SQLAzure LittleBigPaaS with Michael Rys @SQLServerMike
Best with the Microsoft SQL Azure event at the Seattle Hadoop meetup was Michael Rys live demo coding 4 SQL Azure database shards using federated SPLIT AT (user id kv). Learning how SQL Azure’s splits shards for elastic scaling, and the state of folding shards back again into the main db without losing any consistency at all. Essentially by taking SQL and NoSQL learning to date and architecting the Azure Platform to relax the cap theorem.
The principal business impact I am concerned with is the ability of big data business apps to elastically scale up and back down again. Ideally without DevOps or IT interventions.
Currently the cloud biz apps platform market leader, both on revenues and thought leadership is Salesforce.com. Setting a context for comparing SQL Azure and Force.com platforms. Compare say a ticketing application to handle scalability needs when Lady Gaga tickets go on sale (or the Google IO 2011 ticket slashdotting effect).
Seattle Hadoop meetup audience drawing heavily from the Scalability and NoSQL community, Mike pointed out what’s obvious to this community, scaling has mostly been achieved by relying on applications to scale. Not on the platforms. In my experience many client server business apps, even mature apps, scale poorly, often topping out at 300 concurrent users or less. Big data biz apps need to scale to 30,000 or more.
By learning internally and from observing the NoSQL vendors, SQL Azure has been engineered as a platform for scaling, rather than relying on applications to do the scaling. Thus putting more power in the hands of smaller development teams without rock star architects experienced at scaling 1 to 30,000 (and to 100,000…)
The Force.com platform, engineered 10+ years ago on database-on-a-database pattern (Oracle-on-Oracle) locks scalability into the rate limiting allowed in the multitenancy layer. For business developers suffocating in IT bureaucracy, rate limiting for internal apps, is not a worry. But what happens when biz apps cross-over onto the public web, imagine selling a really hot fast moving consumer good (or simply tickets). The next generation of business apps must be capable of dealing with demand uncertainty with certainty.
How will SQL Azure and Force.com compare going forward?
The next version of Java, now driven by Oracle after Sun acquisition, is slated to include capabilities for multitenant applications to sense database loading. Presumably to allow provisioning of additional Oracle SQL database capacity. This may allow Force.com chief architect Parker Harris to re-engineer and remove rate limiting. But when the primary Oracle market is on-premise enterprise applications, what incentives does Oracle have to make cloud applications big data business scalable?
Where as Microsoft Windows client platform, under competition from iOS and Android, predictably has huge incentives to provision a Cloud PaaS platform for developers to create new little and big data business applications with scaling provisioned by the platform, not by the application itself.
A double check on this strategy Saleforce.com omnipresent Cloud Blog thought leadership - (the Gillmor Gang) - already signaled a shifted up the application stack to the Social Enterprise applications by way of the Heroku platform (more growth in Chatter and Polyglot services not in Force.com or CRM)
Bottom line, Microsoft SQL Azure doesn’t push Force.com aside, Salesforce already moved.
(Source: meetup.com)
