SYS-CON Events announced today that the 5th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo will take place April 19-21, 2010, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City. The three-day event will offer a rich array of sessions led by exceptional speakers about the business and technical value of cloud computing with more than 80 sponsors and exhibitors on the 70,000 sq. ft. show floor and over 5,000 estimated delegates from well over 48 different countries.

This year's West Coast conference had 1,700 pre-registered delegates on the Friday before the conference opened. More than 500 additional registrations came in over the weekend and on-site registrations, which brought the number of delegates who registered and attended for the conference to roughly 2,250, more than double a year ago. As far as the expo floor goes, out of 50 sponsors and exhibitors, 46 companies confirmed during the conference that they will participate in the 2010 Cloud Computing Expo at the same or higher level.

The past month has seen an unprecedented concentration of Cloud-related articles, events, tweets, and - above all - product launches, partnership announcements and M&A moves. So is Cloud Computing, after three years, finally coming to the boil? Here, by way of allowing you to judge for yourself, SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal brings you a timeline of the trajectory of the Cloud so far.

SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, held on November 2 - 4, 2009, in Santa Clara, attracted more than 40 sponsors with over 2,000 delegates, a record attendance. The three content-packed days emphasized value with a rich array of sessions led by exceptional speakers about the business and technical value of cloud computing. Enjoy here our photo album of the show.

The first "Ulitzer New Media Power Panel" took place today at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. Streamed live to 60,000 viewers via SYS-CON.TV, the panel was moderated by Jeremy Geelan. Geelan's guests in the first power panel were Ian Thain and Tim Crawford. The first "Ulitzer Live! - New Media Conference & Expo " will take place on June 14, 2010 in New York City and will present a world class faculty who will analyze new media, content marketing strategies, social CRM, enterprise social media, personal branding tools, and many other subjects.

Cloud computing is a game changer. The cloud is disrupting traditional software and hardware business models by disrupting how IT service gets delivered. Entrepreneurial opportunities abound as this classic disruptive technology begins to proliferate, so it is no surprise that SYS-CON's industry-leading International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series is going from strength to strength. The 5th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, to be held April 19-21, 2010, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York, NY, announces that its Call for Papers is now open.

The talk at the Cloud Computing Expo this week in Santa Clara was all about enterprise cloud adoption. Is it real? Is it already happening? If so, who’s doing it, which applications are they running and which clouds are being tested? To a large extent, cloud computing is a victim of its own somewhat out-of-control hype cycle. Since so much has been written and discussed about the cloud in 2009, there is now a growing impatience for actual results.

The most anticipated talk of the day yesterday, at the 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, was by the deputy CIO of the CIA, Jill Singer. Her talk was entitled, "Enterprise Cloud Computing, the Infrastructure’s Final Revenge." She acknowledged the problem with defining Cloud Computing, and then went on to give her paragraph-length definition of “the cloud”. Her talk focused on the part of the Cloud behind the firewall. “Today’s CIO must increase the flexibility of the infrastructure,” said Singer.

Yahoo! aims to be one of the 800-pound gorillas--along with Google, Amazon, and several major technology companies--in the upcoming battles for hosting dominance in the Cloud Computing space. Yahoo aims to be one of the 800-pound gorrillas--along with Google, Amazon, and several major technology companies--in the upcoming battles for hosting dominance in the Cloud Computing space. As Shugar noted in the days before his presentation, the company "is developing and utilizing Internet-scale cloud computing services to improve the consumer experience, speed innovation, simplify operating environments, and reduce costs. Yahoo! Cloud Services are in production today supporting web-serving properties and data processing environments."

Having gone through a couple of decades worth of technology conferences, a familiar cycle occurs. For the first couple years, technology-related conferences are attended by engineers and operations people. Only after the technology has passed a couple of feasibility gates and begun to hit the business cycle do sales and marketing people take over. Cloud is now officially past the engineering phase, well into the sales phase – and the business community is scrambling to understand the implications of a virtualized world.