The Journal on three world-changing tech trends
There is an excellent article in today’s Wall Street Journal that details the technology-driven, macro shifts that are happening right now in the world of business. The three mega-trends they cite:
- Big data – for anyone in IT this is a “no kidding Sherlock” inclusion, but it is remarkable to step back and appreciate how quickly big data is changing the landscape and its long term implications.
- Smart manufacturing – The next wave in manufacturing – engineering from the molecular level to manufacture products using methods more like the ones we use to print documents. The emphasis shifts to design and IP, and away from cheap labor and physical factories.
- The wireless revolution – The extension of internet access to more than a billion of the world’s people, paired with a new generation of applications and services, is fundamentally changing the way the world connects, socializes and engages in commerce.
Ground control to major storm…
Today, we announced a new customer relationship with communications and information technology giant Harris Corporation detailing that they have selected Solace to power the on-the-ground portion of a satellite weather system jointly developed by NASA (the space guys) and NOAA (the weather guys).
This is part of a project called GOES-R (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R-Series). Here is its stated mission as described on the GOES-R website:
The advanced spacecraft and instrument technology used on the GOES-R series will result in more timely and accurate weather forecasts. It will improve support for the detection and observations of meteorological phenomena and directly affect public safety, protection of property, and ultimately, economic health and development.
GOES-R provides essential information related to air quality, coastal and marine monitoring, fire monitoring, hurricane forecasts, precipitation and floods, land cover observations, volcanoes, lightning detection, severe thunderstorms, tornado warnings and more. If you’re interested in learning more about this project and the advances it will deliver, I highly recommend checking out the GOES-R site. Here are some fun facts I learned in just a few minutes of browsing:
Capturing data streams at “big data” scale
Before you can break into a cold sweat about tackling the design of a system that analyzes big data volumes, you first need to be able to capture the data. More often than not, the design parameters feel like a traffic engineering problem — there are simply too many cars and not enough road.
Certainly, LAN and WAN network technology introduces many limits and the largest commercial databases (e.g. Netezza, Teradata) or open source big data stores (e.g. Hadoop, Splunk) can only store data so fast. Even in memory data grids are limited by how many in-memory writes can be performed per second. Managing the distributed information is usually some kind of middleware, once again, usually a commercial product (e.g. JMS or MQ) or open source code (e.g. Kafka or Qpid).
Handling data growth as digital information doubles every 18-24 months
Various studies have claimed that the amount of digital information in the world doubles every 18 to 24 months. Using the conservative 2 year estimate, that means there is 32 times as much digital data today as there was in 2001. Some of that growth is from all those cute cat videos and embarrassing Facebook photos, but much of it is valuable business data generated by automated processes within and between businesses.
Today we announced a new partnership integrating our message routers with the B2B and Managed File Transfer (MFT) components of SEEBURGER’s Business Integration Server platform. The big “why” behind this partnership is captured in the “growth of global data” factoid above. SEEBURGER is a powerhouse in the B2B and MFT spaces, and does a lot more application integration (A2A/EAI) than people think.
De-risking Excel use in front-office trading
Microsoft Excel has been a staple of productivity on Wall Street for years because it puts the power to calculate market data models directly in the hands of quants and traders. But Excel use has been difficult for the bank’s IT staff to manage and auditors to oversee since the traders’ formulas live on their PC and are in constant flux. Wouldn’t it be great if trading firms could let their traders have the tool they want (Excel) and still be able to track and audit formulas and changes centrally?
That’s just what we recently announced with our partner, BCC Group of Germany. BCC Group introduced a solution called CALCNODE that can run thousands of very complex Excel spreadsheets with better performance and accountability than ever before.
Solace Recognized with Deloitte Fast50 Award
Deloitte released their new Fast50 rankings today, and we’re excited to be on it for the second year in a row. Launched nearly 15 years ago, the program celebrates the achievements and evolution of the Canadian technology sector.
We’re especially proud of a leadership award we were given, described by Deloitte’s Mark Noonan in an Ottawa Business Journal article:
“Solace won a special leadership award in the category of hardware for demonstrating their ability to create a distinct competitive advantage in a high-growth market, which allows them to dominate their sector.”
We’re proud of our #25 spot on the list, and as Noonan further explained we would have cracked the top 10 if our fiscal year mapped to the calendar year. “If we look at their current year revenue model, they have achieved accelerated revenue in 2011. If we were to annualize that, Solace’s growth rate would almost be 2,600% percent, which would have been top 10,” he said.
And since real growth and results are what matter, we’re OK with that.
High frequency trading back in the political crosshairs
This week at the Futures Industry Association (FIA) conference, the hot topic is whether government regulators should force the registration and regulation of high frequency trading firms. As this Wall Street Journal article highlights, government regulators know they don’t fully understand the impact of HFT on global markets, especially how they help or hurt non-HFT traders.
bet365: Middleware innovation is safe bet for future growth
Sports betting has changed quite a bit in the last decade. Online innovations have meant that players now have more choice than ever in the way they bet and what they bet on. In-Play betting, where players can place bets while a sport is in progress, e.g. the scorer of the next goal in a football match or the winner of the next point in a tennis game, is probably one of the most important developments and also one of the most popular. Leading the way is eGaming company bet365. Headquartered in Stoke-on-Trent, England, they are a global business that employs 1,700 people and is live in 17 languages.
Their site includes:
- In-Play sports betting
- A wide range of popular casino, poker, lottery and bingo games.
- The ability to bet on financial markets, such as the closing prices of currency pairs and market indices.
It’s a remarkably rich and diverse offering, and if you take a look at their site, www.bet365.com, you’ll quickly realize how hard the company works to offer the best experience they can for their customers.
Baseball, the cloud, and big data
As the release of the upcoming movie Moneyball approaches, it’s inevitable that we’ll be hearing much more about baseball’s sabermetrics. ReadWriteWeb is out front of the topic with a nice article today on How Big Data and the iPad have Fundamentally Changed Baseball.
This article ties together three of my favorite topics – big data analytics, cloud computing infrastructure and baseball. Take a look at the iPad dashboard at right and think about a starting pitcher and catcher sitting together on a flight using this kind of highly-visual tool to decide how to pitch each hitter. Now think about the rudimentary paper-based systems from five or ten years ago. Which pitcher has the edge? I’m sure that comparable data exists for batters on pitcher’s tendencies and release points, but it does appear that the overwhelming advantage of this technology favors the pitcher/catcher game plan.
Government agencies show off their new radiological information sharing system
In the past, we’ve issued a couple of press releases (here and here) about some of the work we have done with the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO), a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). We’ve been working together for the past 18 months or so to deliver cross-agency sharing of real-time information about radiological activity from sensors in major cities, at airports and at other ports-of-entry around the US.
This week, Nick Harris (of the Information Sharing Environment) posted an update on the ISE website detailing the substantial progress in tracking and accurately communicating information about radiological events. The multi-city, multi-agency demonstration took place earlier in July, and Solace was very proud to have participated with DNDO to demonstrate and communicate the role and value of the Mission Critical Messaging (MCM) backbone.
It’s pretty cool stuff, check it out here.