Everyone understands that cloud computing provides pay per use access to resources and the ability to elastically scale up an application as its traffic increases. Those are values that turn on cloud economics, but how do you turn cloud economics to your advantage?

That was the topic of my keynote session at the Cloud Connect 2011 event in Santa Clara, Calif. earlier this month. The video of this keynote can now be viewed on the event website at http://tv.cloudconnectevent.com/. You will need to register (free) on the site. In this short — six minute — keynote you will get the answers to this question. I also encourage you to view many of the other keynotes from this same event, as this was the first cloud computing conference I have attended that finally moved beyond Cloud 101 content and provided a ton of great material on how to really take advantage of cloud computing. We still have a long way to go, but this is a great step forward for anyone still learning about the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions and how they can empower your organization.

If you still aren't experimenting with these platforms, get going. While they won't transform the world, they do give you new deployment options that can accelerate time-to-market, increase deployment flexibility, and prepare you for the new economic model they are bringing to many early adopters today. 

I'll be giving a more in-depth talk on the topic of cloud economics in my keynote at the virtual event, CloudSlam April 19. I'll also be moderating a panel or two on April 18 at the in-person event on April 18. Come join me if you can.