For this year’s Cloud World Forum, the team are working with analyst partner Informa Telecoms & Media to collate your views on the global cloud computing market. All you have to do is complete our 5 minute survey to be entered into a draw for a £150 Amazon voucher. Results will be published next month.

With just 2 months to go until the 5th Annual Cloud World Forum, we’re gearing up for our biggest show yet. Over 5,000 delegates, 100+ exhibitors and 200 expert speakers will descend on Olympia National Hall in London on 26th and 27th June, for what promises to be the most comprehensive cloud computing event to date.

So, what will be driving discussion and debate on the show floor? Which topics will you be looking out for in our 8 conference theatres? That’s what we’re hoping you’ll tell us by completing this survey. How much does your organisation rely on cloud services now, and where do you see the future of your IT stack heading? Just click on the link below and lend us a few minutes of your time. As a reward we’ll give everyone who fills in their details a free pass to the 5th Annual Cloud World Forum:

To register for the Cloud World Forum click here

Organisers have announced two new keynote speakers joining the highly qualified line-up at the 5th Annual Cloud World Forum at Olympia National Hall, London on 26-27 June 2013; Oskar Stål, CTO at Spotify, and Adrian Gardner, CIO at NASA.

Last week’s Big Data World Congress delivered a number of important messages, but none more so than the sentiment provided by Lastminute.com’s Director of Innovation, Bill Beckler, who reminded the data-hungry delegates in attendance that getting the most out of analytics isn’t just about number crunching – it’s about human interaction too.

In perhaps one of the more insightful Big Data conferences in recent months, over 150 senior-level IT decision-makers and data analytics experts came together at Portland Place, London to discuss the importance of big data to their future business practice.

Despite the statistical undertone of the event, it was one of the show’s morning speakers who stood out most for explaining that, in among the rush towards using real-time analytics solutions in the enterprise, it was human input that really made big data a valuable resource:

“The whole idea of big data means nothing without humans understanding the basic functions of querying and questioning,” said Lastminute.com’s Beckler, who was presenting on the topic of ‘Unstructured Data – Understanding its True Value’.

“Gaining value out of big data isn’t just about plugging into SAS or R and running statistical analysis on numbers until you strike gold. It’s about data analysts working alongside other members of the business to find out what it is they want to discover and then posing the right sort of questions to gain meaningful answers.

“This is definitely something businesses could improve on – and where do data analysts sit in the business? How do they interact with other members of the team? It’s all about that human link to the data being analysed. What stands between your data and value is people; I firmly believe that.”

Bill Beckler featured alongside other big-name expert speakers at the Big Data World Congress including the Met Office’s CIO, Charles Ewen, the Press Association’s Director of Technical Architecture and Development, John O’Donovan and Ladbrokes’ IT Director, Jonathan Summerfield.

The overall consensus from the one day event was that despite the hype, the concept of big data wasn’t a new one – it was the speed and cost of analysis that was suddenly making data such an important topic for IT directors across the globe.

The Met Office’s Charles Ewen explained this most clearly, describing the weather forecaster’s  use of big data from 1871 through the ages, to a point in 2012 where the organisation is now generating up to 100m observations a day, being processed at over 100 gigabits a second via what Ewen described as “a huge IT estate”.

“We are big data; we’ve been big data for a long time,” Ewen said, of the Met Office’s methods for dealing with large-scale data.

“It’s the scale that’s changing, and the rate at which we are able to process information. That’s the key to ‘big data’ for us.”

Scale of processing and the human element of data analysis are both topics that will feature again at the 2nd Annual Big Data World Congress, set to take place June 26th and 27th 2013, at Olympia National Hall.

Due to the popularity of the inaugural World Congress, next year’s show will feature two days of conference presentations from experts in the field, and will be co-located with the 5th Annual Cloud World Forum, which is set to be attended by over 5,000 technology enthusiasts.

To register for the event and take advantage of an early booking discount, visit www.bigdatacongress.com/2013/register
Details regarding speakers and the agenda for the event are due to be realised in the coming month. For further details visit www.bigdatacongress.com/2013 or telephone +44 (0)845 519 1230