AFCOM’s Data Center Institute (DCI), a leading industry think-tank, convened at Data Center World 2010 to discuss concepts and approaches to cloud computing and what this technology means to data center professionals everywhere. These concepts and recommendations will be summarized in an AFCOM DCI Cloud Computing report that was to be released in April.

During a keynote at the event, Equinix CIO Brian Lillie encouraged data center owners and operators to “embrace” the cloud. Both Lillie and AFCOM CEO Jill Eckhaus agreed that cloud computing already had already begun to come into its own as a possible cost-savings and reliability strategy, with Lillie pointing out several Paas, IaaS, and SaaS success stories.

“The report will provide basic guidance around the emerging concepts of cloud computing for the data center professional, looking at how he or she can get involved in the cloud computing migration process, and determine the impact on the data center as well as other IT assets,” states David S. Linthicum, the CTO of Bick Group, and the lead author of the report. “It will also provide the ‘how’ more so than the ‘what’ around cloud computing. The guidance to the data center professional should prove invaluable.”