Cloud computing and iPhone versus Andriod were two of the hottest topics in discussion at the 2010 Interop in New York City October 18 through 22.

“Every seminar and speaker at least mentioned cloud computing at some point. It was definitely the hot topic,” said Shruti Worlikar G’11. She was one of four iSchool students in the M.S. in Telecommunications and Network Management program who attended Interop this fall and presented what they learned at the conference to a group of more than 40 students, faculty, and local IT professionals on November 5 in 021 Hinds Hall. Check out the slides from their presentation.

As the cost to compute, to store data, and to transmit via fiber drops exponentially over short periods of time, IT implementation within organizations can’t keep up. “It is estimated that companies waste $500 billion year in IT spending,” Worlikar said.

Worlikar spent her time at Interop exploring cloud computing and the cost savings companies can experience using the Internet-based, on-demand computing system. She discussed three classes of cloud computing:

  • Public—where software, infrastructure, and the platform are hosted by an external service provider
  • Private—where a company maintains its own software, infrastructure, and platform
  • Hybrid—where a company purchases one or two of these services and hosts the other aspects of the cloud

Anirudh Nagesh G’12 said he enjoyed hearing the heated debates between avid iPhone users and Android fans in the sessions he attended on mobile communications. Nagesh compared the evolution of mobile devices to Darwin and his theory of mobility from four-legged apes to two-legged humans. “The more civilized we’ve become, the more mobile we are,” he said. “The next generation mobiles—5G—will have increased mobility. It will be really wireless, with no limitations to zonal and access issues.”

Interop, premier business technology event, featured more than 150 IT vendors, educational programs, workshops, and live demonstrations of emerging technologies. It touts itself as the “meeting place for the global business technology community.”

United Business Media (UBM), publisher of Network Computing and owner of Interop, provided four conference passes for iSchool students, and the iSchool covered the costs of transportation and hotel accommodations for the students. The Interop trip is part of the iSchool’s larger mission of expanding travel and learning opportunities for its students to interact with professionals in the information field.

Harshit Kapoor G’10 wrote short summaries of what he gleaned from the trip, which appeared on Network Computing’s blog. He attended sessions that focused on virtualization, including storage, applications, desktop, and server virtualizations, and on wireless technologies. The discussions of wireless centered on the performance and security of wi-fi and a future which will include the convergence of wi-fi and cellular networks.

Lingwen Zhang G’12 attended sessions that examined network technologies, including wide area network (WAN) virtualizations, new cloud-based data centers, and an inter-data center fabric that supports extremely high-speed networks.

IT professionals from Central New York who weren’t able to attend Interop were invited to hear the students’ presentations to get up to speed on some of the current trends in the field. They asked students a range of questions about security, virtualization versus cloud computing, interoperability of vendors’ products, and common standards for emerging technologies.

Following the presentations, students had the opportunity to continue the conversation with attendees informally during a reception in the iLounge.