An unseasonably wintery and very cold London played host on the 30th November to the Business Cloud Summit 2010, sponsored this year by, amongst others, IntraLinks, Microsoft, CSC, NetSuite, RightNow and Success Factors and attended by several hundred senior IT professionals, analysts and commentators drawn from a broad base of industries, the public sector, media and professional bodies.

This is the second year of the summit, one of the largest vendor independent cloud gatherings in the UK, a forum that serves the purpose of inter-industry networking as much as it reports out trends and discusses issues and, of course, provides a showcase for the propositions of the leading software authors and service providers in the space.

Today’s challenging business environment has brought the importance of delivering world-class investor servicing sharply into focus. Institutional investors expect to access their statements and capital calls online, anytime, from anywhere, placing additional pressure on the related management and delivery mechanisms used by private equity firms.

The recent conference, Private Equity Software and Service Provider Showcase organized by 4VCO at the Renaissance Chancery Court hotel in London, therefore provided an excellent opportunity for 150 private equity professionals to gather for a day of presentations, information sharing and networking to understand how technology helps funds to improve internal systems and operations.