We love to talk all things cloud over here at IT Pro and sister title Cloud Pro, but we love to listen as well. Yesterday, at our first Cloud Summit we did just that.
With attendees from the likes of Amazon, Rackspace and HP, through to customers like Channel 4, KPMG and Morgan Stanley, the stories were insightful, the debate feisty and the lessons well learnt.
The day kicked off with an intro from CLoud Pro's editor, Max Cooter, who highlighted that the majority (96 per cent) of businesses are happy with their move to cloud. The big gasp came when he showed, thanks to cloud computing and other modern technologies, if lastminute.com launched today, it wouldn't cost the 6 million it did in the late nineties; it would be a mere 300,000.
Max was followed by Ovum analyst Laurent Lachal, who gave the audience an in-depth and insightful look at the state of cloud today and where it is heading in the future. He claimed private clouds were still twice as popular as their public alternatives and that Amazon Web Services was set to bring in 1 billion in revenue next year.
Next, delegate heard from those actually using the cloud and taking the journey, even with all the bumps in the road. Liam Quinn from Richmond events started off by showing how his small firm was able to achieve so much more thanks to the expertise of cloud service providers.
He was followed by Simon Bulleyment, CIO of haysmacintyre, who made grand statements on his hatred of service level agreements (SLAs), describing them as "meaningless," whilst admitting to being too nervous to virtualise his security measures.
The last case study of the day saw Bob Harris, Channel 4's CTO, make similar statements on SLAs but show how the cloud was now the TV's channel's default choice when launching any new public-facing product.
The summit was rounded off with a security panel debate, featuring IDC analyst Rene Millman, Trend Micro security expert Rik Ferguson, Rackspace international vice president of technology Nigel Beighton and HP CTO David Chalmers.
Covering topics from data compliance and the Patriot Act, through to the need for cloud providers to gain customer trust, the panel was interactive and answered a lot of burning questions from the audience.
The Cloud Summit 2011 was a great success and we want to thank all who attended and those who presented as well.
Don't worry if you missed the event. We'll be posting on-demand video of the day shortly.
