James Ward came to Florida and gave a talk on cloud computing for the GatorJUG in Gainesville and the OrlandoJUG this week.

What a great presenter! James gave us such an informative talk. The very first slide of his presentation impressed me practically more than anything else. It described current (newer) trends in software development like continuous releases. I hope James posts it here when he reads this blog post.

James described to us the features of cloud computing (and some specifics about the company James works with, Heroku)  that make it such a hit these days. Pay as you go is one big attraction. Instant deployment is another great thing about the Heroku approach, because normally, the Java compile, generate WAR, possibly restart the webserver, etc approach takes so much longer.

One really cool thing about www.heroku.com is that the first dyno is free - meaning that you can try it out and the first "virtual server", called a dyno, doesn't cost anything. James mentioned the JavaPosse are trying it out now. I think James said he's planning to host his popular blog www.jamesward.com there, too. I can't wait give it a try. I can see where cloud computing is so popular these days.

It's got some load balancing features that are very appealing if you expect spurts of high volume use.

If you attended James's talk could you please post your comments and help share what we learned with the rest of the folks at Codetown? And, click on the photo above to see a few more of James's Florida visit.