DIY IaaS vs PaaS Approach Webinar and Meetup
Register for the webinar :: Register for the meetup :: Talk at #asaService
Are you going to join the Platform as a Service revolution?
Joyent customers are answering that question everyday and more are joining the movement than ever before. We want to take a closer look at the topic of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) vs as-a-Service (aaS) so we're holding a panel discussion with four top cloud service providers. We'll also be hosting a meetup at Joyent HQ in San Francisco the evening of the webinar so we can come together to hash out our own cloud strategies.
To preview the content of this webinar we asked our speakers to introduce some of the topics we will cover:
When & Why to Go the Platform Approach by Ben Wen of MongoLab
DBaaS and PaaS represent new tools in a developer’s toolbox. To borrow a 1997 Steve Jobs metaphor, writing an app is like constructing a building. And a good building tool (in the then newly acquired NeXT case, OpenStep) “lets you start developing your app on the 20th floor [instead of the 7th].” Likewise a good PaaS lets you develop your online service by starting with a pre-assembled deployment, provisioning, and scaling infrastructure.
A PaaS also comes with a pre-hired, trained, and conditioned team to keep it updated and running. “Conditioned” means a team that will likely have resolved an issue prior to you running into it. It also means that operational maneuvers that are rare for any one user are practiced nearly daily across a large population. For example, we are constantly restoring databases, upgrading servers, finding helpful indexes, and have it down to a science.
PaaS is a disruptive change: replacing existing processes, enabling new businesses, and needing market education. New tools are always challenging practitioners to learn and adapt. At the end of the day, any new tool must prove its worth and find its place in the toolkit. As practitioners of software, we are always comparing the “known good” tools in our kit with the “new potentials”. PaaS and DBaaS are tools that we hope you will evaluate for their capabilities and will understand how they fit into your toolbelt.
More on MongoLab –
Commoditization of Automation by Sam Bisbee of Cloudant
There are so many components to a product that it is unrealistic for a team to be able to pay the appropriate attention to each component. This is not a new concept - companies have been hiring law firms for years. What is new is that you can carve out different pieces of your product and choose which to own yourself and which to host with an as-a-Service company. This is dramatically empowering. Now a mobile development company that is super at building their game – the components that they want to work on - can offload the management of their database to experts who have internalized the knowledge, culture, and experience that would normally take years to develop.
More on Cloudant –
Economics of Expertise by Yuval Lubowich of Xeround
Developers flock to the cloud, and with good reason. Often though, they find that effectively running their database in the dynamic environment of the cloud - and ensuring its availability and scalability - is no easy task. It usually requires either a skills set not readily available for most developers, or a 24/7 senior DBA on staff with vast cloud experience. When considering the database solution for their cloud applications, developers have two options: the DIY approach, or subscribing to a database-as-a-service that automatically takes care of all aspects of their DB in the cloud.
In this panel, we'll discuss the economic considerations and tradeoffs for each of these options. What are the complexities of running a database in the cloud - which expertise are required? How much does it cost to develop those skills? How much management is really involved? What happens when you need to address a sudden spike in demand or an unpredictable cloud failure? When do economics of scale come into play? What's the cost of each option when you're starting out, and when your application grows?, and more.
More on Xeround –
Xeround also has a free plan offered on Joyent. Create your free cloud database today »
Portability of Flexibility by Nuno Job of Nodejitsu
Portability is key in providing products "as a service". In this panel discussion we will approach a common miss-conception in the industry: that providing a product as a service decreases flexibility and portability of customer solutions. Our panelists will discuss what they did to provide an upgrade path for their "as a service" products in terms of flexibility, and what they did to avoid infrastructure lock-in: - should we agree on standardization of the infrastructure APIs or make platforms that are infrastructure agnostic? What are the tradeoffs between these two approaches? Are they complimentary? Finally they will discuss what they think about marketplaces: What do they add to the equation? What to they do not solve? And how does one create marketplaces across different clouds? What is the role of the infrastructure provider in this discussion?
You will learn how you can iterate faster while maintaining the level of flexibility that is required by mission critical enterprise applications.
More on Nodejitsu –
Post written by joyentlindsay