What is this event?

Now in its third year, CloudSlam® covers the latest trends in the world of cloud computing. The conference has evolved from a purely virtual format to a hybrid Cloud Computing conference spread over 5 days. Day 1 of the conference will take place at Microsoft Research Silicon Valley Campus in Mountain View California on Monday 18 April followed by 4 days of virtual cloud content.

Conference tracks for 2011 will include technology & innovation, implementation experiences, social & mobile cloud, security in the cloud and cloud for business.

How can you win Free Pass?

Simply click the button below or like the new OnDemand Beat Facebook Fan Page, for a chance to win the pass. The fifth person to like the page will win a pass to CloudSlam’11.

If you don’t win the pass you can still receive 10% off either the VIP or virtual conference fee by using discount code OnDemandBeat when registering.

What you need to know

1. The Winner will receive 1 virtual conference pass (Day 1 VIP pass not included)
2. The CloudSlam® Conference Pass Winner will be contacted via email.
3. Contest deadline is Wednesday April 13th and the winner will be announced on the OnDemand Beat Fan Page on Thursday April 14th.
4. No purchase is necessary to win.

Good Luck!

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.

One of the issues that has held cloud computing back from even faster market adoption is a lack of understanding by rank and file business and consumer users of the benefits of moving to the cloud.

Spearheaded by Box.net, CEO’s of a number of prominent cloud vendors have banded together to talk about the benefits of the cloud with the; I Choose the Cloud, initiative. Other vendors who have joined include Xobni, SocialText, Zuora, Get Satisfaction and Freshbooks.

Will be interesting over time to see if other cloud vendors join this or similar initiatives as the cloud continues to becomes even more mainstream.

Randy Hearn, a senior research analyst with Info-Tech Research Group; gives food for thought on how PAAS vendors can make their solutions more appealing to developers.

In a clear sign that Cloud Computing is moving rapidly up the technology adoption curve; there are numerous Cloud Computing conferences scheduled within the next 8 months.

Many of these conferences coincidentally overlap and there are now an equal number of conferences in Europe and Asia versus the USA.

Some of the more interesting conferences include:

CC Cloud Computing 2010
23-24 November 2010
Singapore

Cloud Computing AustralAsia
23-24 November 2010
Sydney, Australia

IEEE CloudCom Conference
30 November 2010 to 3 December 2010
Indianapolis, IN

Cloud Forum 2010
30 November 2010
Utrech, Nederland

DreamForce 2010
6-9 December 2010
San Francisco, CA

Cloud Expo NL
8-9 December 2010
Utrecht, Nederland

Cloud Expo Europe
2-3 February 2011
London, England

Cloud Connect
7-10 March 2011
Santa Clara, CA

Cloud Computing World Forum Middle East and Africa
9 March 2011
Dubai, UAE

Structure Big Data
23 March 2011
New York, NY

Cloud Computing China Congress
24 March 2011
Beijing, China

CIO Cloud Summit
10-13 April 2011
Scottsdale, AZ

Closer 2011
7-9 May 2011
Noordwijkerhout, Nederland

Cloud Expo New York
6-9 June 2011
New York, NY

Cloud Computing World Forum
21-22 June 2011
London, England

Structure 2011
22-23 June 2011
San Francisco, CA

IEEE Cloud 2011 Conference
5-10 July 2011
Washington DC

Vinnie Mirchandani’s new book; The New Polymath, is full of profiles and case studies that illustrate how the New Polymath’s within many industries are creating disruptive innovation to leapfrog their competition and introduce innovation to their respective industries and customers.

The  book’s chapters on Technology and Cloud Computing profile  innovations of technology vendors. In particular, Mirchandani uses many examples from the Cloud Computing industry. Calling Cloud Computing the convergence of Marc Benioff’s “Democratization of Technology” with Marc Manos’ “Industrialization of Technology” Mirchandani cites diverse case studies from Japan Post Network to Salesforce.com in the New Polymath to prove his point.

One profile focuses on how Netsuite uses its shared cloud infrastructure to quickly adjust its business based on market conditions and to benchmark against its competitors. Netsuite hopes to use its collected customer metrics to create Business Process Outsourcing Partnerships that will allow its customers to monitor business process metrics that up to now have been extremely difficult to gather.

In yet another example of the innovation inherent within the cloud, Mirchandani cites Cloud Computing poster child Appirio. Appirio has not owned any servers since its inception and runs all of its operations from lead generation to payroll in the cloud. Unlike its competitors Appirrio only used 2% of its revenue on internal IT versus the industry average of 7%. This type of advantage allowed Appirio to utilize more of its venture funding and initial revenue’s for R&D and customers activities thus allowing the company to grow from 5 to 200 employees without an IT department.

Like the Cloud Computing vendors; who are Polymath’s for bringing disparate technologies together for customers, Mirchandani deftly brings together disparate examples in an engaging book that provides readers a guidepost in how to also become a Polymath.

GigaOm’s Structure 2010 conference kicks off this week in San Francisco. Structure 2010 is spread over 2 full days and includes an impressive list of speakers and sessions in addition to a launchpad.

OnDemandBeat Readers can receive a $300 discount off the conference fee with discount code

http://structure2010.eventbrite.com/?discount=PRESS300

The Cloud Slam’10 conference runs from March 23 – March 25 2010.

In its second year, Cloud Slam is a virtual conference that focuses on Cloud Computing. A few of the conference tracks for this year include the Legal  Aspects of Cloud Computing, Cloud Implementation Experiences, Security in the Cloud and Cloud Business Models.

New in 2010, the conference also includes a virtual exhibition hall and a networking lounge for attendees.

IBM Cloud Computing CTO; Dr Kristof Kloeckner, will keynote the conference and will be joined by speakers from Oracle, SAP, Intel, Redhat , Adobe and Novell among others.

OnDemand Beat readers can receive 20% off either the VIP or regular conference registration fee by using discount code ONDEMANDBEAT.

SAP Launches 12Sprints Beta
SAP launches its Cloud Based Collaboration tool, months (and in some cases years) behind similar tools by IBM , 37 Signals and  a host of other cloud providers

Cloud Computing Revenue Predictions
Interesting article from Linda Leung that estimates revenue from Cloud Computing operations for a few major cloud providers

The IPad and Desktop Virtualization
How the IPad could become the must have thin client for Desktop Virtualization in 2010.

Private Cloud Adoption Models
EMC Global Marketing CTO Chuck Hollis describes the 3 primary adoption models he has seen companies adopt with private clouds.

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.