Welcome to Business Cloud Summit 2010 - the Cloud, one year on

We said that 2009 was the Year of the Cloud. We were wrong. In reality it was a year of the Cloud, albeit an important year. It was the year that Cloud Computing adoption gained sufficient traction that even if your organisation hadn't begun to roll out Cloud-based technologies, it needed at least to put them on the corporate agenda for consideration. 

It was against this backdrop that the first Business Cloud Summit was held. Five hundred delegates attended the inaugural one-day conference in London to hear from end-user peers, political policy makers and Cloud industry thought-leaders about why the Cloud matters and why the potential of Cloud Computing needed to be evaluated sooner rather than later. It was a conference focused very much around establishing the raison d'etre for Cloud Computing and the drivers behind its take-up among early adopter organisations. 

Flash forward twelve months and such has been the continued – and escalating – adoption of the Cloud Computing model that this year's Business Cloud Summit is a very different beast. There will still be a focus on the building blocks of the Cloud and the drivers behind its adoption. Unlike other Cloud conferences, we will remain a defiantly PowerPoint free zone with no sales pitches from suppliers thinly disguised as keynotes. The emphasis will remain firmly on end user, peer to peer, case study-led examples of Cloud Computing good practice. 

But reflecting the greater and more mainstream take-up of Cloud Computing, this year's event is very much The Business Cloud – One Year On! We're going to be hearing from even more of the increasingly established and experienced practitioners of Cloud Computing in both the private and public sectors. 

We're also going to be drilling down further into the vertical job functions, such as HR and finance, in which the Cloud is proving to be a hugely transformative force. This year's event is pitched at multiple business functions within the same organisation, not just the techies! 

We'll be quizzing policy makers and legislators in the public sector who are looking to use the Cloud to enable wider economic recovery and cut the national deficit as well as transform the way that critical public services are delivered to the tax-paying electorate. And we'll be grilling some celebrated Cloud industry thought-leaders to get their views on what's next for Cloud Computing, including RightNow's Greg Gianforte and NetSuite's Zach Nelson.  

One thing that hasn't changed from last year is that each of our sessions and panels will be hosted and chaired by members Sift Media's experienced editorial team and our sister ICT analyst arm K2 Advisory to ensure that the right (and sometimes tough) questions are asked and the needs of the end-user audience are addressed. 

The Cloud Computing industry is fast moving and rapidly evolving. So too is the Business Cloud Summit. We promise that this year's 'one year on' event will mirror the evolution of the Cloud market and guarantee that attendees will leave the conference fully up to speed on the latest developments in Cloud Computing. I hope you'll join us on 30 November for what will be the Cloud Computing event of 2010. 

For more information, go to our conference home page here.