As the delegates arriving in Prague today from all corners of Europe (and USA, Australia) in readiness for Cloud Expo Europe (June 21-22, 2010) are aware, where cloud computing is concerned the Enterprise IT industry has gone from asking 'What?' and 'Why?' to asking 'How?' and 'When?' - making 2010 the year that company after company, organization after organization, and government agency after government agency is moving, or beginning its move, to the Cloud.

Gartner is going so far as to say: "The only bad cloud strategy is no cloud strategy." (Cloud computing moved this year from #3 on the CIO priority list to #2, also according to Gartner.)

Here is the Prague event in summary form:

What: Cloud Expo Europe (6th International Cloud Expo)
When: 21-22 June, 2010
Where: Prague Hilton, Czech Republic

And here is the link to the Conference Schedule for the event, which is the second European event in the series. The first European event, also in Prague, took place last year.

Cloud Expo Europe 2010 : Sessions & Speakers
The speakers in Prague represent a wide variety of Cloud computing players, from various different layers of the ecosystem that has now emerged around the provision of IT over the Internet on a pay-as-you-go and highly scalable basis. They include:

Securing Mobile Cloud Interfaces
Jason H. Christensen - Co-Founder, Intelligence in Motion
– Cloud and mobile are complementary technologies and the benefits are immense in the mobile application space. This session will be a deep dive into securing cloud interfaces specifically for mobile platforms.

Unlock the Cloud: Building a Vendor-Independent Private Cloud
Diego Parrilla - VP of Product Management, Abiquo
– This session will discuss the benefits of vendor neutrality and how to make sure your organization accesses all of the benefits Cloud computing can provide. Welcome to the end of vendor lock-in!

Why Assumptions about Cloud Performance Can Be Dangerous to Your Business
Ron Wilson - Director, Strategy & Product Line Management, Compuware
– The new environment for rising cybercrimes also demands principles and procedures of cyber forensics to be upgraded to the cloud environment. This session will be a summary of the current state of art of "cloud forensics" and an analysis of its challenges and opportunities.

SaaS Data Escrow: Don't Go Cloud Without It!
Julian Cook - Sr. VP & General Manager, EMEA, RainStor
– At this session delegates will learn why SaaS data escrow is necessary and beneficial, why data escrow is not the same as backup or replication, and what the key considerations and requirements of SaaS data escrow are.

The Perceptions of European Business About Cloud & Virtualization
Gregor Petri  - Advisor, Lean IT, CA Technologies
– In this session Petri will discuss the results of a new independent survey: "Unleashing the Power of Virtualization, ­Cloud Computing and the Perceptions of European Business."

Maintaining Application Visibility and Control in the Clouds
Richard Stone - Senior Telecom Solution Manager, Compuware
– This session will provide some real-world insight into how companies are successfully addressing the challenge of meeting the business expectation of faster delivery of new functionality, while at the same time maintaining end-to-end visibility and control of application performance and availability across an inter-dependent, but independent, network of service providers.

Cloud Computing Adoption Globally: What's the Current Status?
Fergal O'Connor - Founder & CEO, CloudICT
– Using the results of the world's largest global cloud computing adoption survey, this session will report on what organizations are doing, or planning to do, with cloud computing.

Disruptive Technologies Create “New Normal,” Dispel Myths
David Milot - Managing Partner, Unisys
– In this session Cloud Expo Europe delegates will learn what you need to consider to ensure your enterprise’s foray into cloud computing successfully and securely meet the needs of your enterprise.

80% of Applications To Be SaaS-Enabled: Why? When? How?
Laurent Gasser - Co-Founder, Revevol
– In this session the Co-Founder of one of Europe's leaders in Cloud and SaaS implementations, Revevol, will give practical guidelines to succeeding amid the tsunami of change.

How Can ISVs and SIs Make Money from the Cloud?
Larry Carvalho - Instructor, Cloud Bootcamp @ Cloud Expo Europe
– This session will help delegates understand how changing dynamics effect how an Independent Software Vendor or a Systems Integrator can develop, market, sell and deliver cloud solutions successfully.

Introduction to MongoDB
Mathias Meyer -Chief Visionary, Peritor GmbH
– This session will cover: Scaling with MongoDB (replica pairs, master/slave, sharding);  Creating schemas for a document-oriented DB# Interesting features for developers (capped collections, file storage, upserts and more).

How Cloud Computing Improves Security
Roberto Tavano -VP Sales, Global Security, Technology & Consulting, Unisys
– This session will focus on the key areas where a successful migration to cloud computing can actually improve security and reduce risk, and address some of the major issues to account for before and during that migration.

Cloud Forensics: Challenges and Opportunities
Keyun Ruan - Ph.D. Candidate, University College Dublin
– The new environment for rising cybercrimes also demands principles and procedures of cyber forensics to be upgraded to the cloud environment. This session will be a summary of the current state of art of "cloud forensics" and an analysis of its challenges and opportunities.

Cloud Computing and the Enterprise
Doug Tidwell - Sr. Software Engineer & Cloud Evangelist, IBM
– This session will draw on IBM's experience working with customers and operating thirteen cloud centers world wide to review the conditions under which cloud computing can deliver its promise of flexibility and cost savings in the delivery of IT services to the enterprise.