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Cloud Connect Roundup Podcast : elemental cloud computing
Saturday [the 12th] morning, I joined Dave Linthicum on his cloud computing podcast to discuss our impressions and findings from Cloud Connect. Learn what Kung Fu Panda is doing in the cloud.
Podcast link: http://cloudcomputingpodcast.libsyn.com/cloud-connect-roundup-
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HP Blogs – The enterprise architect’s role in our dynamic bus… – The HP Blog Hub
“The role is about the entire enterprise and creating an environment that meets its objectives. One thought he puts forward is that enterprises continuously adapt, changing based on the pressures they are under. It is made up of people, relationships and groups, not just the buildings… and IT systems.
“This is forcing the Enterprise Architect role to take on more organizational change management thinking. It is no longer just about plugging software and hardware components together, taking latency out of the organization. It is about being able to assemble groups of services to a common cause – in a repeatable fashion.”
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Amazon Web Services Blog: A New Approach to Amazon EC2 Networking
Virtual networking advances & Amazon Virtual Private Cloud:
“You can now create a network topology in the AWS cloud that closely resembles the one in your physical data center including public, private, and DMZ subnets. Instead of dealing with cables, routers, and switches you can design and instantiate your network programmatically. You can use the AWS Management Console (including a slick new wizard), the command line tools, or the APIs. This means that you could store your entire network layout in abstract form, and then realize it on demand.”
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@bmichelson: You may want to look at Gremlin, a graph traversal language that works over graph databases. http://is.gd/AsROAm
Archives for March 2011
Enterprise Architecture Rant #4,892
Last week was primarily about Cloud Connect for me. However, I did fit in a few other things, including a short rant inspired by enterprise architecture pundits.
As you all know, I believe in the value of enterprise architecture, and even more strongly, I recognize the unique talents and contributions of real-world (‘street-smart’) enterprise architects.
At the same time, I’m increasingly concerned about the macro-direction of our field, as we continue to suffer ivory tower enterprise architecture punditry, rigid frameworks and endless philosophical waxing.
A couple of weeks ago, I attempted to inject a little action / purpose / outcome orientation in the enterprise architecture conversation with the following tweet:
“Today’s word for Enterprise Architects: Utilitarian [u-til-i-tar-i-an]: designed to be useful or practical rather than attractive. #entarch“
Well, as you might expect, I got nit-picked parsed. That architecture by definition is attractive. [Aargh!] My intended point was “useful or practical”. Not easily defeated, I restated as follows:
“better stated, i think every #entarch needs to have a utilitarian perspective”
If you can’t answer “what is the purpose?”, that is an early warning indicator of folly, or worse. This “utilitarian” aspect is something I find myself circling back to more and more, especially in my work on business architecture.
Anyway, on Friday, after witnessing yet another definitional discussion on enterprise architecture, I tried to inject the utilitarian perspective again with the following on twitter:
“Ok, last time: It’s not what enterprise architecture IS that matters. It’s what enterprise architecture DOES that matters. #entarch“
This “pithy” missive hit the mark with real-world enterprise architects and pundits alike.
So remember, next time someone tries to drag you down a “what & how” conversation on enterprise architecture, steer them to “why & outcomes“. It’ll be more productive, in the moment, and for your long-term practice.
Link Collection (weekly)
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Is an Enterprise Data Warehouse Still Required for Business Intelligence? | TheVirtualCircle
Colin White, questioning whether ‘the center holds’.
“Why is this discussion important? The main reason is at present business intelligence is synonymous with data warehousing. This thinking is wrong and needs to be changed. Data warehousing is a component of BI, but BI may employ data in other data stores. In some cases a BI application may not even use data managed in a data warehouse. The tight connection between BI and data warehousing is causing terms such as virtual data warehousing to be used to describe other types of BI processing. These terms are unnecessary and just confuse everybody.
Another issue is that people have forgotten that data warehousing was created to overcome deficiencies in business transaction systems. Many of these issues are now solvable. My concern is that data warehousing has become a system in its own right and companies are now extending the data warehouse into other application areas such as master data management and content management. This is completely the wrong direction and must be argued against.
The bottom line is that data warehousing is still an important component of business intelligence, but it is no longer the foundation on which all BI projects have to be built.”
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Teradata Magazine Online | Article | Time Travel
Teradata 13.10 has option to incorporate temporal processing capabilities into the data warehouse.
“Typically, data analysis has been limited to how two data elements relate to each other, such as projected revenue change based on product sales assumptions. Time-based analysis was limited to comparing events that occur at different points in time, like sales today versus sales a year ago. Systems that enable such analysis are called decision support systems (DSSs). DSSs have been limited to understanding the relationship between data values that represent the current state of the data.
Then there is active data warehousing, which allows you to do such analysis in a timely fashion across more data areas.
Temporal is the next step in analytic capability. It analyzes how a data element evolves or how it relates to other data over time—for example, which products were in a category last year, which are in that category this year and how that change will affect sales. This argues for a much deeper understanding of the time dimension.”
Wednesday, March 9 @ Cloud Connect 2011
Less blogging, more talking today at Cloud Connect. I did capture the morning keynotes here.
During the keynote, I was so busy listening to Neal Sample of eBay that I stopped typing. However, the good folks at bitcurrent caught the high points.
In the afternoon, I took meetings with GigaSpaces, ScaleBase and Translattice.
GigaSpaces has a compelling new enterprise PaaS enablement offering. For enterprises concerned with lock-in on public PaaS, this could provide an answer. There is choice in the development model (C++, Java, .Net) and the cloud platform (private, a variety of public flavors: Amazon, Rackspace, etc.)
ScaleBase is in beta with its first product, a database load balancer. Definitely a real problem to be solved. ScaleBase participated in the Cloud Connect Launch Pad.
Translattice is also in beta with its first product, which is a grid/mesh solution for resiliency. This one was harder for me to envision. But, the underlying technology is interesting.
Later in the day, I attended a Hybrid Cloud Panel. Everyone agreed that a hybrid adoption model will be the norm, however what comprises that model is up for debate. It was suggested that the Hybrid model is really “the pragmatic cloud”. I can live with that.
A point of contention in the panel was whether organizations, mostly enterprises, should “move” legacy to the cloud as-is. In other words, should you follow Dave Linthicum’s “no crap in the cloud” rule. No surprise, the companies that enable cloud switching say crap in the cloud is fine, if it still saves you money. Most others, me included, say no.
Oh, almost time to board. Gotta go.
Tuesday, March 8 @ Cloud Connect 2011
I’ve been blogging at Cloud Connect in Santa Clara today. My posts are at elemental cloud computing:
- @ Cloud Connect 2011: Colin Clark introduces Cloud Event Processing
- @ Cloud Connect: Design Patterns in the Cloud: A Love Story
- @ Cloud Connect: Cloudonomics – Private, Public or Hybrid?
- @ Cloud Connect: Opening Keynotes
More tomorrow.
