Boston Scalability
User Group

Hello everyone,

I’m happy to announce the next meeting of the Boston Scalability User Group will take place on Wednesday June 18. This is the third Wednesday in June, not the fourth Wednesday as we normally do. This meeting will take place at the IBM Innovation Center located at 404 Wyman St. Waltham, MA 02451. Pizza will arrive at 5:45 p.m. and the meeting starts at 6 p.m.

Our guest for the evening is Mike Culver from Amazon! Mike will present “Cloud Dreaming: From Ideas to Innovation”. Read on for more.

Cloud Dreaming: From Ideas to Innovation
It’s amazing when you think about it. Just ten years ago XML was first spec’d out, and XML Web Services were born in 2001 or so. Today the latest buzzword-compliant conversation has dropped “Web 2.0” in favor of “Cloud Computing”, and it seems like every day there is a new announcement about cloud something-or-other.

This talk will look at what’s possible in this new era of Cloud Computing: more specifically it will provide an overview of Amazon Web Services, including a look at what it means to refactor computing as a set of Web services such as data storage in the cloud, on-demand virtualized servers, and a database as a Web service. There will also be a demo showing how to set up a virtual server. But mostly this will be an opportunity to have a discussion about innovation and entrepreneurial tools.

Amazon spent over a decade developing a world-class technology and content platform that powers Amazon web sites for millions of customers every day. Most people think “Amazon.com” when they hear the word; however developers are excited to learn that there is a separate technology arm of the company, known as Amazon Web Services or AWS. Using AWS, developers can build software applications leveraging the same robust, scalable, and reliable technology that powers Amazon’s retail business. AWS has now launched ten services with open API’s for developers to build applications, with the result that over 370,000 developers have registered on Amazon’s developer site to create applications based on these services.

About the Speaker
Mike Culver joined the Developer Relations Group of Amazon Web Services in 2006, and brings with him fifteen years of technology leadership experience, including at companies such as Microsoft. In addition Mike has a strong background running an IT organization, with over a decade of experience in the Electrical Wholesale Distribution industry. As a Web Services Evangelist at Amazon, he helps developers take advantage of disruptive technologies that are going to change the way we think about computer applications, and the way that businesses compete.

As usual there will be plenty of pizza and refreshments at the meeting. Please register so we know how much to order. See you on the 18th!

Anthony

IBM is located at 404 Wyman St. Waltham, MA 02451


View Larger Map

Wednesday’s meeting of the Boston Scalability User Group was a big hit!  I’d like to thank everyone in attendance for coming to talk about computers while the weather outside was beautiful.  We had a great turnout and I noticed a lot of people where talking for quite a while after the meeting, too.  Keep it up, everyone!  I like to see people sharing their stories and experience.

Of course we have to thank our special guest speaker for the evening, Orion Letizi from Terracotta!  Orion flew all the way from San Fransisco to Boston to give a great presentation.  Orion covered a lot of ground in just over two hours he was at the podium.  We got to explore using Terracotta for configuration management, synchronizing actions across JVMs, using distributed shared objects in their locality of reference and much more.  Orion also showed us several demos, including a cool shared editor.  Thanks again for coming such a long way to speak!  And a big thanks to Terracotta for sponsoring the pizza!

Check back soon for the June 18 meeting announcement (this is the 3rd Wednesday not the 4th as we usually do).

(important note: there will be pizza at this meeting!)

Hi everyone,

I’m just popping in to remind everyone about the BostonSUG meeting that takes place next week on Wednesday the 28th of May at 6 p.m. in Waltham’s IBM Innovation Center.  Orion Letizi will host an interactive session about the open-source Terracotta project.  For those that don’t know, Terracotta functions as Network Attached Memory for your JVMs which allows you to work with huge datasets, pool your persistent Hibernate objects, cluster your HTTP sessions and much more.  Using Terracotta in your product can reduce database abuse, ease cluster setup and achieve your uptime goals.  Worried about development impact?  Terracotta implements these features using the APIs that you already know.

All the meeting details (including directions) can be found at the meeting announcement page.  There is plenty of room available at IBM and there will be plenty of pizza available, too! Please register for the meeting if you plan to attend.

Thanks and see you on Wednesday night!

Anthony

Hello everyone,

I’m happy to announce the next meeting of the Boston Scalability User Group will take place on Wednesday May 28 at 6 p.m. We will meet at the IBM Innovation Center in Waltham, MA.

Orion Letizi from Terracotta will conduct an interactive session exploring the open-source Terracotta project. Terracotta is useful in many different cases including use as Network Attached Memory for working with large datasets, clustering HTTP sessions, reducing database load, acting as a second-level cache for Hibernate objects and more. You can find out more about some of these use cases by visiting the Start Learning Terracotta page.

Orion’s talk starts off with an overview of Terracotta and using cluster visualization tools to diagnose performance problems with an application. After that the presentation becomes a discussion about Terracotta with the audience. No questions are off-limits so you can ask about how it works, how to contribute, find out if it is appropriate for your use-case and more. This is a fun and interesting way to run the meeting because it allows us to ask questions about the project that are important to us. So read up on Terracotta, use it and come to the meeting prepared to ask questions and learn!

Please register for this meeting if you plan to attend. There will be pizza so make sure you register so we know how much to order.

IBM is located at 404 Wyman St. Waltham, MA 02451


View Larger Map


See you on the 28th!