Roaming the floor of Amazon Web Services' first user conference last week, it didn't look like a traditional tech show. Many of the 6,000 attendees were with startups or midsize businesses looking to learn more about AWS services or the public cloud.

The ANZ Banking Group will not be introducing Cloud computing until the industry evolves and consistency of data placed in the Cloud can be assured, according to chief information officer, Anne Weatherston.

Australia and New Zealand are the only nations where browser-based file sharing applications used in the enterprise are more business centric than entertainment focused when it comes to bandwidth, a new report has claimed.

Rather than a traditional datacenter, the private cloud uses highly virtualized pools of compute, storage and network capabilities to optimize IT performance and utilization while providing the business with services that improve efficiency and agility. This offers organizations a way to circumvent the increasing complexity, inflexibility and cost of IT environments to be more competitive in the market place through greater efficiency, control, choice, quality of service and, most importantly, business agility. We need to spend more of our budgets on building new value and assets rather than spending precious dollars on, "keeping the lights on." Introducing the cloud!

I am privileged to co-chair the SDForum Cloud Services SIG. This SIG, which Tibco graciously hosts in its Silicon Valley facility (directly across the street from VMware's HQ, I might add), is fortunate with its location-it attracts a fascinating range of speakers from innovative startups to large established technology powerhouses, all presenting on their cloud computing products, services, and plans. So I was a bit taken aback at the last meeting, when, during the pre-presentation networking, one attendee told me "I'm starting an anti-cloud company."

A couple of weeks ago Forrester released a report on cloud computing, based upon a survey of small and large enterprises located in North America and Europe. I was particularly interested in its findings as it addressed the question of private (internal) cloud computing.

Private clouds are a hot topic these days, but not everyone agrees on a definition or the potential benefits.

The topic of private clouds is heating up. A private cloud is, essentially, a cloud computing capability dedicated to one organization. The term "internal cloud" is often used for this kind of functionality, but as many people point out, the term "internal cloud" conflates functionality with location. T