Cloud Architect Forum 25th September London

Short notice, but definitely worth coming too (places limited to 90). The architect forum on the 25th September at Cardinal Place, London will look at cloud from the architects perspective, looking at the opportunities and challenges that enterprises are facing.

To register go here

Given that I had Simon Guest, Senior Director of Technical Strategy in the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) group at Microsoft over I felt I had to get something together for us to talk with him. Here’s some of the key sessions (so far) – I’m still building out the afternoon piece that will drill down on Azure (of course) and will be a great pre-PDC teaser giving us insight in what is to come later this year!

Articulating the value of Cloud Computing
Neil Ward-Dutton, Research Director, MWD Advisors
Before we can talk about value and selling the idea to the business, we have to be clear what we’re talking about! What is Cloud? From here we can start to understand the business case and scenarios and look at the entry points for enterprise investment.

Cloud Computing – What’s the Point?
Dave Coplin, Service Line Architect, Microsoft Ltd
Cloud Computing is being positioned as the future of the IT Industry, yet we collectively seem to be unsure on what it actually is and, more importantly, how to get from here to there. This session will attempt to reconnect us all with the longer term reasons on why the cloud is not just important but fundamental to the kind of transformation we are looking technology to provide the way we live, work and play.

Patterns for Cloud Computing
Simon Guest, Senior Director of Technical Strategy in the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) group, Microsoft Corp
Everything that you read these days seems to suggest that you should be moving to the cloud. But where do you start? Which applications and services should you be moving? How do you build the bridge between on-premises and the cloud? And more importantly, what should you be looking out for along the way?  Based on real-world scenarios, this session explores a set of pattern for applications that best take advantage of the cloud, together with working examples on the Windows Azure platform. This session provides the tools and knowledge to determine whether cloud computing is right for you, and where to start.

Does the Cloud need an Identity?
Steve Plank, Identity Architect, Microsoft
The internet was born without an Identity and although much effort has been made to develop standards still 90% of Internet commerce takes place behind a flimsy username/password combination. Now we are being asked to consider transporting the most mission critical enterprise processes out on to the cloud but the old ways of securing these transactions are clearly not going to stand up to scrutiny. It is clear that security and privacy are taking centre stage and with it the need for a clear architectural strategy around Identity is critical. This session will discuss the opportunities and approaches to making identity central to the enterprise agenda.
Lunch

Microsoft in the Clouds?
Drill down on key Microsoft Cloud investments.