AppFog CEO Lucas Carlson isn’t shy about touting PaaS as the ideal way for developers to access cloud computing resources, but he also knows it’s not mainstream. In this inforgraphic illustrating the evolution of cloud computing, Carlson says PaaS will hit its stride in 2013. Read More »
Bio:Derrick has been a technology journalist since 2003 and has been covering cloud computing, big data and other emerging IT trends for GigaOM since 2009. He has written the words “cloud” and “Hadoop” possibly more than any other person on the planet. Derrick lives in Las Vegas and has a law degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Away from the office, Derrick trains in muay thai and is active in animal welfare issues.
Latest Tweets
- OH at the San DIego Zoo elephant display: "Why does it have an extra leg?" (the kid wasn't talking about its trunk)
- How Intuit uses big data to ‘delight’ you http://t.co/tOLOfFOg < social media are consumers' "Batphone to your company"
- As a term that describes something, "data science" is no better than "big data." I think they're just regional variations.
My Focus
Cloud computing
Big data
Recent Posts
For eBay, big data is serious business. Every day, the site stores and analyzes data from millions of users buying, selling and searching for hundreds of millions of products. It handles all this data with lots of Hadoop, although a good data warehouse doesn’t hurt either. Read More »
According to a predictive analysis experiment by a Yahoo data scientist, U.S. voters can expect to see either a Mitt Romney-Chris Christie or a Newt Gingrich-Marco Rubio ticket to face off against Obama-Biden in this year’s presidential election, if his data is accurate. Read More »
The great thing about big data is that there’s still plenty of room for new blood, especially for companies that want to leave infrastructure in the rearview mirror. At this point, the data-infrastructure space, including Hadoop, is well-funded and nearly saturated, but it also needs help. Read More »
Rightly or wrongly, Facebook catches a lot of flak for impeding on privacy by selling user information to advertisers and generally enabling too much sharing. But would users care so much if Facebook gave them a cut of the profits it generates by selling their data? … Read More »
In the fight to determine who dictates web privacy, web users are like a a chew toy at risk of being torn asunder by two competing dogs — played this week by Google and the European Union. But the best option is empower consumers themselves. Read More »
Developers concerned about confining their apps to a single cloud need worry no more. If they’re willing to utilize Cloud Foundry, the open-source PaaS project, developers can now run apps that move seamlessly between any infrastructure already running a Cloud Foundry-based service. Read More »
More Must Reads
Ad-targeting company 33Across is acquiring link-tracking specialist Tynt Multimedia, resulting in a combined user graph spanning 1.25 billion users. Both are storing and analyzing billions of transactions daily, and they will use that data to help publishers compete on ad sales against mega sites like Google. Read More »
Amazon Web Services is rolling out a new feature called Storage Gateway that lets companies upload data to its cloud-storage services directly from their on-premise storage systems. This should enable cloud cloud backup and cloud bursting without worries about latency as data traverses the Internet. Read More »
Former Yahoo VP and chief cloud architect Todd Papaioannou is working on a stealth-mode startup called Continuuity, which aims to make it easier for developers to create data-focused cloud applications. The company has raised a $2.5 million seed round from Battery Ventures and Andreessen-Horowitz. Read More »
Google announced a new privacy policy and new terms of service that eliminate some 60-odd disparate policies across its myriad services. But fewer separate policies also means less privacy for some as Google finally delivers on its vision of a unified platform. Read More »
On Monday, the Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional in most cases to use GPS to track suspects without a warrant — calling the attachment of a GPS device to a suspect’s property a trespass — but the Court declined to address some major privacy issues also … Read More »
IBM is working the reins of its Smarter Commerce initiative by rolling out a new Netezza analytics appliance designed to help retailers churn through potentially petabytes of consumer sales data in real time. It’s trying to capitalize on the increased importance of e-commerce to revenues. Read More »
Now that human genomes will soon take only one day and $1,000 to sequence, life is about to get a lot easier for medical researchers, but a lot more difficult for companies trying to make a buck selling them tools to store and analyze genomic data. Read More »
Security-software company Sourcefire is trying to help large-enterprise IT teams leverage big data analytics in fighting malware. A new product, called FireAMP, utilizes a cloud-based analytics approach to let IT teams dig deep to find out the hows, wheres and whys of their malware problems. Read More »
SOPA and PIPA supporters still have faith in their shelved bills, citing the jobs they’ll save as making the bills worthy of salvage. However, the Internet economy is a potential job creator the likes of which Hollywood — already its own worst enemy — could ever … Read More »
Executives at NoSQL startups are keeping a brave face in response to Amazon Web Services’ new DynamoDB offering. They cite the new product as a validation, while generally dismissing the competitive ramifications of having Amazon now playing in the same pool. But is that confidence justified? Read More »
The impending SOPA and PIPA bills have the Internet in a tizzy, but Congress has a lot more to think about than just intellectual property. The issues at play in the SOPA debate have broad effects that span everything from the digital divide to international commerce. Read More »
Although the first couple years of commercial Hadoop attention have been characterized by an attitude of “Hadoop is great, but …”, the tone is changing as Hadoop vendors increase the platform’s palatableness with each new iteration. No longer is Hadoop necessarily an epic undertaking rife … Read More »
Somewhat lost in the greater story of Amazon Web Services’ new DynamoDB NoSQL database is that the new service runs atop a solid-state storage system. By abstracting those SSDs behind a NoSQL service, AWS is trying to prove that hardware presents greater opportunities than Infrastructure-as-a-Service alone. Read More »
Metamarkets is readying its cloud-based big data platform for significant business growth by making key personnel changes and spreading its wings into new industries. Co-founder Mike Driscoll is stepping up to CEO, and the company is moving into the gaming and social media spaces. Read More »
Netflix dominates the business of streaming movies and television into consumers’ homes, but a new business model developed by big data firm Opera Solutions could help give cable companies the inside track. The model is combination of peer-to-peer networking via set-top boxes and big data algortihms. Read More »
Oracle’s Big Data Appliance is now for sale, featuring Cloudera’s Hadoop distribution and management tools. Regardless of what anybody thinks about Oracle’s strategy, the deal is a coup for Cloudera as it tries to fend off competition from fellow Hadoop startups Hortonworks and MapR. Read More »
I spent some time playing with Google Insights to find out what parts of the country are most interested in technology and when that interest hit its peak. It wasn’t surprising to see Silicon Valley rank highly, but did you know Utah was into next-generation programming? Read More »
AT&T has decided to build another cloud, this one focusing on developers and, ultimately, incorporating elements of the open-source OpenStack project. It’s an ambitious undertaking as AT&T tries to prove it can hang with the big boys in delivering cloud infrastructure to the masses. Read More »
1010data says it now hosts more than 5 trillion records for its customers. If 1010data’s growth is a microcosm of the greater market, it’s no wonder there’s so much excitement around scalable data stores such as Hadoop, NoSQL databases and massively parallel analytic databases. Read More »
In the world of science, cloud computing provides an ideal platform for crowdsourcing scientific problems across the whole world of researchers, giving them access to data sets and the computing resources to analyze them. If big data is any indicator, scientific crowdsourcing should catch on. Read More »
All startup activity around cloud computing in the past few years has been great, but it also means there’s precious little room on the playing field for newcomers. Here are 10 cloud startups launched in 2011 that have a chance to make it big in 2012. Read More »
I made a lot of predictions about cloud computing and the general IT infrastructure space heading into 2011, and I impressed myself with my skills of prognostication. Of course, it’s possible I’m just grading myself too generously, so I’ll let readers be the judges. Read More »
What if the answer to all the political theatre surrounding SOPA was an amendment forcing copyright holders to put their money where there mouths are? Some of SOPA’s terribly harsh penalties for infringement can stay, but making false allegations would cost accusers dearly. Read More »
Mu Sigma has closed a $108 million investment round to expand its analytics-outsourcing business. Mu Sigma takes customers’ data and it turns it into business insights, meaning customers don’t have to built their own in-house big data expertise. It’s an already-profitable business that’s only getting bigger. Read More »
It’s not 1982 anymore. Twenty-nine years after co-founding Sun Microsystems — a company that once boasted a $200 billion market cap — McNealy is a known commodity in the Valley, and that makes life a lot easier when it’s time to launch a new venture. Read More »
While the rest of the IT world is reeling from the hard drive shortage, users of cloud computing services should have a relatively painless experience — even if their providers don’t. Joyent’s Steve Tuck talks about his experience and how the HDD shortage might affect the … Read More »
Google announced that it’s ending its Academic Cloud Computing Initiative, a joint program with IBM and the National Science Foundation that gave researchers access to a massive Hadoop cluster on which to run their data-intensive projects. The company says access to such resources is now common. Read More »
Cloudability, a startup that bills itself as “Mint.com for the cloud,” has raised $1.1 million in seed funding for its service that helps companies keep an eye on their cloud-computing spending. It recently let one user spot an exploit that could have cost the company dearly. Read More »
Ask Box.net CEO Aaron Levie about his company’s cloud storage business, and you’ll hear a long, excited answer that probably won’t include the word “storage” at all. He’ll talk about sharing, collaboration and universal access — anything but the core storage infrastructure that makes Box’s service … Read More »
Social media sites like Facebook have been criticized as catering to users’ own deluded senses of self-importance, but a current lawsuit against Facebook might prove social media users are important. Within circles of friends, in fact, users might be considered celebrities–which has big legal implications. Read More »
Money has turned the Hadoop community, once united under the Apache banner and the cuddly stuffed-toy-elephant logo, into something resembling a frat house: Everyone’s under the same roof, but there’s plenty of machismo to go around. If it’s not good business; it is good theater. Read More »
At last week’s MongoSV conference in Santa Clara, Calif., a number of users shared their experiences with the MongoDB NoSQL database. One common theme: NoSQL is necessary for a lot of use cases, but it’s not for companies afraid of hard work. Read More »
If big data does indeed write the screenplay for the movie about the next generation of business, the climax will be that mathematicians take the prom queen home. If students want high-paying jobs with the coolest companies around, they’d better heed that prediction. Read More »
Application developers can now use one API to access data from Factual’s marketplace that contains data on more than 55 million places worldwide. It’s not data nirvana just yet, but Factual points to what our data-driven future might look like. Read More »
Virtustream, a fast-growing enteprise cloud provider, is buying cloud-computing pioneer Enomaly for an undisclosed amount. Enomaly, which launched in 2003, sells one of the first private-cloud management products, Elastic Computing Platform, and in the last year launched an infrastructure resource exchange called SpotCloud. Read More »
Beyond Hadoop, there’s a lot more to think about when it comes to big data, ranging from where companies will actually find workers to how they’ll deal with an impending privacy-policy onslaught. The answers won’t be easy to come by, but they could be critical. Read More »
Up-and-coming Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider Tier3 has made a significant contribution to the Platform-as-a-Service world by releasing a .NET implementation of the Cloud Foundry PaaS project. A fork project called Iron Foundry will serve as the primary source of .NET development within Cloud Foundry. Read More »
SOASTA has raised a $12 million Series D round as a throng of competitors jockeys for position behind it. SOASTA’s vision of using cloud resources for load testing is very relevant today as new applications web, mobile and even Facebook applications pop up by the minute. Read More »
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