Whether you are amongst those building their own private cloud or amongst Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Cloud Computing |CloudData Center Business Development |  Enterprise Architect  | Senior Director, SP Data Center and Cloud Solutions | those leveraging the solutions of cloud providers, you want to attend Cloud Connect Santa Clara next week.

Cisco has been very active over the past years to accelerate the emergence of the cloud computing model. Padmasree Warrior, Cisco CTO and Lew Tucker Cisco cloud computing CTO have been on the forefront of this evolution, developing the concept of a "World of Many Cloud" and more recently the "Internet of Everything" .

Last week Giuliano Di Vitantonio, Cisco VP Data Center and Cloud Solutions Marketing, was writing about a series of webinars on cloud computing, including on April 17  a webcast with NetApp, Microsoft and Intel.
All other the world Cisco organize events with partners to explain how to address the challenges of cloud deployment and make today the right choices to make make amazing things happen tomorrow. If you are in Houston, Dallas you may want to attend one of the "Adopting the Cloud" event that we organize with EMC , Frost and Sullivan and Verizon Terremark.

So it's pretty natural that Cisco is a Diamond Sponsor for  Cloud Connect , which is happening April2-5 in Santa Clara , California .

The concentration of very active high tech companies makes this event exciting for the visitors (see exhibitor lists) .  You will find Cisco at the booth#201.  In addition of the Cisco solutions,  partners such as AT&T, Dimension Data, NTT, Savvis, Sunguard, Windstream will be there as well to talk about deployments.

A quick look at the list of speakers, starting with the keynotes makes it even more attractive.

The agenda is organized around tracks reflecting the care about of IT organizations, such as private cloud and hybrid cloud, mobile cloud, risk management and security, enterprise SaaS strategies, performance and availability, WAN and cloud networking , cloud economics, applications design and architecture, but also big data and software defined networking .

If you want more specifically hear from Cisco and partners , here are some suggestions :

Cloud Computing, SDN, And the Internet of Everything 

by  Lew Tucker  Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Cloud Computing | Cisco

Open source cloud platforms such as OpenStack now allow anyone to build their own public or private cloud. This accelerates private cloud platforms usage to not only meet the needs of rapid application development and deployment of enterprise apps, but when combined with SDN also changes the nature of "infrastructure as a service" as a platform for consumer-facing services. Come explore with us this virtuous cycle created by cloud computing, software defined networking, and the internet of everything.
Wednesday, April 3, 10:20-10:35 AM  Mission City Ballroom

Choosing Your Strategy in a World of Many Clouds 

by Pat Adamiak   Senior Director, SP Data Center and Cloud Solutions | Cisco

Your organization has many options to choose from in the cloud. We are here to share our expertise on how to safely navigate a world of many clouds. Please join us to hear about the industry trends, strategies, and solutions you can put in a successful cloud playbook.
Thursday, April 4, 2:30-3:15 PM Grand Ballroom G

Enabling IT as a Service -Cloud Management and Orchestration

by  Rodrigo Flores Cloud  Enterprise Architect  | Cisco

The promise of running IT departments as an internal service provider has been elusive. In their quest to deliver ITaaS, many companies have suffered from an emphasis on IT operations and less focus on infrastructure and application development, resulting in a siloed IT environment held together by heroic efforts. The majority of IT spending is dedicated to "keep the lights on" activities, hindering IT's ability to keep up with the pace of business innovation. This session will address why the answer to this IT quandary lies in the implementation of virtualization and cloud computing, describing these as the essential building blocks for the agility, flexibility, and "services" focus that IT needs to achieve ITaaS. The speaker will describe why IT needs to be delivered as a service and why IT must think in terms of delivering services not servers, and "claims processing" rather than "data processing.
Thursday, April 4 2:30 PM-3:30 PM -Location: Grand Ballroom F

Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud Opportunities 

byVinay Nichani Data Center Business Development | Cisco

Should you build your own cloud, buy from a cloud provider, or go through a cloud services broker? What applications do you place in the cloud? What do you look for as a sign of quality when "good enough" is not? Let's discuss how to advance in your cloud journey.

Theater Session -Wednesday, April 3, 1:15-1:35 PM

Partners speaking sessions

SunGuard Availability Services

Cloud : An Evolution, Not a Revolution -Grand Ballroom G Wednesday April 3, 2013 -3:45pm-4:30 pm
Practical Path to Cloud: Cloud Solutions Theater, Expo Floor Thursday April 4 2013 1:45 pn -2:05 pm

Dimension Data

Cloud Networking Changes Everything -Why Network-Centric Clouds Will Drive Hybrid Cloud Adoption
Cloud Solutions Theater, Expo Floor  Thursday, April 4, 2013  12:15 PM -12:35 PM