It’s time for CIOs to get back on the offensive: Come to CloudBeat

If you’re a chief information officer (CIO), you’re probably tired of hearing how cloud technology is eating your lunch.

The expensive, secure, controlled data center you’ve been running for your company looks increasing like a dinosaur. Cheaper services like Amazon AWS have come along and disrupted your comfy position of protector of the enterprise. Your company’s chief marketing officer will soon command more budget than you as he or she installs cloud-based apps like Salesforce, Marketo, or Box now that it’s clear issues around cloud security and reliability aren’t serious as you initially feared.

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Well, you should come to CloudBeat 2013, our event on Sept 9-10 in San Francisco, which is designed to help you — the CIO — get back on the offensive.

The role of the CIO is as important as ever, because the CIO is the one who helps businesses adapt to all of the new challenges brought by the cloud. Companies need to integrate cloud infrastructure with private and on-premise infrastructure in so-called “hybrid” offerings. Who is going to manage that? Cloud apps need to sync their data in real-time with other cloud apps, a challenge that requires knowledge of a whole new breed of data and other services. The CIO needs to go back on the offensive on all of these fronts. Only the CIO can grasp how it all fits together.

At CloudBeat, we’ve invited what we believe is one of the most compelling rosters of real cloud tech customers ever seen in one room — so that CIOs can learn from their examples. We’ve invited representatives from a diverse set of companies, so that we can debate action at every level of the stack — from Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), to Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).

Here are nine reasons CIOs should come to CloudBeat:

1. PayPal will be talking in more detail than before about their embrace of OpenStack, the open source cloud competitor to Amazon. PayPal is now arguably the biggest user of OpenStack. OpenStack has emerged as an important technology, because it promises to be one of the leading ways companies will install safe private versions of their own cloud, so that they can run applications efficiently and competitively. PayPal’s example is being watched carefully, because it helps show just how flexible OpenStack can be. In March, news leaked about PayPal’s plans to move even more of its infrastructure over to OpenStack, reducing reliance on its VMware vCloud infrastructure. (Investors briefly dumped VMware’s shares on the news, though PayPal later clarified that it still intends to work closely with VMware.) Saran Mandair, senior director of platform engineering for PayPal, will provide more context around PayPal’s efforts. The value for the CIO will be to understand what’s real around the OpenStack phenomenon and what isn’t. Elsewhere in the event, we’ll debate how serious VMware is about providing a hybrid cloud offering at a time when it seems to be dragging its feet about taking the threat of the public cloud seriously?
2. Netflix is the poster child of Amazon AWS. The video streaming company relies almost exclusively on Amazon for its cloud, but it’s also getting help around the edges from other ecosystem players, including CloudBees, to manage it. We’ll hear from Ariel Tseitlin, director of cloud solutions for Netflix, who will talk about managing the Amazon cloud and what it has to offer. He finds it quite secure and reliable, thank you very much. While Netflix is a consumer-oriented company, and relies on Amazon to deliver its consumer offering, there’s no denying that enterprises are also increasingly adopting Amazon and other public cloud and PaaS services. Growth here is exploding and Netflix explains why.
3. Pivotal‘s Paul Maritz will be speaking and kicking off the rollout of his much heralded $1 billion-dollar PivotalOne program, which promises to offer an open source PaaS and state-of-the-art data analytics on top. CloudFoundry, which is the underlying PaaS of Pivotal, already has customer traction. We’ll be talking about customer cases with Maritz, including Intel, which is using CloudFoundry on top of OpenStack.  There’s so much action going on at the level of the PaaS and above, that we’re featuring multiple customers and how they’re using PaaS. For example, Michael Smith, CTO of leading interactive agency Canvas, will discuss the ways Canvas relies on PaaS service Engine Yard to power all of the apps Canvas builds for its clients.
4. SimTable, which provides sophisticated simulation software for first responders such as firefighters and others, will demonstrate how it is using new backend-as-a-service company Firebase do cutting edge analytics straight from the browser. Backend-as-a-service is a hot area right now.
5. How seriously should we take Google? Google is investing significant resources into its emerging Compute Engine and App Engine services, and these are quickly becoming technologies to reckon with. The scale of a Google brings significant advantages, and is a threat to smaller, independent players like Rackspace, Engine Yard, and others. Until recently, Google had been considered a Johnny-come-lately, and well, not to be taken seriously in the enterprise. We’ll be talking with Elliot Tally, senior director of IT collaboration and innovation for Sanmina, a major electronics company, about how his organization’s move to Google Docs and Apps has made it more nimble — and opened the way for Sanmina to play with Google at other levels of the stack.
6. Worried about all of the unknown costs you’ll face in ensuring security and compliance in your cloud deployments? Turns out, you’re in good company. About 80 percent of CIOs say the hidden costs of the cloud is their biggest concern. We’ll be hearing from Dave Lenoe, Adobe‘s product security director, about how he is managing Adobe’s security as it embraces the cloud. In part, Adobe is drawing on help from security vendors like CloudPassage, which offers an automated security platform for private, public, and hybrid environments. CloudPassage’s VP of product, Rand Wacker, will join him on stage.
7. NASA has long had one of the most sophisticated tech offerings on the planet, and it cofounded the OpenStack open source cloud movement to help it. NASA will join us on stage as a customer to describe some of it latest cloud projects, including the cool stuff it is doing with Top Coder.
8. Parsons, a global engineering firm with about 3,500 engineers and designers, will be just one of several customers that will explain how it is integrating media and streaming technologies into its overall cloud stack. Parsons is relevant because it uses 700 different apps and maintains up to half a dozen different versions of each app, to support long-term construction projects where customers require a certain flavor of software (eg Windows XP, or AutoCAD from 2010). Damon Donnell, director of engineering systems at Parsons will join the stage with Osman Kent, CEO and Cofounder of Numecent, which helps with Parsons’ streaming needs.
9. In addition to the content, the dealmaking that happens in the halls at CloudBeat is tremendous. You’ll meet the IT execs who matter. We’ll help you forge partnerships, discover new technologies, and find new hires through a series of organized initiatives including roundtable lunch discussions, quick-connect sessions, business card bingo, receptions, and a slick new networking app.

Over the next days, we’ll be announcing more speakers, many of them customers getting help from the most compelling vendors in the cloud (see “Top 10 arms merchants of the cloud“; we expect all of these players to be represented in some way at CloudBeat).

If you’re a CIO, you’ll want to hear how companies like Mulesoft make sure all of your apps sync together, companies like New Relic let you peer through all of your application metrics to make sure your wider system is working reliably, how Centrify can manage user authentication, and Sumo Logic can track all of your system log data to pinpoint in real-time where problems arise.

Register today. Seats are very limited.

Thanks to the following industry leaders for supporting CloudBeat 2013: IBM jStart as Gold Sponsor; Archpoint Partners and Totango as Silver Sponsors; CareCloud, Numecent, Norwest Venture Partners, Plex Systems, Spice Works, and Xero as Event Sponsors.