I had the pleasure of delivering my first conference presentation as the President of Intellyx yesterday at Cloud Expo in New York. My talk, Breaking Down Enterprise Silos in the Cloud, introduced Bloomberg Agile Architecture to a live audience (download the presentation from SlideShare). I?m pleased (and relieved!) to say the reaction was quite positive. The feedback centered on the breadth of the vision: yes, Cloud was a part of the story, but I touched upon organizational change, Agile methodologies, next-Generation SOA, DevOps, and more. After a day of Cloud-related sales pitches from vendors, my ?the world isn?t all about the Cloud? angle was a welcome relief for my audience.

Furthermore, Intellyx?s focus on business agility, rather than on a particular technology trend or industry, is also receiving quite positive feedback. Too many of the presentations at technology conferences forget that the point to technology is to solve business problems. As a result, my agility-driven message was understood and appreciated.

But perhaps the most insightful comment came from a fellow who worked at one of the large logistics/package delivery companies. He came up to me after my talk and explained how they scan every package several times as it moves through their process (which I knew), and how an additional bar code label is automatically applied at a certain point that directs sorting equipment to put the package on the proper shelf in the proper truck (which I didn?t). His point was that their company was an information company, not a package delivery company. Without the ability to leverage information to automate their processes, they wouldn?t have a business at all.

The notion that information technology is the business is a point that underlies the entire Bloomberg Agile Architecture vision, and in fact, is a notion that I feature on the Intellyx Web site ? but I didn?t explicitly include that notion in my presentation for Cloud Expo. I am pleased, therefore, that my audience was able to understand the more profound principles behind breaking down enterprise silos in the Cloud.