Cloud Computing Impact on Enterprise Integration Recap

Well, that was fun. Spoke at 7PM this evening, at the end of a long day of presentations at the Cloud Computing Expo. I was a little afraid of a 7PM speaking slot because I thought people would rather be at the bar rather than listen to me talk. Boy, was I wrong. Apparently, people were standing in the hallway. Had I noticed, I certainly would have rearranged furniture to get more people in - even if it meant more people sitting on the floor!

First, as promised, here are the presentation materials:

• Download Presentation (please view this in presentation mode for best effect)
• Download Cloud Computing Impact on Enterprise Integration Paper

The presentation was targeted at the Enterprise Architect and hopefully left people in the room with thoughts about how to approach (and explain) cloud computing, and how to get started in the enterprise with a few best practices. Based on the nodding-heads in the audience, I think I touched a few key points.

Summarizing in my own words:

• Cloud computing is about turning a commodity into a utility.
• Integration is way too hard, non-technical people don't understand, so discount the efforts.
• Moving what we can to a utility model, will let us focus on what's important and elevate our game.
• Integration, the easy stuff is way too hard, so we never get to do the cool stuff; just do it. Mistakes with cloud computing are much less expensive and irrevocable than they are with typical enterprise software purchases/deployments.

And as for the best practices... well, just download the paper or the presentation.

For a full "live blog" summary, check out Brenda Michelson's post.

Great feedback that I heard afterwards was that I was the "first presenter of the day who knew how to present." That was the best feedback of all.

Thanks to all my friends, real and virtual, who a ttended. It was great to see so much support.

Download ExpoPreso