We're now at a point where all things "cloud" are sure to be the darlings of the dance in technology circles.  The nice folks over at ReadWriteWeb reference the Gartner 2010 Hype Cycle report  and concisely sum up what many of us already knew.  Cloud based computing is dancing right up there at the peak of inflated expectations. 

Based on what you read online, cloud computing will solve all of your IT woes, cure cancer, stop global warming, and iron your favorite dress shirt (light starch please!).  But how long until the cloud rolls over that peak and starts its downward slide?  Let's give it a little nudge shall we?

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Dave Bouwman and myself are honored to have been asked by the folks at Directions Magazine to participate in a webinar on how to successfully leverage ArcGIS Server in the Amazon Cloud.  We'll be collaborating with ESRI and Amazon to deliver a webinar on October 28, 2010.  ESRI and Amazon will provide the tech background while Dave and I will walk through the business case and a start-to-finish implementation we did for a client. 

Webinar info is posted here. (You'll need to scroll down the page a bit)

Register for the webinar over here.

Please consider joining us.

ESRI has been doing some neat developer outreach things lately to keep the community coming together outside of our once a year geekfest in Palm Springs.  A series of developer meetup events are being held across the country and October 20, 2010 the ESRI travelling medicine show comes to Fort Collins, CO.  This will be a great opportunity to rub elbows with other local devs and hear a few presentations by your peers. The best part is....Jack buys the beer.  This event will be hosted by Andy Gup of the ESRI EDN Team.

The Fort Collins event will be held from 5-8 pm at the Rustic Oven, 123 N. College Ave in old town.  Dave Bouwman will be giving the opening presentation on ArcGIS Server in the Amazon Cloud and then there will be a series of lightning talks. 

Additional details and tickets can be had by shooting over to the eventbrite site.

Just before the 2010 ESRI UC got cooking this year, this press release from ESRI hit the street. In short, ESRI is announcing that they'll be going beyond the ELA-only licensing of ArcGIS Server for the Amazon Web Services cloud.  What is apparent that there is a two-pronged licensing arrangement here where you still bring your own license to the cloud but if you're not an ELA customer, you can "lease" a license on 1, 3, or 12 month terms.

In my mind this is a very good thing because without this option, ESRI was cutting off a potentially large business segment of non-ELA customers as well as short circuiting the scalability and flexibility options of the cloud.  How do I ramp up capacity if I can't do a short term software lease?

Clearly there will be some "glass half empty" folks who want to buy ArcGIS Server on an hourly basis but the flexible short term options are a start and very big step in the right direction.

Some outstanding questions and issues that will likely come to light over the next few weeks:

1. No word yet on pricing. 
2. I assume short term lease options will roll in the cost of the AMI, but no final word on that yet
3. If I'm a company hosting client sites and am using the cloud as my hosting platform, am I subject to ASP licensing costs or can I just pay the normal server license fee?
4. Is the 12 month lease done at the traditional server license costs annually (no maintenance option) or will it be the traditional license model of up front cost plus maintenance?

I've got questions on these and other issues into the ESRI folks presently.  More to follow as the story evolves.