Cloud Computing was the driving theme behind Microsoft Malta’s Innovation Day event, a one-day forum held last week in St. Julian’s.
The event, themed “Be What’s Next … With Cloud Power” was attended by IT leaders, executives and academics. Its main aim was to create more familiarity around the concept of cloud computing and some of its major aspects such as academic, business and technological aspects. The event not only showcased how local companies are innovating in the cloud but also provided an opportunity to learn about the latest cloud technologies from Microsoft and how these can be put into use by businesses, customers, inside the classroom and at home.
“Though the concept of cloud computing has been around for years, it is still an emerging technology. Cloud computing is a way of saying that in the future many of the IT needs such as computing power and storage will be provided as a service on an ‘on demand’ basis,” said Adrianna Zammit, country manager for Microsoft Malta.
“Cloud computing presents exceptional opportunities to our country. In 2009, economies worldwide were hit by a recession. The silver lining in all this is that we were forced to take a fresh look at things and ask ourselves – how do we save IT costs? How can we deploy and rapidly take advantage of new innovation? How do we enable our companies to be more mobile and enhance collaboration (for example having access to important information from any device, anywhere, anytime). On our precious island where space is limited, how do we reduce our geometric and infrastructure footprint? Cloud computing addresses all of these concerns.”
In her speech Ms Zammit also referred to Microsoft’s position on openness and interoperability. “It may be true that we aren’t well known for openness and that our business model leads many to believe that we only support proprietary software. However, many do not know that Microsoft is investing a lot in openness, a value that we are prioritising as a company. Many do not know that more than 350,000 open source applications run on Microsoft platforms; that is 82 per cent of open source applications.
“Microsoft is also releasing protocol documentation for our high volume products like Windows and Office – far more than anyone required – in order to help developers innovate and succeed. You may have seen how in Office 2010 we have enabled documents in Word to be saved in OpenXML or ODF formats. Maybe you have heard that we contributed code to the Linux kernel, and that we are helping our customers to virtualise diverse data centres.”
In his keynote address, Jan Muhlfeit, chairman of Microsoft Europe tackled the subject of cloud innovation. He said: “Exponential growth is changing everything. This is the first time in history when the young generation is using technology much better than the present generation. Cloud computing will attract this young generation and once this happens, the economy will change. In five years from now, we envisage that 80 per cent of jobs will require a form of e-skill.
“Those countries which will invest the most in innovation and design will be the most successful. Global connectivity for the first time in history means that we will start competing for jobs globally. The ‘cloud’ can create jobs through the technology enablement of SME’s promoting a global IT market.”
The third leading address was conducted by Karl Davies-Barrett, developer and platform technical lead, Microsoft Central and Eastern Europe. He spoke about how companies are gradually seeing their operations moving to the cloud and about how cloud technology can be utilised to maximise efficiency and effectiveness by freeing resources that can be used better and more efficiently.
Other Microsoft executives also addressed the event while Maltese speakers at the event included Gege Gatt, director strategy and business development at ICON and Matthew Gatt, CEO at Malta Information Technology Agency.