Opscode today announced the inaugural #ChefConf 2012 User Conference, taking place May 15-17 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott Waterfront in Burlingame, Calif. Presented by the leader in cloud infrastructure automation, #ChefConf will deliver three days of technical sessions, workshops, training and keynotes designed to help businesses maximize the value of their IT investment and accelerate the speed of business. Registration for #ChefConf 2012 is open at chefconf.opscode.com.

"Tens of thousands of people and thousands of companies use Opscode Chef® to automate, manage and scale their infrastructure," said Jesse Robbins, co-chair of #ChefConf, and co-founder and chief community officer of Opscode. "This ability is now a critical skill for every software developer, systems engineer and IT professional who must manage ever-increasing scale and complexity."

As noted by InformationWeek, "2011 was the year that cloud computing knocked virtualization off its perch to become the No. 1 strategy for CIOs to deliver business value, according to Gartner." Just two years prior, the cloud ranked 16 on the CIO priority list. According to a study conducted by CSC, there are three main drivers for this move to the cloud: the increasing speed of business, the desire to cut costs, and an increasingly mobile workforce in a global economy, which requires access to information through multiple devices. Companies must be able to respond to customer demand for 24-hour access to data and resources. As a result, the IT operation must enable dynamic scalability, and provide rapid-response provisioning and deployment of new infrastructure and applications.

"A growing number of organizations, and increasingly enterprises in financial services, media, telecommunications and other key verticals, are working diligently to simplify server configuration and automate application and infrastructure deployment," said Jay Lyman, research senior analyst at 451 Research. "Traditional approaches and skills are no longer sufficient to effectively leverage new tools for virtualization, automation and cloud computing. #ChefConf 2012 is one of the places where enterprise IT professionals from companies of all sizes can get hands-on training and insight into overcoming these new technology challenges."

Today, there are more than 1,400 job postings on sites such as Indeed.com and TechCareers.com that require skills for solutions such as Chef. This signals an increasing demand for specialized training.

"Opscode Chef is more than an automation solution; it's a foundational skillset required by a growing number of companies," said Robbins. "#ChefConf will help IT professionals learn and expand their understanding of Chef so they can lead this movement to the cloud and be rock stars for their companies."

ChefConf 2012 will build on the collaborative nature of its open-source community and partner ecosystem. In just three years, Opscode's community has grown to more than 11,000 registered users and 380 community cookbooks, supporting everything from Apache and Zabbix to Windows. More than 500 people and 100 organizations are contributing code to Chef, and helping others successfully develop new skills for the growing movement in the cloud. The conference will provide in-depth discussions on the latest trends in IT infrastructure management, DevOps and cloud configuration, as well as engaging panel discussions highlighting customer use cases.

Registration is $1,200 for the May 16-17 conference, which includes the plenary sessions and two full tracks of deeply technical content. Early bird pricing is $800 and is available for those registering by Feb. 29. Registration for the workshops on Tuesday, May 15, costs $400. Rooms are available at the San Francisco Airport Marriott Waterfront for a discounted rate.