Today, a quick note about upcoming events regarding cloud computing next week:

• (2/10) — AFCEA Washington, D.C. Is holding the Beyond SOA & Cloud Conference at the Hilton Washington. Learn how SOA and cloud can work together to create a framework for sharing services and information. (Also, FCB will be at this event, so please say hi!)
• (2/10) — Red Hat is hosting its 2nd Open Source Cloud Computing Forum. This is a day-long virtual forum hosted by Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens. It will feature a multitude of half-hour presentations that cover a range of cloud topics.
• (2/11) — SaaS/Gov 2010 will host an event around cloud at the Westin in Washington, D.C. Learn about the government’s move toward Software-as-a-Service and more!
• (2/11) — The Association for Enterprise Information is holding its Security in the Clouds conference. Learn all about Computer Network Defense (CND) and other security issues facing agencies and companies as they transition to the cloud.

Vince Vasquez
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We continue our conversation with Vince Vasquez of Cloudbook.net.

Today he tells us about some of the challenges that come with the cloud, as well as some of the benefits.

Fed Cloud Blog: What’s the importance and relevance of having everyone on the same page when it comes to the cloud?

Vince Vasquez: At the consumer level, it doesn’t matter. If I’m a consumer running, say, Google’s gmail, I don’t really care what computers are being used.

That’s part of the beauty of cloud computing. It just simplifies the use of the application for the end user. You just log on and use gmail.

But, if you’re trying to implement cloud computing, then it’s extremely important because you need to know all the pieces required to build your cloud, and who are the players so you can create the most appropriate cloud implementation for your needs.

That’s why creating a place where all those experts and leaders can share their knowledge [means] you can educate yourself on — what is cloud computing? What does this person think? What does that person think?

Then, from that, you can make your own decisions of what are the most appropriate pieces for your own cloud.

FCB: Have you discovered any major pitfalls when it comes to the cloud or trying to move to the cloud, or even trying to gather information about the cloud?

Vince Vasquez
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If you haven’t heard of Cloudbook.net, you might want to check it out.

It’s a place to learn more about what’s going on with cloud computing at a variety of levels.

Vince Vasquez is one of Cloudbook’s founders and sat down with Fed Cloud Blog to talk about what his site does, exactly, and why he started it.

FCB: Tell us a little about Cloudbook for those who might not be familiar with it.

Vince Vasquez: One level is the community site, where leaders in the area of cloud computing can share their knowledge with the broader community.

We have a second level and, from a marketing perspective, Cloudbook is a marketing platform to promote content through social media channels such as Twitter and LinkedIn.

Timothy Chou and I started Cloudbook because we saw there were two needs that we felt needed to be addressed.

One — there was so much confusion around — what is cloud computing? There are so many definitions, such as public and private clouds and infrastructure platforms, software-as-a-service and the like, we thought it would be helpful for the industries moving into cloud computing if there was a single place where leaders could share their insights and knowledge with others.

Secondly, I had done a lot of marketing campaigns . . . [with] many of what I would call traditional elements of a marketing campaign, such as email, webinars and telemarketing. [They] just weren’t as effective and certainly not as cost effective. . . . I saw the rise of social media and the natural question that many of us have been asking came up, which is — how can I leverage social media as part of my marketing campaign?

Howard Schmidt
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White House cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt has been on the job long, but he’s already met with federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra and federal chief technology officer Aneesh Chopra and is gearing up to be the administration’s lead on cybersecurity.

He talked extensively about his new duties during his first public appearance as cyber czar at the State of the Net Conference earlier this week.

He discussed a variety of topics, including cloud, and, of course, we bring you his thoughts on that today.

“I’m a big proponent of moving thing to the cloud, but moving it right.

I think we have tremendous economic benefits in doing so, but we have to make sure that we do it where we have specific agreements from a legal perspective on what it is that we’re putting [in the cloud], where it’s going to be, what are the authentication mechanisms, all the technical controls around it, as well as the international legal control.

So, as I work with Vivek, who has sort of been driving that — and Aneesh — my role is to make sure, as we’re looking at the technology components, asking the critical questions about the security.

So I see a very close working relationship on that as we move more in that direction.

Jeffrey M. Kaplan
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FCB today continues its conversation with Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrategies, Inc.

Photo: ecommercetimes.com

He gives us his insight into whether or not there will be standards for cloud worldwide, and also discussed what lessons can be learned about the cloud computing world when examining the fight between China and Google.

Jeffrey Kaplan: Standards in the technology have always been a touchy matter because there’s so many different interpretations about the way in which technology ought to be deployed, and, of course, there are a lot of proprietary politics associated with that, as well.

So, I don’t think we’re ever going to get to a point where there is a strict set of standards that govern cloud computing, but I do think that we’ll get to a point where there are a set of defacto standards which set certain parameters for how cloud computing ought to be developed and deployed in order to ensure that it is meeting the quality and reliability and security expectations of organizations.

But I don’t think you’ll find one set of standards that will play that role.

Fed Cloud Blog: [Let's] go back a little bit and talk about security.

Some people — both in the private and public sectors — have said that one of the biggest things about moving to the cloud is that you can’t move everything. There are certain things that . . . no matter how much security you have in the cloud, you’re just not going to want to do it, for whatever reason.