"Cloud Computing" is a container notion, an attempt to create a bit of extra attention ("hype") for a natural evolution towards a more service-oriented infrastructure and software. It's the hypothetical elephant that is described differently by every blind man.
The Sizing Servers Lab has a very pragmatic look on this idea. In reality, when IT is playing an important part in your company, you've already invested in server hardware and virtualization.

You are probably already enjoying the benefits of centralized datacenters by leasing your servers or colocating them at your favourite hosting provider. Or you have your own datacenter. Our point of view is that you'd prefer optimizing that infrastructure and software, rather than starting all over again. On the other hand, we shouldn't be blind for this new evolution; a public cloud like Amazon's may be able to prevent you from doing large investments. A new developing environment like Microsoft's Azure might in some software projects also be interesting...
On this theme day, the goal is to explain you how to further optimize your current applications and infrastructure in a more flexible virtualized environment. Then we continue on: What has our practical research into Amazon EC2 and Azure already taught us? How about Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud? How far can you go with Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager, VMware's vCloud or the German outsider OpenQRM?

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