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"Cloud is being considered because of the computing ease it offers, noted Laks K. Venkateswaran, President & CEO of Solar Enterprise Solutions, in this post-show interview with Cloud Expo Chair Jeremy Geelan. However, he also thinks it "will take its time getting adopted or embraced as a corporate-wide phenomenon." This he believes is due to the "decision process and an evolution path."

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Cloud Computing Journal: A very general question first, about Cloud Computing itself: Surely we've heard all of this before in various forms and guises - grid computing / utility computing, etc.? What is different this time - why is everyone so convinced it will now work?

Laks K. Venkateswaran: The main difference this time is the greater number of players and their hardware or software offerings either together as one solution (or as an inter-company partnership arrangement) that comes under the umbrella of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Apart from a vendor-backed offering, there is also a framework such as Hadoop that is in the open source domain and has been adopted by another set of vendors in their offerings of the Cloud Computing platform. While the core of the Cloud Computing is a master-node that is aware of the existence of the other node and the data/program availability in those nodes, let me also bring in the MapReduce Algorithm by Google that handles a distributed computing on very large data sets residing on clusters of computers.

Cloud Computing Journal: What are the three main factors driving CIOs toward the Cloud? And what are the three main barriers preventing some CIOs from moving some of the on-premise computing to the Cloud?

Venkateswaran: In any offering, the CIOs look for the four Ss, which are Speed, Stability, Scalability and Security. While Cloud offerings have evolved to become stable, there is still some doubt in CIOs' minds about the overall speed, especially with a commonplace resource, for example, when an older computing device is placed in the GRID. Now this reluctance (or we can call it a sort of fear) is completely understandable and justified when looked at it from a CIO's perspective where speed/performance needs to be considered in the overall strategy regarding current levels and future demands. As the company grows, there is exponential growth in the volume of transactions and a weak link in the chain is going to slow things down. But fortunately there are other mechanisms to handle such situations by taking the so-called commonplace resource off the GRID mapping, and terming it as "legacy," allowing its participation through Web services and not unduly slowdown the overall computing.

The other major aspect that CIOs are going to worry about is "security." Now security in itself can be viewed in two ways: the physical aspect of the computing resource and the data security. When the corporate data is moved to an external cloud offering (as, for example, IaaS), the physical aspect can be handled by bringing it to a secure facility. This is true, even for an internal GRID (that is a GRID or CLOUD that the end-user company may plan to build by leveraging its own internal computing resources). Yet, the fear of compromising security (and hence the whole deal of data security and privacy) due to the computing resource's incompatibility or sometimes the sheer incapability (due to an older operating system and the bit-mode it is operating in, etc.) to play into the overall design of the "security" will turn out to be a worrisome thing. While there is no panacea to these problems of bringing an older system into fold, one can always take the recourse of migrating the older system into a newer platform.

Cloud Computing Journal: How does your own company's offering/s assist CIOs and organizations/companies? And are there other players in the Cloud ecosystem offering the same - or is your company unique? Why?

Venkateswaran: Our company Solar Enterprise Solutions, Inc. specializes in Enterprise Data and Application Integration and customized GUI constructs for the users to view data and act on it (so that business rules can be applied on the data either for correction, or for taking it away from the active load scenario). While our offering is unique because of the bridges we build between the silos of data, which in turn becomes invaluable (otherwise, the data would remain in its own silo with risk of being lost because it sits in its own silo for a long while unnoticed), the integration aspect becomes handy when data needs to be migrated from a non-cloud node to a participating cloud node.

Cloud Computing Journal: We hear talk of a Cloud Revolution and also of a Cloud "evolution" - either way, what kind of time span are we talking about, do you think. In other words, for how long is Cloud Computing going to exert its pull on the minds, hearts, and budgets of all involved in modern-day Enterprise IT?

Venkateswaran: In my opinion, these (the "cloud") will take its time getting adopted or embraced as a corporate-wide phenomenon. This is not because there aren't any cloud offerings. But there is a decision process and an evolution path. Let me explain both.

What I mean by the decision process is the decision points involved in the moving of corporate data to an external cloud (internal cloud is rather easy). The major points to consider will be "what data?" and "how much data?" Along with the four Ss (mentioned earlier), the cost factor and provider experience will also be another set of prime factors that will be considered in the decision making.

Next is the evolution path. Cloud is being considered because of the computing ease it offers (that is a kind of re-use of an otherwise cast-away resource by bringing in that commonplace computing resource into the active GRID). Technically this sounds fine (some of the algorithms we have mentioned are the Hadoop and MapReduce). But, before it can get to that level, company CIOs are likely to check the SOA route as an immediately available alternative that can be constructed to be on hand in a secure way. This gives the multiple advantages of "availability/reuse," "interoperability," and "security" (of course beefing up security at the provider end of service will be required).

A Rock Star Faculty, Top Keynotes, Sessions, and Top Delegates!
Cloud Expo 2010 West, November 1-4, Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, California will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.

The growth and success of Cloud Computing will be on display at the upcoming Cloud Expo conferences and exhibitions in Prague June 21-22 and Santa Clara November 1-4.

The recent Cloud Expo at the Javits Center in New York City was the largest Cloud Computing conference ever produced, more sponsors, exhibitors and delegates than all other Cloud events of the year combined!

The four-day Santa Clara event will attract more than 5,000 delegates from 48 countries and over 150 sponsors and exhibitors on a 120,000 sq ft show floor, larger than Cloud Expo 2010 East, New York City event!

All main layers of the Cloud ecosystem will be represented in the6th and 7th International Cloud Expo - the infrastructure players, the platform providers, and those offering applications, and they'll all be here to speak, sponsor, exhibit and network.

"Cloud Expo was announced on February 24, 2007, the day the term ‘cloud computing' was coined," said Fuat Kircaali, founder and chairman of SYS-CON Events, Inc. "Cloud has become synonymous with ‘computing' and ‘software' in two short years, and this event has become the new PC Expo, Comdex, and InternetWorld of our decade. By 2012, more than 50,000 delegates per year will be attending Cloud Expo."

Sponsorship Opportunities
for Cloud Expo Prague and Santa Clara
Cloud Expo 2010 Europe and Cloud Expo 2010 West "show prospectus" have shipped. Sponsorship, exhibit, and keynote opportunities can be obtained from Carmen Gonzalez by email at events (at) sys-con.com, or by phone 201 802 3021.

Early Bird Registration Options
for Cloud Expo Prague and Santa Clara
Cloud Expo delegates can pre-register for the Cloud Expo Europe with €550+ savings here and for Cloud Expo West with $800+ savings here.

About SYS-CON Media & Events
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