In Paris, cloud infrastructure services – IaaS – and unified communications dominated the show, with large stands showcasing the Cloud offerings of a number of (ex-) ISPs, hosters, and telcos. The London event was stronger on solutions vendors with sponsor “villages” highlighting this or that vendor’s solutions and partner ecosystem.

But while vendors, operators, integrators and just about anybody trying to sell IT solutions is pushing the Cloud, where are the customers?

Faced with a plethora of offerings, the customer is anxiously trying to work out what the best solutions are for their business- and how to fit those solutions together. Cloud computing may one day boost agility, but right now it’s doing a good job of boosting confusion.

This is where Cloud Services Brokerage fits in. The Cloud Services Broker is a specialized third party who can identify, select, and integrate multiple cloud services according to individual customer needs.

What does this have to do with CommonIT? With a new solution, AirShip, CommonIT complements the Cloud Services Brokerage with a focus on the end user. Multiple services from different clouds are likely to be even more confusing for the end user than for the CIO. With AirShip, browser configurations and connectivity are managed from the datacenter or in the cloud, with no end-user intervention. As cloud-based services evolve and migrate between private or public clouds, AirShip allows the enterprise or the service provider to deliver reliable, transparent connectivity for the end user.

This year the program included five customer case studies, including a prestigious Geneva-based client of commonIT who shared their experience of a Virtual Browser deployment with the audience. Participants responded enthusiastically to the presentation, covering how Virtual Browser is used to deliver a secure Internet access service. We’ll be bringing you more details shortly.

We’re going to have our work cut out following up all the leads — but that was what we went for! A big thank you to DG Consultants for the organisation and management of the event.

The event will be attended by around 300 people from all over Europe. Representing ECS will be the Board of Directors, the Product Managers, the Sales and presales teams, technical support and Project Managers. An opportunity for us at commonIT to develop a tighter relationship with a valuable partner.

From October 7th to 10th around a thousand of the most senior CSOs representing practically every major enterprise, ministry and government and local authority agency in France will be in Monaco for the ninth annual “Assises de la sécurité” get-together. As one of the sponsors of the event commonIT will man a stand for the three days of conferences and workshops, and deliver a 40 minute workshop on virtualisation and browser security. Through a partnership with the French edition of Global Security Mag all delegates will also receive a copy of a new white paper on enterprise web security developped by commonIT — the English version will be available shortly, watch this blog!

The three days of close interaction with high-level contacts from every sector of the French economy are a once-a-year opportunity to reach key decision makers, to spread the Virtual Browser message, to listen to their needs, and to detect new business opportunities. That’s why we’re sending a team of three people; commonIT will represented by Daniel, Albino and myself. Just like Jenson Button, we’re going there to win. But we’ll be driving a little more slowly.