Hosting providers have mostly repositioned themselves to compete in the new cloud landscape. As we move to phase two in the cloud computing lifecycle, with enterprises representing the new batch of users, we are seeing a new set of stringent needs. While developers looked for low-cost and rapid-deployment infrastructure environments, enterprises are looking for extended benefits from their cloud platforms that include efficiency, robustness, security and improved ROI. These platforms contain significant elements, ranging from the datacenter through to hybrid runtime environments, that may be shared among colocation, hosting and cloud providers. Antonio will present his views on how the datacenter and hosting world is reacting to the advent of cloud computing in the enterprise space, and on the winners and losers of tomorrow.

The lines separating where hosting ends and clouds begin are often blurry at best. The question is not a zero-sum equation, so this panel will focus on how clouds and hosting both compete with and complement each other. Who wins and who loses, as the broader market continues to grow? What trends are emerging in customer purchasing behavior? What technical capabilities, which previously were either not possible or not easily accessible (virtual machine live migration, BC/DR, among others), are changing the landscape? And what are customers asking for from providers as they look for ways to become more agile and cost-efficient?

The ‘greening’ of datacenters and IT is not a single movement, but rather a bundle of trends happening in parallel. These include more efficient IT hardware, a proliferation of software tools, improvements to PUE, evolving standards, regulatory or legislative pressures and more. How can datacenter operators select and pursue the right opportunities, while playing defensively to avoid missed SLAs and regulatory sticks? Join moderators John Stanley and Jason Schafer, along with their distinguished panel of industry experts, as they explore the most important trends and their effects on the datacenter market.

Maintaining and supporting IT infrastructure is a necessary yet effort-intensive endeavor that challenges today's enterprises. And the growing pressure on CTOs to reduce the cost and complexity of their IT environments has only made the situation worse. The promise of cloud computing to improve business agility while lowering operating costs is compelling, but getting corporate buy-in is still a work in progress. What is holding back enterprise appetite for cloud adoption? Are barriers to enterprise cloud adoption real, or just a perception? How can companies mitigate risk when embracing cloud computing? What is the true cost of using a cloud offering?

While there are many angles of attack – from physical construction to operation and even down to service-level agreements – a datacenter exists for one essential reason: to ensure that the processes housed in it run seamlessly for as long as possible. Put another way, it’s about battling the enemy – downtime. This battle has been going on since the birth of the datacenter, although specific tactics have evolved over time. What does the future hold for defeating downtime? Downtime can be avoided – how do the ‘pros’ do it? Join Jason Schafer and Pitt Turner and their distinguished panel of industry experts as they take a deeper dive into the topic of defeating downtime.

This keynote will examine the cloud from two perspectives: that of the enterprise end user, and that of the enterprise ISV. We'll look at how enterprises think about the cloud and examine some of the use cases. In particular, we'll analyze why enterprises don't think public clouds are ready for mission-critical production applications, and what it would take to get there. Moving to the ISV perspective, we see vendors hoping to win service providers as customers – but reluctant to relinquish the large markups they have traditionally been able to charge. We will perform a gap analysis of the cloud strategies at VMW, CTXS, MSFT, ORCL, GOOG, BMC, CA, HP and IBM, and take a look at some promising startups.

The economic downturn has had a significant impact on the ability of firms to access financial resources. What kind of resources will be available going forward? Has debt really become more available in 2010? What role is private equity currently playing? Although M&A activity in Internet infrastructure has begun to pick up again, is this trend sustainable? How are firms currently being valued? Will we see any IPOs this year? Join Aleetalynn Schenesky-Stronge, Jeff Paschke and a distinguished panel of finance experts as they discuss the issues surrounding the Internet infrastructure industry and its access to capital.

As service providers look to expand their capacity and offerings, the economic climate increases the pressure to make top-line decisions that improve margins and core competencies, while simultaneously reducing risk exposure. With all of the messaging to enterprise customers around embracing opex models over capex models, should service providers be considering the same? Should building be left to a select few, or is infrastructure ownership still core to an operator’s differentiation, ability to provide strong SLAs, security and privacy considerations in the marketplace?

Whether a startup or an established vendor, every software company needs to develop a strategy for the cloud and go-to-market partnerships with hosting and cloud service providers to help get them there. This panel comprises representatives from a diverse group of software companies who will discuss the unique challenges and opportunities the cloud offers for infrastructure software vendors. Topics discussed will include: Is true application multi-tenancy a requirement in the service-provider space? Should vendors target the private cloud, or public cloud – or both? What partners will they enlist to help them with these new delivery models, and how will they work with them?

With a front-row seat on the real world of security threats that face service providers and customers every day, our panelists will help guide us through the modern threat landscape of the Internet. Discussing attack trends, remediation strategies, prevention methods, and compliance concerns, this panel will cover how service providers are addressing common security concerns that face all service providers across the cloud and hosting markets, and present risks to the bottom line.