July 11, 2008
Written by Sam Charrington
Nestled between the the high-gloss conferences that were Structure 08 and Velocity 2008 In San Francisco last month; was the “little unconference that could,” CloudCamp!
When I say that CloudCamp was my favorite event of the three, it’s not just because I helped organize it. What made CloudCamp so cool was that it was totally participant driven, and boy did the 300+ participants “bring the funk.” CloudCamp was pure grassroots energy — the enthusiasm about the topic was palpable.
Unlike the other events with their set agendas, at CloudCamp the participants both created and facilitated the sessions. After some opening remarks, attendees were invited to volunteer to present or facilitate a discussion on a topic. We had 27 volunteers step up to run a session (without any prodding!) and easily filled the 30 available slots (10 rooms, compliments Microsoft x 3 one-hour-long sessions).
The list of presentation/discussion topics ran the gamut. A few were:
- What is Cloud Computing?
- 1 Billion Page Views: Hacks to Scale Big on the Cloud
- Cloud Storage; Unifying Cloud Storage APIs
- SQL Database Clusters in the Cloud
- Simple DB or SQL: Which Will Dominate the Cloud?
- Connect the Clouds: Integration Between Clouds and Local Applications
- No Cure for Cancer: Managing the Expectations of Cloud Computing Today and Tomorrow
Here’s the entire session board:
I held a session entitled “How Cloud Impacts Enterprise Computing.” I was joined by about 20 other CloudCampers to explore a range of topics including the emergence of Private Clouds, standardization of Cloud Computing environments, Cloud security issues, and more. One of the most interesting quotes of the evening came from Geoffrey Routledge in my session when he asked “After all, what is the difference between a really well run virtualized environment and a Cloud?”
CloudCamp managed to attract its share of Cloud heavy hitters; many of the folks that attended also presented at both Velocity 2008 and Structure 08. After the sessions, folks hung around networking, chatting and catching up for quite some time.
What the Future Holds
The energy level was extremely high at each of these events, and I was left with the distinct impression that we as attendees were witnessing a decisive turning point for Cloud Computing as a market — a coming-out party of sorts.
I expect each of these first-time events will continue long into the future., and I’ve already learned about three new Cloud-focused events just since June! For our part, we certainly hope to make CloudCamp an ongoing tradition. The next CloudCamp, CloudCamp London, will take place on July 16th, and additional dates/locations are in the works. If you’re interested in bringing CloudCamp to your area, please do get in touch.
Sam Charrington is VP of Product Management & Marketing at Appistry. Sam is responsible for Appistry’s overall marketing efforts, including marketing & brand strategy, product marketing and product management. Appistry is the pioneer and leading provider of application fabric software. Sam blog’s about Cloud and Grid Computing at In The Loop
June 26, 2008
Written by Ameed Taylor
Back in Arizona after attending Om Malik’s inaugural Structure 08 conference.
The conference had extremely high attendance (The attendance I am sure was boosted even further due to the Velocity conference and the inaugural CloudCamp San Francisco taking place in the Bay area the same week) and I ran into Dan Farber and Steve Gillmor in the press area so it also had a bit of star power.
This conference had good marketing free content for the most part and the only session that seemed out of context to me was the panel on Harnessing Explosive Growth. Structure 08 was focused on Cloud Computing for the Enterprise so it was a bit much to have to sit and listen to yet more consumer orientated stories from the likes of Facebook and Meebo. It was also a bit jarring to hear that companies like Ebay and Facebook have no plans to put SLA’s in place to guarantee uptime for their users. When I worked for an ASP 10 years ago, SLA’s were standard and were required of us from all of our Enterprise customers…thus again proving that Enterprises and consumer facing companies like Facebook are in a different world.
The best keynotes in my opinion were from Greg Papadopoulos; Sun’s CTO and Zach Nelson; Netsuites CEO. Greg’s mention that Sun supports Open Services amongst On Demand vendors lead to a few groans in the audience but I think he is right on in saying that the On Demand market wont grow substantially until customers are sure their data wont be held hostage by vendors. And Zach Nelson laid out a great overview of the elusive Middle Market…a huge potential customer base for On Demand vendors that SAP learned recently with Business ByDesign; is hard to design solution for and sell into.
Gigaom Omni Media has become a true new media company along the likes of Tech Crunch and Read Write Web and Om has a full time staff of writers and editors. Thus instead of me giving an overview of the remaining sessions please read Liz Gannes live coverage of the conference here and check out photos here.
June 11, 2008
Written by Ameed Taylor
Heading back to Arizona today after a very interesting and informative Enterprise 2.0 2008 conference.
Had a chance to meet with the founders and CEO’s of a number of Enterprise 2.0 firms and have come away very impressed with the software solutions, business models, channel partner plans and ROI of most of the firms products.
There has been much speculation in the consumer Web 2.0 space as to when the bubble will burst on both the irrational valuations and fantastical (made up word:) revenue models based on advertising that consumer Web 2.0 has been built upon.
It not only is clear that Enterprise 2.0 firms are a different breed from their Web 2.0 brethren , it is also clear that many of these firms will not only survive the current economic slowdown but are thriving now that companies are looking for ways to contain cost. On Demand hosted solutions for the Enterprise are really gaining steam at the moment and look likely to increase in market and mind share based on the enthusiasm I have seen from attendees at the Enterprise 2.0 conference.
A few of the Enterprise 2.0 firms (and Enterprise firms like Sun and IBM) I had a chance to meet with whom I will post follow-up articles and reviews about over the next few weeks include:
- Liquid Planner
- Serena Software
- Atlassian
- GroupSwim
- Small World Labs
- Sun for Project SocialSite
- IBM for Lotus Connections and Mashup Center
- Oracle for Sales Prospector
- Aegeon for Spaceo.us
- Veodia
- Igloo
- WorkLight
- Bungee
Stay tuned….
June 6, 2008
Written by Ameed Taylor
I have created an Enterprise 2.0 Conference FriendFeed room for Micro blogging during the conference next week in Boston.
As Bwana McCall noted, FriendFeed rooms are an ideal mechanism for live blogging an event. Especially now that FriendFeed has added a Semi-Public Room feature.
Subscribe to the room and contribute your videos, links and comments during the conference. I will use Twitter (on the rare occasions that it is up) a bit during the conference but will post the majority of the content relating to the conference in the Enterprise 2.0 Conference FriendFeed Room.
If you are blogging from the conference next week be sure to add your information in the Blogging section so that others can follow your blog.
