If there's a silver lining to social distancing, it's the fact that it gives us a chance to catch up on content we otherwise might have missed. There are always too many sessions to attend at cloud conferences -- from service introductions and updates to best practices and use cases -- that could change the way you use cloud technologies. The global health crisis has made it unlikely any of us will gather for a conference in 2020. Given the dangers of COVID-19, it seems unwise for thousands of professionals from around the world to gather in a crowded convention center. While the in-person conference experience is off the table for the near future, there are plenty of resources still available to review from cloud conferences over the past year.

Even if you think you know what cloud means, the word is fraught with too many different interpretations for too many people. Nevertheless, the effect of cloud computing, the web, and their assorted massive datacenters has had a profound impact on enterprise computing, creating new application segments and consolidating IT resources into a smaller number of mega-players with tremendous buying power and influence. At the top end of the market, ten companies – behemoths like Google, Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba – each spend over 1 billion per year on IT. These ten companies alone account for approximately 20 billion per year in IT consumption. Beyond that top tier, hundreds of additional companies complete the hyperscale landscape.