cloud slam

Let's face it, monitoring server infrastructure and the applications running on them when your your server was in the same room was difficult enough. Now, cloud computing has made that challenge all the more complex. As more and more businesses move to the cloud, it becomes increasingly critical to have very detailed visibility into the behavior of your applications wherever they reside.

At the same time, the state of the art in monitoring still assumes your server is close enough to hug. What's available provides monitoring that doesn't come close to the level of visibility you need to effectively manage your applications, let alone detect and find performance issues quickly. The more you know about your application's resource utilization, the better equipped you are to respond and plan effectively. As users continue to experience traditional monitoring technology in cloud deployments, the clearer it becomes that existing solutions will never deliver the capabilities required for effective use in the cloud. During this talk we'll highlight many examples of this exact scenario using real-world war stories as we migrated and tried out many of the public clouds solutions for our production system.

DevOps has taught us how to embrace change and master frequent deployments, but we are often left to our own devices when confronted with dynamic cloud infrastructures. Deploying and maintaining an application on static infrastructure feels quite different from having to deliver high availability, fault-tolerance and auto-scaling in a cloud environment.

We will summarize the findings of a major study that we are launching Q1 2011. This study surveys and analyzes mid-market and enterprise users who are actively engaged with leading IT vendors in evaluating, purchasing and using their infrastructure and cloud solutions. Only key decision makers: CIOs and their direct reports are targeted by this study. The study will measure brand satisfaction/loyalty and the level of advocacy for specific brands and their impact on “Share of Wallet”.

Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most important technology trends of 2011. Providing virtualized resources over the internet enables users to leverage key technology infrastructure “in the cloud” without requiring direct management and expertise. IT organizations see cloud solutions as a way to reduce costs and complexity. Yet, for those choosing managed solutions, service levels and security are a challenge. For those building private cloud infrastructures, constructing flexible, highly available, and cost effective architectures is difficult. Using real case studies as examples, we’ll walk through some best practices and new technologies that will make cloud initiatives more successful.

To realize the full benefits of cloud computing as we move into 2011, application services must be built in a way that gives cloud providers the freedom to deploy them in the most efficient manner while respecting any business constraints. Any technical restrictions that introduce rigidity into the application are sure to impede the cloud provider’s ability to do this.

Transactional applications are a particular case in point and the need for transactional integrity imposes complex constraints that impede effective scalability and distribution in the cloud. Removing these impediments necessitates a new approach, one that revisits what is fundamentally required based on first principles. Companies must now look at a new set of requirements

Join two members of the “Clouderati” in this session as they highlight the common paths to the cloud – the evolutionary and the revolutionary – and where and when each route makes the most sense. Many companies are working through a step-by-step evolution to a more dynamic data center, leveraging virtualization and automation. It's a methodical route that maps to traditional infrastructure maturity models. Or, if organizations have the freedom or the pressure to deliver, they can look at a revolutionary turnkey cloud platform approach that’s faster and addresses cloud deployment in completely new way. How do you know which one is right for you? This session will explain what makes up the evolutionary and the revolutionary paths to cloud computing, how to decide which approach to take, why it might make sense to choose both, and questions to consider before starting on a journey to the cloud.

Current computing products are generally location specific, enhancing the ability of governments to enact regulations representing their national priorities. This, in turn, provides contractual certainty to users of computing resources who can reasonably anticipate which laws will apply to their contracts, and analyze risk pertinent to their transactions. In contrast, cloud computing in its fullest form will likely have a disruptive impact on the transnational regulation of security issues.

This talk will present an overview of U.S. and EU laws, regulations and policies pertinent to the use of computing resources in general, drawing attention to areas that regulators might reasonably target regarding cloud computing. Possible regulatory and legal schemes emerging from this evaluation will be presented, followed by a discussion of resources available to users of cloud computing resources in response to potential changes, primarily regarding contract terms and risk management theories.

The presentation is based on work that David Snead began as a contributor to the European Network and Information Security Agency working group on cloud computing security. It builds on that work by providing a more detailed description of methods cloud computing providers and users may use to help mitigate risk contractually, with particular attention to SLAs, coupled with an analysis of where the law and regulations in the EU and U.S. may be heading.

Pressured to improve operational performance and accountability, many companies have increased scrutiny over their outsourcing strategies and are exploring new deployment strategies. Outsourcing has evolved to include cloud-based services and internal services increasingly are composites made up of both cloud-based and traditional building blocks. Making matters more complex, many departments have taken it upon themselves to “outsource” services to the cloud without discussing the decision with IT at all.

Given these shifts in deployment paradigms, how does a company understand and manage their composite services so that they make the “best” decisions to leverage cloud computing, traditional outsourcing relationships and internally provisioned components? Join us for this session to discuss the practical issues of managing the composition and performance of services within your service library. In addition, we will discuss the practicalities of leveraging cloud architectures to help determine performance for the services you offer.

An increasing number of service providers currently launches cloud based IT services for enterprise customers. This market transition is driven by both large incumbents and small specialist operators, yet the offerings are similar and revolve around leasing compute and storage capacity with varying pricing models and value added (network) features. They face competition from “Cloud Incumbents” and system integrators/hardware vendors.

An effective Cloud Computing network infrastructure needs to be designed to meet the rigorous demands for low latency, very high bandwidth, stability and security. Building the Cloud Network on a foundation of high-performance Physical Layer Switching offers more options for design flexibility, as well as better fault isolation, test access and monitoring. Layer 1 switching offers an innovative design option for reducing latency and costs, for large networks and latency sensitive applications.

The performance and availability of a web site have a direct correlation with business success. Improving the web page load time by merely one second can have a measurable impact on user satisfaction expressed in lower bounce rates or higher conversions. Web site outages can have a disastrous effect on customer loyalty. Today it is not good enough to build great code, it has to deliver excellent performance and be available close to 100% of the time as well.

Service Providers, be it Independent Software Vendors or Telecom Service Providers are having their ecosystems shaken up with the advent of cloud computing. Combined pressures of customer demand based pull and cloud vendor supply based push are setting up the field for interesting times ahead.

Developers and IT departments who are being told they need to move applications to the cloud are often left on their own to navigate the myths and realities related to developing and managing the security of applications in cloud-based environments. This session will examine the topic of securing cloud-based applications in three phases. First is an examination of inherent threats facing applications in virtualized environments.

The writing is on the wall for on-demand platforms: regulations are coming, and they are coming soon. The Financial Information Regulatory Authority (FINRA) released the opening salvo in January 2010 when they issued the agency’s “Regulatory Notice 10-06.”The notice provided financial services and publicly-traded companies with an overview of the practices necessary to ensure compliance with future regulations. These included basic recordkeeping and suitability responsibilities as well as supervision guidelines for social media sites, blogs and third-party posts. All of this was an excellent precursor to the data challenges presented by social networking tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

In this economy all companies - large and small - are looking for ways to optimize their performance, but by doing more with less. Cloud computing offers tremendous cost savings by eliminating the need to purchase additional computing power and at the same time easing the IT work load. It offers companies the ability to scale up or down computing resources to meet demand without needing large capital budgets or forcing them to maintain idle capacity. Small companies no longer need to purchase computing resources; many are building their businesses on the cloud. And large companies are evaluating using the cloud to implement lower cost disaster recovery plans.
Michael Crandell, CEO of RightScale, will give examples of real companies who have deployed real business applications, and saved real money on the cloud. This session will focus on best practices for scaling websites on the cloud using real-world case studies of companies who have utilized resources in the cloud for bursty loads and flash crowds, and discuss how companies have reacted to the most famous scaling events to date.

Organizations are in a constant struggle to identify tools that will help their organization run more efficiently and make life easier for their employees and customers. This can take the form of finding new ways to connect with customers or developing new processes that can streamline the flow of information within the organization. When you boil it down, organizations are ultimately looking to get closer to customers, gain data faster, and provide services in a timelier manner. However, these goals cannot be met with skyrocketing costs. The question remains, do these types of solutions even exist?

Faced with shrinking IT budgets, government agencies are under tremendous pressure to do more with less. Cloud solutions, specifically Software as a Service (SaaS), help government agencies improve performance, transparency and collaboration, as well as save costs, without compromising security. In fact, Vivek Kundra’s 25-Point Plan’s “Cloud-First” Policy mandates that agencies select three programs that could potentially move to the cloud within six months and move one of these programs to the cloud within 12 months.

A number of government agencies are transitioning email, HR and citizen service programs for the initial stages of adoption. Citizen facing programs present the fewest security and C&A challenges so agencies can move them quickly to the cloud. Still, to transition programs to the cloud, federal civilian, defense and intelligence agencies need SaaS solutions that meet stringent security and certification and accreditation (C&A) levels required by the U.S. federal government and DoD.

This session will explore how agencies like the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP), the U.S. Air Force Personnel Center (AFPC) and the Social Security Administration (SSA), are leveraging cloud-based, citizen-centric software solutions to streamline citizen experiences across agency websites, call centers and social media platform as well as how the agencies addressed common security and C&A challenges to implementation.

In this session, the speaker will lead a dynamic discussion on challenges, security concerns and best practices for government agencies implementing cloud solutions.
The session will also include an interactive Q&A to illustrate implementation and provide audience members with an opportunity to ask questions and discuss best practices in the context of real-life scenarios and visual examples.

From this presentation and Q&A session, the audience will identify:

- Best practices in government cloud adoption
- How government agencies can address the challenges of cloud implementation and management
- How agencies with the highest security requirements can turn to the cloud to improve citizen services

With the rise of cloud and social, it's time for the IT department to change the way they work -- and become company heroes.

By democratizing adoption, the cloud changes everything about enterprise IT. It's now the sales manager that implements Salesforce.com (CRM) for his/her team. It's the developer that brings Amazon S3 (AMZN) into their toolkit. It's the support representative that selects Zendesk as the simplest solution for the customer service team. As a recent Forrester report noted, "Especially in firms where IT is seen as plodding and cumbersome to work with, the new price points and pre-provisioning of SaaS and cloud will foster renegade buying by the business."

Like it or not, users now control the mindshare of their company's IT strategy, and enterprise vendors must begin to build tools that are meant to be used, not just meant to be sold. And this is why startups are inherently disruptive in new markets. They're not beholden to the old business models that represent major profit centers. Starting at a much smaller baseline makes you immune to the risk of cannibalizing past product lines, simply because you have none.

Attendees will learn why, in just a matter of three to five years, the enterprise technology landscape has changed dramatically - and why, in the next three to five years, our corporate IT environments will look remarkably different than they do today.

The economics of cloud computing are compelling, and increasing numbers of application developers and app owners are embracing the model. A critical consideration in the move toward the cloud is how to manage and scale your data across a distributed infrastructure. Typically, RDBMS technology is problematic for the cloud because of its centralized, “scale up” model, which simply doesn’t provide the scalability and performance required by most modern software systems. New technologies have recently emerged that provide a “scale out” data model that delivers the elasticity and flexibility needed for cloud-based environments. In this session, Frank Weigel from Couchbase focuses on elastic data management solutions (those that scale-out), which hold the promise of enabling a fully-automated cloud that can seamlessly scale both application logic and the data behind the application. He will also provide real-world examples of companies that are using these technologies to achieve the scalability and performance needed to serve millions of users with their cloud-based applications.

This talk presents a methodical enterprise approach called Systematic Cloud Assessment and Roadmapping (SCAR), which provides a comprehensive method to evaluate the current state of the IT environment in an organization and gauge the suitability of Cloud Computing at different granularity levels. We compile a list of critical questions to systematically handle the challenges in Cloud evaluation and adoption, which leads to the necessity of strategizing the adoption of Cloud Computing.

A holistic Cloud Adoption Lifecycle Model (CALM) is designed, which consists of 8 stages: Operation Baseline, 360° Assessment, Target State Blueprint, Transformation Roadmap, In-depth Evaluation on Specialized Subjects, Cloudification Program, POC/POT & Pilot, and Execution & Cloud-enablement. Templates, tools and working artifacts are developed for the work breakdown in each individual stage. For example, in the phase of Operation Baseline, the current business and technology models are created or reverse-engineered, along with the future business and technology model. 4 working artifacts (Cloud maturity model, industry domain model, reference model, and Cloud reference architecture) are devised to assist the gap identification, impact analysis, Business/IT alignment, and architectural examination. A set of techniques and means are formulated to facilitate the anatomical diagnosis and investigations on multiple dimensions, such as SWOT, cost-benefit, bubble chart, and radar diagram, to just name a few.

As a part of the implementation of CALM, a Cloud Opportunity Assessment Tool (COAT) is constructed. COAT prescribes a wide-ranging process for thorough evaluation of the suitability and feasibility as well as roadmapping, composed of 4 major steps: Discover, Evaluate, Map, and Operationalize (DEMO). An execution matrix is employed to describe the key aspects in every step, namely objectives, inputs, activities, outputs, checkpoints, dependencies, and time estimates. Illustrative case studies are discussed to demonstrate COAT in action.

As they consider deployment and operational issues around implementing cloud-based services,
providers of enterprise application services do not appreciate the greater complexity of cloud deployment, as the systems for providing their current services are not complex - the complexity has been ironed out over the years. The great majority of current enterprise services are tethered to the Internet in one-off, one-to-one private environments. To successfully manage the complexity of cloud-based services – including the issues of multi-tenancy - service providers need develop a different skill set. As it is, too many are trying too hard to make multi-tenanted connections look like individual connections.

In this presentation, Cisco Vice President Raj Patel will provide a ground-level view of cloud operations and deployment, examining practices that are working; the preparations that are needed; and the challenges that providers of SaaS and other services face - what do they need to do differently to be able to provide enterprise grade services to their corporate customers.

Based on his first-hand experience, Mr. Patel will discuss areas that both service providers and enterprise IT management must address, including the need for service providers to deliver a seamless, consistent experience to their corporate customers; and enterprises’ need to provide the same to users. Both provider and user organizations must confront issues of cost, multi-tenancy, and how to let go of control over application distribution while continuing to guarantee quality experience.

Cloud computing has evolved from low-cost, fast, and easy-to-use to social, mobile, and open. The next generation of the cloud all about innovative new apps that are changing how people work. Colleagues now work from instant status updates, from data that finds its way to them before they ask for it, and from anywhere in the world through the ability to access information from any mobile device. In this keynote, Chuck Ganapathi, SVP of Mobile & Chatter at salesforce.com, will discuss how real-time social platforms are redefining the way people communicate, collaborate and innovate.

Enterprises know that something big is brewing. Enterprise cloud transformation promises to remake enterprise IT into something much better, but in many ways unrecognizable from what it is today. Enterprise IT leaders are at once humbled, scared, and anxious to get started to make this transformation while time is on their side. While they can better control the outcome and results on their terms. But who has established a best practice for this? Who can provide a roadmap for what lies ahead? How do I inoculate myself from the vendor induced confusion associated with private cloud implementations, PaaS, cloud management platforms, security, and other enabling technologies?
In this keynote session, Eric Pulier, CEO of ServiceMesh, will confront common pitfalls and challenges that await IT and business leaders, and deliver practical strategies to overcome these hurdles and navigate risk. Mr. Pulier’s session will discuss a successful path forward to transition current IT operating models toward a combination of internal and external cloud providers, and infrastructure, platform, and software as a service. This includes discussion of enterprise cloud maturity models, real-world examples of Global 2000 cloud execution strategies, and other valuable context to better prioritize and execute your organization’s cloud transformation objectives.

As more service providers deploy LTE networks, smartphone users will have expanded broadband access – opening up availability to a wide variety of new services.

Complementary to this growth pattern is the increase in cloud-based services, especially for mobile devices. As more business services are migrating to the cloud, on-the-go users will benefit from anytime access to business and mission-critical applications and files, such as email, documents, sensitive data or even proprietary applications. Taking it a step further, enterprises can leverage the cloud to supplement existing applications such as ERP and CRM systems with advanced communications.

What is the benefit? As an example, cloud-based social networking communications increase social communications in the workplace through click-to-call capabilities, Instant Messaging and even video. With always-on connections to colleagues, workers can collaborate much more efficiently and in a way that coincides with their company culture and personal preferences.

Beyond sole productivity benefits, the widespread adoption of both smartphones and cloud-based services is also driving higher levels of entertainment access to the masses. Soon cloud-based entertainment delivery systems will become device-agnostic, and adapt to video streams based on available bandwidth. This means the segregation of “business” devices and “personal” devices will be an arbitrary distinction at best. In the meantime, enterprise IT managers are having nightmares about how to manage it all.

The bottom line is that all of these factors will combine to put increasing pressure on the entire mobile video ecosystem, from content creation through delivery – especially because of the need for media delivery to diverse markets, technologies and devices. The opportunity now rests with a growing area of specialist capability providers that provide the interfaces and platforms to support these new services. In doing so, providers encourage other developers to build on these interfaces to increase their own value – while also strengthening the mobile video ecosystem as a whole.

This session will explore how broader LTE deployments will give rise to the next generation of cloud computing services. It will also address the challenges that must be overcome to meet consumer needs and demands as video becomes increasingly important to the mobile user. It will also discuss the difficulties that telecommunications providers face in gaining increased revenue streams to support infrastructure rollouts and how they can better manage and improve bandwidth issues through variable pricing, Quality of Service/traffic prioritization models, and the automatic adaptation of the media stream to the underlying conditions.

The ICT industry consensus is that the process of enterprise IT management will eventually evolve to a highly virtualized, services-on-demand state enabled through tight coupling of private clouds in enterprise data centers and public clouds, delivered through global carriers and service providers. While everyone talks about this end state, an equally important consideration is how companies plan to get there.

Virtualization is an enabling technology for the evolution toward cloud IT as it collapses the silo walls that have traditionally divided computing, storage and networking and in their place provides an abstraction layer above the physical infrastructures. In doing so, virtualization offers the promise of easier manageability, provisioning, and orchestration of resources. Nowhere are these trends taking shape faster than inside enterprise data centers.

In this presentation, Brocade Vice President for data center activity Doug Ingraham will provide an overview of how a company’s IT infrastructure will evolve in order to prepare for and take advantage of the migration to private-public cloud coupling. Among the steps that Mr. Ingraham will discuss:

· Virtualization of mission-critical applications – many of which have been virtualized in mainframe environments for more than 30 years. Increasingly today, companies are virtualizing Unix-based applications in multi-vendor environments with the benefit of reducing costs by decoupling software licensing; and reducing down time for maintenance.

· Virtualization of storage and reducing the time it takes to provision an application without outages

· Transition to networks that are converged; large; flat; simple to operate; hyper-visor independent (or agnostic); and integrated with existing management platforms

· Integration of networks with data center orchestration platforms and building a proper networking foundation for a dynamic, elastic infrastructure that is future-proof, bullet-proof, idiot-proof, and vendor-proof

Hybrid clouds have received wide attention lately but few users want to be locked in to a specific cloud or architecture; instead they want the ability to choose from a range of offerings that best meet their needs, whether for performance, QoS, price, or other criteria. Join Ellen Rubin, Founder and VP of Products at CloudSwitch, as she describes the emerging “new normal” architecture in enterprise computing, where on-premise environments (whether traditional data centers or private clouds) are federated with preferred public clouds for access to resources on demand. As companies gain experience with different clouds, this dynamic hybrid environment is becoming routine, with companies moving their applications to the right environment over the lifecycle of the application and using the best cloud offering available for a particular workload. Perhaps most important of all, everything “just works,” with point and click simplicity.

Enterprises know that something big is brewing. Enterprise cloud transformation promises to remake enterprise IT into something much better, but in many ways unrecognizable from what it is today. Enterprise IT leaders are at once humbled, scared, and anxious to get started to make this transformation while time is on their side. While they can better control the outcome and results on their terms. But who has established a best practice for this? Who can provide a roadmap for what lies ahead? How do I inoculate myself from the vendor induced confusion associated with private cloud implementations, PaaS, cloud management platforms, security, and other enabling technologies?

In this keynote session, Eric Pulier, CEO of ServiceMesh, will confront common pitfalls and challenges that await IT and business leaders, and deliver practical strategies to overcome these hurdles and navigate risk. Mr. Pulier’s session will discuss a successful path forward to transition current IT operating models toward a combination of internal and external cloud providers, and infrastructure, platform, and software as a service. This includes discussion of enterprise cloud maturity models, real-world examples of Global 2000 cloud execution strategies, and other valuable context to better prioritize and execute your organization’s cloud transformation objectives.

2011 has been heralded by analysts as the year of real private cloud adoption. But many organizations are either still building or re-evaluating their cloud strategies. Join Songnian Zhou, CEO of Platform Computing, as he shares his experiences from meeting with dozens of medium to large enterprises over the last year to help understand their objectives and build a path to cloud (both private and hybrid). Key issues that will be covered include building the business case, key capabilities required to support open cloud management, how to run a proof-of-concept as well as key pitfalls to avoid.

Based on the very positive feedback from the UP2010 conference session where we chatted with technology leaders about real problems they addressed with the cloud, we will be joined by a new set of forward thinkers who will share the challenges they faced and how cloud enabled them to solve matters in ways that range from very sensible to absolutely remarkable. One upshot: cloud computing is being applied to a very wide array of business problems; it does not apply to some narrow scenario or just a handful of industry verticals.

So join us for a thought provoking discussion where you will learn of the problems faced, the constraints within which the solution needed to be addressed and the lessons and insights from taking an approach that extended into, or depended upon, the cloud. Our examples will focus upon:

- Mobile apps: Mobile applications are abounding and cloud is the perfect backend for addressing services that can range from simple data services to more advanced applications. At CES Flickr announced a new mobile application and we will discuss the way they are using cloud computing as part of a great mobile experience

- Early Warning Cancer testing: Massachusetts General Hospital has always been an innovator in the world of medicine. Now it has harnessed cloud computing to create a cheaper, safer, more convenient alternative to a traditional colonoscopy, a test needed by millions of people in the US alone;

- Retail: Cloud was a central building block for two established companies in do-it-yourself home improvement, Lowes and PPG. Together, they have created an elegant solution to help the purchase experience;

- Data and Compliance: Compliance is a sticky issue that all too often is only addressed AFTER there is a problem. Whether it is Access databases or SQL databases, migrating data to the cloud is a good thing; no longer are these precious assets residing on “occasionally maintained” environments. Further, now you have the opportunity to weave such date into a more mobilized and larger dataset, and the ability to scale out when needed. Learn about how the cloud is addressing this situation.

As soon as someone gets “serious” about using the cloud in some non-trivial manner, security is THE #1 topic that is raised. Security expert Enrique Saggese will address the most common security concerns CxOs and other business decision-makers have regarding the security of their data in Windows Azure cloud platform. Topics we will broach fall into the following areas:

· The security controls that Azure has in place to help protect the customer applications and data

· A brief description of physical data storage and replication capabilities associated with Windows Azure Storage

· Security aspects of design of Azure infrastructure and how Microsoft secures its datacenters

Additionally, he will outline assets created to enable technology decision makers and developers to carry out their own due diligence which has received very positive reviews:

· The Azure Security forums – in the 1st 2 months alone it had +260k viewings

· The Azure Security essentials content available for reference

Today, more than ever, Federal, State and Local government are experiencing tremendous pressure to show productivity and transparency. To add to matters, all too often they are working with fewer funds and smaller staffs, on increasingly demanding problems. As example, the City of Miami saw its 2010 budget fall by 28%, and its staff downsized by 32%. But the cloud is certainly helping in these heady times to serve citizens in a transparent, nimble manner. The result: better services delivered in the face of few dollars and in a manner that helps out the IT staff be modern day heroes. We will chat with the City of San Francisco’s CIO, Jon Walton, and hear his lessons gained from moving some of the city’s services into the cloud.

Connecting organizations in a public Cloud significantly accelerates the agility and speed with which
cross-company and cross-country business processes are set up. It can be organized by means of a
Cloud self-service within a matter of hours and with almost no capital expenditure.
But is it secure? Are organizations willing to put their business data in a public cloud in order to benefit
from the vast number of advantages?
This break-out session will offer best practice experience about connecting organizations in Folio Cloud,
a public Cloud for business-to-business collaboration. Learn how…
· Siemens Energy organizes an international project in a Public Cloud.
· European companies collaborate with their Chinese business partners in a Public Cloud.
· Fabasoft collaborates with customers, partners and suppliers in a Public Cloud.

The fundamental model for writing applications has not changed in 40 years. The core model is: 1) A library of useful APIs. 2) A programming language for writing applications that compose an application from the APIs and add some additional functions. There have been some changes: 1) Higher layer abstractions like BPEL or RDBMs queries. 2) More flexible “linking,” e.g. Web services. 3) Improved languages and frameworks, e.g. Spring.

Unfortunately, evolving the basic programming model will not work for cloud computing. Consider core elements of cloud computing:
1.Software-as-a-Service: The canonical example is Salesforce.com. Extending and programming the sales force application typically does not require programming. There is a higher layer, focused abstraction for adding fields, modifying forms, defining simple rules, creating simple workflows, etc. There is an intuitive interface for defining the customization and extensions. Write code is the exception, not the rule.
2.Platform-as-a-Service: Drupal is a widely used, open source platform for content and collaboration centric applications. There are over 8,000 plug-in modules. Using Drupal or a plug-in is primarily defining an information schema and setting configuration properties. There are interfaces for defining the schema and properties.
3.Programmable Web: The vision of SOA was, “Encapsulate all of your APIs, put them in a repository and build all new applications by stringing them together.” The programmable web of called APIs supersizes this model. Any function a programmer needs is “out on the web somewhere.”

These simple, configuration/form based technology and prebuilt modules/APIs allow non-programmers to implement 99.9% of all cloud applications. This model is what will drive cloud computing, combined with HTML5 based mobile applications.

The advantages of using the cloud are apparent, but the approaches to the cloud are still in a heated industry debate. Renting cloud space from a vendor, private clouds, open clouds – just what is the best choice and where is the industry heading? While renting cloud space from a vendor seems easy, it is difficult to move off these clouds, especially problematic when you’d like to test another provider’s cloud. Private clouds tie you into a verticalized stack, limiting flexibility and choice, not too mention are cost prohibitive. We are driving towards an open cloud, providing control and flexibility to users. An open cloud is the next reiteration of the web and what will power the web moving forward. John Engates, Chief Technology Officer at Rackspace, will talk about why the open cloud is inevitable and how OpenStack is leading the way.

As more companies adopt cloud computing and the range of services available in an ‘as a service’ model are increasing, businesses are recognizing that the benefits of cloud computing go far beyond the cost savings from virtualization or the outsourcing of their data centres to ‘cloud’ data centres. Business transformation – changing the way enterprises interact with the customers, suppliers, employees and others through the agility and ease of use of cloud-based solutions – is rising on the agenda of many CEOs.
Leveraging cloud computing to support a transformation in the business or simply moving business processes to the cloud requires changes that go beyond technology. Business processes will change to adapt to a model that involves less direct control by enterprise, greater standardization, and new capabilities to manage cloud environments or providers (“cloud administrators”).
With change introduces risk and successful companies will address the risk of change proactively so they do not get caught without the right processes, controls and governance to ensure they maintain, at a minimum, the existing level of control and compliance that they have invested in over their company’s history. This session will discuss key business process areas that are changing as company’s leverage the cloud for business transformation or that are moving key business processes to the cloud. We will discuss key areas of consideration for identifying and managing the risks of change through this transformation.

Integrating cloud applications, platforms and infrastructure with your existing and legacy systems is consistently cited as a primary barrier to cloud computing adoption and overall success.

- Do you have a strategy?

- Are you still dealing with “SaaS sprawl?”

- How do you provide self-service to the business without losing control?

Welcome to the new era of Hybrid IT. Now that you’re starting to get comfortable with cloud security, it’s time to think about cloud data integration. And don’t forget data quality. What about MDM?

Don’t let the cloud mean more silos and more data fragmentation. Whether you’re migrating, synchronizing, cleansing, replicating or archiving cloud data, it’s critical that you have establish a plan to ensure your organization is always working with timely, relevant, and trustworthy information.

This session will provide an overview of the different options and use cases for cloud data integration. We’ll share a number of case studies and best practices and discuss techniques for improving IT/Business collaboration by taking advantage of cloud-based data integration services. Don’t wait to integrate!

For organizations accustomed to tight control and measurement of internal IT resources, the advent of cloud computing presents an immediate challenge to established practice.  Although a cloud service provider may have complete management of its own resources, that insight is not necessarily extended to its organizational tenants.  Even if a detailed view of the underlying infrastructure is shared, the tenant’s view will be more loosely coupled to the actual resources than its traditional interaction with internal IT, for instance as a result of virtualization.  The challenge should in fact be considered a good thing, because it forces tenants and providers into a loosely coupled, policy-based management approach that formalizes the essential interface between tenant and provider.   As organizations seek to adopt and leverage cloud computing , they can be impeded by lack of reliable and auditable management of all the dimensions of IT entrusted to the cloud provider.  In this talk, I’ll describe the evolving technology capabilities required to enable the rapid adoption of cloud computing for mission-critical workload deployment.

Sure there’s lots of hype about cloud computing but what’s really going on? Are enterprises really investing in public clouds? Are they really building private clouds? If you are under pressure to get to yes on cloud and need to know if you are behind (and how to catch up), then this is the session for you. Forrester analyst James Staten will share the results of their extensive research on cloud computing to help you uncover what your enterprise peers are doing and how to set a cloud strategy that is realistic and doable.

Anant Jhingran will talk about the cloud stack (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) and the deployment locales (private, public, hybrid) and their implication on cloud application developers. He will give several examples demonstrating the different choices. He will also do a small dive on the role of Big Data, NoSQL and other data issues pertaining to the cloud. Finally, he will discuss the emerging standards in this area and their implications to developer productivity.