Cloud Computing Expo - 2009
I wasn't able to attend the 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo last week at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, so I've asked Warren Davidson, Objectivity's Director of Business Development, to give us all an update on his impressions of the venue. Here's Warren...
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Objectivity attended this year's Cloud Computing Expo West with great anticipation. There has been a lot of discussion about cloud computing, and we were particularly interested in learning more about the motivations of the people attending. What were the most important questions they wanted answered? We also wanted to see what other technology vendors were doing, and how people were starting to solve problems in the cloud computing space.
First I should point out our interests. Cloud computing means many things to many people, but one thing we know (and validated at the show) was that many different types of organizations want to take the best from cloud computing and apply it to their products, infrastructure and corporate strategy. For many attendees this meant learning how cloud computing could provide the insight on how to build highly scalable systems more cost effectively. Many want to reduce their complexity, and solve some of the challenges of traditional IT architectures.
And many attendees had mixed interests. Some wanted to learn how they could leverage SaaS offerings to move some of their infrastructure into the cloud, while building in-house systems where needed. There were many vendors there who could help companies with both, such as 3Terra. Others were providing customers the platform to move their infrastructure out to the cloud, like GoGrid and Rackspace. And then some provided the platform to get to these platforms such as Rightscale.
Our focus of course was how to manage data in a cloud, whether it is public or private. We wondered if people saw current database strategies well suited to their needs. In some cases where people had very simple data the answer was yes, something like Hadoop or SimpleDB would do the trick. But for many of the attendees that was only to start, or "Cloud v 1.0" as I call it. Their expectation for the future was they would need something more robust. And many said that their data was complex - using file systems or trying to manage data across relational databases was not promising.
In the end we found that people wanted to start with distributed systems, and reducing complexity is a key issue. This is tied into scalability and performance, but in the end using a fully distributed database system would solve some major problems for many customers. If nothing else many people know they can't truly scale with relational databases, relying on partitioning and sharding to get around short-term data issues.
The show was a good start. Keep an eye on this space. There is a lot more to learn and we'll make sure to post more information on the topic of managing data with respect to your cloud computing strategy.
Warren Davidson,
Director of Business Development
Objectivity, Inc.
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Objectivity attended this year's Cloud Computing Expo West with great anticipation. There has been a lot of discussion about cloud computing, and we were particularly interested in learning more about the motivations of the people attending. What were the most important questions they wanted answered? We also wanted to see what other technology vendors were doing, and how people were starting to solve problems in the cloud computing space.
First I should point out our interests. Cloud computing means many things to many people, but one thing we know (and validated at the show) was that many different types of organizations want to take the best from cloud computing and apply it to their products, infrastructure and corporate strategy. For many attendees this meant learning how cloud computing could provide the insight on how to build highly scalable systems more cost effectively. Many want to reduce their complexity, and solve some of the challenges of traditional IT architectures.
And many attendees had mixed interests. Some wanted to learn how they could leverage SaaS offerings to move some of their infrastructure into the cloud, while building in-house systems where needed. There were many vendors there who could help companies with both, such as 3Terra. Others were providing customers the platform to move their infrastructure out to the cloud, like GoGrid and Rackspace. And then some provided the platform to get to these platforms such as Rightscale.
Our focus of course was how to manage data in a cloud, whether it is public or private. We wondered if people saw current database strategies well suited to their needs. In some cases where people had very simple data the answer was yes, something like Hadoop or SimpleDB would do the trick. But for many of the attendees that was only to start, or "Cloud v 1.0" as I call it. Their expectation for the future was they would need something more robust. And many said that their data was complex - using file systems or trying to manage data across relational databases was not promising.
In the end we found that people wanted to start with distributed systems, and reducing complexity is a key issue. This is tied into scalability and performance, but in the end using a fully distributed database system would solve some major problems for many customers. If nothing else many people know they can't truly scale with relational databases, relying on partitioning and sharding to get around short-term data issues.
The show was a good start. Keep an eye on this space. There is a lot more to learn and we'll make sure to post more information on the topic of managing data with respect to your cloud computing strategy.
Warren Davidson,
Director of Business Development
Objectivity, Inc.
Labels: Cloud Computing Expo, Distributed database
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