Most blogs like this start off apologizing about not posting in a while, not here. When you are focused on getting shit done you just don't have time.
With that said, not only do we have our beta out the door, we are “Getting Shit Done Faster and Better!”
As the internet slowly moves into a social/collaboration type of platform we thought that a solid and simple product is needed to help this shift. I don't want to worry about desktop clients for various things I would like to do, I know how to use a web browser so why not keep it that simple. Why not give a product the ability to do what I need and keep that simple as well. So with this tasks in mind and a focus on a dumb guy like me being able to use it, our developers have come up with a wonderful idea.
We call our wonderful new baby software “i2” and have created an interesting activity center for collaboration. You can see a demo of the software here and access the beta here
At first we hear such comments as Facebook can do this, Google+ can do that, and with Dropbox I can do this. Well there are things in common but in the end:
We are not Facebook, Google+ or Dropbox!
- though I did mention to our developers I would like to play FarmVille from on our platform :-) -
In my opinion they are consumer products and very good ones too. Instead, our focus is on what you really care for. Be it an organization, a business improving on their work flow, students, teachers and professors to discuss, exchange and learn together, or for people just like you and me who value and enjoy getting things done without compromising on privacy.
To those I can say:
We have something for you in the works! We will build the best getting-shit-done-place for you in order to re-gain privacy, control what is yours, on what you care for, and on what is important to you.
Give it a try an let us know what you think -- i2
Now that we have defined the types of data commonly used in data analytics, we will move forward and look at some of the methods to collect the data.
Please excuse the confusing and somewhat loose usage of terms which happen quite often. I consider data analytics and data mining to be one in the same to a certain degree.
One of the most important things in data analytics is the empirical data, which can be defined as "data produced by an experiment or observation".
Traditionally the most common means to collect empirical data is the survey. A primitive however effective survey could be a simple questioner or product sample. This method can be used for everything from behavior patterns, consumer acceptance, up to understanding how people feel about various topics. This is seen even today for example walking through a shopping center and you are asked to test something, the national census in respective countries, or even people stopping you on the street or door to door asking questions about the community. This is a very tedious method and eventually it must become electronic so that it is somewhat easier to evaluate the data gathered. This is impractical in my opinion, however it does cover that “rare breed” of Homo sapiens that do not have a computer or internet (Like my 94 year old grandma). Though this may seem unstructured in the beginning because it is, the actual data is then structured by being placed into electronic form and then into a database. - WOW, now isn’t that a waste of time and money between initial data input and analytical output.....
A more common approach today is the use of online surveys. Again covering just about any topic and aspect, it is a bit more particle based on the fact the data is saved into a structured database for use at any time. Just go to about any web site and a pop up will appear asking to answer a few questions. In the end however it is just a more modernized way of collecting data compared to the above example. - Ok, a bit better but still old or historical data. By the way -
Please take a minute to answer our short survey - 5 questions on Real Time Data Analytics
The survey is a very typical approach to data collection or production via observation. Another common way to gain data is experimentation, which can lead to enormous amounts of data. This is a very interesting source of data, however it is one that has the most problems when it comes to saving the data somewhere. Electronic collection has become a standard in science in todays world, which may seem that it would be easier, however the lack of money in many of the scientific programs cause data to not be saved for comparison or reduces the amount empirical data that can be gathered. This is simply a physical limitation, simply put: low budget = less hard drives = important empirical data may not be saved for analyzing. I would go so far as to claim that this is not only a problem found with scientists, but also in may large commercial organizations that use empirical data to improve their offerings, brand protection, and business decision.
Based on this information, you may see why I consider my third type of data described in my earlier blog post may become extremely critical.
As you may imagine based on the very basic information above, it becomes easier to understand why it is claimed that many professionals in the field of data analytics will be needed in the future. The need for data analytics is huge, the amount of professionals is quite small. This will of course drive their market value extremely high and only large companies will be able to afford such highly qualified individuals. Companies such as Nielsen or GFK have been focused on data analytics which have helped them grow into enormous companies. I have also seen reports that IBM, EMC and HP are very concerned about this market as well, knowing that is is estimated at $200 billion by 2015 and the compute power needed to do this type of research. Alone these 5 companies can control this market based on the large need by many companies for data analytics and combined with the very good analysts will stay in scientific research programs at their universities once complete with school. Imagine the costs of data mining in the future if 5 major companies own the market, scary isn't it!
I do hope it is becoming clear, though indirect, how the third type of data I mentioned will become very important. I will discuss in the next post a bit more detailed on why I feel the 80% of the data that is not saved is more important than any other structured or unstructured data.
With a bit of luck we may even see a solution that can help every field interested in data analytics in the future, who knows?
Going against what I learned many years ago when I set out for my degree in computer science, I would like to explain the three types of data that I find interesting when looking at data mining.
First there is the structured data which in my opinion has the least importance. It is historical data, meaning that it happened in the past, and is placed in a very structured method somewhere. You can compare this to a card catalog in a library. If you are looking for a book, then you start with the first letter of the authors name, pull out that drawer, then go through the cards that are listed in alphabetical order, find the card and the location of the book is listed there. You then can follow the “mapping system” of the book shelves in the library and locate the book.
The next and very interesting type of data is unstructured data, which is a very important data type and probably the larger part of saved data anywhere. This can be anything from historical data to real time data. It is not kept in a very organized compared to structured data, however there are many methods to index this data now days to assist us in finding what is needed. Comparing this one is simple if you know me. Using the book reference from above, if I receive a new book I order from Amazon I get it in the mail, open it and take it to my home office. I read through it and place it somewhere in the office. It could be on the book shelf, could be in a desk drawer, or even just leave it on my desk. Now I know that object is saved somewhere, but not in a very tidy method. I also know that it is somewhere in my room if I need it again, but as more books arrive, documents are printed out, and mail comes in it could become difficult to locate it, or quite slow.
Thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/addie_oh_addie/ for the office pic, under a CC license.
The third category that I will put out there is the data that never gets saved, small events in time that happen, but someone did not save it. I have seen studies that claim that 80% of data created fall into this category. To base this example on the above two, when you get a book either from the library or my home office, you don’t know how it got there. Was it UPS, DHL, or even the guy next door accepted the package because I was not home. This is data, but it was not “saved”. This is also the real time data, that is happening now but will be forgotten in 5 minutes. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know how that book got there as it was happening? (ok, probably not but you get my point I hope)
I feel that the third type of data that I have listed, the 80% that is not saved, is the most interesting and critical data of all for data mining or better said analytics. If I want to know what is going on now I just can not use structured data, obviously because it has already happened so it is not interesting. If using unstructured data I also have a problem of historical vs. real time, for many companies are claiming real time but just are not delivering. There is also a scalability problem with unstructured data, looking simultaneously at various data streams, and of course if it is not saved somewhere then that moment is gone.
In order to keep these posts short, I will continue in the next part about how the types of data are being used for data mining. It will be interesting to look at todays common methods, the short comings in the near future and what is being done to help conquer these short comings.
all other prictures used in my blog that are not directly listed as a CC license are used from WikiCommons under OpenSource license
As a brief introduction to this series, we will start off with just a small example of who is using such a technique and why.
When people look at the term “data mining” they think about computer geeks hovering over their keyboards, getting excited about a bunch of formulas and mixing them together. Just for the record this is only a very small part of this amazing large market.
Let’s start with journalists, people always looking to combine various means of gaining information, scrubbing this, and trying to be the first to report the next big thing.
Then there are the marketing agencies, scouring through the information provided by the web each day. Did you ever wonder why Facebook ads on the right of your profile are kinda related to what you like? Perhaps you thought it was pretty cool or scary that google searches always have advertisements that are focused on what you search for and in your area? And then there are those web pages you visit and the advertisement is from that same company you looked at yesterday that seemed pretty interesting?
Common businesses use this as well for everything from new product research, consumer acceptance on products, to brand protection. It is critical for companies to have such information, and as quickly as possible.
So it is interesting to see just a few of these areas that are dependent on data mining. One of the biggest challenges today is that the people that need it have difficulty doing it.
Recently I have seen reports and blogs stating that there will be over 190,000 unfilled positions alone in the US shortly. These are the jobs in the top companies of the world, knowing that a small to normal size organization could never afford such specialist (does supply and demand ring a bell in relation to their salaries?) So what is being done for the “normal” people of the world that can not afford to hire such a data specialist?
I guess I will stop there for today, before I write a novel length blog post. Next I will speak about the types of data that is being mined, from historical to realtime, structured to unstructured, and the lack of various combinations - such as realtime and unstructured, which is the most interesting and valuable of all.
Reading through various tweets today I came across one (thanks @RayDePena) where it was recommended to read "10 Cloud-Based Apps that give Mid-Sized Companies a Competitive Edge". For some reason when I had seen the term "cloud" in this headline I instantly thought of rain clouds....
When it rains we all get wet, so what is the difference? Imagine a group of 50 people walking through the city and it starts to rain. Everyone would get wet, so there is no difference. You would rarely just see one person with an umbrella, you would see at least 50% of the people with one.
Now let's think about this for a minute.......
If my company is one of these people with an umbrella and 24 others are using one then we are better than the other half. However I have nothing better or better said no competitive edge over the other 24 people using an umbrella. Perhaps the color of my umbrella is brighter or it may be bigger, but in the end all 25 stay dry. No competitive edge at all here!
Let's now look at this in a real world IT situation:
Common "rain cloud" recipe:
Mix everything together, bake for 2 minutes at 350 and (ta-daaaa!) you can now serve your (rain) cloud.
Does this make me a cloud adapter? Does it give me an edge over my competition?
I guess you could answer NO to both questions. Come on, just because I use a few applications in the cloud does not make me a cloud adapter. It just shows that I know how to invest my money properly so that I can grow my company without outrageous costs of the infrastructure. Most of all I do not know how on earth I have an edge over the competition if we all use the same simple recipe.
I do believe that people are getting caught up in this "bubble" called cloud (scary thoughts of 2002 enter my head). I am not knocking these guys that are stirring up open source solutions with a twist of lemon. They do have good products, but there is nothing different about them. Everyone that is using such solutions MUST shape their business around what is available from them, again no difference!
I guess it is time for a company to come up with a software that has no boundaries, allows for commodity hardware (even old systems I have sitting around), and designs custom apps to help me achieve my business goals and increase the revenue that I can achieve with proper use of my most valuable asset - my DATA!
My personal opinion is that we are being taken down a dead end road with the current software offer for the cloud or "big data", which I feel is why wew are seeing the effect of no major move into the cloud by businesses. These solutions do not help us use our data more effective nor do they shape to my business needs. I only see a financial restructuring of how IT money is being spent, but it is not helping me become more effective and it only gives me an edge on spending if my competitors buy expensive infrastructure based solutions.
What I really want is a software that can assure me the proper governance of my data, lets me design my own cloud using commodity hardware or multiple cloud storage offerings, give me apps that I can have custom tailored for me and let me be creative so that I can actually have an edge over my competition.
Kinda like....
"Give me a software that I can shape to my business, because I do not want to base my business on your solution!"
In the end this is what will make the difference, a software that can make me a leader in my market and not just a follower.
(just as a side note: Did you ever see a successful follower?)
I guess to sum it up I can only say that there is much confusion in the cloud application world today. When I look up I see only rain clouds and like most rain clouds they will dissipate eventually and what will be left behind is a few fluffy white clouds in a wonderful blue sky. I figure it will take about 3-6 months for the sun to start coming through and force away some of the rain clouds, and about a year or two until it all clears up. When it does it will be a wonderful sight with a few effective fluffy whites....
I can't wait to see who the few fluffy white vendors are when it all clears up, but I know one company that sure is trying to get their customers and the rest of the world out of the rain!
One of the oldest issues in the market is how to stay competitive..... Once I move into a cloud, how can I stay competitive?
It is no secret that there are many cost saving advantages to moving into a cloud structure, as is reflected in the success of the major players in the market such as Amazon and Google. We also see Yahoo joining the ranks in March with a new idea on how to manage the data, though it is still in Alpha stage. Now we find ourselves faced with a very large and cheap opportunity for using external service such as data asset management based in the cloud.
This idea combined with many new companies showing up on the radar that offer open source software solutions to build a private cloud is becoming interesting. This will certainly lead to a very large drop in OPEX enabling us to use "cheap"or commodity hardware as a basis for a very efficient data asset collection area, or as it is commonly called today "storage".
However, will this help me in the long run to stay competitive? When is the next phase in the evolution of clouds coming?
How can I stay competitive if everyone is using the same things to manage and store their data? Open source is a very good alternative today to maintain a low cost infrastructure, along with the very inexpensive price/GB offered by the large companies. Unfortunately every offering is very similar today and will not help me differentiate from my competition. If the competitor is using a service from one of the big guys, and I decide to create a private cloud based on an open source offering, we have a small delta in the CAPEX but quite a similar OPEX in the long run. Adding to the options I have today, if I want to manage my data assets I will also need the assistance of 3rd party appliances or software regardless of which cloud I decide to utilize. This means that I have a very low cost/GB however I would increase the complexity of my infrastructure with many new products that all have to be managed, and most from different management tools. At this point I will leave out the variable of eventual high cost traffic bandwidth, as my data grows.
Now I am sure it is common knowledge based on past posts here that I am a bit strange.
Today I was walking through a hardware store and while looking around an idea hit me. What if the cloud was a nice big roll away tool box, and it was full of tools so I can work on just about anything that would come up. Just a one time purchase and I have everything I need! However, if I do forget something I can always head down to the hardware store and buy what I need to complete the next project.
I would love to see the cloud evolve into a tool box. I can imagine a big roll away tool box that is called "the unstructured object container tool box". Within my tool box I would have many tools, so that I do not have to keep buying tools for each new project I start, but do not have to pay for all the tools up front that I do not need. When I need the tool I just reach in, grab it, and use it. That Simple!
Now to come back to earth, I guess the evolution of the cloud could look quite similar. A simple custom tool box cloud as my data asset container. Within my tool box I am equipped with many tools to help me manage and better use the data assets, and if I am missing the tool then it is a simple add-on that I can add within seconds. One interface that can do everything......
With such an idea, no two clouds would look alike helping me differentiate myself from the my competition, and hopefully gives me an advantage in the market.
The evolution of the cloud.... actually the more I think about this, the more excited I get. Imagine the tools that I could add - a nice chrome archiving tool, a gold plated real time data mining tool, or even a bronze object de-dup tool........
Reading through blogs today, I came across a very interesting entry in the 37Signals blog dated 13 Jan. Here they referred to Tim Ferriss' idea on "Tolerable Mediocrity".
"It's worse to tolerate your job than to hate it because, if the pain is painful enough, you'll make a change" he says. "But if it's tolerable mediocrity, and you're like, 'Well, you know it could be worse. At least I'm getting paid.' Then you wind up in a job that is slowly killing your soul and you're allowing that to happen. Comfort can be a very, very dangerous thing."
I feel sometimes that the IT world is headed in this direction. If we look a the topic of distibuted object management, we see the current technology being used over and over again, just bundled in a different way. If we look at the main direction of distributed object management you will see that it seems to be commonly accepted to use eventual consistent solution, partly based on Brewer's CAP Theorem that there is a trade off between availability and consistency. The definition that I seem to agree with the most is that of Amazon.com's CTO Werner Vogels in his paper:
-------------------------------------
Eventually Consistent - Building reliable distributed systems at a worldwide scale demands trade-offs between consistency and availability.
Eventual consistency. This is a specific form of weak consistency; the storage system guarantees that if no new updates are made to the object, eventually all accesses will return the last updated value. If no failures occur, the maximum size of the inconsistency window can be determined based on factors such as communication delays, the load on the system, and the number of replicas involved in the replication scheme. The most popular system that implements eventual consistency is DNS (Domain Name System). Updates to a name are distributed according to a configured pattern and in combination with time-controlled caches; eventually, all clients will see the update.
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In the end being a sales guy, I finally found a blog post that takes this down into terms a dumb guy like me understands. In Claudio Martella's blog he does a very good analogy with NoSQL (which is also based on the concept of eventual consistent) and low cost airlines in Europe. However it wasn't until the very last paragraph that I had to laugh out loud and figure what would happen if the world would tolerat this:
"the analogy would work better if the low-cost carriers would offer an "eventual landing" with the flight ticket....."
This is probably one of the best statements I have read in quite a while, being someone that is a fan of trying to get away from an eventual consistent type of environement that would be scalable and have high availibility, though I guess I will never win against the CAP Theorem. This goes to show that the IT world is falling into this idea of "Tolerable Mediocrity" when it comes to distributed object management. While researching the the basic idea of eventual consistent, I have come across papers dating back to 1975 where this was discussed, and not much has been done to try and improve this.
There are of course many debates on the pros and cons of such, but it seems to be widely accepted. Thank you Kannan Muthukkaruppan of Facebook for going against this idea and trying something different. Otherwise this would be an unspoken acknowledgement that people are satisfied with ideas that are only 80% of a possible 100%. If you are a father like me, just imagine your daughter coming home and saying "Dad, I am 80% sure I am pregnant." I guess I would only have an 80% chance to have a heart attack........
Why not try to complete the 100% and come up with something that is always consistent, scalable and highly reliable?
Could this be due to the idea of sustainment as described in The Innovator's Dilemma by C. Christensen?
I do bet that the company who would go 100% and try to achieve such a distributed object management environment that is always consistent, scalable and highly reliable (or very close to it) will be the big winners in the long run. After all, over 35 years of Eventual Consistent being accepted, this would be a true Disruptive Technology!
Travelling down the road today in the world of Oraclun (My fantasy world representing the giant Oracle/Sun) I noticed a billboard on the side of the road that looked like:
The Future is here!
(Picture courtesy of Oracle)
It really started my head spinning, going through all that saved information hidden within that amazing hard drive that was placed between my ears just prior to birth. I was going through many thoughts, thinking about the world of tapes, 2012, tapes, 2012, tapes, 2012.... for some reason I can only think of an "end of the world" scenario when I think about the tapes. Then I realize hard drive companies have said a million times, "Tape is dead!" They have brain-washed me.......
So why would a *clear throat* software company come up with such a tape? The fact is that they are held captive by their customer and they (the customer) drive the industry wanting more, more, more - often helping even the giants make bad decisions and help them down the road to nowhere.
Is it really that simple?
I can't believe that tape is dead, but I have seen signs - perhaps just a dream, or maybe a book I read - that the industry is heading in the wrong direction.
If we refer to a book that I adore by Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma, we will see clearly what is going on based on his analogy:
"An example that has nothing to do with “high tech” comes from the mechanical excavator industry. This industry was dominated by steam shovels until the 1920’s, when gasoline powered engines began to replace them. This was, however, not a disruptive innovation, but a sustaining one, even though the design of the machines changed radically from that of a steam-powered system of cables, to that of a gasoline engine driving a system to extend and retract the cable connected to the bucket. The new engines were more capable than the old ones, and were better at doing more work more reliably, and cheaper than the old system. Despite the radical change in the industry, the same firms that were strongest in steam shovels stayed on top. The disruptive change came with the introduction of hydraulic-actuated systems after World War II - a change that eliminated nearly all of the established players by about 1970, in favor of companies that entered the market with hydraulics. The first hydraulic-based excavators were less capable than the cable systems that were in existence, and certainly couldn’t compete with them. However, they were small enough that they could be deployed for jobs previously done by hand, opening up a new market, in which the desired attributes were quite different from the big jobs that the cable actuated excavators were used for. The technology involved in hydraulics continued to improve, however, and with time eventually equaled and then surpassed the needs formerly filled by cable-based systems. In the meantime, though, the established firms were still going strong, and didn’t do much, if anything, to deal with the new competitor (because it wasn’t really seen as a competitor, not being sufficient for their existing clients’ demands) until the new arrivals were “in the midst of their mainstream market”. By the time the established companies introduced their own hydraulics, however, it was too late, and the later entrants were by then better positioned with the new technology."
So how did I get from tape to excavators?
The same way I will now jump into a cloud. There are one or two companies that have created something new, a "disruptive technology", that can really change the world. They have learned from the cloud, and they understand how to implement their technology to improve business of their customers, not just sustain it.
The benefits of such a market player are clearly outlined in the example from C. Christensen.
Just as a side note - While I was heading down the road looking at the billboard, I did not see the small advertisement just below it telling me how I can save tons of money, get away from large vendor lock in, and use a new technology that would actually help me generate new revenue with my data by using it more efficient. Now if that doesn't show how the big guys can influence the markets, then I don't know how to explain it.
Look out for the small company that is not listening to the market and try something bold and new, keeping under the billboard of the large players. These can become the giants of the future, if they follow the lessons that they have learned from other's mistakes. They also have to believe in their technology and be teachers, able to educate customers to leave the vicious circle of sustainment. I feel as if I lived through this already from 1997 to 2006 in that small company I once worked for called NetApp.
If we look at Oracle, you almost have to laugh and think why did they do such a thing. They are a software company that control a very large part of the market. If they were to spend their r&d money smartly, they could probably develop a software that would rule tape obsolete. But they listened to the market and decided to sustain it, by focusing on something that the customer will like and spend money on.
I personally prefer the smaller companies, that are there to help make tape and disk obsolete (ok, at least a very cheap commodity). They come up with something new, they learn from mistakes others have made, and best of all they show customers a way to improve business not just sustain something that has been done for years the same way. By the time these big guys wake up and realize what is going on it is usually too late, so they continue to sustain old technologies - am I right oh great gods of Oraclun?
So now the question is "red pill" or "blue pill" - sustainment or innovation?
I'll always choose the blue pill!
So I mentioned this small gem that I was lucky enough to come across, and think that they get it.........
So what do they do?
Their focus is creating a data "bucket" that the applications can speak to, with a very simple way of adding functions that are business oriented. The idea is basically to have a base software that creates a highly redundant data bucket that is 100% consistant. Then there is the wonderful world of API plug-ins to customize various processes within a business to help simplify everything. I thought this is a great idea, a simple data infrastructure that is not based on anything expensive and is very easy to manage or add new automated business processes. This also allows me to have a very scale out data bucket, that is spread out over many areas. This could be 2 or 3 different fire zones within the physical building or spread over 2 or 3 countries. Now I have a whole new idea for working with my most valuable asset, my data. Of course this is not what the world is used to, so it will be a very difficult educational period teaching people to let go of their infrastructure oriented thinking, and move to a thought pattern of how can I improve my business by being able to manage my data in a more effective way. It is hard for people that have been in the IT market for a long time to understand something that they have never seen before.
- take a few cheap servers
- install a base software on it, turning them into a highly redundant data market
- review your applications and improve the work flow of the applications
- not have to "tune" applications to work on various storage systems, but tune the data bucket to work better with your applications
- imagine a better way to work with your objects in your data market, and be able to implement such a way
- scale out as needed, without risky things such as thin-provisioning
- best of all, there is no mention of a gateway or some type of appliance. Just software that can run on anything (hmmm, there goes my save money alarm again)
To keep it simple, it really looks like this:
To sum it up for now, we can just call it a very nice business enabled toolkit, that allows for domain driven customization, and let the customer focus on their business. Ok, now with all that out there, I am interested to see if someone will comment and let me know a better way to do such things. I was impressed so much I left the world of storage hardware vendors, and started to work for this company with such a wonderful way of..... Changing the world of data!
Ok, bad title..... or did it get your interest?
How do I want to change the world? Simplicity - it is as simple as that.
Let's first look at some common things in the world today that are simple, such as a smart phone. I personally use an iPhone, which I love due to how simple it is-
- I take a picture, and the App saves the object for me.
- There is no user-visible file system that needs to be taken care of
- If I want something new on the phone, I just click on an icon, agree to T&Cs, it downloads and I can use it
- There is no more complicated things like setting up email clients, I just select the email app I want to use and I get my email
I look at younger generations today, and realize how addicted they are to such simple things. I ask myself if this due to how simple it is and/or saving the most valuable asset that everyone owns - Time. If I can save time with just a few taps on an icon, then I am 100% for such a device. Now let us take this one step further into our daily business. If I could run my company on such a simple way of doing things this would probably add to the success, or at least in saving money. Of course I can not change everything in a company to make it simple, but I can focus on an area that has been a large part of my OPEX over the years.
In reviewing the standard applications of today that are very storage intense, I am sure we can figure out how to improve the layer between applications and storage. Up to recent times there were always expensive storage systems, that take time to administer, have very expensive service contracts, but they work and work very well. So I have a an option to pay a high price for the comfort of having a top storage infrastructure that will work.
Now as we move into the more recent past, there are quite a few new things that have made life easier and saved money one of which is the "Cloud". There are such things as S3 clouds services, gateways to help access the S3 services for various applications, and many companies that are riding this wave and claiming they can do great things but in the end it is a matter of buying some type of proprietary hardware to enable such simplicity. Of course this is not the case in the S3 cloud services, you can just save things there. The biggest problem with such services is the bandwidth that may be used and this gets very expensive really quick. There is also the old question of almost consistant data vs. high reliability in the modern world. Of course going back to our older methods of taking one of the major storage companies, buying their expensive hardware and service contracts you can avoid such a trade off. However, as you see in the world today things are not getting cheaper regardless of which way you choose. This then pushes some companies into a decision to save money with the newer methods, however you have to pay for the trade off with almost consistant data, but high reliability. Also you get into an area where many vendors are needed to accomplish what you want to do.
- you would have your main cloud provider
- the "appliance" to do various things (such as WAN latency improvement)
- hardware gateways to help improve performance and functionality of various applications (like backup/archiving)
- etc.....
So this is not as simple as most vendors make it out to be.
This moved me to thinking about turning everything into a world of commodity and simplicity. I then came across a small gem hidden just north of Frankfurt, Germany.
They just get it!
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