The Cloudification in Cloudy Times conference organized on November 24 at the LHoFT by Telindus brought together 70 CIOs and tech decision makers eager to exchange views, ideas and practices on how to turn uncertain times into opportunities for cloud services. 

The arrival of the Cloud in the industry was a real game changer for data storage and processing. Its numerous advantages along with the sanitary crisis the past few years propelled cloud solutions to new heights to the point it is in almost all business operations now. As the years goes by, the world will face more challenging crisis we can’t ignore and thus, companies will have to deal with a lot of changes. In that context, businesses will have to adapt their strategies to their new environment and think about how to take advantage of the situation to strengthen cloud services. 

Jacques Ruckert, Chief Solutions and Innovation Officer at Telindus, opened the conference by presenting what cloudification is, its close link with sovereignty and raised the question whether sovereignty means to be fully disconnected or if there are more subtle ways to approach it. 

Gregor Petri, VP Analyst at Gartner, then joined the conference via video for a talk entitled “Challenging Times Call for Capable Clouds”. He started by listing all the challenges that executives in organisations – CEOs, CFOs, HR and supply chains - are trying to cope with and went on by analysing how cloud trends move from disrupting technology to disrupting business. 

Finally, Gregor Petri focused on the sovereignty cloud types, requirements, and offerings, as well as on the drivers and enablers for industry cloud platforms, before giving the audience some recommendations. 

Adapting to change 

He then gave the floor to Jean-Benoit Van Bunnen, Ad Interim Luxembourg Country Manager at Microsoft and Ron Pooters, Belux Business Strategy Manager at Microsoft. 

They addressed the question of “How to rhyme the desire to innovate with innovative cloud technology while respecting the increased need for more sovereignty?”. They highlighted the rise of concern regarding data protection and digital sovereignty and exposed solutions that might help to overcome them and accelerate innovation. “We have been too dependent on others in terms of supply chain, technology and energy”, stated Jean-Benoit Van Bunnen. “We need to better understand these balances and have plans to mitigate them”, added Ron Pooters. 

Those talks were followed by a fireside chat involving Wouter Winters, Enterprise Account Manager at Commvault and Emilien Caquard, Client Executive at NetApp who answered the questions asked by Christian Lazard, Backup Solution Architect & Storage Engineer at Telindus. 

Accelerating the transition to the cloud 

For the rest of the evening, Eva Gram, Head of Codit Luxembourg and Christophe Zingg, General Manager at Codit Switzerland took the stage to share their expertise in successfully modernizing applications in order to facilitate the transition to the cloud and benefit from its advantages. 

Eva Gram explained to the audience how to move from “an old environment and way of working to a new one”. “You can plan in the long run but it’s crucial to keep track on short term changes as things such as new technologies and cloud environment are moving faster”, she said. “It is impossible to keep working the old fashion way in such a fast-paced environment that we live in. You have to adapt to those recurring changes and make them fit into the scope”. 

To conclude, Christophe Zingg shifted the focus on “Modern Applications” and described the various methods and architectures businesses can use for integrating applications. 

The conference ended with a networking cocktail.