Cloud Talk : A walk through the clouds

Thanks @syzygyuk for hosting the EPiServer meetup.

I've uploaded my slides from my talk on the Cloud to the Cloud:

The Cloud and Microsoft Windows Azure - A Walk through the clouds from Mark Rodseth

Buzzword Bazinga: What is Big Data? featuring MapReduce and NoSQL

The term 'Big Data' describes a vast amount of data, or chat, generated from two main sources: people and computers. People spend a lot of time talking on social networks like Twitter and Facebook and producing on-line content about their companies, affiliated organisations and themselves. Computers and devices, now IP enabled and connected to the internet, now have the ability to send their instrumentation information into internet. The latter phenomenon is known as 'the internet of things': a description of how connected devices and sensors, from shoes to thermostats to cloud server farms, now have a voice and can make information about how they are used and what they experience accessible to data crunching algorithms. These algorithms would then produce insights that can be feed back into the real world and affect everything ranging from peoples behaviour to how corporations are run.

Handling all this data is a massive computational challenge. Compounding the challenge is that data is  growing exponentially, may be stored over the place and even kept in different formats. To address these challenges two key technologies have evolved to help us along: MapReduce and NoSQL.

But before we delve into these let's break down the attributes of Big Data into a bit more detail.

The Seven Truths of Open Source Software

Open Source Software is often described as 'free' software; as in 'free' speech rather than 'free' beer. I find this a distracting explanation as the words 'free beer' summon images of flipping burgers on a sizzling barbecue whilst taking large slugs of ice cold lager. See, I bet the last thing you feel like doing now is reading about boring old Open Source Software. But we must continue and quench your also parched brain with some delicious knowledge.

Buzzword Bazinga: Service Orientated Architecture

... is a grand way of building a system with a lot of moving parts. A simple system has two main things: resources and functions. Resources - such as databases and file systems - is where all information is stored and retrieved. Functions, and the applications that execute them, are the means to interact with the resources. Applications come in a number of guises such as web sites, desktop applications and mobile applications.

Depending on the size and scale of the system; applications can directly connect to these resources. Kind of like a Tie Fighter docking directly into the Death Star. The Death Star being a central core of massive evil; like, for example, a Microsoft Access Database.

But let's say distributing this evil is a galactical ambition and having one place where you can arm, equip and feed the Storm Troopers and send them out to do your nefarious bidding becomes a bottleneck. To scale, you would have look at spreading the resources and facilities around a bit. You could, for instance, take over a planet and build additional docking stations, dormitories with foosball (for those times when the rebels are not trying to overthrow you), and an array of vehicles you could use to turn small furry natives into road kill. The planet would then become a disconnected, fully functioning service of evil.

Buzzword Bazinga

Welcome all to the opening ceremony for Buzzword Bazinga, or BB from now on. I apologise in advance for the lack of fanfare, excitement and sparkle but I didn't have the directorial assistance of Danny Boyle . If you don't get the reference, then you clearly should pay more attention to the 2012 Olympics which is being hosted in East London - where I live. So if you are looking for a place to come and watch the proceedings and pay and exorbitant fee to stay in a tiny little pad, then drop me a line.