Cloud Databases

VMware lays out roadmap to the clouds.

By G C Network | June 10, 2008

Earlier this year, Diane Greene, VMware President and Co-Founder, described cloud computing as the final evolutionary step for virtualization. Reza Malekzadeh, Senior Director of Products and Marketing reinforced that view…

Mario Dal Canto at Virtualization Conference & Expo 2008 East

By G C Network | June 9, 2008

According to Mario Dal Canto, “Virtual Cloud Computing represents the next wave of virtualization and offers significant market opportunities by providing a new, simpler, and much more pervasive platform for…

Microsoft cloud fits and starts.

By G C Network | June 9, 2008

Microsoft’s dance with cloud comuting is very puzzling. Point 1: The June 5th Wall Street Journal article discusses the friction between Steve Ballmer and Bill Gagtes over NetDocs, described by…

Salesforce.com & Google

By G C Network | June 6, 2008

A short promotional video on Salesforce and the Google cloud. Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

Gamers now have their own cloud.

By G C Network | June 5, 2008

Valve, a Bellevue, Washington based entertainment software and technology company, recently announced that they will use the cloud computing paradigm as their next major update. Called “Steam Cloud” the service…

Is IBM serious about cloud computing?

By G C Network | June 5, 2008

Last week in Eye on the Enterprise, Joe McKendrick, highlighted IBM VP Steve Mills’ apparently less than enthusiastic statement regarding cloud computing. In an April 30th interview with CNET’s Dan…

VMware and Cloud Computing

By G C Network | June 3, 2008

VMware President and Chief Executive Officer Diane Greene,in her keynote address at the JP Morgan Technology Conference in Boston, described cloud computing as the final evolutionary step for virtualization. In…

DISA Cloud Computing Plans

By G C Network | June 3, 2008

During last month’s Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Partnership Conference, cloud computing debuted as a “top priority” for senior leadership. Speakers described a future state when users would access computing…

The Cloud Computing Portal

By G C Network | May 30, 2008

The Cloud Computing Portal is a community edited database that makes the cloud vendor selection process easier, by helping you find a cloud provider who supports the environment you need.…

HP in the Cloud

By G C Network | May 29, 2008

In “HP weds cloud…” , Hewlett-Packard has apparently outlined their approach to cloud computing. They are merging their high-performance computing unit with the Web 2.0 and cloud computing infrastructure businesses.…

Joab Jackson, in his “Cloud computing leaving relational databases behind” article, makes some pretty interesting points on the incompatibility of relational databases with cloud-based infrastructures. He first list the various cloud optimized databases:

And then notes that they all have cloud computing-specific characteristics.

  • They can be run in distributed environments,
  • None of them are transactional in nature, and
  • They all sacrifice some advanced querying capability for faster performance.

Since the national security community literally lives and dies by the information in their relational databases, what does that mean if the community adopts cloud technology in order to benefit from the scalability and economy?

The key issue here is that in cloud implementations, database material is spread across different locations. Executing complex queries with relational databases across vast geographic distances can slow response time. It is also difficult to design and maintain an architecture to replicate relational data across different locations and keep that data in sync if one location goes down.

Since cloud implementations are seemingly the wave of the future, community CIO’s and analyst alike need to start thinking about the implications of the coming transition from relational databases today.

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

G C Network

3 Comments

  1. Randall on October 7, 2008 at 10:30 am

    I don’t know Kevin, I think relational db’s will be around for a long time.

    You know when we start thinking in the cloud, we think every cloud computing application is going to have millions of users so can’t use a relational database, but there are lots and lots of problems that relational databases solve — in the cloud — very easily.

    And there are some very scalable websites built on top of relational databases.



  2. James Urquhart on October 8, 2008 at 5:03 pm

    I second Randall’s comment. If your database is focused on complex set-based analytics, then stick to a relational database. If you need to map the results of that analytics to a large audience, replicate results from the relational query results to either static pages or perhaps a Map-Reduce based data store. It doesn’t have to be a “paradigm shift” in any way shape or form.



  3. Anonymous on April 30, 2009 at 1:53 am

    ^^Thanks!!

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