Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Chris Preimesberger.

The ninth International Cloud Expo conference in Santa Clara, Calif., this week was packed to the brim. Parking places were hard to find, the food went quicker than usual, and the expo floor was almost elbow-to-elbow with new companies introducing themselves and established companies making themselves look new. The entire scope of cloud computing, infrastructure, management, applications, services, networking and consulting was represented. If there was one headline that could be used to describe this event it might be: "Cloud Expo 2011: It’s About Control of All That Big Data." Companies, such as newby Cloud Cruiser, whose specialty is keeping track of all costs and chargebacks connected with cloud systems, and Arista, which simplifies cloud networking, are two good examples. Here is a list of all the good-idea companies at the conference. This eWEEK slide show presents 10 important highlights.

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Greg O’Conner.

We were all there at the beginning when, "The Internet changed everything," morphed into the paradigm buster we now call "The Cloud." As an industry, we watched Amazon (AWS) break the $100M revenue mark in 2008; scanned Gartner’s first cloud computing vendor list in 2009; and heard Microsoft declare itself "all in" in 2010…

Grazed from Wired.  Author: Jon Stokes.

Though I think the term is generally useless as either an analytical tool or category of computing that large entities can and should use in planning strategy, I’m not quite ready to give up on the idea that “the cloud” does have at least some worthwhile content. And after three days at the Cloud Expo, I’d like to suggest a simple signature of cloudiness that seems to fit everything I’ve seen with the sole exception of Oracle’s “cloud” offerings. Here’s my idea: it’s “cloud” at the platform and infrastructure layers if users can provision their own resources via some automated system…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: David Linthicum.

I was asked to talk about the future of cloud computing at Cloud Expo, taking place this week in Santa Clara, Calif. For those of you not at the show, I identified five key trends to anticipate…

Grazed from Directions Magazine.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Grazed from V3.  Author: Shaun Nichols.

Fujitsu has extended its cloud computing business with two new services and a set of hardware modules designed to serve as the basis for enterprise private cloud computing deployments…

Grazed from Knowledge@Wharton.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing is not only changing how users access software applications, it’s also upending the pricing model for software products. Fading fast are the days when software packages were sold in boxes with a one-time, perpetual software license fee. Instead, consumers and businesses are increasingly turning to subscription models and are buying only those applications they need for particular tasks rather than broad, general-purpose suites…

Grazed from Reuters.  Author: Alistair Barr.

Amazon.com’s investment opportunities are under a cloud — and that’s a good thing.

Five years after launching its so-called cloud computing service, the biggest Internet retailer is reaping the benefits of what has become a unique window into the technology startup world…