Earlier this month I had the opportunity to deliver two presentations on cloud computing at the Next Generation Data Center (NGDC) conference.

From essentially nowhere less than a year ago, Cloud Computing has quickly risen to the top of the IT industry agenda and has everyone talking about what amounts to an exciting new way to deliver applications and services.

With this growing buzz as backdrop, three brand new Cloud-focused events launched in San Francisco last week, bringing together a host of key players from the rapidly growing Cloud Computing ecosystem.

I was recently interviewed by the good folks at InfoQ, and the resulting interview has been posted to their site.

The interview spanned a variety of topics including our Open Distribution program, Spring support, and our over-all strategy; I encourage you visit InfoQ to take a look at it.

One exchange I did want to highlight here was about how we think of ourselves relative to grid and cloud computing:

CloudCamp San Francisco
Summer 2008

Call for Participants

CloudCamp was formed in order to provide a common ground for the introduction and advancement of cloud computing. Through a series of local CloudCamp events, attendees can exchange ideas, knowledge and information in a creative and supporting environment, advancing the current state of cloud computing and related technologies.

For many, the phrase "grid" continues to carry the baggage of first generation grid computing, which was marked by complexity, rigidity and worst of all a lack of relevance for the vast majority of problems faced by mainstream businesses.