Cloud camps are cropping up all over the world, providing the opportunity for IT professionals, Web developers and business users to engage in conversations, share insights and discuss the benefits and challenges of cloud computing.

Defining cloud
Early cloud computing conversations focused on defining what cloud computing is. Some attributes include: it’s something hosted by someone else, it’s scalable so you can scale up or down as needed, it’s metered so you know how much you’re using, and it’s on demand, so you can get it when you need it.

Getting a bit more granular, the definition of cloud computing varies depending on your role i.e. for IT professionals, cloud computing may be infrastructure as a service; for Web developers, it tends to be platform as a service; and for a business user it’s software as a service.

The evolving conversation
Now that cloud computing is pretty clearly defined, the conversation is evolving to focus on questions like; How do you manage your app in the cloud? How do you scale your application up and down? How do you architect applications to run and take advantage of features of the cloud? and, How do you take existing applications and migrate them to the cloud?

Not surprisingly, security, privacy, regulations and service level agreements are huge topics of discussion. Cloud computing raises many questions in these areas including, How do you make sure data is in a secure place when you need to restrict access to information? How do you make sure your cloud provider is doing what needs to be done to keep your data and applications secure? 

Many of these issues are not unique to cloud computing. They also have to be addressed in a traditional data center that’s offered as a hosted environment. The good thing about cloud computing is that there is an expectation you are not relying on one server. There is also an expectation you have a back up strategy so data is copied somewhere else and can be restored in a reasonable amount of time.

It is clear that cloud computing is here to stay. While there are issues yet to be addressed, there are strong economic incentives to figure them out.

Find out more
To participate in the conversation, attend a Cloud Camp in your area. Click here for more information.

IBM is a sponsor and will be speaking at the cloud camps listed below.

San Francisco, November 4- Click for details

Phoenix, November 6- Click for details

Dusseldorf, Germany, November 25- Click for details

Recife, Brazil, November 26- Click for details

London, United Kingdom, November 30- Click for details

Seattle, WA, December 1- Click for details

Houston, TX, TBD- Click for details

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