By Mark Loesel, Cloud Solutions Marketing, Cisco

I hope that you are able to join us at Cloud Connect this week in Santa Clara as we have much to share with you. Cloud Connect is a great show that attracts more than 4,000 industry decision makers, offering an ideal venue for Cisco to share the value of our cloud solutions. Cloud Connect is an opportunity to showcase how we at Cisco are at the forefront of cloud computing, enabling our customers and partners in a world of many clouds. Whether you are building your own private cloud, using services from a public cloud, offering cloud services, or enlisting a hybrid approach, we're here to have a conversation on how we can help.

In our booth, you'll find demos on:

• Managing Cloud Network Services:This demo shows how a server/virtualization administrator can create a security policy once for a virtual machine and then make sure of enforcement across the network. Cisco Virtual Network Management Center will be used to show how service chaining can take place with the Cisco Nexus 1000V and virtual Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance and Cisco Virtual Security Gateway as virtual machines are turned up and move throughout the data center.
• Cloud Automation and Orchestration:Learn how to access a service portal to create a request for virtual machine(s) and provision a bare-metal server. The demo will also show how an administrator can create a service catalogue for users to leverage.
• Cloud Computing with Cisco UCS:This solution overview highlights the centralized management with high scalability of Cisco UCS to facilitate building-block entities (policies, resource pools, and templates) for rapid server provisioning.
• OpenStack API for the Cisco Nexus 1000V:Exhibit on how we integrate our Cisco Nexus 1000V with open-source hypervisors to allow for the continued evolution of advanced virtual machine networking and cloud management to provide more control, visibility, and programmability for customers.

In addition to the demos,we will also have partners showcasing the Cisco Powered services they offer to accelerate your business. These partners include AT&T, Dimension Data, NTT, Savvis, SunGard, and Windstream, and I hope you can make the time to see their enterprise-grade solutions.

Lastly, come by our booth as we will have our Advanced Services team available in our "Ask the Experts" section. The team will have representatives to talk about cloud if you're a user or provider of cloud services.

Cisco Featured Sessions

Beyond the booth, discover how your business can accelerate its cloud strategy and capitalize on new business opportunities in our speaking sessions. Cisco leaders will share strategies, innovative technologies to watch, and customer success stories. Our sessions at the show are:

Keynote -Wednesday, April 3, 10:20-10:35 AM -Cloud Computing, SDN, and the Internet of Everything
Lew Tucker, Vice President and CTO, Cloud Computing, Cisco
Mission City Ballroom

Open source cloud platforms such as OpenStack now allow anyone to build their own public or private cloud. This accelerates private cloud platforms usage to not only meet the needs of rapid application development and deployment of enterprise apps, but when combined with SDN also changes the nature of "infrastructure as a service" as a platform for consumer-facing services. Come explore with us this virtuous cycle created by cloud computing, software defined networking, and the internet of everything. Sponsored Session -Thursday, April 4, 2:30-3:15 PM

Theater Session -Wednesday, April 3, 1:15-1:35 PM -Public, Private, and Hybrid Cloud Opportunities
Vinay Nichani, Data Center Business Development, Cisco
Cloud Solutions Theater, Expo Floor

Should you build your own cloud, buy from a cloud provider, or go through a cloud services broker? What applications do you place in the cloud? What do you look for as a sign of quality when "good enough" is not? Let's discuss how to advance in your cloud journey.

Cisco Session -Thursday, April 4, 2:30-3:15 PM -Choosing Your Strategy in a World of Many Clouds
Pat Adamiak, Senior Director, Cloud Solutions Marketing, Cisco
Grand Ballroom G

Your organization has many options to choose from in the cloud. We are here to share our expertise on how to safely navigate a world of many clouds. Please join us to hear about the industry trends, strategies, and solutions you can put in a successful cloud playbook.

Cisco Session -Thursday, April 4, 2013, 2:30 PM-3:30 PM -Enabling IT as a Service -Cloud Management and Orchestration
Rodrigo Flores, Cloud Enterprise Architect, Data Center and Cloud Solutions Marketing, Cisco
Grand Ballroom F

The promise of running IT departments as an internal service provider has been elusive. In their quest to deliver ITaaS, many companies have suffered from an emphasis on IT operations and less focus on infrastructure and application development, resulting in a siloed IT environment held together by heroic efforts. The majority of IT spending is dedicated to "keep the lights on" activities, hindering IT's ability to keep up with the pace of business innovation. This session will address why the answer to this IT quandary lies in the implementation of virtualization and cloud computing, describing these as the essential building blocks for the agility, flexibility, and "services" focus that IT needs to achieve ITaaS. The speaker will describe why IT needs to be delivered as a service and why IT must think in terms of delivering services not servers, and "claims processing" rather than "data processing".