UBM Tech Web’s Cloud Connect will be held March 7-10, 2011, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.

"In the last year, there's been a dramatic shift in the questions CIOs are asking," said Alistair Croll, content chair for the event and a partner at Bitcurrent. "We've moved beyond 'what are clouds?' and now we're figuring out how to put them to work for us."

The event's content has adapted to this in a number of ways:

• The first ever Cloud Performance Summit, looks at the challenges of running fast, reliable applications on on-demand infrastructure. Performance in the cloud is a different game entirely, rewriting much of what we know about the speed and cost of IT systems. The conference also features a Performance and Monitoring track led by Hooman Beheshti, vice president of products at Strangeloop Networks, which addresses issues around capacity, availability, new problems like application sprawl and server hoarding.
• A new focus on cloud security with both the workshop How to Operate Securely Using Cloud Computing taught by Christopher Hoff, director of cloud & virtualization solutions at Cisco and creator of the popular Rational Survivability blog, and the CloudSectrack led by Steve Orrin, director of security solutions at Intel. Both dive deep into the new security models, risk profiles, and vulnerabilities of clouds.
• The Cloud Crash Course, brings IT professionals, analysts, and journalists up to speed on the state of cloud computing, preparing them for the rest of the conference. This fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek look at clouds sprinkles a healthy dose of irreverence atop a solid foundation of virtualization, automation, economics, and types of clouds.
• Data and Storage gets the attention it is due with the workshop Data and Storage and the Cloud and a Conference track led by Jeremy Edberg, Operations Manager at Reddit. In many ways, clouds run on the back of new storage technologies, and they make the real-time analysis of massive data sets possible. Jeremy's speakers will look at real-world examples, post-SQL technologies like Cassandra, and the impact of utility computing on disaster recovery.
• An interactive Platforms and Ecosystems program run my Shlomo Swidler, Founder of Orchestratus, will bring analysts, vendors, and end users together to debate standardization, portability, and the risk of cloud lock-in-major issues for anyone considering moving to a cloud. Run in an unconference format that encourages heated debate and shuffles participants, it promises to be a lightning rod for controversy and opinion. Shlomo is also the track chair of the Design Patterns track which offers insight on how to tailor cloud architectures to specific workloads.

Last year's inaugural Cloud Connect conference set the bar for rich content, controversial debate, and expert opinion. But no industry stays still, and these changes reflect the changing landscape of cloud computing.

Cloud Connect will also feature more than 60 companies and is the premier event for cloud computing hardware, software and service providers to come together in one location. Sponsors and exhibitors include Diamond Sponsors Cisco Systems, Inc., IBM Corporation, Intel SOA Products Group, Microsoft and VMware; Platinum Sponsors Rackspace Hosting, SunGard Availability Services, and Terremark Worldwide; Gold Sponsors Abiquo, Inc., AT&T, GoGrid, HP and SOASTA; Silver Sponsors Apica, Ariba Inc., Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., CloudOptix, Cloudsoft, Keynote Systems, MeghaWare, OnApp, Riverbed, and Savvis.net.