommend having at least 1 System User.
- Billing User – Billing Users are contacted for financial, billing or account-related issues.
- Read-Only User – Read-Only Users are secondary users who are contacted if any of the above users are unavailable.
The contact form can be quickly filled out as there are only a few critical details, namely:
- Name (required)
- Email Address (required)
- Phone Number (required)
- Role (required)
Here is what it looks like:
Contacts can be easily created, edited and deleted from within the My Contacts module. You can see the list of created contacts as well:
We believe this new feature is very important for any ServePath customer to have accurately set up and recommend that it is filled out immediately. It only takes a few minutes to ensure that your communications are going to the proper contact person.
Do You Have a Load Balanced Network? 07/14/2009
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.
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