Get Digital

The fourth and last DICE conference was entitled Get Digital and took place on the 15th of April in the Helix. It was different than the others because it only lasted two hours instead of four, because we had to present our posters with our groups before the conference started. The presentation of our poster about our app, Listowel went very well, we were satisfied of what we had done and enjoyed seing the result of the work of the other groups.

Anyways, at four, we all met with our project managers to go find our seats in the Helix for the conference. I knew before coming to the Helix that day that it was going to be aout cloud computing, because we had to do some research about that for our poster, and I was looking forward to learning more about this theme.

Sean Baker from IC4

Sean Baker from IC4 (the Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce) was the person that presented the conference and introduced the speakers. I understood by this inititative that this conference was organised by IC4.

The first speaker after Sean Baker welcomed us was Clare Dillon, from Microsoft. Before speaking about what she said, I am going to talk about what is cloud computing, because the NIST definition has been given to us, and it is impossible to talk about the impact and the use of Cloud Computing without expaning the concept first.

Cloud Computing, as NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) states it, is : “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing ressources that can be rapidly released with minimal effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.” The means that networks and applications are cloud computing, anything that permits data to be shared onto a virtual platform can be considered as so.

Clare Dillon from Microsoft

Clare Dillon talked about the mobile opportunities offered by cloud. The first part of her presentation was entitled Mobile First, Cloud First and she clearly said that the could oriented partners outperform others, so cloud is an obvious advantage and everyone is starting to get involved in it, because it is the future. She used the expression “a chicken in every pot” to explain that the world is changing and that we should grad the opportunities that are offered to us. For her, using cloud is being connected.

Paolo Malinverno from Gartner

After Clare Dillon, it was Paolo Malinverno‘s turn to give us his ideas on cloud computing. He spoke about the Realities of Cloud Computing in Europe. His presentation consisted of three key issues : what will cloud projects look like in the next five years, what are the cloud inhibitors in Europe and how should European Companies use cloud to support their IT and business strategies? What I got out of his presentation was the fact that the data privacy regulations were one of the key inhibitors of cloud because cloud can often go against these. Also, he recommends businesses to use cloud because as Clare Dillon thinks, he says it is a business opportunity. He also said that is is very important, crucial, to have an exit strategy to the cloud services, in case things go wrong.

Davin Cody from HP

The third speaker of this mini two hours conference was Davin Cody, a converged infrastructure specialist for the HP Entreprise Group. His presentation was called Hybrid Cloud and he first spoke about the journey that companies go through to become a cloud service in a hybrid environment. For Davin Cody, there is a huge cloud market opportunity and with the development of this service, we can now see new customer cloud challenges appearing, that didn’t exist a few years ago. I enjoyed this presentation because it was concrete and well explained with examples. To deliver a cloud service, you need a clear strategy and for him, the Hybrid strategy is the one to use.

Next was an american speaker, Alistair Croll. He explained through a very well explained powerpoint presentation that “companies die because they fail to move to new business models”, and with innovation, they could raise their global maximum. Cloud computing (along with digital channels and social platforms as other examples) is one of these innovations that could do good to a company. He explains that “cycle time trumps scale”, and that is one of the main ideas that I think he wanted to get through to us during his talk.

Julie Sinnamon from Entreprise Ireland

Finally, the last speaker of the day, and of all the DICE conferences since they are now over for us, was Julie Sinnamon, the CEO of Entreprise Ireland. Her speach was called Where Innovation meets Business, so we can find here again the idea that cloud computing is related to as an important innovation. She talked a lot about the example of her own business; Entreprise Ireland and I got the same message from her that I did from the other four speakers.

This last conference has been usefull for me in the way that I have learned more about cloud computing; what it is, what is used for and that it is a recommended innovation for a business. If I ever launch a start-up and become an entrepreneur, I will be sure to use cloud computing as one of my services.