In September I presented on the foundations of MapReduce and MapReduce applications at the St. Louis Lambda Lounge.
It always surprises me how simple the MapReduce algorithm is and how few people really understand it. After the talk I had multiple people approach me and say “I have had elements of MapReduce on my applications for a long time and didn’t know it.”
Posted in Cloud Computing, Software Architecture
The VMWare/SpringSource acquisition announcement took me by surprise. My first question was what is VMWare getting themselves into? I have always thought of VMWare as the “Switzerland” of infrastructure tools. Whether you are Windows or Linux, C++ or Java, packaged software or open source VMWare can help you build, test, and deploy your environment. Why are they giving up their independent status by picking a Java framework like Spring?
Posted in Cloud Computing
Microsoft TechEd 2008 was held in Orlando, Florida the week of June 2nd. I was fortunate to attend many of the technical sessions. I was surprised how many speakers were conveying the same message:
Lately when I talk to architects and administrators about the Appistry fabric, I often hear the same question: “Is your fabric the same thing as a grid or cloud?”
The confusion is understandable. We software types can’t construct a good naming convention without someone else trying to overload them. In this post I am going to provide my best definitions of the phrases cloud, grid, and fabric. Each are valuable tools, but with different meanings and usage patterns.
Posted in Cloud Computing
