OpenSource World/NGDC/CloudWorld
I've been watching, and involved with, LinuxWorld Expo since the very early days. As with other operating system focused conferences in the past, the conference has had its glory days and then faced a declining interest from sponsors and attendees. IDG World Expo, the host of LinuxWorld and other conferences, has tacked on the next generation data center conference (NGDC) and CloudWorld. It also changed the name of LinuxWorld to OpenSource World in the hopes of broadening the audience.
Why is that? It is clear to me that LinuxWorld has followed the same arc as other operating system focused events. I recall UNIX focused events evolving into open systems events and then moving on. I recall similar client/server events that ran their cycle as well. The requirements of the audience has changed as the understanding of and use of Linux changed.
At this point in time, Linux has become part of the data center club. It can be found in organizations of all sizes, in all geographical areas and supporting nearly all workloads. This means that there is a broad understanding of the rudiments of its use, a community of experienced IT folks to operate these systems, and some level of application and development tools support for this platform.
So, of course, an event focused largely on the fundamentals became less and less interesting to the attendees. What they want to know now is more focused on where is Linux's place in the datacenter. Questions such as "what applications are best hosted on this platform and why?", "what database engines that are supported on Linux are best for what workloads and why?" and "What development tools and application environments are best for a given purpose and why?" have come to the forefront
IDG World Expo has done its best to refine and refocus the event. Since Linux supports a wide array of virtualization technology, it could easily earn its place in the "next generation data center," that is a datacenter that is organized and managed very much like an in-house cloud. It also has earned its place in the datacenters of the managed and hosting services providers for the same reasons.
I hope to learn a great deal during my visit to the event that is being held in San Francisco this week. I hope to see you there.