#cloud computing and technology

Proxy Server differences in Computing

The general difference in a Proxy Server

In computer networks, a Proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients. Especially seeking resources from other servers. In general, there are mainly two types of proxy servers. In that case, the two types include the forward proxy and the Reverse Proxy.

But, when people talk about a proxy server, most of the time they mean…

Back from spring break and catching up on my reading on tech, I stumbled upon this article by Gartner that outlines the future of cloud and how we are truly in a post-PC world.

My personal view is that adoption of the personal cloud will take longer than the article's authors propose, as security and privacy issues will remain a huge obstacle to the private consumer. Google Play and the ICloud is paving the way, and strides will be made, but in my opinion, the biggest play in the market remains the enterprise space, especially B2B enterprise applications and services that are popping up all over the place to help other businesses reach consumers more effectively and quickly.

Cyberposium Conference organized by Tech Media Club at Harvard Business School yesterday was awesome! I led the Cloud Wars panel, which was perhaps the most well attended AND received panel during the Cyberposium Conference yesterday. The Aldrich classroom was overflowing, with people sitting on the steps and standing at the back to listen in to the panelists that I had helped to recruit using my own personal networks and being extra resourceful. And I achieved this despite having no entrenched links to the tech industry!

After working relentlessly on this effort for the past month, I was super proud that we managed to have a lively, deep and fantastic debate on Cloud Computing. This was in spite of one key panelist from Dropbox, that would have been a fantastic value add, who was unable to attend at the last minute!

I came away from this panel even more convinced that Cloud is really NOW and you can only ignore it at your own peril. I'm also keen to start a business that will be able to take advantage of the amazing cloud applications that enable start up businesses to have such lower boot-strapping costs today. My own personal conviction will drive me to learn more about Enterprise, which I have become absolutely intrigued with.

Earlier readers will recall that I wasn't convinced about the Cloud over the summer while I was with a seed venture firm in Palo Alto and evaluating an entrepreneur's pitch. I look back and stand corrected - this is the giant 10,000 lb gorilla in the room, and I am certain that disruptive innovation will continue to drive the future of cloud forward. Slower adopters will only be left behind in the dust. Cloud is making IT infrastructure obsolete, in a way that the PC made the typewriter disappear. Now, I want to figure out where my place in that space will be =)

Another lesson that I learned yesterday while attending other panels on Cloud Apps on SMBs and Mobile Advertising is the importance of coding. We now live in a world that if you don't code, you are severely handicapped. I've made it a personal mission over Thanksgiving break to do a deep dive on Html 5 and maybe Ruby; it's amazing what kind of free resources are available online if you're determined enough. Now, I just need more time to improve.

I'm back on my blog! Finaalllyy!

It's been a crazy month since I moved over to Boston to start my full time MBA program at Harvard Business School (HBS). Without getting mired into the details of setting up my awesome apartment and the first 2 weeks of classes, parties + multiple social events, I'm excited to announce that I've been selected to be on the organizing committee for our Tech Media Club's upcoming Cyberposium Conference on 5 Nov 2011!

Cyberposium Conference is the biggest MBA tech & media conference in the world with > 500 attendees from over 25 top schools in attendance, not to mention 50-100 big name corporate participants speaking and moderating during the full day event! This year's theme is the "Sky's the Limit" - and I'm proud to announce that I'll be working on developing a key panel topic - cloud computing - that ties in very closely with the conference's major theme. CCoooooooool...here's the website

http://www.cyberposium.com/team/

With only 5 weeks to go, I'm now reaching out to major players in this field to supplement the efforts by the existing team, as we try and develop a tremendous discussion topic around enterprise analytics and cloud computing. What I love most is how I'm learning so much about this space myself, as I work with my team to try and think of how to structure our panel discussion and dive headfirst into this space that everyone is talking about - the cloud.

Continuing from where I left off, I found this link to be the best starting point about terms and acronyms that get thrown around in cloud computing. Solid article. http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/what-cloud-computing-really-means-031?page=0,1

As part of yesterday's readings till midnight (the price you pay for being new is to work twice, thrice as hard to get up to speed!) I stumbled across this article, which had a pretty funny picture about the cloud computing industry today.

Credit goes to David Linthicum (and his friend Brenda Michelson) who first found this graph: http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/its-official-cloud-computing-now-meaningless-169416

So where are we in that graph? I don't know - but it would sure be interesting to look back in retrospect when all is said and done.

My gut feel is that this boat probably left the dock many years ago. After all, by the time these concepts reach mainstream, you're the last one to the party, no? Well, I don't see any harm in learning more! 

First post!

Tomorrow I'm listening in to a presentation by an entrepreneur about "enterprise analytics on cloud computing". Did that make your head spin? It certainly made mine spin, so I took the afternoon out to learn as much as I could absorb.

So what's in a cloud? Trusty old Wikipedia and google came to my inner geek's rescue. Here's what I've learned in a short afternoon:

Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provide interaction.

Simplified: IT needs to cut costs while fulfilling ever increasing needs for data storage and processing. 10 years ago, 50 MB of email space was plenty.  Today, you wouldn't last a week with that. My last company gave us only 70 MB to live on back in 2007 - yes, cost neutral was always on their minds. Cloud computing lets IT achieve its goals.

What about enterprise analytics? Thanks to this post it was understandable:  http://smartdatacollective.com/brett-stupakevich/33341/abcs-enterprise-analytics

Enterprise analytics can refer to any or all of these three concepts:

1. Access to analytics capability (so users throughout the enterprise can perform their own local analytics) 2. Access to enterprise-level analytics (so some users can see reports or dashboards that incorporate data from the whole enterprise) 3. Analytics platforms that can function at an enterprise level (working with multiple data sources and formats)

There's a lot more that I digested, but I'll make this a short post since it's my first one and I'm still experimeting. Anyway, tomorrow should be a crash course in flying blind. Let's see how my basic understanding works!