A full day seminar presented by George Reese. This workshop is being coordinated by Dr. Mark Srite, Associate Professor in Management Information, Lubar School of Business, UW-Milwaukee

Overview

Cloud computing has already touched most IT organizations. The current economic crisis—punctuated by an alarming lack of capital—is certain to increase the adoption of cloud technologies in IT. This workshop, presented by the author of O’Reilly’s “Web Architecture and Programming in the Cloud,” explores what the cloud is, its value to IT, and how an IT shop can confidently begin moving into the cloud. We’ll examine the full range of cloud services—from SalesForce.com to Amazon.com—and dive into the details of moving your IT systems into environments like the Amazon cloud.

Topics

●What is the cloud? You will commonly find two people talking about cloud computing who appear to be talking about completely different concepts. We’ll get started by looking at the variety of things people consider “the cloud” and establish a baseline for discussion for the rest of the day.

●Why move into the cloud? Flexibility and finances often drive organizations into the cloud. We’ll cover the different motivations for using cloud services, including the economics of being in the cloud.

●Application architectures in the cloud. Depending on the problem you are trying to solve, different approaches to cloud computing make sense in different circumstances. We’ll examine SaaS solutions as well as in-house development of web applications and grid computing systems.

●Reliability of the cloud. Not a day goes by without news of some cloud service having availability issues. Of course the downtime of in-house systems is rarely widely reported. We’ll look at what causes cloud systems to become unavailable, which systems are more reliable than others, and how you can minimize the impact of cloud availability issues on your infrastructure. We’ll even talk about how to achieve 99.999% availability in the Amazon cloud.

●Data integrity, security, and privacy in the cloud. The scariest thing about the cloud for most CIOs is the apparent lack of control over cloud data and the implications on different laws and data management standards. We’ll talk about all of the different security concerns in the cloud and the steps you can take to protect your data from prying eyes.

●Making the move. Among the chief benefits of the cloud is its “on demand” nature. Consequently, you can dip your toes into the cloud without having to commit insane amounts of money or having to take a meaningful risk. We’ll finish with a discussion on how you can begin moving into the cloud while minimizing risks.

About the speaker

George Reese is the founder of two Minneapolis-based companies, enStratus Networks LLC (maker of high-end cloud infrastructure management tools) and Valtira LLC (maker of the Valtira Online Marketing Platform). Over the past 15 years, George has authored a number of technology books, including the upcoming “Web Architecture and Programming in the Cloud.”

Throughout the Internet era, George has spent his career building enterprise tools for developers and delivering solutions to the marketing domain. He was an influential force in the evolution of online gaming. Most recently, George has been involved in the development of systems to support the deployment of transactional web applications in the cloud.

George holds a BA in Philosophy from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Illinois.

Who should Attend?

CIOs, CTOs, and IT managers looking to develop a strategy for moving their organization into the cloud or who need to evaluate whether the cloud might have any benefits for their organization.

CFOs and CEOs of companies looking for ways to develop more “enterprise-class” IT services with little or no capital investment.

Systems architects and information security specialists looking to understand how they need to structure their applications and data to work well in a cloud environment.

Anyone interested in cloud computing. We’ll have a lot of tech talk, but throughout the workshop we will be dealing with the high-level concepts that are important to anyone who might be interested in cloud computing.

Coordinator

Dr. Derek Nazareth is an Associate Professor in Management Information, Lubar School of Business, UW-Milwaukee