Top Cloud Computing Thought Leaders and Influencers to Track in 2011?

Thanks Becky! I am surely not only of the illustrious, brilliant, and modestly self-styled '#clouderati', but I do try to contribute to the cloud conversation. ;-P

A couple of additional people I think are not just interesting in cloud discussions, but who really are inspirational thought leaders (i.e. not just contributing but creating new thinking, looked to by others for their opinions) include:

** Simon Crosby (Cloud CTO at Citrix) - smart, funny, definitely ahead of the cloud curve, and never ever shy of expressing an opinion - http://twitter.com/#!/simoncrosby
** Stephen Herrod (CTO at VMware) - hard to think about cloud without looking for opinions from the technology lead at VMware - http://twitter.com/#!/herrod
** Werner Vogels (CTO at Amazon) - perhaps the most important technology guy in the most important cloud company on the planet - http://twitter.com/#!/werner
** Jay Fry (my colleague at CA Technologies - formerly at Cassatt) already a savvy cloud thinker well before he joined CA - http://twitter.com/#!/jayfry3
** Randy Bias - (CEO at Cloudscaling) not a guy I always agree with, but a smart bloke with well-reasoned ideas and lots of real-world cloud experience - http://twitter.com/#!/RandyBias
** James Staten (analyst at Forrester) - unabashedly critical thinker on virtualization and cloud, with a very solid understanding of IT strategy - http://twitter.com/#!/Staten7
** Vanessa Alvarez (analyst at Forrester) - well experienced in cloud and virtualization, with a broad range of knowledge in IT - http://twitter.com/#!/VanessaAlvarez1
** Chris Wolf (analyst at Gartner, formerly with Burton) - wicked smart, technically and strategically, in virtualization & cloud - http://twitter.com/#!/cswolf
** Carl Brooks (journalist at SearchCloudComputing.com) - quality journo reporting new developments & insights in cloud - http://twitter.com/#!/eekygeeky

Probably a hundred of more others I could think off, but these people spring to my mind as a few real 'go-to' experts in cloud. Hope the list helps readers get and stay informed.

Actually...

Phil Wainewright
James Urquhart
Sam Johnston
Reuven Cohen
George Reese
Krishnan Subramanian
Justin Pirie
et moi.....

Thanks Becky, here are a few more that I enjoy following:

Alex Wied http://twitter.com/#!/alexwied
Alistair Croll http://twitter.com/#!/acroll
Bernard Golden http://twitter.com/#!/bernardgolden
Guy Rosen http://twitter.com/#!/guyro

I'd add:

Adrian Cockcroft : Personal Blog: http://perfcap.blogspot.com/ Netflix in the Cloud Presentation @ QCon: http://www.slideshare.net/adrianco/netflix-on-cloud-combined-slides-for-dev-a... and a interview: http://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/cloud-innovators-netflix-strateg... This is the guy behind Netflix going Cloud w/ AWS.

Vittorio Bertocci : Personal/MSDN Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vbertocci/ He's the claims based evangelist all around smart guy at MS that is really great at explaining how claims based auth is the way to go with cloud tech.

I'll probably think of some more as soon as I click post, so I'll add those in a subsequent post. :)

Hmmm - kind of hard to answer that without sounding arrogant! ;-)

You need to include Ben Kepes. ;)

via @ruv

aw shucks! :-)

I feel so...so...well just so.. :-)

Thank you very much Becky, much obliged!

I think we'll all be less fussy about Cloud Computing in 2011. Next to that, I hope so...

It's not snake oil nor a one-size-fits-all cure, and knows many facets. I'm very bad at design and luckily can't add an attachment, but I like to make a clear distinctgion between IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, and the need to recognise for all that we will need to loosen up and allow Hybrid and even Private forms of that to grow from the current status quo towards the future

After all, no vendor or system integrator in the current world is applauding Cloud - and those are the guys dividing the biggest pieces of the pie at the moment

Can we ignore them? No. Do we want to ignore them? Hmm well maybe, but No really. Can we even "go Cloud" without them? No.

The long story is here, btw: http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2010/06/cloud-field-social-way-to-future.html - and I'd appreciate your comments as usual

Simon Wardley (@swardley) and Kate Craig-Wood (@Memset_Kate) are people with exceptionally good bullshit filters.

Funnily enough Simon recently posted his top ten influencers, and they are definitely *not* the usual suspects! Read and ponder: http://blog.gardeviance.org/2011/01/my-top-10-influential-thinkers-in-cloud.html

Becky, Great site and great question. Adron, good to see you here. I'll be short and loose the poetry.

Selfishly, consider me, David Joshua Plager
20 years practicing/registered Architect in small to multi-national firms. Working on the below startup. No partners yet.

bimClouds Corporation:

Targeting the Architecture-Engineering-Construction Industry with proxy servers and a data licensing web app. Add a geospatial browser (bimEarth)?

Private Clouds control Copyrights. Hybrid Clouds govern Licensing.

I'm biased as we've been coworkers for many years. But I'd add John Stetic to that list (http://twitter.com/#!/jstetic)

He was one of the founders of PlateSpin and is now managing product management for the systems management and cloud products at Novell.

I'd add Stephen Pollack as well, also founder of PlateSpin and now advisor to several cloud and virtualization focused startups. (http://blog.insidespin.com)

Adrian Cockcroft @netflix
Adrian Cole @jclouds
Bernard Golden @hyperstratus
Allan Leinwand @zynga
Dave McCrory @dell
Shlomo Swidler @orchastratus

Damn, I feel so left out, even though I launched VMW's cloud... kinda like Jr.high all over again... trying so hard to fit in... :) Guess I'll have to be happy with top "girl" clouderati's -- @wendyperilli (shameless plug)

II not already mentioned Andrew Baker.