Day 3 at the Amsterdam conference of the Open Group was dedicated to Cloud Computing.

The date, October 20th 2010, coincided with that of the CloudCamp London #9, facing a difficult choice, I decided to explore the uncharted territory of the Open Group.

My rationale was simple: I have never (yet) seen or read a document mapping TOGAF with a real use-case involving Cloud Computing, it seemed from the list of speeches that this time I had the chance to see the unseen.

No. Plain simple: it didn’t happen.

The list of speakers was excellent, and, to give credit where it belongs, Mark Skilton (Cap Gemini), Tejpal (TJ) Virdi (Boeing) and Pamela Isom (IBM) delivered three speeches that kept me awake.

However, the intrinsic value of their arguments was annihilated by three disturbing facts:

• The public was not allowed to pose questions directly during each Q&A session. We had rather to write them on a paper slice. What did really p…d me off was the fact that the moderator did not read my questions… All of them were regally ignored!
• No sight of TOGAF! Pamela ISOM has been the unique speaker to map TOGAF’s phases to a Cloud-based project: 1 single slide in 6 hours…
• For most, the content was the fair of obviousness and cyclical graphs (thanks a lot Outlook Smart Graphics): I have been poured out an explanation of the business artifacts of TOGAF of 18 slides before the last one did tell us that TOGAF can be used for the Cloud.

Add to this that attendance was scarce (20 people perhaps) in the huge ball-room of the Hotel Krasnapolsky (see the picture) and you will understand my discomfort.

Moreover, I probably lost a great CloudCamp and the chance to speak with some good individuals about our favorite meme.