Latest News from Bill McColl

Cloud Computing for Everyone

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:00:00 EST

Cloud computing really is a game changer. It provides an infrastructure on which it is now possible for hundreds of millions of non-programmers to become serious app developers. In computing, big revolutions happen whenever a new technology comes along that enables everyone to do something that could previously only be done by a small number of technology experts, or only by those with tons of money and technical talent. Personal computing (Microsoft, Apple), Publishing (Adobe), Search (Google), Video (YouTube), News/Journalism (blogs) are all examples of this kind of disruptive revolutionary change. What's the next big game changer? In a word - Apps! We are about to move to an era in which everyone will be able to build their own apps - business apps, web apps, financial apps,...

Got Excel? Go Cloud in 2010

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:30:00 EST

At the recent Hadoop World conference, Doug Cutting, Hadoop Project Founder, remarked that "The Dream" was to provide non-programmers with the power of parallel cloud computing tools such as MapReduce and Hadoop, via simple, easy-to-use spreadsheet-like interfaces. Not only can you develop and launch massively parallel MapReduce/Hadoop-style cloud computations, simply and seamlessly from within the standard Excel interface, you can also go way beyond tools such as Elastic MapReduce and Hadoop, developing and launching live, continuous, realtime stream processing applications in the cloud, from that same Excel interface.

25 Years of Big Data: From SQL To The Cloud

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:00:00 EST

Today what's needed is smart IT systems that can automatically analyze, filter and push exactly the right data to users in realtime, just when they need it. Oh, and since no one wants to own data processing hardware and software any more, those IT systems should be in the cloud.

Excel Meets The Cloud

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:45:00 EST

Data is revolutionizing how we live and work, and it's growing exponentially everywhere. Faced with this information explosion, experienced programmers are now using parallel processing tools such as MapReduce/Hadoop, rather than SQL databases, to analyze large repositories of stored, historical data. The next major step in this direction is to bring the full power of advanced data mining and analytics, realtime stream processing, and massively parallel computing to everyone, not just to experienced programmers.

Cloud Analytics: Dataflow vs Databases

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:34:00 EDT

As the need for realtime analytics grows we will continue to see a migration away from databases and towards more scalable parallel dataflow architectures for analytics. For twenty years, analytics has been viewed as just one specific area within the broader relational database industry. So, analytics has meant databases. Today that view is changing. Over the past year or so, a new movement, the "NoSQL" movement has emerged promoting the advantages of doing a variety of kinds of analytics without using any relational database technologies at all.

Cloud Analytics Checklist

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:30:00 EDT

What are enterprise users looking for from a cloud analytics solution? Realtime + Historical Data. In addition to analyzing (historical) data held in databases (Oracle, SQLServer, DB2, MySQL) or datastores (Hadoop, Amazon Elastic MapReduce), a next-gen analytics solution needs to be able to analyze, filter and transform live data streams in realtime, with low latency, and to be able to "push" just the right data, at the right time, to users throughout the enterprise. With SQL/OLAP or Hadoop/MapReduce, users "pull" historical data via queries or programs to find what they need, but for many analytics scenarios today what's needed instead, to handle information overload is a continuous "realtime push" model where "the data finds the user".

Cloud Analytics

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:30:00 EDT

Business analytics is a major established sector of the IT industry, but it's one that's ripe for disruption. Cloud analytics is hot. Gartner's top two strategic technologies for the enterprise in 2010 are cloud computing and advanced analytics. Venture capitalist Ann Winblad, in a recent video, points out that the coming era of realtime cloud analytics will have a revolutionary impact on the enterprise, creating a radically new "innovation palette" for businesses of all kinds.

Welcome To The Realtime Intercloud

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:00:00 EDT

As massive historical data sets and torrential realtime data streams flow into public and private clouds around the planet, the intercloud becomes essential to support new applications and services that are able to run across these clouds.

The Intercloud: Turning Computing Inside Out

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:30:00 EDT

For fifty years we've been moving data to where the computing power is. With intercloud computing, the world is going to look quite different, with the computing power moving to where the data is. The intercloud turns computing inside out. With traditional IT, we move the data to where the computing infrastructure is located. With the data volumes in most application areas now growing exponentially, this IT model is now broken. Moving massive volumes of data around means more bandwidth, more storage, and more latency.

The Intercloud: Coming to a Desktop or Mobile Device Near You

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:24:00 EDT

Twenty years ago, the work of Tim Berners-Lee gave birth to the WWW and ushered in the internet revolution. Now, in 2009, we stand on the threshold of another major disruption in computing, as computing begins to move to a worldwide network of clouds, the Intercloud.

The Intercloud: Realtime Apps

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:46:00 EDT

A realtime data explosion is underway throughout business, finance, government, health, media, science, sensors and the web. Individuals and organizations that had only recently figured out how to cope with thousands or millions of events per day are now drowning in billions of realtime events per day, and for leading organizations the number is rapidly heading towards ONE TRILLION EVENTS PER DAY. Gigabyte databases are history, multi-terabyte datastores are now routine even for small businesses, and for leading web businesses the size is now in the petabytes.

The Intercloud

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:45:00 EDT

Within five years we will have dozens of public clouds and thousands of private clouds. The intercloud is now taking shape and will be the infrastructure on which the next generation of apps and services will be built. At Cloudscale we have been developing the first intercloud platform - a platform for the world’s realtime apps, with seamless integration from desktop or mobile clients to realtime intercloud analytics.

What's Really Industry Changing About Cloud Computing?

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 20:00:00 EDT

This is an incredibly important time for the cloud computing area. What are some of the new directions in the massively parallel cloud computing space? I’ll mention four that I’m particularly interested in, that are exciting and challenging, and that I think will have a huge impact on the industry.