Gartner 2012 Conferences

I know Gartner has a lot of conferences, but seeing the North America 2012 list was surprising how many there are.  Note the data center conference is the last one on the list.

Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit gartner.com/us/pcc	March 12 – 14	Orlando, FL
Customer 360 Summit gartner.com/us/crm	March 14 – 16	Orlando, FL
CIO Leadership Forum gartner.com/us/cio	March 25 – 27	Scottsdale, AZ
Enterprise Architecture Foundation Seminar gartner.com/us/easeminars	April 2 – 3	Los Angeles, CA
Business Intelligence Summit gartner.com/us/bi	April 2 – 4	Los Angeles, CA
Master Data Management Summit gartner.com/us/mdm	April 4 – 5	Los Angeles, CA
Business Process Management Summit gartner.com/us/bpm	April 25 – 27	Baltimore, MD
Supply Chain Executive Conference gartner.com/us/supplychain	May 21 – 23	Palm Desert, CA
Enterprise Architecture Foundation Seminar gartner.com/us/easeminars	May 21 – 22	National Harbor, MD
PPM & IT Governance Summit gartner.com/us/ppm	May 21 – 23	National Harbor, MD
Enterprise Architecture Summit gartner.com/us/ea	May 23 – 24	National Harbor, MD
IT Infrastructure & Operations Management Summit gartner.com/us/iom	June 5 – 7	Orlando, FL
Security & Risk Management Summit gartner.com/us/risk	June 11 – 14	National Harbor, MD
Catalyst Conference gartner.com/us/catalyst	August 20 – 23	San Diego, CA
Enterprise Architecture Foundation Seminar gartner.com/us/easeminars	September 10 – 11	Orlando, FL
Outsourcing & Strategic Partnerships Summit gartner.com/us/outsourcing	September 10 – 12	Orlando, FL
IT Financial, Procurement & Asset Management Summit gartner.com/us/itam	September 12 – 14	Orlando, FL
Symposium/ITxpo gartner.com/us/symposium	October 21 – 25	Orlando, FL
Application Architecture,  Development & Integration Summit gartner.com/us/aadi	November 27 – 29	Las Vegas, NV
Enterprise Architecture Foundation Seminar gartner.com/us/easeminars	November 29 – 30	Las Vegas, NV
Identity & Access Management  Summit gartner.com/us/iam	December 3 – 5	Las Vegas, NV
Data Center Conference gartner.com/us/datacenter	December 3 – 6	Las Vegas, NV

James Hamilton and other Amazon execs discuss AWS DynamoDB

James Hamilton posts about DynamoDB.

Amazon DynamoDB: NoSQL in the Cloud

Finally! I’ve been dying to talk about DynamoDB since work began on this scalable, low-latency, high-performance NoSQL service at AWS. This morning, AWS announced availability of DynamoDB: Amazon Web Services Launches Amazon DynamoDB – A New NoSQL Database Service Designed for the Scale of the Internet.

In a past blog entry, One Size Does Not Fit All, I offered a taxonomy of 4 different types of structured storage system, argued that Relational Database Management Systems are not sufficient, and walked through some of the reasons why NoSQL databases have emerged and continue to grow market share quickly. The four database categories I introduced were: 1) features-first, 2) scale-first, 3) simple structure storage, and 4) purpose-optimized stores. RDBMS own the first category.

DynamoDB targets workloads fitting into the Scale-First and Simple Structured storage categories where NoSQL database systems have been so popular over the last few years.  Looking at these two categories in more detail, Scale-First is:

Scale-first applications are those that absolutely must scale without bound and being able to do this without restriction is much more important than more features. These applications are exemplified by very high scale web sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo, and Amazon.com. Some of these sites actually do make use of relational databases but many do not. The common theme across all of these services is that scale is more important than features and none of them could possibly run on a single RDBMS. As soon as a single RDBMS instance won’t handle the workload, there are two broad possibilities: 1) shard the application data over a large number of RDBMS systems, or 2) use a highly scalable key-value store.

And, here is a video with James and others at Amazon.

Made the leap, ordered Samsung Galaxy Note, will I like the iPhone 4S or Note better?

I've been thinking more about Mobile applications, and a friend just bought his Sprint Samsung Galaxy S II.  After some technical design decisions another friend bought a Verizon Samsung Galaxy Nexus.  Yesterday Samsung announced the Galaxy Note in a Superbowl commercial.

I've been looking at the Samsung Galaxy Note, given my tech friends are getting normal sized Smartphones, and was willing to try a different form factor.  If I want a small phone I have my iPhone 4S.

We'll see if the Galaxy Note works for me.  I'll comment later when I get the device on Feb 17.

Wind-powered Green Data Center in the works

ZDnet reports on a wind powered data center project in Austin, TX

Wind-powered Texas data center moves closer to reality

By Heather Clancy | February 6, 2012, 4:27am PST

Summary: Project spearheaded by Baronyx and subsidiary WindData will draw power from offshore wind farms.

I used to hear a lot more about data centers powered by alternative energy two years ago, before energy efficiency measures started stealing some of the government and utility incentive thunder.

But WindData, an operator owned by renewable energy and data center project developer Baronyx, apparently is still hard at work on a $70 million data center project outside of Austin, Texas, that is supposed to be completely powered by wind energy. Yep, that’s right, Texas. When it is hot, the coastal winds apparently kick up nicely, helping fuel the growing demand for power in the state.

The power cost in reported to be sub $0.05 kw-hr

Because WindData is closely affiliated with Baronyx, it can offer competitive power pricing, at up to 4.6 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to some of the information that I have seen published about the project.

Another Alternative to Physical Media, Verizon and Coinstar's Redbox partner for New Streaming Service

Physical media has an environmental impact and streaming bits can have a lower environmental impact.  Netflix is infamous in this space and while we are watching the PR disasters by Netflix last year, it looked like it woke up a few to the opportunities to compete.

Verizon and Coinstar's Redbox announced a new joint venture today where Verizon is 65% owner.

The joint venture is a limited liability company with Verizon holding a 65 percent ownership share and Redbox holding a 35 percent ownership share at the outset.

Who else will join the streaming media momentum?

Verizon and Coinstar's Redbox Form Joint Venture to Create New Consumer Choice for Video Entertainment

Joint Venture Will Offer the Best of Both Worlds - Physical and Digital - to All Consumers Nationwide

NEW YORK, Feb. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Verizon and Coinstar, Inc. today announced the formation of a joint venture that will create a new choice for quality- and value-conscious consumers seeking a simple and affordable way to access the video entertainment they crave. The venture's services will offer all of the convenience, simplicity and value of Redbox® new release DVD and Blu-ray Disc® rentals combined with a new content-rich video on-demand streaming and download service from Verizon.