Solution providers said the new NexGen Cloud Conference & Expo, to be held Dec. 3 to 5 in San Diego, fills a much-needed gap for vendor-neutral content in an increasingly partisan cloud-computing marketplace.

The conference, the brainchild of CRN parent company, The Channel Company, is the first partner-centric, cloud-computing conference aimed at providing vendor-neutral content developed by and for the broad swath of solution providers delivering cloud migration strategies and services for customers.

NexGen Cloud  is critical, solution providers said, because it provides an independent multivendor expo in a market filled with single-threaded, vendor-focused cloud conferences. The inaugural event with the theme “All Roads Lead To The Cloud,” will be held at the San Diego Convention Center.

“A lot of the vendor-specific cloud conferences feature ‘rah-rah’ content rallying the troops for the upcoming year,” said Ryan Trimberger, director of sales and business development for Nimbo, a four-year-old, fast-growing New York-based, born-in-the-cloud provider that is helping develop content for the conference. “NexGen Cloud is a venue for solution providers to gain expertise across multiple cloud platforms with best practices across all of them. You are not just going to hear from solution provider peers, but also get real candid feedback from customers.”

Nimbo, a member of the NexGen Cloud Advisory Board, is slated to feature a conference session with a Fortune 100  CIO it has teamed that whom it will give a first-hand account of how its cloud computing solutions have  completely transformed every aspect of the business, from marketing to finance.

“NexGen cloud is all about providing  partners with new ways to innovate and help customers generate revenue with cloud solutions,” said Trimberger, a top Microsoft and Amazon partner that is also eyeing a potential Google partnership. “This is all about getting  partners to become an extension of the customer to yield results that will benefit the bottom line. It’s really cool to be part of transforming businesses.”

Chris Ward, chief technology officer for GreenPages’ Logics One, a Kittery, Maine-headquartered leader in cloud computing data center consulting and management, said NexGen Cloud is critical because it will allow partners to cut through all the cloud clutter to focus on what are the “key market segments and technologies that will drive sales growth” in 2015. “NextGen Cloud is a good place to see what’s relevant and driving the biggest gains for customers,” he said. “The key focus for me is what are customers ready, willing and able to do with cloud.”