While Jay-Z may have impressed upon you that New York has streets that will make you feel brand new and lights that will inspire you, the fact that he cut his verse about The Planet’s participation in Cloud Expo East from “Empire State of Mind” means you might not know how to meet us at the Jacob Javits Convention Center this week. I’m tempted to provide the details in an exceedingly awkward rap over the song’s instrumental track. As I think about the sheer horror of that final product, this tried-and-true blog post is probably the best for all parties (especially you).

Expo Hall: Booth 118

If you’re an avid reader of The Planet Blog, you’ll remember the video we shot in the expo hall at the 2009 Cloud Computing Conference in Santa Clara, CA. That interview is probably the reason you decided to attend Cloud Expo East 2010, and we’re happy to have inspired you.

This year, you can find us in Booth 118 on the expo hall floor. Some of our hosting and cloud subject matter experts will be in attendance, and we’d love to share our experience and expertise with you. To commemorate your visit, be sure to snag one of our “refreshing approach to hosting” water bottles, and don’t forget to drop your business card in our fishbowl to enter our random drawing for a Flip UltraHD camcorder.

The Cloud’s Not the Revolution: Monday, 3:30 p.m. | Duke Skarda

Duke Skarda, our vice president of information technology and software development, is presenting a contrarian point of view about the significance of “the cloud” in a general session on Monday afternoon: The Cloud’s Not the Revolution: Cloud Usage Is.

It’s hard to read any technology news that doesn’t include an emerging technology or new products with the cloud moniker attached, so it’s no wonder technology professionals and IT teams are concerned and confused. The goal of the session to help you understand the ‘real’ adoption curve of these technologies and the ’silver bullets’ from days past. Duke will share several use cases where cloud adoption makes sense, and with those examples you should be more prepared to evaluate your own cloud decisions.

Finding Your Cloud Source: Wednesday, 8:20 a.m. | Carl Meadows

On Wednesday morning, our senior product manager Carl Meadows will share Five Steps to Sanity: Methodologies for Finding Your Best Cloud Source.

All clouds aren’t the same, and adoption hasn’t begun to lay claim to 1.0 adoption criteria. In this session, Carl will share a comprehensive five-step methodology for choosing the right cloud platform for your business. From profiling your applications to clearly articulating a capacity plan, defining security requirements and even hybrid options, he will provide the resources, considerations and questions companies should ask to be fully informed.

The Linux Foundation & The Planet Server Cloud

Not coincidentally, today is a banner day for our Server Cloud product. We were just announced as a new member of the Linux Foundation, and they have some great things to say about our cloud computing strategy. As Linux Foundation vice president of marketing and developer programs Amanda McPherson explains in a press release today, “We expect The Planet to be among the first companies to launch a large-scale public-cloud service on KVM and we applaud their foresight and vision,” so the pressure is on as our Server Cloud offering blazes a new trail.

We believe KVM is the future of Linux-based server virtualization, and our membership in the Linux Foundation reflects our commitment to the Linux development community. The Planet Server Cloud is currently in beta with more than 500 customers testing the new architecture.

Duke and Carl are two of friendliest and most engaging guys you’ll meet at the conference, so don’t hesitate to seek us out to ask questions and share your thoughts on our presentations. We are happy to talk to you about our involvement in the Linux Foundation, and we can share some great reasons for developing on the KVM hypervisor. In short, if you want to talk cloud, you should seek out The Planet.

Because a post that talks about New York and music isn’t complete until we get Ol’ Blue Eyes in the mix, “Start spreading the news, Cloud Expo’s starting today. We want you to be a part of it, in old New York.”

-Kevin