If you haven’t heard, Greenplum was just bought by EMC. This, to me, was not unexpected. Smaller players need a lot of funds to create compelling products in this space. Even with a compelling product (and Greenplum’s product is compelling), getting to that next stage may very well require a deep pocketed sugar mommy (or in the case of EMC, sugar daddy). And don’t even get me started about cracking the corporate IT garden. You really want to have a big name player attached to you in some way, shape or form. Other companies left in this space would do well to start looking. I do wonder where Vertica is going to land. And will anyone purchase Dataupia? Will Netezza join the ranks of the big boys or will it too get acquired?
The database markets are saturated. There are a ton of companies fighting over the same spaces: spaces that is getting served by a lot of open source projects and/or by the major appliance players. NoSQL and cloud are changing the rules. The appliance companies are trickling down with software solutions to match their screaming hardware (or, in the case of Oracle, trickling up). The landscape is changing and companies not playing with heavy hitters are doing the work themselves. And finding that up to a point, it’s really not horrid. That last part is due, in no small measure, to companies like Facebook and Google releasing their code to the open source community. Additionally programs like Drizzle, I believe, are already creating a compelling argument that open source projects can supply 90%+ of a database user’s needs with lot less pain than a few years ago. Add in memcache and, well, I don’t envy any database company targeting data sents under a few hundred gig.
For any new database company to make it, to me, they need to offer some compelling, game changing ideas. I’ve heard a few bantered about – and some are neat. However game changing? I haven’t seen it. VoltDB? Infobrite? Neat but not game changing.
I really need to stop writing about database companies and start talking more about my awesome new vocational field – robotics.
And now for something completely different. I love lego. I love Ted. Together you get this wonderful talk.
A little bit ago, I started to think about different backup strategies for the information that I do not wish to lose in case of drive failures or fires. This includes important applications, music and photos. At first I was looking at NAS, but I really don’t want to admin that and I did like the idea of offsite storage. Plus, after a double hard drive failure a few years back, all it takes is one good spike to take everything out.
Having worked in a cloud based company, I realized that someone must have a cheap solution to my problem. I quickly started looking at the prime players: Amazon’s S3, Google Docs, Carbonite, and Mozy. I quickly removed Mozy and Carbonite from the list as I wanted incremental backup without deleting files I delete locally (I wanted true persistent storage). This left Google Docs and S3. Actually, Skydrive from Microsoft was also an option, but 25g (even though free) just wasn’t enough for me.
Comparing prices and who I’m already deeply entwined with, Google docs won. For $100 USD I get 400gigs of online storage. That’s a hard price to beat. The only issue left to me was the interface. Google docs is not designed for exactly what I needed but it does have a fairly robust API.
Thankfully I didn’t need to write the app I wanted, gladinet already exists and it was cheap enough to qualify as an impulse buy. So far, it meets all my needs and then some. It took a minute to set up. The interface, while not perfect, is easy enough to figure out. And it’s not a resource hog. What’s not to love?
I’ve been rather busy these past few weeks as I come up to speed on my new job. During this period I’ve had several thoughts that keep coming back into my head.
The first is that process has to make the product and the path to product get better. A lot of people share this mantra with me. The trick is to figure out what this means, per company, and how to apply it (or remove it). This is something that I’ve played with at almost every company I’ve been at over the last 10 years or so. There aren’t silver bullets and there is trial and error.
Another thought that I find myself frequently coming back to is that at the end of the day, seeing an actual piece of hardware as your product is more fulfilling, to me, than something in the clouds. Don’t get me wrong, I love all the great work going on in the clouds – and I plan on utilizing it more and more (hello offsite storage!) but for me, at this stage, tripping over robots is pretty damn neat. And more satisfying. I guess you could say my years in database helped me appreciate embedded development.
Now that time is sort of returning to normal, I do plan to return to posting more thoughts on management and a lot more thoughts on robotics and AI/Machine Intelligence. For example, this site has gotten a lot of my free time attention of late – aigamedev.
I’m a little behind on photo sharing. I had a few shoots and then I was off to Germany for a week (it’s always wonderful seeing people I consider to be family). Anyway, this is not about Germany, this is about a photo shoot. The goal of this shoot was to show off the human body. I’m still working on a lot of the images, but this particular one I loved.
I found out today, 4 years after the fact, that my master’s adviser, Prof. Schmoltze, died. I can’t even begin to fathom this. He wasn’t old by any stretch, and his spirit was, well, younger than mine.
In fact, I don’t think I would have completed my grad work without him. Prof Schmoltze was always ready with a quick smile, a joke, an insight or an idea. He, more than anyone else, inspired me to concentrate on AI for my masters work. I barely knew him during my undergrad – but I do remember a few hallway and lab conversations with him. He cared.
We were in CT and our friends have a lovely daughter.
I have 2 more photo shoots to work on and some more thoughts on CMMI and Agile to get together. I must admit, I’ve spent these past few days, between jobs, enjoying the outdoors. Now that this is coming to a close, I’ll be certain to return to my regular posting schedule
Why yes, I’ve been wrapping up one job and preparing to move to another – and that is why I haven’t had time to make many substantial posts of late. However, I’m hoping some photos help make my limited management/engineering blogging a little easier.
