“All too often, insider analyst research and commentary is costly, inaccessible or ineffective to the entrepreneurs, investors and innovators who need timely insights most. We’re changing this by making high-quality expert reports, data and commentary easy to access and highly interactive for our community in key emerging technology areas.”

I was therefore delighted when VP of Research Michael Wolf got in touch before Christmas to ask if I’d be interested in providing them with content.

My first piece, which is published today, explores some of the issues faced by Cloud service providers and users in negotiating the attitudes and laws of the different jurisdictions through which their data may pass. I would welcome any comments on the piece, and must thank Microsoft‘s Matt Deacon, Sun Microsystems‘ Michelle Dennedy, IBM‘s Harriet Pearson, Rackspace‘s Simon Abrahams, Computacenter‘s Matthew Yeager and F5 Networks‘ Lori MacVittie for taking the time to talk with me as I prepared it. Thanks, also, to Celeste LeCompte at GigaOM for editing and for Americaniszing my spellingz… Any misunderstandings, misrepresentations, typos etc, are of course my own.

I look forward to my next GigaOM assignment!

For those on this side of the Atlantic with a particular interest in the topic, London’s Powered By Cloud event (where I participated in a panel last year) is back for a second edition on 8 and 9 February. Of particular interest in this context is an addition to this year’s event; 10 February’s dedicated to a Cloud Law Summit.

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Eric Norlin has once again assembled a great programme, of which I’m pleased to be part.

Previous attendees tell me that the mix of Colorado mountains, slick yet understated organisation, a thought-provoking programme, and a registration list that’s deliberately kept manageably small all makes for a pretty unique event.

If it’s even half what some of these people tell me it can be, it’s going to be pretty special.

If you’re interested in coming along, Eric reminds me that early bird pricing expires at the end of this month. Just click the image above, and use code ‘spkr’ to get a further $50 off the early bird rate.

I hope to see you there and, JP, I’ll see you on the plane…  :-)

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