Before, there were few things and they were simple. There were few roads to take, few choices at hand, few decisions to make - so most of the time we could find a solution that would fit easily with our needs. Now, there are a lot of things and they are complex. I am not sure but did Lorie or Shannon ever imagine that we would need a search engine to search through the Internet 20 years ago?
How did we get here? - I think as humans, we love new ideas, new experiences, and new perspectives. So we build new things, we innovate, we create, we add value. As technologists, we know that innovations get complex.
But the real question is where do we go from here?
It sounds to me like we need to re-learn the concept of "fit" and "choice" all over again. Because simply put, to find the right fit from the myriad of choices is a lot of work these days. Our tech background makes us great pattern matchers. We think we know what fits perfectly for our needs. But do we really?
At Intel, my job is to figure out what matters to enterprise applications and its relationship to platform performance. Some applications "fit" perfectly with the architecture. Some applications do not "fit" with our architecture. I work closely with the software teams within Intel as well as software vendors that run enterprise applications. I have learnt that evaluating systems is not as simple as it might seem. Because computer performance depends on the workload, it is necessary to understand just what your needs are so that you can make correct trade-offs.
There are a lot of performance numbers out there. Just because one set of numbers might not make sense it does not mean that you cannot find out what is right for you. See all the numbers; make your own calculations. Find your "fit". Understand your trade-offs and choose well
By the way, I am piling up a stack of enterprise application "must haves" - scalability, reliability, performance per watt. When the server room came to life I said wow, here is an opportunity to share and learn from our customers their needs better.
Stay tuned for what I think matters in world of performance analysis, benchmarking, enterprise applications and some case studies.
Your comments are fundamentally different. You let a customer decide what is the right technology for their need and you give un-biased pertinent information.
You not only describe what is important but explain what is perfomance per watt and why should you care about it.
Perfomance, availability, relaiability, stability are key components of an infrastructure. Platform apporach lifts intel as a solution provider, a problem solver rather than a hardware or a chip maker.
Innovation is the key from now on. 45nm technology brings more apportunities for people that think ahead. It allows a competetive edge. Combined with open standards and virtualization and management technologies intel is leading the industry in a systematic way.
One of the biggest industry challenge in the information technology industry is keeping and running a business non stop. 24/7 is the norm now. 8 to 5 is gone for ever. people are mobile and the need for information and the ability to do work is not limited by office hours any more. People can be and should be productive any time from any place. The economic impact far reaching. Agile infrastructure that is based on autonomic and healing technologies will make IT operations more effective, business more agile and resilent and provide edge over other business that do not have these capabilities.