IT departments must transform in the face of the cloud revolution

During the week of October 5th, I had an opportunity to attend the AWS re:Invent 2015 conference in Las Vegas, of all places. As someone who has built an entire career on putting together custom application server software, I should be the last one to get excited about server-less applications. Just like Salesforce’s “no software,” Amazon’s “server-less software” mantra is about a world where application development is not limited by IT, software to install and servers to manage.

Top Ten Differences Between ActiveMQ and Amazon SQS

UPDATE 2/15/2018: This post was originally published in 2015. While it is informative in its own right, a lot has changed in AWS since then. In particular, AWS now offers managed ActiveMQ. Please read a more up-to-date article on the topic: Which AWS messaging and queing service to use? 1. Persistence and Durability ActiveMQ Depending on … Continue reading Top Ten Differences Between ActiveMQ and Amazon SQS

Ten Questions to Consider Before Choosing Cassandra

  1. Do you know what your queries will look like ? In traditional SQL you design your data model to represent your business objects. Your queries can then evolve over time and can be ad-hoc. You can even create views, materialized or otherwise, to facilitate even more complex analytical queries. Cassandra does not offer … Continue reading Ten Questions to Consider Before Choosing Cassandra

Smart IT Departments Own Their Business API and Take Ownership of Data Governance

Satya Nadella explained Microsoft's “secret” weapon against AWS and Google: To me what matters is having the right mix of SaaS value. I don’t think of my server business as somehow “old school” or “legacy.” I actually think of the server as the edge of my cloud. We now have the ability to tie together … Continue reading Smart IT Departments Own Their Business API and Take Ownership of Data Governance

Guaranteeing Delivery of Messages with AWS SQS

I wanted to scratch an itch and get feedback from the open-source community. So, I put together a little Github project that I like to call SQS-RetryQueue. Amazon SQS can be utilized to guarantee delivery and processing of messages. This project serves the following purposes: Demonstrate an example of using AWS SQS with Java to … Continue reading Guaranteeing Delivery of Messages with AWS SQS

Building a Supercomputer in AWS: Is it even worth it ?

The fact that Cray is still around is mind boggling. You'd think that commodity hardware and network technologies have long made supercomputing affordable for anyone interested. And yet, Cray Sells One of the World's Fastest Systems: “This, to IDC’s knowledge, is the largest supercomputer sold into the O&G sector and will be one of the … Continue reading Building a Supercomputer in AWS: Is it even worth it ?