December 2010

Is Data Integration Acceleration On Your Holiday Wish List?

December 20, 2010

Jorge A. Lopez

Post by

Senior Manager, Data Integration

As we all prepare to wrap up the year, I can’t help but think about the great opportunities and challenges for the upcoming year. Our industry is hotter than ever. We’re witnessing an unprecedented creation of and demand for information. The exponential adoption of mobile technologies continues to push the demands for data even higher and faster than ever before. In this environment of unconstrained mobility and 24×7 operations, organizations are increasingly facing the same challenge of how to transform terabytes of data into relevant, consumable information in a timely manner.

To date, most organizations have invested millions of dollars on procuring, implementing and maintaining data integration tools that perform critical processes within the information “value-chain.” Unfortunately, the majority of existing data integration implementations are focused solely on solving functional problems, neglecting the need for fast performance and data scalability. Altogether, the explosion of data and the lack of scalable, performance-driven DI tools have created critical data performance bottlenecks that can hinder an organization’s ability to operate and compete.

For example, at this very moment a leading online retailer must analyze hundreds of millions of records to derive critical information about customer preferences, online behavior, and latest trends. Failure to do so can result in severe revenue losses and customer attrition during this holiday season. Similarly, businesses in all industries and markets are increasingly facing data performance bottlenecks in areas such as business intelligence, data warehousing, marketing analytics, and clickstream analysis to name a few.  Therefore, the key question many organizations are asking is how do we accelerate our existing data integration processes to fit into the ever shrinking batch windows?

In order to solve this problem, organizations have to look at solutions that seamlessly leverage and integrate with their existing infrastructure while providing the required performance boost to remain relevant and competitive. This is what data integration acceleration is all about! In fact, data integration acceleration can very well play a big role in determining the success of any new or existing data initiative in the coming years. If it isn’t already on it, data integration acceleration just might make a worthy addition to your holiday wish list!

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2011 Data Protection Predictions – 100% Accurate, Guaranteed!

December 17, 2010

Peter Eicher

Post by

Senior Product Specialist, Data Protection

Since the official Rules of tech blogging require everyone to make predictions about the year to come, I will join the crowd and toss my guesses into the fire. The difference is that all of my predictions are guaranteed to come true!  Yes, with a 100%, fully refundable guarantee.

Without further ado, Karnack, the envelopes please….

Prediction #1:  Some company will buy another company
As part of the ongoing M&A fever in the storage space, 2010’s big events – HP buying 3PAR, Dell buying Compellent, etc. – will be followed by another big event, or an event of possibly lesser importance, in 2011. The purchasing company will be looking for market share, strong growth, key technology and/or something else. The company doing the buying will let us know that it’s a great strategic fit, and that company’s competitors will tell everyone who listens that it’s a clear sign of desperation.  At least, until they bid more for the same company!  I have spoken!

Prediction #2: An EMC blogger will make less than flattering comments about a rival company
In the world of tech blogging, EMC has a very robust community of scribblers. I do enjoy many of them on a regular basis, but they have a habit of being a bit…. umm….  opinionated about their rivals (not that they would admit to anything as threatening as a “rival”).  Therefore, I fearlessly predict that an EMC blogger will say negative things about another company in 2011. At least, until they decide to buy that company, at which point it will be the greatest thing since Mister Potato Head. I have spoken!

Prediction #3.  Somebody, somewhere will fail to meet a backup window
Data growth isn’t slowing down in 2011 (count that as a sub-prediction). As a result, backup windows will continue to feel the pinch, and some poor IT guy will find that despite his best laid plans, a backup will fail to complete on time. This will result in a combination of dismay and head scratching, leading him to think….. there must be a better way! Indeed there is, and with any luck The Magical Backup Elf (what, you don’t know about him?) will appear and deliver a nicely wrapped package of NetApp Syncsort Integrated Backup to our IT friend. I have spoken!

Prediction #4.  Virtualization will continue
There will be at least one more server virtualized in 2011, possibly more. The person virtualizing it will quickly figure out that he doesn’t have the slightest idea how to get the darn thing backed up successfully. He will then sneak in under cover of darkness and steal the nicely wrapped NetApp Syncsort Integrated Backup from the guy in Prediction #3, helping to solve his VM backup woes.  I have spoken! 

Prediction #5.  A recovery attempt will take too long
A significant set of application data will be lost in 2011. Someone will try to get it back, resulting in hours and hours of hair-raising (and resume building) suspense. Users will be angry at first, and then get back to posting on their Facebook accounts. More hours will pass, and users, unable to work, will say “what the heck, might as well go home early and post on Facebook from there.”  Finally, the application data will be restored, except it will be data from last Tuesday, meaning several days of work is gone forever. Somebody will post “data got lost!” on Twitter, to which someone will respond, “my bad.” Meanwhile, the person posting “my bad” will sneak in under cover of darkness and steal the nicely wrapped NetApp Syncsort Integrated Backup from the guy in Prediction #4 who stole it from the guy in Prediction #3, helping to solve his recovery woes.  I have spoken!

Hopefully I have not offended anyone with my attempt at humor. There are certainly a number of important data protection challenges that companies will continue to face in 2011. At Syncsort, we look forward to be part of the discussion and bringing ideas and solutions to the table that we believe can help.

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Some Final Thoughts on SC10

December 15, 2010

John Dean

Post by

Director, Global Alliances

All the excitement from SuperComputing10 may be behind us, but much of what we learned remains top of mind.  We have enjoyed our beignets, strolled the French Quarter, toured the Garden District and maybe even tried a couple of Hurricane Punches.  Now, it’s back to solving tomorrow’s problems which seem to be more within our grasp now than before the conference.

As we started exploring in the post with Microsoft’s Director of Technical Computing Bill Hamilton, the strides that Microsoft has made in their standard development tools is impressive.  Visual Studio 2010 is specifically designed to aid developers writing, testing, and debugging parallel code.  Working closely with partners from Nvidia, this also includes GPU development using Nvidia’s parallel Nsight for Visual Studio 2010.  With the paradigm shift to multi-core computing, cluster farms reaching 1000s of nodes and the emergence of cloud computing, the need for this evolution is obvious.  For example, a new Task Parallel Library in .NET allows you to create for loops that run in parallel by simply replacing the for construct with Parallel.For.  They’ve also included a similar parallel patterns library for C++ developers and parallel profiling and debugging tools that give a visual representation of what each is thread is doing, where blocking or other inefficiencies may be occurring, so the developer can easily see how to optimize their code.

I believe this is a significant breakthrough and that the application of this technology is bound to be pervasive.  It finds use in multi-core engines and in cloud applications.  While it is argued that HPC and cloud are at opposite ends of the spectrum, the reality is that parallelism is at the heart of both operations.  Both require function segmentation with complete definition to facilitate scalability.  With the advent of cloud computing and its ”pay as you use” business paradigm, the availability of HPC clusters is becoming a reality for all of the HPC community, not just the elite few.  This has the potential of bringing another 55 million users online within the next few years. 

Bill Hamilton referenced Bill Gates’ desire to put a computer on every desk when he said that it is the intent of Microsoft Technical Computing to put supercomputing capability into the hands of every scientist, engineer, or analyst.  The early adopters of cloud HPC will be the embarrassingly parallel functions that do not rely on high speed interconnectivity among individual nodes according to Hamilton.  As users become more accustomed to cloud HPC and the technology continues to evolve and improve, the need for MPI applications in the cloud will follow suit.  Modeling will become a more pervasive and normal activity in the development and manufacturing process.

With this vision, I can easily see HPC becoming a larger part of mainstream corporate America much sooner than you might think.  With HPC cloud, response times from simulations are measured in hours rather than days.  Having the ability to model, test and refine development and subsequent manufacturing processes using HPC in a cost effective manner in the cloud will certainly produce better products in a quicker timeframe.  This offers a true competitive advantage. 

Another thought provoking topic is as HPC becomes more pervasive, we can anticipate more technical breakthroughs resulting in a plethora of exciting new products.   The future is certainly much more promising as we uncover other enriching opportunities and applications for High Performance Computing.  Isn’t it always the case with each edition of the SuperComputing Conference that dreams shape into reality and previously unknown vistas form on the horizon!   Thank you , New Orleans.  Seattle and SC11 are less than a year away!

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