In our first 3 Bars ? 3 Questions video interview, SoftLayer CTO Duke Skarda talked about Hybrid Hosting with Kevin, and last week, I tackled the topic in a session the Texas Technology Summit in Houston. If you have a few minutes and want to learn a little more about SoftLayer’s take on hybrid computing and hybrid hosting, you can pull up a virtual chair and see my presentation here:

Even though hybrid hosting is relatively young, it has a great deal of potential. Unlike some of the hyped technologies and developments we hear about all the time, hybrid hosting isn’t going to replace everything that came before it … On the contrary, hybrid hosting encompasses everything that came before it, allowing for flexibility and functionality that you can’t find in any of the individual component technologies.

We weren’t able to record all of the questions and answers at the end of the session, but one of the most surprising themes I noticed was a misunderstanding of what “Cloud Infrastructure” meant. Those questions reminded me of a fantastic BrightTALK Cloud Infrastructure Online Summit that featured several interesting and informative session about how cloud computing is changing the way businesses are thinking about deploying and managing their IT infrastructure. I know it seems like we’re preaching to the choir by posting this on the SoftLayer Blog, but take a look at the BrightTALK Summit’s webcast topics to see if any would be helpful to you as you talk about this mysterious “cloud” thing.

-@toddmitchell