Last Day for Early Bird Registration 7x24 Exchange Spring Conference

I am going to 7x24 Exchange Spring and today is the last day for early bird registration. http://conferences.7x24exchange.org/spring15/

For a short time I was debating whether I should go.  I've gone for 4 years and 2 conferences per year.  Chatting with a data center executive who has attended just as many he was debating as well,  after a quick discussion we both agreed we are returning.

One of my data center friends who now works for Uptime Institute originally suggested I attend 7x24 Exchange years ago. Of course at the time he didn't work for Uptime.  Am I going to Uptime? No.  Am I hosting a party next week?  No.  Honestly Uptime Institute and 451 Research doesn't come up in any of my discussions.  So why would I go.

As one of my friends pointed out the Data Center industry organizations are like religions.  AFCOM/Data Center World, Data Center Dynamics, Gartner Data Center World, 7x24 Exchange.  And like religions they appeal to people for different reasons.  I've been to all of them.  And I favor 7x24 Exchange.  They are consistently growing while everyone else is shrinking as the overall data center ecosystem shrinks.

The data center ecosystem is shrinking?  Yes.  It is.

Even as it shrinks there are some that are holding steady. 7x24 Exchange a non-profit is doing fine.

Copper River Salmon season starts today, Eaglet delivers a fish to our back door

Today, May 15, 2015 is the start of Copper River Salmon season.

"Alaska Air Cargo is proud to deliver the largest catch of wild Copper River salmon from our namesake state to the masses here in Seattle and across the country," said Betsy Bacon, Alaska Air Cargo managing director. "As the salmon season gets into full swing, our team is prepared to continue to bring fresh Alaska salmon to restaurants and consumers in the Lower 48 and points beyond."

Copper River Salmon will be on the menu soon.

This morning I heard a thump out the door and looked out saw this fish.

An Eaglet (young eagle) had just flown by and being a youth was clumsy with his catch and dropped it.  Luckily he/she didn't decide to try and fetch it back.


Is Litbit Orchestration service like Biztalk Server and other Application Integration Suites?

Many of my data center friends ask have I heard anything what Litbit is doing.  No.
 

So I checked out the Litbit video that has been up since Nov 2014.

When I saw the video say it was about Orchestration it reminded me of Biztalk Server.

Extend your applications across enterprise and cloud
Keep your apps connected across private and public cloud environments. Deploy BizTalk Server on premises and leverage Microsoft Azure BizTalk Services and Service Bus in the cloud.

Provides Business-to-Business (B2B) and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) capabilities for delivering cloud and hybrid integration solutions.

Service Bus is messaging infrastructure that sits between applications allowing them to exchange messages in a loosely coupled way for improved scale and resiliency.

Here is a Gartner Magic Quadrant on the Application Integration Suites. http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1YJ9WDM&ct=140731&st=sb

Application integration is defined as making independently designed applications work together. In 2008, Gartner published a seminal paper (see "Understanding the Three Patterns of Application Integration") identifying three integration patterns:


Data consistency — The objective of application and data integration is making data across all applications consistent. For example, if a customer changes a billing address in a CRM application, that changed data is pushed out to other applications (such as accounting, billing and ERP) so those applications can update their databases with the new data.
Multistep process — This entails orchestrating the execution of a sequence of business process activities, regardless of whether these activities are performed by software (applications or services), humans or intelligent devices, such as a printer or a programmable logic controller. Comprehensive support for multistep process integration involves supporting multiple styles of business integration, including system-to-system, collaborative, document-centric and administrative.


Composite application — This creates what appears to be a single application, purpose-built from the ground up to address user requirements. When examining the deployment of the application, users will find components, both business logic and data, that are part of existing production applications.

We'll see what Litbit finally announces, but from the video Youtube it looks like LitBit is a data center use case of Biztalk Server.

Here is a Biztalk Orchestration demo.


Day 2 - Apple Family Watch - Daughter takes it to school

Sharing the with watch between myself, my daughter (13), and son (11) is done by unpairing from the iPhone, then pairing (restore from backup) to another phone.  It takes a few minutes to unpair as the Apple Watch is wiped clean and reboots.  Then another few minutes to pair to another person's phone.  I doubt many other people would do this, but I bought the Apple Watch to see how my kids and I would use it.  I could have bought 3 Apple Watches, but that would just be over the top.  Share the watch let's each of us try and it and see what they like and don't like.

My Daughter took the Apple Watch to school.  Her school is a private school with a high percentage of kids who work for Microsoft.  The school computers are all Windows and Surface.  This school probably has the most amount of Windows Surface and Windows Phones.  Will the Windows Phones have been fading out.  2 years ago if you had a parent employed at Microsoft then you had a Windows Phone.  Now, the kids are almost all on iPhones.

One of the reasons why kids have migrated off of Windows Phones according my knowledgeable source, my daughter is the kids with Windows phones couldn't use snapchat.  Looking up what kids were using was 6Snap for Snapchat.  Most of these kids had no idea they were not using Snapchat official app.  So when Snapchat enforced the removal of 3rd party apps on the Windows Phone store.  http://www.winbeta.org/news/sad-state-affairs-snapchat-wont-let-6snap-return-windows-phone-store  Snapchat support was gone.  And, kids pushed their parents for iPhones.

So, at school on May 1, my daughter was the 2nd kid at school with an Apple Watch.  She had kids think the watch cost $5,000.  Some thought $25,000. The one other kid who had one said that one cost $350 which is correct.  The perception of the Apple Watch is interesting.

My daughter said she had problems using the Apple Watch at school.  Asking a few more questions, it turns out she turned off bluetooth on her phone when at school which I then explained means the Apple Watch doesn't communicate to her iPhone. 

By 4p when she got home the Apple Watch was down to 10% which means she was playing around with it a lot at school.  We charged it up.  Unpaired it.  And paired it to my iPhone.  Then went to Malt and Vine for Deschutes Abyss tasting.

  1. Malt & Vine @maltandvine

    We're getting stoked about our @DeschutesBeer 'The Abyss' Vertical tasting Tonight! pic.twitter.com/tUGeyQsE5E

I caught up with some ski friends who happened to work for Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. My one AWS friend just got an iPhone 6 plus, upgrading from his Windows Phone.  Yes he was Microsoft (17 yrs).  Another AWS guy has an Apple Watch on order, and is thinking of changing his order to the 38mm from the 42mm.

The Apple Watch is convenient to see the time if you stopped using a wrist watch, seeing messages, e-mail.  My daughter has tried some of the fitness apps.  My son has the Apple Watch for the weekend.  He is sending text msgs to friend and family.  He has dyslexia and will approach the use of the watch differently than I or my daughter.  On Monday my daughter gets the watch.  On Tues I get the watch back as I travel to SJC.

One of the things I am curious about is how having an Apple Watch changes your use of the iPhone.