This is one of those questions with which I am getting bored.  You can’t attend a conference these days without someone asking that question.  The constant theorizing is akin to the classic debate of “Kirk or Picard?”  It’s a question that may never get answered, and in fact will engage the nerds for decades to come.

After my conversations last night at the Structure VIP reception, I came to the conclusion that the word “cloud” is like catnip for nerds.  You can attach the word cloud to anything to attain relevancy.

During his panel at the Structure 09 conference (being live streamed from GigaOm), James Lindenbaum from Heroku said that he doesn’t want to think about the question anymore; in fact, he wants to avoid the word “cloud” all together.  Instead, he would prefer that people focus on building applications and rely on abstractions provided by the development frameworks than to think about to cloud or not to cloud.

This just in, local San Francisco entrepreneurs are launching the world’s first cloud gas station.  They supply a true multi-tenant, pay by the drink model, removing the need to purchase your own refineries, and abstracting the gas production process to deliver a truly seamless experience for downstream customers.

Next up on the zeitgeist watch?  Attaching the word “scale” to the name of your company.

This week should be an exciting one.  Not only do I get to travel down to CA and see old friends, I get to talk to a bunch of great startups, and cap the week off by participating in a panel discussion at Structure 09 – the 1:30PM session titled “Toward Cloud Computing: Private Enterprise as a First Step.”

The panel is being run by George Gilbert, who, like myself, is an ex-Wall Street guy, and he used to work at Microsoft.  He’s now running TechAlpha, and based on the few conversations we’ve had in preparation for the panel discussion, it should be a good one.

If you are going to be at the conference and want to get together to talk about your company or your cloud needs, find me by sending me a DM or @ on twitter – I am @brandonwatson.

It looks like I will be speaking at the Structure09 event on June 25th in San Francisco.  I was invited to join a panel on cloud computing, and am honored to have the opportunity to share the stage with many industry heavy weights.  Quite frankly, I’m not sure I measure up to the panel, but the team over at GigaOm have faith in me.

If you haven’t already registered, they gave me a discount code for anyone who reads this blog or follows me on Twitter.  It should be a really good event.  They had their inaugural event last year, and I’m certain this one will be even better.  Here’s the synopsis of the panel:

Toward Cloud Computing: Private Enterprise Clouds As A First Step

Enterprises aren’t yet able or ready to migrate their applications to public clouds.  Public cloud infrastructure can’t run existing enterprise applications without requiring a rewrite.  Yet the lure of usage-based resourcing is strong. The solution? Build your own cloud with your existing infrastructure investment as a first step. This panel will contrast vendor visions about how internal systems can work in unison with external cloud platforms. A must attend for those looking to find solutions or opportunity in the migration path to cloud services.

Panelists

Moderator – George Gilbert, Lead Analyst, TechAlpha
James Urquhart – Market Manager Cloud Computing,Cisco
Brandon Watson – Azure, Microsoft
Steve Herrod – CTO Vmware
Dave Hitz, CTO, NetApp
Joseph Tobolski, Cloud Computing Lead, Accenture