We are implementing a pretty extensive system of database, data marts, and a data warehouse that track product and market research data. What I am finding is that extensive database systems are major pain. The application developers are frustrated because the frameworks are hard to use and their development environments are now cluttered with complicated database frameworks. The database developers are frustrated because stuff now breaks in new and mysterious ways. The sys admins are frustrated because the data recovery and disaster recovery plans just became terribly complicated.

Does anyone even have a clue what cloud computing even is? Remember the days of monochromatic screen terminals that hooked to the all powerful mainframe. The terminal had little to no computing power and all applications ran on the mainframe. How is the idea of cloud computing really any different? The underlying implementation has improved and changed but the idea is still the same. To call cloud computing a "paradigm shift" is just a bunch of marketing BS.

It is easy when living in the technical world for so long to come to a technical answer to a social problem. For instance, when faced with a scenario when someone writes an e-mail that is addressed internally the pokes fun at a customer should the e-mail be deleted from the server or not? What are the risks of the e-mail inadvertently being forwarded to the customer? What are the risks of e-mails mysteriously disappearing from inboxes? These are things to consider and you will notice that neither of the risks have anything to do with technical solutions.

Over the past year, the Kray XT5-HE known as "Jaguar" has played second fiddle to "Roadrunner." Roadrunner is an IBM Bladecenter supercomputer at Los Alamos National Labs and has held the top spot over Jaguar this past year on the Top500 list of supercomputers. Then later this year, Jaguar received upgrades to push it to a staggering 1.75 Petaflops, yes Peta, and propeling Jaguar to the front of the list that will be announced at the Portland Super Computing Conference.

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Top500

It is a new day, and I am starting a new site that is all about Big Iron. What is Big Iron? The term has been used to describe two things, big computers and big guns. Wikipedia has an article here. So whether you like big guns or big computers, this site is for you.