Will Cloud Computing Kill the Operating System? We’ll Debate That, and Much More, at Cloud³

Wade Roush11/23/09Comments (4)Follow @wroush

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uncover and address forum participants’ burning questions about the nuts and bolts of cloud computing: Which cloud service vendors are easiest to work with? How does network latency affect the performance of applications running in the cloud? Who’s responsible when things go wrong?

No question about getting your company running on the cloud—or finding the next niche for new cloud services—will be out of bounds. With Sim as impresario, and a strong group of “cloud seeders” on hand from local cloud enterprises to answer audience questions and drive the discussion forward, we think the Unpanel will prove to be a successful and dynamic alternative to the traditional panel-discussion format. (But we admit it’s a bit of an experiment.)

We’ll also excited that Eric Nakajima will be joining us from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development. He’s a senior policy advisor who has been closely involved in coordinating the Holyoke High Performance Computing Center initiative, a joint effort between government, university, and corporate players (including EMC, Cisco, and Accenture) to build a “green” computing center in western Massachusetts dedicated to exploring new applications in areas like life sciences and clean energy. Nakajima will talk about the project’s deeper economic-development goals and report on progress with fundraising, site selection, and the like.

On top of all that, we’ll have an opening keynote speech on Akamai’s cloud computing strategy from founder and chief scientist Tom Leighton. And event host Microsoft is flying Yousef Khalidi, a distinguished engineer in the company’s Windows Azure team, out from Redmond, WA, specifically to speak at Cloud³. Azure is the platform that Windows developers around the world are using to build, test, and deploy cloud-based Windows applications. During the recent Cash for Clunkers rebate program, for example, Kelley Blue Book, the famous provider of used-car price estimates, used Windows Azure to quickly scale up its website (which runs on Windows Server 2003, Microsoft’s SQL Server, and the Microsoft.NET framework) to deal with an onslaught of new users. In his keynote address, Khalidi may talk in part about Microsoft’s roadmap for adapting the Windows Azure public cloud model into an enterprise-oriented private cloud offering.

Register for Cloud³ today to take advantage of the early-bird price of $95. After midnight, the price goes up. And remember that a companion event, CloudCamp Boston, will take place in the same space right after Cloud³, offering a more technical look at many of the same questions (separate registration required).

Finally, for your education and entertainment, here are a couple of cloud-related videos— one from rPath giving a clear (and surprisingly non-commercial) overview of cloud computing, and one from Google explaining the vision behind Chrome OS.

rPath Video

Google Chrome OS Video

Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent and editor of Xconomy San Francisco. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/wroush.