Enterprises should not be intimidated by any aspect of cloud computing, but rather, look to the potential of aligning IT with business through the cloud, said Richard Marcello of Unisys. This observation was among a number of  "myths about the cloud" that he described during the initial keynote presentation at the 4th International CloudComputing Expo at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley.

The first day of the conference more than 2,000 delegates from 37 countries collected their badges.

Referring to cloud computing as "an evolutionary revolution," Marcello noted that there are many types of cloud (public, private, hybrid), that cloud is "really about business and can be transformational," that private clouds are about "much more than virtualization," and that cloud computing initiatives are reliable "when architected well."

Marcello also stressed that cloud computing installations must be able to run enterprise applications. "What the folks at salesforce.com have done, for example, is very impressive," he noted. "But we also need to move all these Dotnet and Java enterprise applications to the cloud.." Furthermore, while doing so, "you must remember that cloud computing is not just about cost," he said. "It's about business, agility, and transformation."

He cited an example of a group of scientists who were able to scale up to 5,000 servers "in a few days" when deploying a cloud computing architecture to conduct recent work. Their experience did prove to be cost-effective, Marcello notes (otherwise they wouldn't have been able to do it), but by using cloud "they were able to scale up so quickly in a very short time and this gave them opportunities that they otherwise would not have had."

Marcello left his audience--which was SRO in the main hall and spilled into two additional conference rooms, with a few key pieces of advice:

* "Look beyond just costs. Cloud has to be about agility and business results.

* "Enterprise cloud is not about just rewriting your business applications."

* "Consider private cloud as an easy entry point."

* "Don't let security or compliance concerns stop you." Unisys, for example, has spent considerable time considering how to meet the compliance challenges of such environments as the European Union regulations about data storage, HIPAA compliance in the US, and others.

"Do not underestimate the power of aligning IT with business."

Cloud Computing Expo continues through November 4, and features more than 110 speakers and a technology exhibit as well.