I have worked in the cloud computing industry, in various positions, from Governance Consultant to Product / Program Manager to Sales, for the past 5 years. This also means very few people really understand what I do—and this includes my wife. I can’t recall exactly when this conversation happened, but I think it was during our drive to Orlando, Florida from Madison, Wisconsin. I guess long drives tend to bring out the questions.

My Wife: What exactly is your new job all about?

Myself: Well, I am responsible for cloud presales for my company in North America.

My wife: But what does it mean?

Myself: My company deals with data warehousing and big data technologies. Basically it is a way of collecting, organizing and analyzing information about our customers’ business so they can help grow their business. I help put this technology in the cloud, so that customers …

My wife: But why is the cloud part of your job?

Myself: Cloud is an easy way to deliver information. You can deliver it quickly. I basically combine different elements of the cloud to bring together a solution for the account teams and customers. I advise them on what things they should have in their cloud, what cloud solution would suit them and how it would work. And how these different aspects come together. What could suit their needs and wants, and help them run a cloud based solution …

My wife: So you are a Cloud Sommelier.

Myself: That’s one way to put it.

 

And that is how this idea started…

What is this blog about?

This blog is about helping people understand what cloud is and how it affects our lives, from the point of view of someone who works with it every day. Over the years whenever I have had conversations about cloud computing, I have heard a lot of comments and questions: What exactly is the cloud? How safe is it? I don’t like the cloud so I don’t use it. It’s not for my business (big or small). My focus is to address a lot of these issues and considerations around cloud computing with this blog. I would like to hear from readers about what you want to read around the topic of cloud. I will try to share with you with my personal advice, opinions and my experiences, and I would love to hear yours.

In addition, I will welcome guest bloggers on a semi-regular basis to express their opinion about cloud computing topics. I will rely on people I know in the industry to express about their thoughts about cloud computing or any topic they want to bring to the readers.

A special thanks goes out to my wife Nikki for the motivation, and my friend and writer extraordinaire Laura Schaefer for editing my blog! She is a co-founder of wordchum, writes travel books for kids and the author of The Teashop Girls and its sequel The Secret Ingredient (out now!).

Feel free to leave a comment 🙂