As we count down the remaining days until HCTS 2015, we are pleased to highlight two of our featured speakers, who will conclude content on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.

Alan Zweibel, original Saturday Night Live writer and best- selling author

After a full day of sessions, Wednesday will wrap up on a lighter note with a presentation from Alan Zweibel, who will deliver a charming and candid look at his career journey as a comedy writer. He will describe the experience of writing for some of television’s most beloved comedies – from Saturday Night Live to Curb Your Enthusiasm – and discuss how his career success has transcended television to film, theater and literature.

We are excited to have SoftLayer as our Cornerstone sponsor for this year’s HCTS. Since 2005 SoftLayer has provided cloud infrastructure as a service to datacenters and network points of presence throughout the world. Acquired by IBM in 2013, SoftLayer’s growing client base ranges from startups to global enterprises.

As August draws to a close, we are now just a few weeks away from this year’s Hosting + Cloud Transformation Summit. If you’re interested in learning more, take a look at our infographic containing statistics and feedback from past Summits. This year’s HCTS promises to be the best one yet – with a great roster of speakers, informative sessions and numerous networking opportunities.

For this week’s News and Views, we spent some time with Dr. Owen Rogers (@owenrog), Senior Analyst, Digital Economics and featured speaker at HCTS. As a contributor to the 451 Research Cloud Price Index, Owen will incorporate these findings into his presentation.

#451HCTS: Hi Owen, looking forward to hearing your presentation at HCTS next month. Can you give us a preview of your session,  ªPricing Benchmarks and Strategies: How Service Providers are Differentiating on Price and Increasing Margins º?

@owenrog: In the same way that a consumer price index uses a basket of groceries to measure inflation, our Cloud Price Index uses a basket of cloud services, which represents a typical cloud application, to measure how cloud pricing is really changing. There’s been lots of hype over the past year about cloud providers cutting prices, with some commentators saying regular price cuts of up to 50% are affecting service providersʼ profitability. We’ve been tracking pricing for nearly a year now and our big finding is ʻdon’t believe the hype!ʼ

Adam Tamburini, Development Director at e-shelter, will be travelling to Las Vegas for his fourth Hosting + Cloud Transformation Summit this year. We sat down with Adam to hear more about his experiences and what brings him back to HCTS year after year.

#451HCTS: Hi Adam, appreciate you chatting with us. As a long-time attendee, what has been the most valuable aspect of attending HCTS for your company?

AT: The exposure to the thought leaders in the industry, the quality of the content in the 451 Research presentations, and the opportunity to meet a great deal of senior people from peers, customers and financiers in one location.