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, think­ing peo­ple would rather be at the bar, than lis­ten­ing to me talk. Boy, was I wrong. Appar­ently, peo­ple were peo­ple 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:

• Pre­sen­ta­tion, best viewed in pre­sen­ta­tion mode
• Com­pan­ion Article

It’s best to read the arti­cle first, then look at the pre­sen­ta­tion. The two mir­ror each other, as the pre­sen­ta­tion is a real pre­sen­ta­tion, not loaded with bul­lets and small-text.

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 lets 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.

I heard some great feed­back after­wards  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 attended. It was great to see so much support.