Deep Dive: Cloud Crash Course

Cloud Computing is a major shift in IT. It's similar to the switch from circuit- to packet-based networking, or from procedural to object-oriented programming, or from mainframes to client-server models. As with those shifts, some IT professionals will thrive -- and others will become obsolete. Clouds rely on a new set of fundamentals: horizontal scaling, sharding, eventually consistent data systems, virtualization, and more. In this two-hour workshop, we'll cover these fundamentals and understand how they combine to give us today's cloud offerings.

Need to get up to cloud speed in a hurry? This fast-paced workshop will give you the foundation you need to understand where utility computing is headed and arm you with the fundamentals of on-demand infrastructure.

Speaker - Alistair Croll, Founder, Bitcurrent
Alistair is the principal analyst at Bitcurrent; an executive at CloudOps; an advisor to various technology venture firms; the founder of the Bitnorth conference; and the founder of the Human 2.0 blog on emerging technologies.

Prior to Bitcurrent, Alistair co-founded startup accelerator Rednod; web performance management firm Coradiant; and Networkshop, a research firm. He has also worked as a product manager for 3Com Corporation, Primary Access, and Eicon Technology. Alistair is the content chair for Cloud Connect, the industry's largest cloud computing event; the track chair for cloud computing and the Enterprise Cloud Summit at Interop; and the co-chair of O'Reilly Strata.

Alistair is a frequent contributor to a range of technology publications. He has taught at industry conferences such as Web2Expo, IGT, Interop, Structure, Enterprise 2.0, Velocity, Mesh, and eMetrics. He is also the co-author of Web Operations (2010, O'Reilly), Complete Web Monitoring (2009, O'Reilly) and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks (1999, Prentice-Hall).