In this month’s Build Newsletter, the state of the open source, big data and PaaS markets continue to be the main threads throughout the industry news.
Open Source
First, we love this report on the Linux Foundation’s assessment of how open source projects such as OpenStack, Cloud Foundry and Docker are driving both innovation and enterprise readiness in cloud technology.Apache Hadoop® is another excellent example of how wide adoption of projects dramatically shifts the market, as we see in this article on Deutsche Bank’s latest Hadoop study (big data OSS). OSS has both become a wonderful way for companies to collaborate on technology and also create high growth business such as the record breaking business performance with Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Two other related and noteworthy items include independent analyst Steve Chambers’ highlights on Cloud Foundry’s impressive first year, retracting a previous “bearish” attitude, and Matt Asay’s analysis asking if Cloud Foundry will be the next Red Hat.In our own experience, we have seen customers shift their buying, preferring OSS-based solutions as much as possible. Tesora’s shift to OSS within the OpenStack ecosystem is a great example of this.Individual contributors are the lifeblood of OSS, but you don’t have to be a developer checking in code to contribute. Here are 8 ways you can contribute to open source projects without writing code.Sometimes, OSS projects may seem to run in their own silos or ecosystem niches. Part of the power of OSS comes when contributors help increase the “innovation surface area” by bridging and connecting technologies. Several excellent examples can be seen here in multiple Spring and CF projects bridging PaaS, cloud, Apache Hadoop®, and MySQL:
- Spring Cloud 1.0.0.RC2 Available Now—common patterns for distributed systems/environments, including Cloud Foundry
- Introduction to Spring for Apache Hadoop—an introduction to using Java skills for writing workflows with Map Reduce, Hive, and Pig across Apache Software Foundation (ASF), Cloudera, Hortonworks, and Pivotal
- 12-Factor App-Style Backing Services with Spring and Cloud Foundry—and an example of backing services on Cloud Foundry in A Highly Available MySQL Service on CFMySQL HA on CF
Finally, in an effort to better align investment with the primary challenges Pivotal is trying to solve, Pivotal is looking for new sponsors for Groovy and Grails.
Custom Development and PaaS
First up is an interesting analysis by Redmonk, suggesting the most popular programming languages in use today. The top 5 all run on Cloud Foundry—JavaScript (e.g. Node.js), Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby (tied for 5th).On to platform decisions—there is always the ongoing debate whether to build or buy a development platform. Here is an explanation on how you might choose what works for you. Either way, development platforms are undergoing significant change with the rise of Docker and PaaS ecosystems such as Cloud Foundry, and this is having a profound effect on traditional IT operations and processes.More technical descriptions of PaaS can be found in this slideshow of The Cloud Foundry Story from @DevOpsSummit and this deeper dive on Why Services are Essential to Your Platform as a Service.Finally, a “How To” on 12-Factor App-Style Backing Services and a narrative on old versus new app deployment methods (with microservices in a PaaS) are two examples of techniques that today’s developers use with PaaS.
Big Data and Data Science for Developers
First, Gigaom suggests all developers need to become familiar with big data technologies and use cases since soon every business application will likely incorporate some big data functionality.For example, big data is making its way into digital travel services—Expedia plans to “double the size” of their Apache Hadoop® cluster in 2015 to help solve its big data challenges in the UK, having previously only used DB2 and Microsoft SQL databases.Not convinced yet? Here is SaaS visionary Mark Benioff and two separate executive research surveys saying big data and predictive analytics are top priorities and that CEOs desire big data solutions: 1) PwC CEO Survey Recap: Mobile, Data Mining, and Analysis most important 2) IDG Enterprise Big Data Research. Expect funding for future projects and all the market requirements you are building towards to reflect such priorities.Cloud Foundry is useful for big data and analytical applications as this blog about Cloud Foundry for Data Scientists reveals, and in how Pivotal built a Super Bowl social sentiment analysis application in less than a day on Cloud Foundry using microservices.Editor’s Note: Apache, Apache Hadoop, Hadoop, and the yellow elephant logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries.
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