When Sun announced its Open Cloud Platform today, developers around the world with an interest in cloud computing benefited from the arrival on the scene of a powerful new force in favor of cloud architecture that is both interoperable and open. According to Sun's Sr. VP of Cloud Computing, David Douglas, what Sun envisions is "a world of many clouds - public and private - that are open and interoperable" and this paradigm shift away from proprietary clouds is a recurring theme in the infrastructure industry.

But a world of multiple clouds is not without its complications. Thorsten von Eicken, for example, the CTO of RightScale, says that one burning question he's hearing right now is "How do you actually deploy an app across multiple clouds?"

Meantime Reuven Cohen, Founder & Chief Technologist at Toronto-based Enomaly Inc., considers the issue so important he helped to start the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (with its accompanying online forum, Cloud Interoperability Magazine, saying that the industry needs to create an open unified cloud interface and achieve the unification of existing IT and cloud based infrastructures (a.k.a. hybrid computing).

Both Cohen and von Eicken, along with a welter of their industry peers with special knowledge of interop and other related issues, are featured speakers at SYS-CON's upcoming 3-day Cloud Computing Conference & Expo in New York (March 30-April 1, 2009), where many of the sessions reflect this view that we are moving into an era of multiple types of cloud, public and private, open and proprietary - a world of "many clouds."

As for Douglas, he is one of three distinguished Keynote Speakers at the event and will be keynoting exactly on this issue of how enterprise IT operations can best take advantage of the emerging world of multiple clouds to achieve the cost and flexibility advantages that cloud computing allows while maintaining control of their IT infrastructure.

Another keynoter, IBM's Dr Kristof Kloeckner - who is CTO of Enterprise Initiatives and VP of Cloud Computing Platforms in the IBM Software Group - is presenting a keynote address that will talk about the standards required for interoperability between clouds. IBM, like Sun, sees the world as being a mix of clouds - of private and public clouds, for example.

Among the 102 differerent breakout and general sessions on offer in New York (view Schedule here), the main sessions focused on these inter-related issues include:

KEYNOTE - A World of Many Clouds
David Douglas

Leveraging the Clouds for Reliable Web Apps
Thorsten von Eicken

Implementing Cloud Storage: Public or Private?
Sajai Krishnan

10 Steps To Unified Cloud Computing
Reuven Cohen

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Cloud Computing Expo 2009 East is a three-day event, which is being held at The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. It features a top-notch lineup of speakers from the leading industry players of the main layers of the Cloud ecosystem - the infrastructure players, the platform providers, and those offering applications and services. The lineup includes, among others:

• Dr Werner Vogels - VP & CTO, Amazon.com
• Dr Kristof Kloeckner - VP of Cloud Computing Platforms, IBM
• Davis Douglas, Sr. VP, Cloud Computing, Sun Microsystems
• Vik Chaudhary - VP of Corporate Development, Keynote Systems
• Peter Coffee - Director of Platform Research, Salesforce.com
• Russ Daniels - CTO of Cloud Services Strategy, HP
• Doug Tidwell - Senior Software Engineer, IBM
• Ajay Anand - Director of Grid Computing, Yahoo!
• Martin Ingram - VP of Strategy AppSense
• Jim Blakley - Director of Data Center Virtualization, Intel
• Brian H. Prince - Architect Evangelist, Microsoft
• Ronnie Thomson - Sr. Vice President of Engineering, Quark
• Tim Crawford - Director of IT Operations, Stanford University
• David Bernstein - VP & GM of Cloud Computing, Cisco
• Glenn Brunette - Chief Security Architect, Sun
• Sajai Krishnan - CEO, ParaScale
• Ken Oestreich - Vice President, Egenera
• Stephen Elliott - Vice President of Strategy, CA
• Warren Wilbee - Director of ISV Evangelism, Microsoft
• Lucian Lipinsky de Orlov - Director of Business Strategy, VIRTERA
• Patrick Kerpan - CTO, CohesiveFT
• Jim Rymarczyk - Chief Virtualization Technologist, IBM
• Thorsten von Eicken - CTO and Co-Founder, RightScale
• Owen Garrett - PM and Technologist, Zeus
• Scott Sanchez - Chief Technology Architect, Unisys
• Scott Wiener - Co-Founder & CTO, Cloud9 Analytics
• Jeff Bauer - Creative Director, Forbes.com
• Anthony Arrott - Special Assistant to the CTO, Trend Micro
• Stuart Charlton - Chief Software Architect, Elastra
• David Bressler - Principal Architect, Progress Software
• Clod Barrera - Distinguished Engineer and Chief Technical Strategist, IBM
• Tien Tzuo - CEO, Zuora
• Raghavan Srinivas - Technology Evangelist, Intuit
• Brian Zanghi - President & CEO, Kadient
• John Trembley - Vice President, Xeround
• Ranjith Ramakrishnan - Co-Founder & CTO, Cumulux
• John Barr - COO & VP Engineering, Yieldex
• William Fellows - Principal Analyst, The 451 Group
• Kevin L. Jackson - Director of Business Development, Dataline
• Bob Quinn - Founder, Chairman & CTO of 3Leaf Systems
• Pau Garcia-Mila - Founder, eyeOS
• David Linthicum - Editor-in-Chief, Virtualization Journal
• Bryan Wade - Director of Channel Partnerships, ExactTarget
• Bill McColl - Founder & CEO, Cloudscale
• Omer Trajman - Director of Field Engineering, Vertica Systems
• Jon Pyke - Chief Strategy Officer, Cordys
• Daniel Beveridge - Director of Virtualization Strategy, VIRTERA
• JP Morgenthal - IT Architecture Consultant
• John Gauntt - Founder, Media Dojo
• Ed Sullivan - Founder & CEO, Aria Systems
• Raghavan Srinivas - Technology Evangelist, Intuit
• Brian Zanghi - President & CEO, Kadient
• Simon Wardley - Software Services Manager, Canonical
• Omer Trajman - Director of Field Engineering, Vertica Systems
• Michael Hill - VP Enteprise Initiatives, Sales, Services & Business Development, IBM
• Steve Milroy - Solution Architect, OnTerra Systems
• Prof Rich Wolski - University of California, Santa Barbara
  
  

You can follow the Event - and those planning to attend - by connecting to the Event on LinkedIn, or following it on Twitter.

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