I had the pleasure of speaking at the marcus evans CLO Summit in Georgia last week. The other presenters and most of the attendees were directors, VPs, or CLOs.

There were also several solution providers that I had the pleasure of catching up with or meeting for the first time too.

The venue was a winery and resort  50 miles North of Atlanta. It was an intimate event…probably about 100-150 people total.

I sat on a research panel with Dr. Arthur Paton, Motorola, Inc., and Gary Whitney, VP at InterContinental Hotels Group. The panel discussion was facilitated by Jenny Dearborn, Director L&D, at Hewlett-Packard. She also served as chairman of the event. Our topic was “Has eLearning taken the World by Storm?” We had an interesting discussion and my contribution probably was memorable for my push back on the multi-generational stuff. I couldn’t really answer all of the questions asked because they were “at your organization…” questions. As you know, I’m my own organization and I study other organizations…some of which were there.

I’ve been to one other marcus evans event in San Francisco a couple of years ago. They do about 150 conferences a year and have it down to a science.

I sent my slides to the event planner prior to the conference (as requested) and just assumed there would be Internet access. I had planned on doing the entire presentation in the cloud switching back and forth between various sites but learned there was no Internet service in the conference center. Event planners have to arrange for (and pay dearly for) that in advance and they weren’t aware I would need it. I just assumed the default was “yes.”

So…Dr. Jay Colker, SVP & CLO at ShoreBank Corp. and I met up on a break and I had an interesting conversation about working in the cloud, crowdsourcing, and other things and I shared with him my original plan of doing the cloud prez in the cloud.

He tried to make the Internet thing happen but it wasn’t to be. I’m 99% sure I was the most high-maintenance presenter there. So, I arrived with Plan A, fell back to Plan B, returned to Plan A (based on “let’s try” discussions) and ultimately back to Plan B. Plan B+: original slides, video, Twitter on my mobile, and screen shots.

My talk, the last of the day on Tuesday, was about cloud computing (hence my desire to deliver it in the cloud). I’ve uploaded my slides to SlideShare. It’s missing the ‘slideography’ which is a bit sloppy on my part. Once I add that, I’ll free it up for download.

Couple of takeaway’s for me…

• SharePoint is more commonly used than I thought.
• The gap in knowledge between traditional delivery of eLearning and self-service eLearning through the social web is ginormous…
• …however, there is tremendous interest in moving beyond a content- and infrastructure-centered approach to a socially-centered approach. The topic generated excitement.
• Gangsta hats make people wacky.
• Learning executives are taller than average L&D types (random observation).
• There’s a need for some PowerPoint best practices.
• I need to find a way to do more to address the knowledge gap.
• There is a “one-way” mentality with a lot of the newer social tools and technologies. I find myself switching things up constantly. That was never the case in the corporate environments. I think that prevails today.

Some of my friends on Twitter came through for an impromptu flash conversation on the topic of cloud computing during the presentation. I gave my BlackBerry to the person lucky enough to be in the front row and he was kind enough to read off responses. It was described as provocative. Of course, I was unable to respond to anyone since I didn’t have my device so it must’ve appeared rude to my friends.

That’s how friends are on Twitter though…forgiving of longer than normal absences and sudden requests for “say hi” type stuff.

All speakers were good and I particularly liked what Donald O’Guin, Director, e-Learning and Learning Technologies at Pfizer, Inc. shared. Pfizer has opened various apps up to employees and they seem to understand the power of the social web.

I also enjoyed Nancy Lewis’ (former CLO & VP at ITT and former VP, Learning, IBM) talk about the future of learning and next generation tactics. Another person who gets it! All my prior communications with Nancy have been on the web so it was especially nice to meet her and see her friendly face up front during my own presentation. That helped (thanks Nancy).

Karie Willyerd, former VP, CLO at Sun Microsystems was also fabulous. Her talk was “Social Learning Innovation: A View to the Future.” She recently wrote a book with Jeanne Meister about the 2020 workforce. Lots of data and discussion.

A meaningful conference rich in networking.

James Urquhart shares a paper by David A. Couillard that addresses the fourth amendment and cloud computing.

The paper is a concise but thorough outline of where we stand with respect to the application of Fourth Amendment law to Internet computing. It finishes by introducing a highly logical framework for evaluating the application of the Fourth Amendment to cases involving cloud-based data.

Couillard’s framework:

[T]he service provider has a copy of the keys to a user’s cloud “storage unit,” much like a landlord or storage locker owner has keys to a tenant’s space, a bank has the keys to a safe deposit box, and a postal carrier has the keys to a mailbox. Yet that does not give law enforcement the authority to use those third parties as a means to enter a private space.

The same rationale should apply to the cloud. In some circumstances, such as search engine queries, the third party is clearly an interested party to the communication. But when content data, passwords, or URLs are maintained by a service provider in a relationship more akin to that of landlord-tenant, such as private Google accounts, any such data that the provider is not directly interested in should not be understood to be open to search via consent or a waiver of Fourth Amendment protection.

Does the Fourth Amendment cover ‘the cloud’? The Wisdom of Clouds James Urquhart January 17, 2009 (via Mike Gotta)

One of my 15 fans asks, “Janet what the heck is cloud computing, when should I consider a cloud service model and when should I not?” This is a great question and much better than an anonymous question I received via my chat widget, “what is the current state of e-learning?” Seriously. And, to which I responded…let’s try to break that down a bit…

First, let me point to some existing definitions cloud computing. I always start with the definitions. Otherwise, it’s all fuzzy. Which it actually it is. Clouds, if nothing else, are ‘fuzzy.’

Cloud Service Models

Cloud Software as a Service, or SaaS (pronounced “sass”) has been the term used by learning management system providers for several years to described their  ”hosted” service model. “Hosted” meaning 100% browser-based in this context. The (U.S.) National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in their effort to “promote the effective and secure use of the technology within government and industry by providing technical guidance and promoting standards,” has defined SaaS, as:

The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings.

Another service model is Cloud Platform as a Service” (PaaS). Fewer LMSs offer a PaaS solution (vs. SaaS) but some are moving in that direction. NIST defines PaaS as:

The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.

Yet another service model is Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas)

The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).

Some lower-tech descriptions

I like this diagram and explanation from Michael Sheehan:

There are other ways to display this hierarchy, however I elected to show it as a pyramid. For example, if one were to weight the graphic by the number of providers within each segment, the pyramid would be upside-down. The point here though is to show how these cloud segments build upon and are somewhat dependent upon each other. While they are directly related, they don’t require interdependence (e.g., a Cloud Application does not necessarily have to be built upon a Cloud Platform or Cloud Infrastructure). I would propose, however, that Cloud trends indicate that they will become more entwined over time.

(click diagram to make larger)

Another great read is Defogging Cloud Computing: A Taxonomy from Michael Crandell.

The technology industry has been moving toward open standards for some time, and cloud computing is the next logical step. Cloud solutions -– at any of the three levels described above -– are attractive for just about any company with an application that runs in a data center or with a hosted provider, that doesn’t want to reinvent the wheel or pay a premium. Multi-tenancy, low cost (metered hourly vs. monthly ), high availability with clustered servers (one goes down, spin one up automatically), virtually infinite scalability with a click –- all this is here, and here to stay. Our job as cloud vendors is to make it easily accessible and manageable, deliver best practices and continue to refine the architecture.

One of the better nut-and-bolts definition uses the common utility comparison. This one is from Darryl Chantry at Microsoft in his article, Mapping Applications to the Cloud..

Utility computing refers to using computing resources (infrastructure, storage, core services) in the same way you would use electricity or water; that is, as a metered service in which you only pay for what you use. The utility can eliminate the need to purchase, run, and maintain hardware, server, and application platforms, and to develop core services—for example, billing or security services.

When I query our LMS KnowledgeBase of 100 commercial systems by systems with 50% or more of their implementation are hosted (SaaS), it returns 70 systems. Among 107 authoring tools in our Authoring Tool KnowledgeBase, 39 have server-based authoring environments that one or more content developers access simultaneously using their browser. SaaS has been trending for quite some time. Years in fact. What we’ll see more of now is PaaS service models.

Cloud Deployment Models

Again from NIST:

Private cloud.

The cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise.

Community cloud.

The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). It may be managed by the organizations or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise.

Public cloud.

The cloud infrastructure is made available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services.

Hybrid cloud.

The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load-balancing between clouds).

When should you consider a cloud solution and when should you not?

I’ll comment on that in my next post in this series. This one is too long as it is. I welcome your answers to that question and will feature them in the next post.

A cloud is normally visible right? It seems then that the “cloud” metaphor of “cloud computing” is flawed although I understand that it is based on the typical computer network diagram.

As I understand the term, cloud computing is used to describe the use of a scalable platform, like external web-based Google Apps, for computing services vs. installation and management of software and hardware. One common analogy I like is the use of public utilities to secure services where you can’t see the infrastructure.

John Iscream raises his concern about cloud computing and security. His issue is with the lack of visibility which should be a concern.

“There are many questions to be answered about the issues surrounding the “safe” (whatever that may mean) use of the cloud, and I believe some questions are still to be asked.”

Harold Jarche weighs in too.

“…if your data are important, you should know where they reside, as I said in Own Your Data… All of this has implications for training and education, especially as more organisations use Web 2.0 tools for learning.”

I’m working (on?) (in?) the cloud I can’t see and teeter-totter between the glad-I-know-where-my-stuff-is to the holy-shit-all-my-stuff-is-out-there.