Adam works as a Java EE Architect at Jayway, specializing in Java performance, scale-out and test automation. He has worked for many years on Agile and distributed architectures, and he feels that cloud computing is the next step that will help us build better systems with higher quality, since cloud computing will do wonders for test automation, which in turn helps Agile to Work.

Among his engagements are some open-source projects. Adam is the lead of the open-source project "DDSteps" (www.ddsteps.org), a data-driven test framework for automating large, complex web applications. DDSteps has become popular with both large companies (such as SonyEricsson, IBM, Sprint and PayPal) and many smaller businesses for integrating all the tools you need for end-to-end function testing of websites. Adam is also involved in the Qi4J and Spring LDAP projects.

Cloud Computing sounds fluffy, so what are the real-life benefits? And how can I start using the Cloud today, in my own projects?

The first step: Getting more power at a low low cost
How can we use the cloud today, by moving parts of our application or environment to the cloud? We'll share our hand-on experiences with developing using the cloud for everything from testing to deployment.

The next step: Scaling out in the cloud
The cloud brings new issues and concerns. How do you best store data if it's stored in distributed data centers? How can you ensure data consistency when ACID-style transactions are your biggest bottleneck? How will it affect your architecture that servers are added at any time?