A friend asked me recently what Cloud Conference would I recommend he attend. I suggested GigaOm’s Structure.

Making Sense of the Real Cloud

After years of questions about what cloud computing is and how it will affect IT, we’re finally starting to get answers. With major acquisitions having gone down, hybrid clouds now a reality and the federal government eyeing cloud-inspired legislation, it is becoming more clear how the cloud landscape will shape up. At Structure 2011, we’ll address these issues and more to help attendees make sense of where cloud services are headed and how they’ll affect everything from application development to data center design.

One of the main things that got my attention for the event is the list of speakers. Here are some people I know, and it will be good to see their latest presentations and chat in person again.

Don Basile

CEO, Violin Memory

Don Basile joined Violin Memory in 2009 and grew the company from under $10m in funding and 15 employees to a $110 million backed entity with a staff of over 120. The company’s Memory Arrays are changing the datacenter for companies like AOL, Brand.net, Tagged.com, Oracle, Juniper, and HP through its patent-pending flash vxMemory and vRAID technology. Prior to his role at Violin Memory, Don was Chairman and CEO of Fusion-io. Earlier, during the rise of the Cable Industry, Don pioneered digital video insertion and Internet advertising as an executive of Lenfest. Don holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University.

Barry Evans

CEO, Calxeda

Barry Evans is an experienced semiconductor executive, most recently as VP and GM of Marvell’s Application Processing BU in the Cellular and Handheld Group. He was responsible for the Xscale (ARM-based) product line, the world’s highest performance handheld processors with revenues exceeding $300 million. He served as Intel’s Director of Marketing for Application Processors for Xscale and Low Power x86 customer engagements and product strategies to address the wireless handheld market. Mr. Evans is an 18 year veteran of the semiconductor industry having held roles in field sales and marketing management across wireless handheld, telecommunications, embedded servers, and embedded computing applications. He holds a BSEE from University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from Boston University.

Luke Kanies

CEO, Puppet Labs

Luke is the founder and CEO of Puppet Labs and the founder of the Puppet project. He helped kickstart the devops movement by preaching Infrastructure as Code, and he believes that computers should be used, not managed.

Paul Maritz

CEO, VMware

Paul Maritz joined VMware in 2008 as President and CEO. He was previously President of Cloud Infrastructure and Services at EMC after the company's acquisition of Pi, where he was founder and CEO. Before that, he spent 14 years at Microsoft. He was a member of the five-person Executive Committee that managed the overall company and he oversaw the development and marketing of Windows 95, Windows NT, and Windows 2000, Visual Studio and SQL Server, and the complete Office and Exchange Product Lines. He also spent five years at Intel. Born and raised in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Paul is a graduate in Mathematics and Computer Science of the Universities of Cape Town and Natal in South Africa. He is Chairman of the Grameen Foundation.

Satya Nadella

Microsoft

Sam Ramji

VP, Strategy, Apigee

Sam is Vice President of Strategy at Apigee, the leading API products and services company. He brings over 15 years of industry experience in enterprise software, product development, and open source strategy. Prior to Apigee, Ramji led open source strategy across Microsoft. He was a founding member of the AquaLogic product team and has built large-scale enterprise and Web-scale applications, leading the Ofoto engineering team through its acquisition by Kodak. Other experience includes hands-on development of client, client-server and distributed applications on Unix, Windows and Macintosh at companies ranging from Broderbund to Fair Isaac.