StrAIT Blogging

I moderated a panel at an event here in Houston today. The event was our local TechExecs CIO Panel Forum and covered Cloud 2.0 topics. I have been writing about similar topics in recent posts on this blog. See a security focused example here. Prior to our panel segment, we heard from several vendors mostly talking about cloud technology. There was quite a bit of good information presented and I learned that several vendors have been making more progress in the maturity of their products and services than I had given them credit for.

For example, one of the vendors was layeredtech. An intriguing notion in their presentation was the idea of a Virtual Private Data Center, or VPDC. While this acronym seems to be a natural extension of virtualization and cloud technologies that have been around for a while now the acronym is actually fairly new. My simple metric for that assessment is that there is no listing in Wikipedia for VPDC or Virtual Private Data Center (heads up layeredtech, you should fix that). The attraction of a VPDC is the notion of a holistic, virtualized data center that can dramatically simplify corporate IT life and lower costs for large, mid-size and small companies is compelling. The ability to quickly adapt a data center to align a company’s data center to better align with business process changes is music to my ears.

Another example was from iland. The presentation today discussed cloud-based disaster recovery. While that idea has been around a while and there are multiple vendors offering similar services, I found it interesting how well thought out their presentation was. It was just another indication to me of growing maturity. If you haven’t considered this scenario for disaster recovery yet, I suggest it’s time to do so.

Our panelists represented primarily larger and mid-sized companies. My overall impression from their comments was that they had well thought out opinions on each topic that not long ago were considered quite controversial. Remember, the Gartner Hype Cycle chart referenced in my security focused post mentioned above is new information. It still shows cloud computing at the peak of inflated expectations with some amount of negative hype still ahead. Our panelists were all highly competent professionals. There comments reflected well considered opinions about cloud security and value to their businesses. My overall conclusion from today’s event is that cloud computing has matured to the point of acceptable risks for people whose necks are on the line for such decisions. That’s a big deal.

I suggest that you catch a TechExecs event in a city near you. They don’t require much travel and only last half a day. Yet they are still able to provide useful information and a good networking opportunity. And as we all know, the moderators are really the big draw. It’s their witty way of reading printed questions, shutting up and listening for someone else to deliver the wisdom. I do the shut up part really well.

Thanks for stopping by. Until next time…

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