Cloud Computing and Virtualization both take center stage this March in New York City, as SYS-CON Events brings two of its most popular industry-leading Enterprise IT events to the Big Apple: 2nd International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo and 5th International Virtualization Conference & Expo.

In the Opening Keynote address of SYS-CON's upcoming Cloud Computing Expo in New York City (March 30-April 1, 2009) Werner Vogels, Amazon VP & CTO, will be speaking about the lessons he and his infrastructure team learned first-hand about transitioning to the cloud while building one of the world's largest distributed systems, Amazon.com.

Cloud Computing Expo 2009 Europe, the first event outside the USA in the industry-leading International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series produced by SYS-CON Events, is to be held May 18-19, 2009, in Prague in the Czech Republic. The conference theme is "Deploying Cloud Computing in the Enterprise" and it is the perfect event for anyone looking for a jump-start on delivering and/or using massively scalable Enterprise IT as a service using Internet technologies.

The theme of the 6th International Virtualization Conference & Expo, to be held in Prague, Czech Republic, on May 18-19, 2009, is 'Deploying Virtualization in the Enterprise.' The Call for Papers, which is now open, welcomes submissions from exceptional speakers with high-quality use cases not only of how virtualization maximizes the use of resources and thus saves companies money, but also of how it is fundamentally altering the way that businesses run IT in Europe and worldwide. The event is co-located with Cloud Computing Expo Europe, the third in SYS-CON's industry-leading International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series.

iPhone Developer Summit (www.iphonedevsummit.com) today announced Ian Thain as the Tech Chair of the Conference. In a Letter from the Tech Chair at the conference Website, Thain writes: "With the iPhone more than earning its place in the consumer market, it is now being adopted by enterprises. In fact, many believe that the iPhone will be the most adopted enterprise device in 2009."

SYS-CON's 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, held on Nov. 19-21, 2008, in San Jose, CA, attracted more than 40 sponsors with over 1,200 delegates. Cloud Computing, through which massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided as a service using Internet technologies, has many interpreters just now - and many interpretations. The next event, 2nd International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo will take place, March 30-April 1, 2009, in New York City, with more than 60 sponsors and exhibitors and over 1,500 estimated delegeates from 27 different countries.

Overall, very exciting times, and a great event put together by the folks at SYS-CON! There was a lot of excitement and optimism throughout the event. As someone put it: cloud computing is about 700 days old. That means that there are a lot of arguments about definitions, and where things are going, and so on. And that also gives a lot of vibe and a lot of fresh community spirit.

SYS-CON Events announced today that the leading global virtualization technology provider IBM named "Platinum Sponsor" of SYS-CON's 5th International Virtualization Conference & Expo, (www.virtualizationconference.com) which will take place on March 30-April 1, 2009, in New York City. The event is expected to attract over 1,200 developers, engineers, architects, IT managers, and hardware and software professionals of every stripe.

"Virtualization will help our customers be more agile and efficient," noted Mike Neil at SYS-CON’s Virtualization Conference & Expo, in San Jose, CA, "and there are three areas these companies are focused on." These areas are to drive costs down, increase efficiency, and using virtualization to provide new capabilities.

Open Source. Open Standards. Open Collaboration. For the past 15 years, Linux has served as the benchmark of a successful global open source project. The impact has been far reaching: today it powers the Internet, a significant portion of the datacenter, is the emerging market choice for the desktop, and soon will likely be on your phone. Over the last 5 years, this open community has turned its attention to virtualization. In this session from Virtualization Conference & Expo 2009 West, Brian Stevens discussed what has been achieved and what is under development, and most important why open source is critical when building integrated infrastructure solutions.

Preeti Somal of VMware discussed the challenge of bridging the interoperability gap between on- and off-premise cloud computing, as this is emerging as a key requirement for enterprise adoption. This session at the Cloud Computing Conference and Expo 2008 West revealed how VMware and others are addressing this challenge to make seamless enterprise cloud computing a reality. View technology offerings that deliver smart applications for on- and off-premise clouds. Whether you're a business building a cloud, considering cloud services, or developing for the cloud, this session revealed how applications will traverse the clouds and why it will change the game.

In this session at SOA World Conference and Expo 2008 West, Thorsten Moeller discussed how to overcome performance issues in SOA environments to help businesses maintain a competitive advantage. One of the fundamental building blocks in today's services-driven world is XML and accelerating XML processing at, for example, the user interface, data integration and exchange, and storage level. Doing so can have a substantial impact on your success. This session reviewed integration techniques for and benefits of using the Intel® XML Software Suite in such environments.

In this session from AJAXWorld Conference and Expo 2008 West, Matthew Quinlan discussed how Static HTML wireframes are no longer sufficient to prototype today's RIAs built on syndicated content, widgets, DOM manipulation, AJAX calls, and often a substantial amount of custom JavaScript.