Day 2 Roundup: CloudWorld and NGDC

The Register covered the keynote by Sun cloud computing CTO Lew Tucker, who predicted that web applications will become self-provisioning. "Whereas previously, it seems like only viruses and bots on the net have been able to take over computers and use them for their own purposes, now we're actually seeing that applications themselves respond to increased demand or load and are able to provision services," Tucker said. A provocative idea, but problematic as well, as Tucker acknowledges by making a Skynet reference.

Larry Dignan at ZDNet has a video excerpt from Wednesday's well-reviewed panel on the challenges and opportuntiies in mainstream adoption of cloud computing.

UK tech pub V3 (formerly vnunet) profiles a session in which Asurion's Robert Lefkowitz advaned the notion of "IT delis" able to swiftly process custom orders for services. "People think that people in IT are bozos," he said. "One of the ways you can dispel that is to do simple stuff quickly."

In the wake of complaints about low attendance and vendor participation, IDG issued a press release reporting that the combined conferences "drew in more than 2,000 attendees over the two days" and said more than 60 vendors participated in the expo.

Nonetheless, disappointment continued to be a theme for some attendees, particularly the careers columnist at Examiner.com, who called the show and job fair "pathetic, sad and dismal."

As with Day 1, the relative lack of coverage by mainstream IT media and blogs made Twitter the best source of information and opinions about the event. The prevailing mood may have been captured by James Urquhart: "Too many pitches, too few 'wows.' Good keynotes and convos, though."