I am looking forward to moderating a panel for the SIIA on the 19th that will focus on cloud computing and its impact on publishing. I am particularly pleased that we have a balance of publishers and technology companies that will be able to address the issue from both a media perspective and an enterprise perspective, an aspect that should be of particular interest to SIIA members. Marc Frons, CTO of The New York Times, Larry Schwartz, the President of Newstex, Charles Matheson of EMC and Matt Turner of Mark Logic will provide a multi-dimensional view of how important cloud computing will be to shaping the competitive landscape of the content industry. Please register soon for this event.

Below are the preliminary questions that I've assembled for our panel, if you have additional or alternative questions that you'd like to have asked please add them to the comments of this post. See you on the 19th in NYC - or online via the webcast!

1. How does your company use cloud computing to provide better services for your clients/audiences? How do your clients/audiences benefit from it? What really is the cloud from your perspective?

2. The key advantages of cloud computing revolve around scalability, economy, ease of deployment, and ease of content and services integration. Which of these are offering you and your clients the most “bang for the buck?”

3. Why should enterprise and media oriented publishers care about cloud computing? What real advantages can it provide to them in the marketplace?

4. When we say “cloud computing” there are three basic types of networks that can support content from cloud computing: enterprise networks, public networks, clouds that combine both enterprise and public networks. Looking at how enterprises are using cloud computing to access content, how open are they today to using cloud computing to combine their internal and external content resources?

5. A cloud is only as good as its ability to have access to everything that ought to be in it. Where are we doing well and where are we falling short today in making seamless access to content in cloud computing a reality? How is content affecting the way in which people think of content aggregation?

6. Cloud computing offers many companies the ability to scale up new content services inside and outside the enterprise very rapidly. If this is so, then how does a company allocate its proprietary technology resources most effectively to compete with potential competitors that can take advantage of the same scalability? Does cloud computing enable more publishers and enterprises to scale up more cost-effectively to be mid-sized and even large competitors more rapidly?

7. Thinking of everything that we’ve discussed today, what would be your recommendations for the best ways for enterprise and media publishers to approach cloud computing?

Labels: cloud computing, emc, mark logic, New York Times, newstex, panel, siia brown bag