Tue 29 – Wed 30 Jun, 2010 from 10:00am – 5:00pm
Olympia, Hammersmith Road
London, W14 8UX, UK
Cost: Free
Event Website
Description:
The 2nd annual Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event to learn and discuss the development, integration, adoption and future of cloud and SaaS.
Building on the success of the 2009 show, this two day conference and free-to-attend exhibition will provide a focused platform for the global cloud computing and SaaS industry.
Wed 5 May, 2010 from 6:00pm – 11:00pm
Gateshead Heritage @ St Marys
Oakwellgate
Newcastle, NE8 2AU, UK (Map)
Cost: Free (optional donation)
Event Website
Description
About CloudCamp:
CloudCamp is an unconference where attendees can exchange ideas, knowledge and information in a creative and supporting environment, advancing the current state of cloud computing and related technologies.
Google's Parisian Love campaign told a virtual love story to the Superbowl audience.
The search engine giant, that previously has relied strongly on word-of-mouth hype in its marketing, has turned to creative agencies for a new advertising campaign, The Marketing Week reports.
Agencies across the UK have been invited to pitch for a campaign that will focus on promoting Google’s search facilities.
Date: 28th January 2010 between 10am and 1pm
Venue: Middlesbrough Football Club
Cost: £20
Cloud Computing has far-reaching implications for businesses. Don’t get left behind – find out how to take advantage at ‘Cloud Seminar’, an event featuring Microsoft and Sage.
In recent reports both The Economist and Business Week have commented how cloud computing – where software, data and services are hosted on the internet – will transform the business world. Make no mistake ‘the cloud’ is going to be disruptive to IT. It offers significant threats to market incumbents but huge opportunities to new entrants and established companies that respond quickly.
Thu 3 – Fri 4 Dec, 2009 from 8:30am – 6:00pm
Cumberland Hotel
Great Cumberland Place
London, W1H 7DL, UK
Cost: £500
Event Website
Description
2 Day Web 2.0 conference covering web 2.0 interface and innovations.
Interface tackles how users and their clients connect to the web 2.0 phenomenon and “how best to” engage them. Innovation addresses web entrepeneurial challenges and new technologies.
The Telegraph Media Group is embracing cloud computing in a big way.
Speaking at Salesforce.com’s Cloudforce event in London earlier this year, CIO of the Telegraph Media Group (TMG), Paul Cheesbrough, said the company is looking to move as much of its back office IT into the cloud as possible.
With around 50 per cent of TMG’s back office systems now being hosted on the internet, Cheesbrough added: “We would like to get that much closer to 100 per cent so we can free up resources.”
Media companies are all too familiar with programmes and events sending huge spikes in traffic. This has prompted the team at digital agency Monterosa Productions to use Amazon’s cloud service to host The Apprentice Predictor, which is kept running through each episode of the show so fans can predict who will get fired.
The company previously used the same service for the BBC’s Visual Radio trial in January, through which listeners could see Chris Moyles at work and interact with him through messaging and polls. Monterosa is also developing the next version of the BBC’s fantasy football-style Celebdaq game in the cloud and expects to use Amazon’s service during peak traffic.
The cloud may not be right for all, of course. IT lawyer Peter Wainman, senior solicitor in the technology and commerce team at law firm Mills & Reeve, warns that companies are still liable for data protection, so must scrutinise service-level agreements. “Many cloud hosts won’t be held liable for downtime or loss of content, IP or data. You need to ensure you retain control and must be aware of the scope of the hosting agreement,” he says.
This issue of control appears to a major reason for not all content owners being convinced by the cloud. Property site Rightmove’s head of development Nathan Barron says, “I’m not sure we’d seriously consider the cloud as we’d be concerned we were giving away control over our content. We mostly work through estate agents using our site to sell or rent properties, and they expect details to be updated instantly and the site always to be available. We store our database in three locations to make sure we’re always up — we could lose one set of servers without impacting the site’s performance. I really don’t think we’d be able to confidently offer that level of service if we didn’t control the servers ourselves.”
For radio station Kiss, the switch to cloud computing was a simple calculation. Its infrastructure had been built with tolerance to ensure it was never overloaded but the servers were in need of updating. When it compared the cost of new equipment to moving its web content to a cloud service from Rackspace (video and audio streaming are handled separately), the choice was clear.
“We estimate that by moving our web content onto the cloud we’ve saved around 50% compared to the hosting contract we were on,” says Kiss lead developer Gareth Morris. “We wanted to move because the cloud is more cost-effective, but it also has the advantage of being able to scale up easily if we have, say, a week of planned activity from DJs to drive people to the website. The only downside is you need to work with tools supported by your cloud provider, but that hasn’t been a major problem. We’ve been able to work with what’s available to us, and new software and tools are constantly being launched.”
OK, so that’s cleared that question up then. Or not. According to John Foley of Information Week, the chief complaint about cloud computing isn’t that it doesn’t exist, but that we’ve been doing it for years. “As that argument goes, ASPs, outsourcing, Web site hosting, and browser-based applications are all forms of cloud computing, so what’s really new here?”
The term has been bandied around for a year or so now and even now, in late 2009, debates still rage on the web as to what it is, what it is not, and whether it’s good or bad. NMM has noticed a flurry of seminars and workshops springing up to talk about Cloud Computing with speakers including the Great and the Good from industry and retail. So what IS it? Well, we’ve borrowed John Foley’s definition here, because it’s pretty good:
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