We were recently sponsors of the cloud expo in New York held from 19 April – 21 April. I had three speaking spots during the event and although I could blog about these, instead I've decided to write about a perception held by many who attended the conference which I disagree with. After attending a few presentation sessions and speaking with delegates and vendors, I get the impression that the true value of "cloud" is not clearly understood. Many people are talking about how cloud, in this case IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is great because it offers greater infrastructure flexibility and the ability to be more agile. Now don't get me wrong, this is true but I think many people are missing the key point...cloud is about automation *capability*.Yes you can achieve infrastructure savings by scaling up and down based on demand. You no longer have to provision for your peak load and hence achieve savings on infrastructure. But if you take your application and your existing manual processes and put them on the... Read More »