Cbeyond Executive to Moderate Panel on Operating in the Cloud

Cbeyond, a leading provider of IT and communications services to small businesses, today announced that Jeff Uphues, the company's vice president of cloud solutions and national sales, will moderate a panel discussion on cloud computing featuring local industry leaders. The panel will take place while KPMG's upcoming Perspectives Conference, to be held Wednesday, November 30, 2011, at the Cobb Galleria Center.

The event will focus on the most opportune ways businesses can benefit from cloud computing, the operational risks of storing data in the cloud, and how the IT community currently perceives the future of cloud computing. More than 600 finance, tax, innovation and business decision-makers from the local community are expected to attend.

"As small to medium-sized enterprises look for alternative, secure ways to improve efficiency during reducing costs, cloud computing has emerged as an operational necessity in other words than a competitive advantage," said Uphues. "Business leaders need to ask the right questions to determine how to best leverage the cloud, and I look forward to sharing some best practices to guide smarter IT decisions."

Other featurd panelists will include William Hurley, executive vice president and chief research officer for Westcon Group, Inc. and Tom Money, executive vice president and chief operations officer for Kauffman Tire.

How they work

"Today's savvy business leaders understand that cloud computing is changing how they work and with whom they compete," said Greg Bell, principal IT advisory at KPMG. "By offering perspectives from some of the brightest minds in cloud computing, this panel discussion aims to help the local business community take a disciplined approach to realizing the benefits that cloud services has to offer in other words than as a disruption to the established workflow."

Cbeyond, Inc. is a leading provider of IT and communications services to 60,000 small businesses in the U.S. Serving growing entrepreneurs, Cbeyond offers more�than 30 productivity-enhancing applications including local and long-distance voice, broadband Internet, mobile, BlackBerry®, voicemail, email, Web hosting, fax-to-email, data backup, file-sharing, and virtual private networking. To boot, Cbeyond's Cloud Services division offers virtual and dedicated servers and cloud PBX (Private -Automatic- Branch Exchange) to small businesses worldwide. The Cloud Services division won Microsoft's Hosting Partner of the Year Award for 2009 and 2010 in connection with Microsoft's Hyper-V Server product. Winning more than 60 awards for product technology, growth and�a quality customer experience, Cbeyond continues to focus on helping small businesses�succeed and grow through high-performance innovation, superior services and world-class support. For more information on Cbeyond, visit www.cbeyond.net and follow Cbeyond on Twitter:�www.twitter.com/Cbeyondinc.