This first one is of Effective UI a company out of Denver, Colorado. You’re probably asking yourself, why are they at a cloud conference? I asked the same question and they brought up a really good point. Most cloud computing interfaces are horrible. I have to agree, most are or at least have been pretty bad. User experience is fundamental to a good adoption and usability of the customer base, a solid user interface is the cornerstone of this experience.

I’m stil tripping on this one. I’m totally stoked that Windows Azure is providing Linux support. I however can’t stop laughing about how cold it must be in hell. For over a decade Microsoft oft repeated that it would be a “cold day in hell” before they where involved with, used, sold, or offered a Linux product of any kind. Now they offer Linux VMs on Windows Azure and employees of Microsoft actively and openly contribute to the Linux kernal!  Truly awesome, and a little shocking.

Jaspersoft, the open source BI Solution Company. A few people asked me about BI solutions and such for the cloud and for big data. Jaspersoft is one of the leading companies in this part of the industry. They even have the capability to build their service into a PaaS.  Ok, I’ll admit I don’t exactly know what they mean by that, but it sounds really cool. Maybe I need to have a conversation with them about this and see about working on extending this PaaS BI Service?

I also had to give some Postgresl love. They even had their elephant mascot hanging around! Does anyone know what the elephant’s name is? Beers on me to whoever gets it.  😉  For anyone looking to get an RDBMS running in the cloud, Postgresql is easily one of your best options. Don’t even start thinking about Oracle these days…  no seriously, don’t.