Mario Meir-Huber

Self-service is a traditional element for humans. A typical and successful example of self-service is vendor machines that dispenses drinks. Coca-Cola (among others) operates a large number of self-service machines all over the world, in public places such as universities, museums, and sport arenas. People are used to dealing with the machines as they are simple to use and easy to find. In today's world, there is a huge variety of self-service machines that are not limited to soft drinks. There are self-service machines for snacks, chewing gum and you can even buy pizzas from self-service machines. Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) have revolutionized the way we deal with money. The only question is, why is there no self-service IT available yet? A self-service IT where you can use the benefits of self-service machines: insert money, press a button and get the servi... (more)

NoSQL – The Trend for Databases in the Cloud?

SQL seems to be somewhat old fashioned when it comes to scalable databases in the cloud. Non-relational databases (also called NoSQL) seem to take over in most data storage fields. But why do those databases seem to be more popular than the "classic" relational databases? Is it due to the fact that professors at universities "tortured" us with relational databases and therefore reduced our interest - the interest of the "new" generation for relational databases? Or are there some hard facts that tell us why relational databases are somewhat out of date? I was at a user group mee... (more)

My Top Five Cloud Predictions for 2011: Mario Meir-Huber

1. We will face the challenge to new Software Architectures Cloud Computing Platforms such as Windows Azure, Amazon EC2 and Google AppEngine give us a lot of options to built great software on top of these plattforms. The main challenge we face is that current Software Architectures might not be ready for these challenges. We need to rethink how we built our software in terms of elasticity and scalability. 2. Microsoft will present Windows 8 with huge Cloud Support Microsoft will soon present Windows 8. Cloud Computing will be integrated in the system and the new OS will focus on th... (more)

Understanding Windows Azure

To understand Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform, it's necessary to understand how the Microsoft Datacenters work. This article provides an overview of how Microsoft Designs their datacenters and why the Generation 4 Datacenters are so revolutionary. The Building of Datacenters Microsoft has been building data centers for a long time. One of the best-known services Microsoft offers is Windows Update, which delivers updates as part of their content delivery network all over the world. But this is not the only product Microsoft's Datacenters are famous for. Other import... (more)

Cloud Computing and the Hype Cycle

I had the opportunity to talk to Mark Raskino, Vice President at Gartner, at the "UT Messa" in Reykjavik (Iceland). Mark is one of the authors of the book Mastering the Gartner Hype-Cycle. At the conference, Mark gave the keynote, and I presented a talk on Cloud Computing. This interview is about how to Master the Gartner Hype Cycle for Cloud Computing. This interview represents Mark's opinion, not the opinion of his employer Gartner. Mario Meir-Huber: We currently have the IT trend "Cloud Computing" and it's interesting to compare this trend to the "Cloud." Where would you see th... (more)