Download the FULL agenda and the registration form for the 2010 Study Tour.

Last year’s study tour – Doing Business in the Cloud: What it Means for Cost, Agility, and Collaboration – provided delegates with a front row seat from which to view the emerging world of cloud computing. We heard from companies and individuals who were already doing real work and gaining real benefits from the cloud.

However, as we dug into the details in the course of our research, we learned that you cannot fully understand, implement or leverage cloud computing unless you take a holistic view. There is a wide range of important related and supporting issues that cannot be treated separately. We see this mix of forces and issues as a ‘wave’, and to get the best from cloud computing you need to learn how to surf it.

The issues you need to address include:

• Identity and global business collaboration – identity within a single company and behind a single firewall is relatively easy to manage with old-style access control processes. However, the future of business is collaboration and the future of collaboration is in the cloud, not behind my firewall or your firewall. To get the innovation we need, we will have to work with people we don’t know very well – leveraging so-called ‘weak ties’. What mechanisms can protect you when working within this ‘weak tie’ environment?
  
  

• Consumerization and ‘double deep’ employees – never before has it been possible to buy massive, scalable computing for nine cents per hour using a $25 Visa debit card. This means that IT no longer has exclusive control of the means of IT production. If we in IT can’t make it easier, better and faster to do work the right way then users will organize things for themselves. How will your IT group train and support these new ‘double deep’ users, who know both their business role and the relevant IT?
  
  

• Big data and unstructured data – the arrival of cloud computing and designs such as Hadoop (the open source version of Google’s MapReduce) make it possible to analyze data sets that were previously too large for most organizations. Many marketing departments are already eager to exploit these new capabilities. Are you ready to support them?
  
  

• ‘Enterprise 2.0’ and knowledge flows – the rise of Web 2.0, social media and a culture of participation are creating a new model of the enterprise. The key questions here are not so much technical as organizational. For example, how can you ensure and manage their adoption? How do you judge success? What is the role of Enterprise IT?
  
  

• Mobility and employee contracts – hand-held devices now have the processing power and screen resolutions that were once the province of desktop computers. Smart phones have become the Swiss army knives of modern life. For many, a cool phone has replaced a cool watch as the jewellery of choice; and it seems that no matter what you are discussing, someone will say “there’s an app for that”. And these devices are often owned by the employee, not the firm. What new employee ‘social contract’ will you need? What does ‘support’ mean when the employee owns the phone?
  
  

• Semantic web and other new technologies – during last year’s study tour, it became clear to us that security in the cloud depends on how well you understand your data. For example, do you know what data has to stay in a particular country and what can go into the public cloud? Semantic web efforts are about adding meta data and/or tags to information to help us (and machines) understand it better. Recent announcements by Facebook and others indicate how semantic web technologies (such as RDFa) will be a growing part of our life. Do you understand how the Semantic Web can be used to help you manage what you do in the cloud?

To help you ‘surf the wave’ and not get swept away, the 2010 LEF Study Tour will help you answer these and other key questions. The tour will take place in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, from 17 to 22 October 2010. Please contact Jane Kingston at jkingsto@csc.com, or +44 (0)20 7015 6829, or complete and return the registration form, if you are interested in joining us.