The Cloudcast: PaaS Meets Data Gravity

The Cloudcast (.net) #37 - PaaS meets Data Gravity (43:20)

Date: May 17, 2012

By: Aaron Delp and Brian Gracely

Description: Brian talks with Dave McCrory (VMware Cloud Foundry) and Adron Hall (Tier 3) about the evolution of Cloud Foundry and how Tier 3 is developing and delivering their PaaS services. They also talk about how developers can begin using PaaS platforms, and Dave provides more background on his “Data Gravity” concept.

Date: May 17, 2012 
Guests: Dave McCrory (VMware, @mccrory, Dave's Blog; Adron Hall (Tier 3, @adron, Adron’s blog)


Description: Brian talks with Dave McCrory (VMware Cloud Foundry) and Adron Hall (Tier 3) about the evolution of Cloud Foundry and how Tier 3 is developing and delivering their PaaS services. They also talk about how developers can begin using PaaS platforms, and Dave provides more background on his “Data Gravity” concept.


Topic 1 - Updates on Cloud Foundry’s 1st Birthday - BOSH, better organization and tools on GitHub, more contributors, more partners, more live services, CF World Tour (presentation slides)


Topic 2 - Adron wrote a great introductory series on Cloud Foundry (Part I, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) back in February, and then announced a move to be part of the Tier III PaaS offering. Let’s talk about your journey as a developer in adopting PaaS and how you engaged with the community.


Topic 3 - Let’s talk about Tier III’s PaaS service. How are companies differentiating their offerings? [NOTE: In the 1yr Cloud Foundry anniversary announcement, it mentions that Tier III runs Cloud Foundry on vCloud, but there is no mention of vCloud in the BOSH docs. Does this exist today?]


Topic 4 - What’s still missing from PaaS platforms? Most of what I’ve heard is the “what’s inside the black box?” types of questions (performance, monitoring, troubleshooting). What areas do you see the most potential to improve, or change developer behaviors?


Topic 5 - Over the last year, Dave introduced a concept he calls “Data Gravity” - http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2012/05/what-data-gravity-means-to-your-data.php. What have you learned about this as you’ve researched it more? How is it different than the concept of a “walled garden”?


Topic 6 - Both of you were at InterOp last week. What topics and discussions were interesting at that show?