The CloudAsia 2011 conference runs from 30 May to the 2 June.  It spans the enterprise and telecom domains, moving the conversation on from the hype and generalities of cloud computing to the specific problems telcos can solve for enterprises through delivering cloud and transport as a single SLA (Service Level Agreement) wrapped service.  The timing is also quite fortuitous, in that with the recent outages in a number of cloud based platforms, it will encourage a more practical discussion on its role and evolution, without the hype of “cloud is the answer, now what’s the question.”

CloudAsia 2011, co-organized by IDA (Infocomm Development Authority) & ITM Asia with the VCE (The Virtual Computing Environment company) being the top sponsor, brings together decision makers across the entire cloud computing eco-system from enterprises, telecom operators, regulators, government agencies, service providers, system integrators and vendors. For any business and in particular any service provider, cloud has to be on the road-map if you’re not doing it already.  This event enables the frank discussions with implementers, potential buyers and technology providers to understand how APAC is going to use cloud to redress the IT-gap in the region.

At the conference I’ll be running the pre-conference “Cloud Computing 101” workshop, based on the in-depth workshop described in this article.  Being independent means I’m not trying to sell, just provide advice which makes the workshop fun as I can say exactly what I think:

• The workshop beings with some fun describing the misinformation circulated on cloud computing;
• Then provides some quantification, reviews the technologies (some of concepts date back to before I was born – cloud has been a long time in coming);
• Reviews the vogue of private cloud (the pitch appears to be: make virtualization work and stay working, continue to buy our hardware, also buy this new automation software and lay off some of your IT staff to pay for it);
• Reviews what operators are doing,
• Then dives into the practical implementation steps including security, governance etc., though to be frank its the same as any IT project: focus, don’t believe the hype, and take it step by step.

I’ll also be giving a presentation on “Telecoms And The Cloud: Does it Make Sense For The Customer?”

• What is an operator‟s role in cloud computing beyond the pipe?
• How can operators compete against the scale of the web service providers (Google has > 1 million servers on the Internet) and the channel dominance of the enterprise software vendors (e.g. IBM, Oracle and HP)?
• What is the core of value an operator can deliver to customers where they are consumers, small and medium enterprises or national and international corporations?
• Does combining “on-demand transport quality of service” with “on demand computing resources and software services” make sense for customers?
• What is the value to customers?
• What are the regional variations?
• What is the status of operators‟ cloud computing initiatives in other markets?

I’d recommend attending CloudAsia 2011 to understand how the unique and diverse markets of Asia will adopt cloud computing to address its IT-gap.