Read full summary:Five Opinions on Cloud Computing in New York City

Roughly five or four years ago, Amazon Web Services entered the market as Infrastructure as a Service, enabling companies to “forklift” their applications into the Cloud. This early entry served them well as they soon be came known as the de facto Cloud provider, even later, when Platform as a Service became the rage.

I remember back in 2008, when our Microsoft evangelism team ran the Financial Services Developer Conference for Microsoft. We had chosen High Performance Computing (HPC) as a theme, because Compute Cluster had just come out. At the time, Oracle was touting grid computing. Both Grid & HPC were the darlings of the Wall Street firms – allowing analytics to be “burst” into multiple HPC nodes, saving tons of processing time. A perfect scenario for this was running complex Excel algorithms in the Cloud.

At the same time, I had heard that Amazon had paid a visit to a group of a hundred or so female technologist at Goldman Sachs. I remember at the time being confused at why Goldman would be looking at a retailer for technology. Amazon wasn’t there to be a case study. They were there to be a Cloud Service provider. This was 4 years ago, when as a Microsoft evangelism team talking about bleeding edge beta products, we hadn’t even begun covering Azure.

Because of this early pioneering, Amazon now has great mind share with the CIOs of small and medium business, as well as large enterprises. At Slalom, we find that both Microsoft and Amazon can provide the best of breed Cloud technologies; however there are times when CIOs already have a preference in mind, and that oftentimes will be Amazon.

For customers who do not have a preference or those who want to avoid vendor lock-in, the team offers a Comparative Study, to help CIOs choose when one platform works better over the other. In nearly every case, either Amazon or Microsoft Cloud will provide an excellent platform to meet the business requirements for that customer.

See next: Infrastructure as a Service sometimes is another name for old school hosting

Slalom consulting is looking for the cutting edge technology developers that are ready to chart new territory. Cloud computing presents an exciting opportunity to build innovative applications using the familiar tools of the .NET platform, while delivering the tremendous business value with the cost benefits of the Windows Azure Platform. This architecture model requires fresh and critical thinking about development, testing, and deployment, as well as data and network topography. Slalom is looking for qualified architects and developers that understand these complexities yet appreciate the art of building software. We are looking for seasoned and passionate technologists. Apply now!

You didn’t have to be in Istanbul to enjoy the largest Microsoft event of the year! Watch the Turkish Cloud Summit(Microsoft Bilişim Zirvesi) online now!   The keynote sets the stage, and all technical breakout sessions were recorded including the Cloud Computing Talk with my colleagues, as well as my first ever Turkish presentation about Turkey’s web story. Hopefully with time my Turkish can only get better!