Also this year cloud computing was a large topic at Gartner's annual symposium in Barcelona.  It shared the limelight with the other three forces of the Nexus (Social, Mobile and Information) but managed to pop into most conversations and presentations.

For those who missed it - and for attendees that did not manage to be in all parallel sessions at once - video recordings can now be accessed at gartnereventsondemand.com (highlights available after registration of email, full sessions for registered attendees).

Personally I did a couple of dozen 1on1's, seven larger sessions (presentations, roundtable's and clinics) and met with several more people over breakfast and dinner. With breakfasts at the time most Americans are accustomed to and dinners taking place according to local tradition, you can imagine these were pretty lengthy days.  Not that we noticed, because the 1on1 rooms (unlike last year) had no daylight. Luckily we managed to get some fresh air as we popped over to the special CSP (Communication Service Provider) track that was running across the street.

Of course this special track also touched upon cloud computing as an opportunity for CSPs using the recently published (and now publically available) high level overview of Gartner's Advice for CSPs Becoming Cloud Service Providers.

On day two I popped into the IT Expo to present the new MQ for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, the first Gartner MQ I got to participate in creating (Note: this is not a public doc, but a number of  providers are offering access via their websites). Presenting at the expo is different as the audience is sitting in a kind of fishbowl while wearing headsets as the noise from the surrounding stands, raffles and demoes is at times deafening.

My conclusion from four days (where I managed to speak to maybe 1% of the total attendees and a slightly larger percentage of the participating providers) is that participants are increasingly aware of the slower pace of cloud in Europe. Providers are pushing the cloud envelope harder than (most) end-users, who -as we saw in the outsourcing and cloud clinics that we ran throughout the event - are often still more looking for a restaurant with cloud views than for self-service cloud supermarkets.