A free half-day seminar

Private clouds are all the rage these days, because they host and deliver applications and resources on demand from the data center. But there are also public clouds, which are run externally by large service providers. This model offers some benefits over private clouds, but it also raises some security concerns.

The public vs. private clouds debate will be an important issue as cloud computing becomes more popular. That’s why we’ve developed this free half-day seminar where our independent expert speaker will tackle this issue and help you determine whether private or public clouds are the best option for your organization. Receive essential tips and strategies for implementing this technology and maximizing your return on investment.

Session 1: Are Private Clouds an Option?

Delivering IT as a service is the promise of private cloud computing, but it means reconsidering the entire IT stack. Managing 'at scale' demands a new focus on security and risk management, automation, virtualization, and self-service IT that will consume datacenter architects and IT managers for the next 10 years.

At the end of this session you will be able to answer a number of key questions including:

• What are the elements of a private cloud?
• Is my IT organization competitive against external services?
• What applications need to reside inside or outside my firewall?
• How do I wire it all together so that I can manage the return on investment regardless of where the IT service resides?
• How do I ensure we maintain security and compliance policies as the environment becomes more automated?

Session 2: When to Use Public Clouds

The shift toward cloud computing means that running IT services that are expensive, under-utilized and provide no competitive advantage is bad business. IT organizations are identifying these services and off-loading them to external providers, but it takes a rethinking of your IT strategy. In many cases, Software-as-a-Service will suffice, but in others, legacy applications must be moved lock, stock, and barrel. In these cases, it's important to know how to manage public clouds.

At the end of this session you will be able to answer a number of key questions including:

• How are enterprise IT shops using public clouds today?
• What options do I have to secure public clouds to meet security standards?
• Can I use an external private (dedicated) cloud instead?
• Can all of these outsourced cloud services be connected together and managed as one?

Speaker Biography

Randy L. Bias
CEO, Founder, & Cloud Strategist

Randy is the expert cloud providers like VMware, EngineYard, Internap, and GoGrid consult
when they need help. His independent cloud consultancy, Cloudscaling, advises Fortune 500 companies like Kaiser Permanente on cloud strategy. Randy has driven innovations in infrastructure, IT, Operations, and 24×7 service delivery since 1990. He was the technical visionary on the executive team of GoGrid & ServePath, a major cloud computing provider. Prior to GoGrid, he built the world’s first multi-cloud, multi-platform cloud management framework at CloudScale Networks, Inc.

Randy is recognized as one of the top cloud bloggers and twitterers and recently won a 2009 ‘Cloudie‘ award for Most Influential Cloud Blogger. The Cloudscaling blog has tens of thousands of page views every month.

Randy’s innovative open licensing of the GoGrid API inspired many others to open license their cloud APIs including Sun Microsystems, Rackspace Cloud, and VMware.

Randy is a cloud computing thought leader who is frequently asked to present and participate on panels at technology conferences.