The first conference was "The Business of Cloud Computing," sponsored by . It was a relatively small event, but the content represented perhaps the best end-user perspective on cloud computing I have ever seen at a conference. The second conference was , put on by . It was also outstanding and carried the feel of a peek into the future of IT and just what a wrenching transformation cloud computing will impose onto established IT practices.

What I took away from the two conferences is the sense that cloud computing is seeping into IT organizations and companies, often without any "official" approval or strategy, but with the undeniable momentum of a locomotive. Let me share some of the presentations and facts that struck me during this two week period.

Steve Phillipott, CIO of Amylin Pharmaceuticals presented one of the keynotes at "The Business of Cloud Computing." Over the past couple of years his organization has completely changed its way of doing business--driven, admittedly, by constraints like a tough business environment and completely full data centers. Amylin is moving all of its computing out of its local data center and into a remote outsourced colo provider.

At the same time, the pharmaceutical company is re-evaluating the deployment requirements for its apps, selecting non-core as candidates for SaaS migration, and strategic apps as ones that require significant IT resources and will remain in-house. Amylin has also implemented a stringent financial model to evaluate deployment options. It found that the projections for applications hosted in external public clouds would save, on average, 30 percent to 50 percent; applications written in were delivered in 1/8th to 1/10th the same applications would have required to be written for internal deployment.