Paul Miller

Amazon’s globe-encircling cloud infrastructure is compelling to many. From Virginia to California, from Ireland to Singapore, and from Japan to Brazil; wherever you find yourself there’s a local instance of the same familiar set of services. And, in all likelihood, Australia will soon be added to the list. For those primarily interested in just serving both Europe and the US, the list of options grows to include Rackspace, GoGrid, CloudSigma and a few others. And yet, despite the buying power and increasing ubiquity of these larger players, there seems to be plenty of space left for smaller entrants. For prospective customers only concerned with a single country or region, for example, the choices are almost too many to count, and choosing between them becomes a complex and multi-faceted affair. Take Brightbox, for example. As my family know all too well, those pesky... (more)

Hubris and the Data Scientist

Data scientists are an increasingly capable bunch, and the tools at their disposal sometimes appear almost magical in their capability to derive insight. ReadWriteWeb‘s Joe Brockmeier captured a recurring issue from the O’Reilly Strata conference in March, asking “Can Big Data replace domain expertise?” According to Brockmeier, the audience (of data scientists) apparently narrowly agreed that their arsenal of tools and algorithms trumped the knowledge and experience of the meteorologists, financiers, and retailers to whose domains data scientists are increasingly turning. This... (more)

CloudCamp reaches Leeds on 14 June

County Arcade, Leeds The global CloudCamp movement continues to grow, with events over the next few weeks in Denmark, Germany, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and across the United States. And now, I’m very pleased to announce that the English city of Leeds is joining the party. CloudCamp events have been taking place in the UK for years, and the London gatherings have picked up real momentum. Outside London, we’ve seen a few events in Warrington, Newcastle, and Edinburgh. We believe that the time is now right for something more regular; a place in which the cloud-building, cloud-using... (more)

Data Market Chat: Leigh Dodds Discusses Kasabi

Kasabi sees its role very much as an enabler of aggregation. Rather than focusing, as some data markets do, on simply providing access to data sets, Kasabi is betting on the power of being able to combine and recombine data in compelling new ways. Hidden under the hood, Talis’ platform technology leverages the potential of the Semantic Web to make these connections possible. But as Kasabi CTO Leigh Dodds is keen to stress, you don’t need to be a Semantic Web developer or enthusiast to derive value from what Kasabi has to offer. Like many others in the nascent data market space,... (more)

Data Market Chat: Microsoft’s Windows Azure Marketplace

As CEO Steve Ballmer has noted more than once, Microsoft’s future plans see the company going “all in” with the cloud. The company’s cloud play, Azure, offers the capabilities that we might expect from a cloud, and includes infrastructure such as virtual machines and storage as well as the capability to host and run software such as Office 365. Microsoft also recognises the importance of data, and with the Windows Azure Marketplace and the nurturing of specification such as OData, the company is playing its part in ensuring that data can be found, trusted, and incorporated into a... (more)