CloudCamp Lightening talks

Last week’s CloudCamp in Newcastle started of with a series of lightning talks, five minutes on a topic of the speakers choice.
Simon @ Amazon
Simon focused on security issues arising from implementing service provision based on Cloud architecture, starting of suggesting that most cloud implementations don’t consider security issues until after the initial implementation. It was also proposed that a lot of the security concerns were physcological, people feel less confidence in the security of their systems if they don’t control the physical hardware, but that sufficient security can be achieved by following best practice at other layers of the system architecture. To assist, Amazon’s cloud provision denies access to all network ports by default.
Gehan Munasighe @ Flexiscale
Gehan discussed provisioning cloud systems in more general terms. Cloud services are not virtualisation, but virtualisation is an integral component to a functional cloud offering. The goal of a cloud provider, and the benefit to a client hosting within the cloud, is that a client should not notice or be aware of any system failure within the cloud.
Stewart Townsend @ Sun
This presentation contained nearly every buzzword related to the Cloud, but trying to prove that the buzzwords aren’t important. The benefits provided by a Cloud environment are low-cost, increased agility and greater efficiency. Stewart claims the the technology required for Cloud systems is simple, the roadblocks to Cloud implementation are often developers and deployers, and in some case out-dated corporate policy.
Matt Deacon @ Microsoft
Cloud computing is required for progressive enterprises. The computing industry is currently an industry in transistion, but this transistion will likely not be realised for another 20 years.
Steve Caughey @ Arjuna
Steve started out by detailing some universal laws of computing. In addition to the well known Moores Law which states that processor power doubles every 18months, the law of storage states that disk capacity doubles every 12 months and Gilder’s law doubles every 6 months. These increases mean that geography and phyical location of resources become less important over time, allowing businesses to take advantage of economies of scale, but this must be tempered by consideration of local legal requirements.
Ross Cooney @  EmailCloud
Ross discussed a use for Cloud services that he calls ‘Boot strap & Transistion’. The theory is that by utilising Cloud services in the short term, start-ups and new services can be instantiated without the initial capital expenditure commonly associated with new IT environments. Once business is stable, and return on investiment can be proven the service can be transistioned back to in house hardware to increase control of the service and to increase potential client base as some businesses currently do not trust the cloud model. Alternatively if the venture proves unsuccessful the stakeholders can walk away with penalty or outstanding debt.
— Andrew Waite