What does the CTO of the U.S. Dept. of Justice have in common with the CEOs of Eucalyptus, GoGrid, OpSource and Nortonworks, the Founder & General Manager of Dell Boomi, the VP of Big Data & Streams at IBM and the Chief Strategy Officer at Pacific Controls? Answer: all are shortly to present breakout sessions as members of the distinguished Speaker Faculty of Cloud Expo New York, taking place June 11-14, 2012, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City.

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«Our strong results show that we are addressing the major trends in clouds, big data, and trust,» said EMC’s CFO David Goulden, as the company reported first-quarter 2012 revenue of $5.1 billion, up 11% over last year’s $4.6 billion.

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The web is fundamentally changing the way we work – is your company ready? Intrigued by how more than 4 million businesses are using Google’s cloud to work in the future?
Join us as we bring Google’s highly anticipated annual gathering of business leaders together to hear:
Industry experts shed light on emerging business models
Customers share stories of business transformation
Our product experts unveil new products
Our executives answer your questions

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“Cloud computing represents a paradigm shift for IT, transforming computing power into a utility,” observed James Weir, CTO and Co-Founder of UShareSoft, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “While cloud adoption remains in the early stages,” Weir continued, “this shift means that the overall market will grow massively in the coming years.”
Cloud Computing Journal: Agree or disagree? – «While the IT savings aspect is compelling, the strongest benefit of cloud computing is how it enhances business agility.»
James Weir: Agree. Cloud computing is not just about cost savings but adding value and creating new business opportunities. Many of the customers I speak to definitely see these benefits too. Cloud computing enhances business agility by providing «self-service» access to compute, network and storage resources through automation. And we’re now seeing enterprise customers and cloud providers start to focus on the next big open question: software agility. Software delivery to the cloud needs to benefit from the same automated process to provide users with on-demand access to IT applications. UShareSoft’s tools are designed to do just that.

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“Cloud computing represents a paradigm shift for IT, transforming computing power into a utility,” observed James Weir, CTO and Co-Founder of UShareSoft, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “While cloud adoption remains in the early stages,” Weir continued, “this shift means that the overall market will grow massively in the coming years.”
Cloud Computing Journal: Agree or disagree? – «While the IT savings aspect is compelling, the strongest benefit of cloud computing is how it enhances business agility.»
James Weir: Agree. Cloud computing is not just about cost savings but adding value and creating new business opportunities. Many of the customers I speak to definitely see these benefits too. Cloud computing enhances business agility by providing «self-service» access to compute, network and storage resources through automation. And we’re now seeing enterprise customers and cloud providers start to focus on the next big open question: software agility. Software delivery to the cloud needs to benefit from the same automated process to provide users with on-demand access to IT applications. UShareSoft’s tools are designed to do just that.

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It’s time to rehabilitate hybrid – and no, that doesn’t mean that you have to check the Prius into a 12-step program. We’re talking about that big buzzword “hybrid” and what you can you do today to make turn that trend into a true business environment that runs as efficiently and with as little drama as a Prius.
You see the word “hybrid” affixed to as many trends as you do “cloud” today. The over use of the term has about as much relevance and meaning to most of us as “best of breed”, “paradigm shifting”, and “synergy”. You see the word hybrid used to describe for systems integrators, infrastructure, databases, business applications, platforms – pretty much anywhere and everywhere you can say “online and premise together”, you can say “hybrid.”

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The scenario is fairly typical. You launch your SaaS application for $14.99 per month. A few months later, a competitor launches a competing service for $10 per month. How do you respond with a competitive offer without cannibalizing your existing customers? We asked three software executives for their thoughts on the topic and have summarized their responses.
In the above scenario, you are introducing a new tier in the Free->Premium continuum. The inherent risk is that existing customers might want to downgrade to the new level to save albeit with a constrained set of features. While you cannot stop this, one way to have your customers think about this decision is to make the distinction between the SKUs extremely clear in the new tier vs. the premium SKUs. For example, at the low-end customers might be able to only perform 50 transactions a month (or an equivalent measure that makes sense in your business). While this might be okay for someone who is getting on board just to try the service, existing customers must think twice about downgrading for the ever-present fear of «what if I grow?» Usage-based price tiering lets your customers experience the product with little risk then upgrade to customize features to their unique needs.

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The average business in 2012 will double its amount of data, with more than half of that increase occurring within the cloud. Aggregation of data is no longer the competitive lever in itself, but rather the distribution and commercialization of data across multiple platforms.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Drew Bartkiewicz, VP Strategy at Mashery and a data economist, will analyze the massive intersection of Big Data Economics and Managed APIs as a way for Cloud and Mobile ROIs to be realized, understood, and predicted. He will discuss what «the market of APIs» means for your business and what it takes to compete in Big Data distribution.

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“Big Data is not simply code for lots of information,” observed Victoria Kouyoumjian, Sr. Business and Technologies Strategist at Esri, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Instead,” Kouyoumjian noted, “Big Data refers to information in myriad different formats from varying sources – and many of these digital formats and streams haven’t existed until recently.”
Cloud Computing Journal: Agree or disagree? – «While the IT savings aspect is compelling, the strongest benefit of cloud computing is how it enhances business agility.»
Victoria Kouyoumjian: Agree. Many organizations are initially attracted to Cloud Computing as the new bright shiny object that can potentially improve their IT portfolio. At the top of the list of benefits is cost savings, including reducing overall operational costs and exposing more cost avoidance opportunities. However, if the pay-as-you-go model does not fit with the business model of the organization, the savings aspect using the predominant cloud cost model cannot unanimously be adopted. For example, a Federal government agency accustomed to committing spend and decrementing after, or a public company with budgeting forecasting mandates might not have the same business needs as a commercial organization. Additionally, sitting down and doing the math on those cloud-hosted services that run 365 days a year may not equate to a compelling case for significant IT savings.

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