An email conversation with Layered Tech's chief marketing officer John Pozadzides, who describes the content of his Wenesday morning presentation at next week's HostingCon.
By David Hamilton, theWHIR.com
In advance of HostingCon 2008, we're contacting some of the speakers presenting at the event and asking them about the content of their sessions in an effort to give readers a sense of what to expect from HostingCon, and perhaps help them choose which sessions to attend.
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July 23, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Utility hosting services provider Layered Tech (layeredtech.com) chief marketing officer John Pozadzides says the "new world order" is coming and when it does, "every business is either a 'Web' business or a dead business."
Pozadzides will deliver the presentation "Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining" at HostingCon 2008, where he will be among the biggest names and brightest minds in web hosting who will converge in Chicago for three days of networking and workshops.
John Pozadzides, pictured at the LTPact partner conference in June 2008.
A torrent of change has hit Layered Tech over the past few months. New staff appointments include CIO Terrance Bush, CFO John Faulkner and Pozadzides himself in February. Despite the changes, however, Layered Tech remains firm in its belief that a focus on cloud computing, grid computing and virtualization will be the key to the new marketplace.
Pozadzides leads Layered Tech's branding, and its sales and product marketing initiatives, overseeing all enterprise and partner marketing initiatives, including product planning and positioning, and executing customer acquisition and retention strategies. He joined Layered Tech from SAVVIS Communications (savvis.net) where he was vice president of the Herndon, Virginia, IT-infrastructure-as-a-service company.
President and COO Todd Abrams said his experience (consisting of over a decade within the IP and applications hosting industry) have given him a proven track record and deep understanding of the marketplace.
"In addition to his expertise and leadership in the IP services arena, John has a well documented background of innovation and integrity, having founded HTMLHelp.com, the leading Web authoring reference site; and later building a loyal following with his personal site OneMansBlog.com," Abrams says.
Pozadzides will present from 8:30 to 9:15 a.m., on Wednesday, July 30 in Room #327.
Your presentation is entitled "Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining," in which you will explore how cloud computing, grid computing and virtualization are going to change the hosting industry. Can you briefly explain the main ways in which you see these technologies affecting business?
JP: Web 2.0 companies like Amazon, Google, and Yahoo have been exploiting large scale computing architectures for years, and have used them as a competitive advantage to drive smaller or slower competitors to an early grave.
In the new world order every business is either a "Web" business or a dead business. Enterprise IT managers need to learn from their online brethren and adapt to provide the same levels of cost effective scalability and redundancy.
Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, James Staten said in an interview with the WHIR that one of the barriers to adoption by enterprise companies is security. How do you approach this concern as a marketer?
JP: I understand that security can be a concern to clients. But the problem is one of perception caused by lumping all emerging technologies under a single "cloud" umbrella.
There are different options available for clients with specific needs. For example, if security is not an overriding concern, and you need the ability to purchase infinitely scalable resources, Amazon's offering might work just fine for you. If security is an imperative, Layered Tech's offering can supply a totally private, dedicated cloud.
It's really just a matter of educating people about the available choices.
A lot of confusion in terminology exists. How do you describe cloud to company staff that may not have specific technical knowledge? Do you see any difference between cloud, grid and cluster technologies or does this just amount to more confusion?
JP: There are major differences between cloud, grid and cluster computing, and while it doesn't take a tremendous amount of technical aptitude to comprehend them, it does require a little time set aside to investigate and ponder these differences. I'll definitely cover each of these at HostingCon.
Do you see any major differences in how cloud technologies are being adopted now?
JP: Absolutely. We are seeing everything from people who are essentially "outsourcing" just the commodity components of their applications like storage to Amazon's S3, ranging all the way to companies migrating their existing critical commercial applications to LT Grids. The variety is a wide as the general population of Internet and business applications.
Do you think there will be (or has already been) a "tipping point" where firms begin to adopt cloud technology? Is there any specific problem - whether technological or otherwise - stopping the adoption of cloud by the entire industry?
JP: Oh, there will be a tipping point. But we're not there yet. We are well into the "early adoption" stage however. The two biggest hurdles at the moment are:
1) As the poster child for this technology, Amazon's repeated outages give nay-sayers all the ammunition they need to continue to promote fear, uncertainty and doubt about Cloud computing - meanwhile not enough high profile advocates have stepped up to praise the technology. And why would they? We have customers who won't publicly admit they are using the Grid because they consider it a strategic advantage. They've told us flat out that they don't want their competitors to catch on.
2) Education is a major issue. Cloud computing is part of the larger subset of virtualization, which is only now expanding beyond VMware into offerings from Citrix, Microsoft, Sun, Parallels and others who will rapidly bring a lot of attention to the topic. As more and more people understand the benefits of virtualization, the advantages of Grid and Cloud technologies will become extremely apparent.
Is cloud mature enough for most enterprise applications, or are there certain struggles and challenges it needs to address? Do you see any businesses now that absolutely could not switch over to cloud?
JP: Amazon's technology is not appropriate for many businesses. In addition to the reliability concerns (which can be mitigated), applications must be specifically built to run on the Amazon cloud. However, any business can migrate existing applications onto the Layered Tech Grid since it doesn't require an application be "cloud aware."
Your session is scheduled for 8:30 am Wednesday, the last day of the event. You might have a hard time getting some attendees to set their alarm clocks - could you plead your case and give some reasons why this is not a session to miss?
JP: First of all, I'll be giving away brand new 4.2-inch Plasma TV replicas to every attendee. Secondly, Pamela Anderson will be my on-stage assistant. And finally, you might want to stop by and see what cloud computing nuggets you can pick out of my brain. Knowledge equals power.
