Talking technical with techmesh

Recently, techmesh held their second TechTalk event at the Aspire in Leeds. The evening began with networking and canapés as guests marvelled at the elegance of the prestigious Aspire building, which used to be the site of Yorkshire Bank.

The evening commenced with an introduction from Jim Pendrill, Editor of Yorkshire Business Insider and award-winning business journalist. Jim introduced the presenters and question time panel for the evening and announced the topic; ‘Cloud Computing and using Software-as-a-Service’.

James Akrigg, Head of Technology for Partners at Microsoft then took to the stage and began to unveil how Microsoft is innovating and developing their software to be more Cloud focussed. This included an exclusive demo of Microsoft Office 2010. Microsoft intends to completely reshape their software delivery approach, rather that just offering its software on premise, they are allowing over 400 million Windows Live users to access slimmed down, online versions, of its popular Office software.

Matt Holmes, Managing Director of Liquid Accounts, who are a new techmesh sponsor, discussed how Liquid’s accounting software was developed to be used in the Cloud. Matt decided to mix up the proceedings by using an alternative software provider for his presentation, Google docs. Matt’s presentation mapped out how Liquid Accounts began, raising investment to the sum of £770k and how they intend to capitalise on future trends.

The evening was then thrown open to a panel ‘question time’ format, taking questions from the audience. The main issue of concern was security in the cloud; will encryption be sufficient enough and what if data is lost? As with all web based services, there is no guaranteed security level for Cloud based applications, this was a heated topic on the evening. But in addition, there is no guaranteed security when a data server is destroyed at the office following a flash flood. One explanation that was suggested is that Hotmail have been operating their email service in the cloud for many years, this demonstrates that Cloud computing is not just a new development and is being tailored for more business and cost savings.

The event was a great success with nearly 80 delegates. We need your feedback on future events like this. Did you attend and was it useful? Did you not attend for any reason and what events would inspire you in the future? Send us an email info@techmesh.org

The next techmesh event is in Sheffield on 30th June at The Circle, S1 4FW. The keynote speaker for the evening will be from IBM. George Taylor from Digital Region will be discussing the services available for businesses in South Yorkshire. For further info visit: http://techmesh.org/events/view/60.

Join techmesh today to attend techmesh: Sheffield for free!

Clouded Thinking?

TeckTalk 2008 on June 17th will debate the issues surrounding 'cloud' computing. How important is it for enterprises to be able to 'hug' their data? Is day when all server machines no longer belt out heat from your own rack but sit somewhere out in cyber space, maintained and upgraded by men in white coats.

The technology promises to bring the cost of application hosting, data storage and connectivity down via 'pay as you go' services and open source tools. But have may of us have already found that's not the whole story and the vendor perspective can be "when we have them by their databases, their hearts, minds and wallets will follow".

Cloud computing brings together high performance supercomputing capabilities to the masses. Is your application taking off? The promise is that you can scale processing power as your application grows. Backups? All taken care of for you. But what about security? That probably still is the Achilles heel of the cloud - are you going to entrust your precious corporate data to some outside your firewall?

And what about the green agenda? One of the companies backed by the South Yorkshire Seedcorn Fund has a novel approach to server cooling (no not locate them at the North Pole!). Full tilt computing generates a serious amount of hot air where ever the processor is located and that needs to go somewhere.

So on the 17th, let's hope the debate produces some clear thinking and we get demistify what cloud computing has to offer for the future and lets hope it not all vapourware! We have a great keynote speaker lined up from Oracle and a supporting panel to debate the issue: Cloud Computing - Is it all hot air or is there a silver lining? See you there.