Thinking about Data Gravity
Dave McCrory introduced his idea of Data Gravity with a blog post back in 2010. The core idea was — and is — interesting, and got some traction from sites like ReadWriteWeb, ZDNet and GigaOM. More recently, Data Gravity featured in this year’s EMC World keynote. But beyond the observation that large or valuable agglomerations of data...
CloudCamp reaches Leeds on 14 June
The global CloudCamp movement continues to grow, with events over the next few weeks in Denmark, Germany, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and across the United States. And now, I’m very pleased to announce that the English city of Leeds is joining the party. CloudCamp events have been taking place in the UK for years, and the...
Of little clouds and big clouds, local clouds and global clouds
Amazon’s globe-encircling cloud infrastructure is compelling to many. From Virginia to California, from Ireland to Singapore, and from Japan to Brazil; wherever you find yourself there’s a local instance of the same familiar set of services. And, in all likelihood, Australia will soon be added to the list. For those primarily interested in just serving both Europe...
Solar power in the data centre – solution or window dressing?
Most of us recognise that the Earth is warming and that — despite our planet’s temperatures having dramatically risen and fallen before — we humans must accept some measure of responsibility for the current changes. Already consuming at least 1.1-1.5% of global power, and only forecast to grow ever-more rapacious, the data centres that power our information...
Data Market Chat: Piyush Lumba discusses Microsoft’s Windows Azure Marketplace
As CEO Steve Ballmer has noted more than once, Microsoft’s future plans see the company going “all in” with the cloud. The company’s cloud play, Azure, offers the capabilities that we might expect from a cloud, and includes infrastructure such as virtual machines and storage as well as the capability to host and run software...
CloudCamp London: the Big Data Special
The CloudCamp unconference returned to London for the 14th time this evening, regaling a capacity crowd in the Crypt below Clerkenwell’s St James Church with several hours of discussion and debate on the somewhat elusive topic of ‘Big Data’. Rather rough notes of the proceedings follow, after the break.
TOSCA may prove a prescient name for new cloud standards effort
Last week, open standards body OASIS unveiled yet another shiny new standards effort. The OASIS Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) Technical Committee hopes to make it “easier to deploy cloud applications without vendor lock-in,” and to support moving from one cloud to another. The usual suspects — the likes of IBM, CA, and Cisco...
Top Level Domain for data answers the wrong question
British-born computer scientist Stephen Wolfram sees ongoing efforts to extend the Internet’s top-level domains (TLDs) beyond the familiar .com, .org, .uk etc as an opportunity to raise the profile of machine-readable data. In a blog post published yesterday, he argues that a new .data domain would increase “exposure of data on the internet—and [provide] added impetus for...
Nurturing the market for Data Markets
From Microsoft’s Azure Data Marketplace to the eponymous DataMarket, or InfoChimps, Factual, and Kasabi, there’s resurgent interest in the venerable business of collecting, curating, and commercialising data created by others. But despite investment and innovation, there isn’t yet the matching evidence for much use or — even — interest amongst prospective customers. In principle, at least, these data markets...
The myth of a data free trade policy
In my last post I looked at the USA PATRIOT Act, and at some of the ways in which it exemplifies differences in attitude and approach on either side of the Atlantic. In our increasingly connected world, these differences begin to pose quite serious challenges for those wishing to join up, to aggregate, and to...
Microsoft, the USA PATRIOT Act, and European cloud computing
Microsoft announced last month that its Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, Office 365, will better comply with European guidelines to ensure that customer data is adequately protected. This move is certainly welcome, but the long-armed spectre of the USA PATRIOT Act continues to hang over Microsoft and other US companies, regardless of customers’ nationality...
Of Kindles and Business Models and Stuff
Over at TechCrunch, MG Siegler’s 2 September post on Amazon’s new Kindle has generated quite a storm. All across the web, media, bloggers, pundits, analysts and the rest are pointing to MG’s post, getting terribly excited about a new tablet that might actually challenge the iPad; something that so many others have patently failed to...
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