startupmania

It seems that every IT player or consumer has formed a different attitude and strategy regarding cloud computing, and everyone wants to see, consult, share and stay up to date. I wish to thank all those whov’e been with me, following and heping in the past six months in preparing this convention.

Today, I’d like to present CloudCon’s Enterprise track, set to begin at 11:00 until 13:30, immediatly following the general assembly and right before lunch. Next week, I’ll present the other three tracks, as well as the speakers in the general assembly who are expected to reveal some interesting things. I will also be dedicating a special post to the three proffesional workshops on large-scale cloud computing we will be hosting following lunch.

CloudCon’s Enterprise track, which is aimed at Israel’s senior computing managers, is set to be visited by three interesting lectures from abroad. The first is Dr. Matt Wood, Amazon’s cloud evangelist, a world leader in the integration of complex computing systems with Amazon’s own computing infrastructure. A visit by an Amazon global expert in Israel can only point at one thing – the Israeli market is starting to matter to Amazon and they mean to compete for every organization they can get as a client. Israel’s activity manager, Dan Feld, will join the general assembly panel (hosted by Yehuda Confortes and yours truly earlier in the day, and will probably reveal more about Amazon’s AWS program.

Our second guest will be hailing from the Symantec offices in Europe. Valeria Caracuta will present to us Symantec’s security attitude towards cloud compting, a direction much reinforced by their purchase of MessageLabs, and seems radically different from the traditional direction presented by Symantec up until now to Israel’s large organization’s security managers. The cloud is having an effect on all sects of the industry, and security is not left out, with everyone needing to reorient themselves.

Our third and final guest, who will be going on stage straight from the airport, is Stephane Viallet of SalesForce, a company which has turned SaaS to someone that really works, and can teach the whole world how to transfer imporant organizational applications outside the organization. According to people at Blat-Lapidot, who are responsible for bringing Viallet to CloudCon, 300 organizations in Israel have already made this shift, and each organization going through this transition is downloading a potential install of a local CRM system onto the organization’s servers.

CloudCon’s Enterprise track will be opened by Amir Shevat, Windows Azure platform manager for Enterprise organizations at Microsoft Israel. Shevat will talk about the considerations a computing manager faces before a transition to a cloud-based platform, and will most probably touch on the enormous profit Microsoft is making on the enterprise market in Israel. Even for them, the cloud is something that will change everything.

Following him, Vadim Solovey will take the stage. Solovey is a well-known virtualization expert who was chosen to speak about Google Enterprise’s technology and Google’s public cloud offerings. It’s interesting to see which new annoucemnets will come from this unique new direction. If you’re interested in Google-related products, you’l be pleased to hear that Barak Regev, Google Enterprise’s regional manager, will appear at CloudCon’s general assembly, at 09:30 am.

Next on the Enterprise track will be Gabi Zodik, from IBM’s labs in Haifa. He will present the blue giant’s cloud strategy, and how he sees it through IBM’s gloabl software labs. It is there that one can find the software engineers who are toiling over building the future infrastructure which IBM will offer enterprise organizations in the future.

Next, Guy Lupo, regional technical manager for Checkpoint, will come on stage. Lupo promises to demonstrate how Checkpoint plans on turning cloud security into a simpler task. Is Checkpoint’s firewall set to transition into the cloud as well? Are Checkpoint analysts going to change the recomendation for stock prices? We will have to wait and see what Lupo has to say to receive yet another overview on the security market and its adaptation into cloud-based computing.

Lastly, we’ve slotted Amit Dover to speak. He is VP of software solutions for Yael Software, on of Israel’s oldest and biggest software houses. The direction decided on by Yael’s management will probably be emulated by many other software houses, who will strive to replicate the move to building enterprise applications for the cloud. Dover will present the cloud-based partners of Yael Software, and the eco-system it’s building in preparation for developing cloud-based enterprise applications. It will be very interesting to understand how the power will shift in the Israeli market and which cloud services each integrator will choose to offer its respective clients.

Quite a handful, and this only one of our tracks.

All this will follow, as mentioned, the general assembly and parallel to three other tracks (an ISV development track, a security management track and a Start-Up/Venture Capital track). It will be possible to move from one track to another, so look over the agenda and mark the most interesting lectures. Following the tracks we will adjourn for a festive lunch, followed by three parallel workshops on working with the cloud services offered by Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Anyone who’s considering working with any of these services should attend, as you can expect to gain much insight and maybe even a few months of free trials.

So take a day off before the convention, rest well and arrive refreshed. Keep your schedules clear for the day – as we will attack the cloud from all sides, from 8:00-17:00.