Cloud Asia 2012, 14 to 17 May 2012 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Singapore

Cloud Asia 2012 is the second year of the conference, my summary of Cloud Asia 2011 is
here and here.  Cloud Asia 2012 is a great event to meet the decision makers across the cloud computing eco-system from enterprises, telecom operators, regulators, government agencies, service providers, system integrators and vendors from Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

The event really has its “feet on the ground”, its focused on practical implementation issues, rather than having its “head in the clouds.”  Put simply in APAC vendors do not win deals through hype and BS, rather through clear, customer-centric, easy to understand propositions.  The event is co-organized with the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) which highlights the strategic importance Asian governments place on Cloud Computing.  The event runs from 14 to 17 May 2012 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Singapore.

For me the highlight of the event are the many presentations from end users on their requirements and experiences in adopting cloud computing.  Some of the presenters include:

  • Steve Lee, CIO, Changi Airport Group
  • Mrs Rosina Howe, Chief Innovation Officer & Group Director, Innovation and InfoComm Technology Land Transport Authority
  • Taufik Kurniawan, Head of IT Infrastructure Information System Directorate, Royal Court of Bahrain
  • Alan Dawson, Director, Infrastructure and Service Operations, MOHHoldings
  • Michael Ong, General Manager, SoftLayer Technologies APAC
  • Bernard Golden CEO, HyperStratus & Author, “Virtualization for Dummies”Dummies Press, 2008

I’ll be chairing some of the main conference and running a pre-conference workshop on “Advanced Cloud Computing 101” where I’ll be providing an independent review of cloud computing basics, but this year diving into the details of the practical issues in deciding what workloads to migrate into the cloud and the real-world issues of such migration.  An enterprise application exists and is well integrated into the existing enterprise infrastructure, to rebuild it in the cloud takes effort and can hit many roadblocks such as: rebuilding the application stack within the cloud; setting up the network; adding end-to-end security; and managing the application in a separate environment.

The workshop is independent, it will explain the reality behind the hype, the effort required in migrating workloads, and provide the tools on how to decide based on your specific situation.  The workshop is be divided into 4 sections, as shown below.  I hope to see you there for a fun, frank and insightful conference.

Part 1: Introduction to Cloud Computing

  • Confusion and Cloud-Washing
  • Cloud Consolidation
  • History
  • Vision
  • Definitions – focus on NIST
  • Cloud computing reference architecture
  • Actors, Brokers, Consumers, Auditors,
  • Cloud Types: Public, Private, Community and Hybrid
  • Orchestration and Management
  • Business support, security and privacy
  • Cloud Benefits and Issues
  • Cloud Misconceptions
  • The Open Group Cloud Survey 2011

Part 2: Getting into the Details

  • Mapping suppliers and technologies in Cloud Computing
  • Understanding the economics behind the benefits
  • Quantifying the benefits
  • Cloud market taxonomy and market size
  • CSPs and Cloud Computing – AT&T, BT, DT, NTT, Orange, SingTel, and Verizon
  • Mapping the workloads
  • SOA and the Cloud
  • Cloud Computing in Asia

Part 3: Understanding the Components

  • Summary: Web 2.0, SaaS, Utility Computing, Virtualization, SLAs, Autonomic computing, Grid technology, Web Services, Service Oriented Architectures, Free and Open Source Software
  • Deep Dive: Virtualization
    • History, Issues and Trends
    • Supplier review: Citrix, IBM, Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Symantec, Oracle, VMWare
  • Deep Dive: Data Centers
    • History and the drive for efficiency and availability
    • Changes and pressures on DC – drive for DC management
    • Capex and opex DC costs
    • DC economics drives cloud computing
  • Deep Dive: Force.com, Google, Microsoft and Amazon
    • Force.com
    • Google App Engine
    • Microsoft Azure
    • Amazon Web Services
    • Netflix deep dive
    • AWS walk-through

Part 4: Implementation

  • Survey – what workloads others are moving into the cloud?
  • Key points in cloud migration
  • Industry : Workload : Cloudability Space
  • Project Plan
  • Decision Tree for implementing Cloud Computing
  • Security: reviewing SAS70, PCI DSS, ISO27001, NIST, HIPAA, FISMA, CoBIT, Data Protection Directive, practical aspects
  • Architectural Review
  • Concluding Remarks