While navigating the expo hall of the 2009 Cloud Computing Conference, Dell’s Cloud Evangelist Barton George snagged Rob Walters for a quick interview to learn more about how The Planet is taking advantage of the cloud. Rob tackles some big questions about the market’s perception of pure cloud computing and its hesitance to immediately adopt the seemingly Utopian platform. If you have about six minutes and forty-two seconds to spare, head to Dell’s Inside Enterprise IT blog and watch the video: The Planet, from Hoster to Hoster & Cloud Provider.

As soon as they wrapped up the interview, I turned the camera to Barton. What does Dell’s Cloud Evangelist think about the future of cloud computing? Can private clouds and virtualization survive the hype of the public cloud? How is Dell approaching the cloud behemoth? His answers may surprise you:

Key Points:

• Dell has invested about $450 million in software in the past two years to provide niche public cloud services.
• Similar to Rob’s sentiment, Dell sees virtualization as the “building block” of the cloud – a necessary step in getting hardware-minded customers comfortable with the platform.
• The private cloud isn’t necessarily doomed, and it’s more than just a stepping stone.
• Traditional IT isn’t going anywhere.
• In the future, a company’s infrastructure may involve a mixture of traditional IT, virtualization, private clouds and the public cloud.

-Kevin