Over 200 delegates from a cross-section of leading UK-based enterprises joined us yesterday for the 6th Cloud Circle Forum in Victoria, London, where the very latest issues surrounding the business value of the Cloud were up for debate.

Repeating the agenda from the 5th Forum back in May due to ardent demand, yesterday’s event featured speakers from the BBC, Google, Microsoft and IBM, covering topics including Cloud security, business transformation, legalities and the changing role of IT in the enterprise.

The opening session saw Thomas Davies, head of Google Apps in the UK, relay to delegates how the Cloud can bring real strategic value, beyond just cost benefits. In the main, it is freeing up business based employees to use technology for innovation as they are now able to engage with it. “The makeup of technology applications used to be determined by the process,” he said. “Now, it’s end users.” However, the Cloud isn’t about individual productivity, he pointed out. “It’s about teamwork, collaboration and a single version of the truth.”

Davies was followed by Stefan Haase, product director of data cloud services at InTechnology, providing an insight into current Cloud usage trends and uptake predictions for the next few years. With Software-as-a-Service stealing a march in the education and media categories and take up of Information-as-a-Service high in business-to-business sectors, Haase pointed to research which suggests the Cloud industry will see compound annual growth of 26 per cent until 2014, by which point the UK market will be worth £10bn.

EMC’s practice manager of Cloud and virtual datacentres, Elliot Young, then looked to challenge some of the myths surrounding Cloud Computing. By using a blueprinting service, he said, you can discredit the idea that you can only move new apps into the Cloud. Likewise, tokenisation could be the answer to concerns that your data is ‘too secure’ for the Cloud. He conceded, however, that concerns around compliance with security regulations could have some grounding. 

After a mid-morning networking coffee break, we reconvened to hear from the Cloud’s answer to Ant and Dec – Justin Pirie of Mimecast and Paolo Picone of Phoenix Business Solutions discuss whether the Cloud entails a technical or organisation change. They advocated accepting that there is some element of risk which should be embraced as the Cloud moves from an innovative new tool to a ubiquitous, mainstream utility style service.

Next up, Simon May, a Microsoft UK evangelist – “a job title,” he says, “which gets me stuck in airports quite often” – explored the changing role of IT within the enterprise. “Some will have to retrain,” he said.  “The last ten years have been pretty stable – the calm before the storm. But it means some have become adverse to risk and have forgotten how to change. The IT manager’s job will be to guide people in making decisions, not just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”

In the final session of the morning, IBM UK’s Cloud leader Doug Clark illustrated how organisations can benefit from one another’s expertise by using community Clouds and gave examples of how IBM is orchestrating such projects to solve problems that the world is facing today. This includes collecting road data and canvassing drivers in Stockholm which has led to a 22 per cent reduction in traffic.

After a lunch time break, in which some delegates joined our sponsors to discuss issues specifically relating to their own Cloud projects while others networked with their peers, we opened up proceedings once again with our panel debate, featuring members from Google, SunGard, InTechnology, IBM and IMGROUP and chaired by Accenture. The questions came thick and fast from our audience, who grilled the panel on the issues of which jurisdictions data are stored in, openness and standards, governance, Cloud expectations and Platform-as-a-Service. There was a sense that everybody would have been happy to have continued to debate away the whole afternoon had time allowed.

Fortunately, we had plenty more to capture the imagination. Delegates chose between two streams at this stage, opting either for Nic Merriman from Avanade’s briefing on how to build a Cloud strategy or a jointly presented transformational case study from the BBC Audience Service’s David King and its outsourcing partner Capita’s David Cooling.

Merriman, a former HBOS Plc head of architecture, explained ‘Cloud sprawl’ – the tactical adoption of app management by business end users for strategic gains – and gave a rundown of the key business and technical drivers which should drive cloud initiatives. “Remember,” he said, “emails and CRM are important but they are not your differentiator. You need to be looking to support your primary business functions.”

Cooling and King, meanwhile, provided an insight into the BBC’s commitment to reach, quality, impact and value – it’s RQIV strategy – and how this, coupled with the increasing platforms which the audience uses to contact the organisation and their heightened expectations in terms of response times, has led the broadcaster to seek a new portfolio of Cloud functionality from Capita. The main drivers for the system were that it had to be absolutely always available, could handle spikes in demand and can support the on-going development of new lines of contact.

Another networking break then ensued, before we sat down for a series of industry-focussed roundtables where delegates could discuss the issues most pertinent to their sector.

The final sessions of the day once again saw delegates break into two groups, with one opting for Helen Rose of law firm Bristows’ address on jurisdiction and the other group heading to Accenture manager Anish Mohammed’s security presentation.

Helen, a contract lawyer, looked at Cloud contracting and Service Licensing Agreements and had a few key words of advice: “If your agreement says the service will be provided ‘as is’ there is actually no obligation to provide any servicer whatsoever.”

The daytime event then formally ended with nibbles and a glass of wine before IBM and InTechnology took a number of delegates off to dinner at Michelin-starred restaurants Maze (Gordon Ramsay) and Rhodes (Gary Rhodes).

Emma Taylor, founder and managing director of The Cloud Circle, felt the day was an unmitigated success.

She said: “The biggest priority for us at any of our events is satisfying our members and making sure that they get out of the day what they wanted to. I’m delighted to say that based on conversations I had with everybody yesterday and the feedback we’ve received, we’ve exceeded expectations almost across the board. Delegates have told me that they thought there was a perfect mix of delivered content and networking and that there was a good range of different content formats, broaching the subjects they wanted to hear about.

“This isn’t too surprising, since our mission objective here at The Cloud Circle is to provide content that is driven by what our members tell us they want – we had months’ worth of consultation leading up to our 5th and 6th Forums where we canvassed our membership to find out what they wanted to know about. However, nothing pleases me more than to see it in action and to know that we have got it right.”

Next on the upcoming Cloud Circle events include a desktop virtualisation masterclass in October and two Cloud security conferences, in October and December.  If you would like details of any of these events please email kristin.matthews@thecloudcircle.com.

Check back here soon for pictures, videos, delegate testimony and the presentation slides from yesterday’s 6th Cloud Circle Forum.