Amazon EC2 suffers significant outage on April 21
Amazon’s challenges with getting all services back online following an outage in its US-East  region  is already becoming a hot topic for debate in the Cloud Computing Industry.

Key differences between Social Business and Social Media
Social Media Club readers have posted compelling feedback on Chris Heuer’s framework that outlines the differences between Social Business and Social Media.

New Enterprise 2.0 survey needs participants
Jacob Morgan is looking for reader participation in an interesting Enterprise 2.o Survey.

Dell makes 1 Billion investment in Data Centers
Dell continues its transformation into a full services IT firm with 1 Billion investment in data centers. This investment in comes on the heels of recent major acquistions by Dell.

Is the timing ripe for Cloud Computing Capacity Marketplaces?
The beta launch this week of SpotCloud; from Reuven Cohen’s firm Enomaly, is a first in terms of a company focusing on the trading of compute capacity. Although SpotCloud is first to market, I would expect many players in this space in the near future as smaller cloud providers will have to soon start maximizing utilzation and profitability to stay viable.

Social Business Vs Enterprise 2.0
Peter Modigliani’s recent article really keys into the latest trending of the dualing terms Social Business vs Enterprise 2.0.

Cloud Computing Stocks Outperform General Market
While I don’t agree with the inclusion of Qwest Communications as a pure Cloud computing company, the charts do bear out that Cloud computing companies are doing quite well on Nasdaq since 2009.

Applications Made for the Cloud
James Urquhart reviews the 3 application types that are currently thriving or posed to do well in the coming years in the Cloud.

IBM launches its 3 day Social Business Jam on 8 February 2011. The Social Business Jam is a online business social media brainstorming event along the lines of IBM’s Innovation Jam and is one of a series of Jam Events that IBM sponsors throughout the year.

During the event IBM partners, Subject Matter Experts, developers and Social Media Analysts will examine the role of Social Media in business, how to lower the risks of engaging in Social Media in business and what type of systems need to be in place for Social Media to be adopted in business.

A few of the scheduled participants in the Social Business Jam include, Charlene Li, Founder of Altimeter Group, Author of “Groundswell”, Steve Wylie, GM of Enterprise 2.0 Conference and Vittorio Cretella, CIO, Mars, Inc.

Some of the topics to be covered during the jam include Building the Social Business of the Future, Using Social to understand and engage with Customers, and What Social Means for IT.

Enterprise 2.0 Software Patents

In a sign that Social Computing in the Enterprise is now going mainstream, Alexander Wolfe reviews 13 recent Enterprise 2.0 patent applications.

CA Acquires Cloud Consulting Firm

CA continues its acquisition strategy with the purchase of Silicon Valley based 4Base; one of the more established Cloud Consulting firms in the industry

Is the Cloud Ready For Open Source?

Ashlee Vance comments on how RackSpace OpenStack might finally open the gates for Open Source Cloud Computing solutions.

Will China Become The Leader In The Semantic Web

Do current events point to a future where China will be the de facto Semantic Web Leader?

E-Books in the Cloud
Will the use of the cloud for storage of E-Books  lead to even greater adoption of cloud storage in the coming years?

Enterprise 2.0 year in Review
Dion Hincliffe posts an insightful review of Enterprise 2.0 in 2009.

Practical SOA Applications
Joe McKendrick has compiled 17 examples of SOA being put to real world use with fairly good results.

Oracle’s Enterprise 2.0 Assessment Tool
Oracle has created a useful (if not somewhat irritating at times) Enterprise 2.0 assessment tool.

GoodData is one of the first firms to offer BI in the cloud and just recently won the Amazon Web Services Start-Up Challenge.  GoodData offers standard BI functionality and tools for Analytics, and Dashboard and Report creation but due to its Cloud architecture offers scalability and collaboration ability not available with on premise BI tools.

A few of GoodData’s competitors include SAP Business Objects, Swirrl, and SQLStream. Expect to see more competitors jump into the space as both computing cycle costs come down and as more companies make the transition to the cloud for BI projects.

Amazon Launches Relational Database Service
Amazon this week launched its Relational Database Service.(RDS) Amazon RDS is a MYSQL 5.1 database offering that will compete directly with Joyent’s recently announced MySQL Accelerator and indirectly (but not at an enterprise level) with Microsoft SQL Azure.

Cloud Wars Begin
Amazon also announced a 15% drop in pricing for all EC2 instance families and sizes. This is significant due to the fact that one can expect EC2 competitors like GoGrid and Softlayer to follow suit and lower pricing as well.

Stephen Baker Researches Enterprise 2.0 Consulting
Over on BusinessWeek; Stephen Baker is creating a few articles on Enterprise 2.0 Consulting. Will be interesting to see whether his research indicates that Enterprise 2.0 consulting is a viable industry or more of the sometimes dubious Social Media consulting with an Enterprise twist.

W3C announces OWL2
The Semantic Web group within W3C released the OWL2 recommendation. OWL2 is part of the W3C’s Semantic Web Toolkit and is a standard for representing knowledge on the Web.

GSA launches Apps.Gov
The General Services Administration has launched the long awaited Apps.Gov site. Intended as a one stop shop for US government agencies keen on getting into the cloud, the site lists vendor provided Social Media, Business, Productivity and IT Services applications.

Are Washington Post’s Policies A Sign of The Future?
The Washington Post’s draconian Social Media Policy for its staffers has raised the question of whether strict Social Media Guidelines will become the norm in corporate America.

Practical Web 3.0 Applications
An interesting listing of 13 useful Semantic Web application over on ThoughtPick

Is this the Best Enterprise 2.0 Definition?
Bill Ives has posted what is probably the best Enterprise 2.0 definition I have seen to date. Now it will be up to a vendor to actually sell Enterprise 2.0 solutions to a customer with this definition.

Amazon Rolls Out Virtual Private Cloud
Amazon today introduced its Virtual Private Cloud Service. This service allows customers to connect resources within the AWS Cloud, to resources within their own your own datacenter using encrypted IPsec VPN connections

Help Shape Enterprise 2.0 San Francisco
The Enterprise 2.0 San Francisco Conference Organizers have set up a survey for the Enterprise 2.0 community to vote for sessions they would like to see at its inaugural west coast conference

VARS To Get a Slice of Cloud Computing Pie
Anthony Ha discusses Salesforce.com’s recently announced program for VARS to build applications on its Force.com platform

Cloud Computing Budgets Approved at Most Large Firms (pdf)
F5 recently released a survey of 250 large enterprises that indicates that funding for Cloud Computing projects and trials is in place at over 85% of the surveyed firms.

Is VMWare Making a Move into SAAS market
Interesting article from Sam Dean that delves into the real reasons behind VMware’s recent acqusition of SpringSource

There are a number of new events scheduled at this years conference including new cloud computing workshops and an open enterprise study.

The popular Enterprise 2.0 Launch Pad returns in 2009 and a strong group of Enterprise 2.0 developers and entrepreneurs have made it to the round of 8. The comunity will choose 4 finalists to present at the conference based on each firms 2 minute product video.

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference organizers at TechWeb have offered 1 free conference pass valued at $2200 that I will give away to one of the OnDemand Beat’s readers.

The pass will go to the first reader who can answer either via twitter to @ondemandbeat or via a comment to this post the answer to the following question:

“Who were the 5 finalists in the 2008 Enterprise 2.0 Conference LaunchPad?”

If you do not win the Free Conference Pass you can still save 30% on conference registration or get a free Pavillion Pass by using code CNAPEB22 on the conference registration page.