Andrew and I arrived in Phoenix around 3 pm yesterday and had to hustle to check in before the 5pm checkin deadline. After picking up our race packets, we headed out to Scottsdale to check into our hotel. After a nice 3 mile jog around the park next to our hotel, we changed and met up with my buddy from high school, Bobby Braun for dinner. I had a nice chicken enchilada dinner and hydrated with plenty of water. After dinner we headed home and decided to put our bikes together in the morning.

11/17/12 – 6:00pm
This morning we woke up after a nice 12 hour sleep. It was nice making up for very little sleep the night before and a long day of traveling and checking in. We headed out for breakfast in Scottsdale and had egg sandwiches and pancakes for breakfast. After breakfast we went back to the hotel and put our bikes together. My mom arrived just as we were getting ready to load the up and take them to transition. We ended up cutting it close again and turned in our bikes just before transition closed at 3pm. After returning the rental car, we headed back to the hotel and relaxed. We just left for dinner and will be sitting down for dinner a friends house in Scottsdale. We’ll update again later tonight.

11/17/12 – 11:00pm

We just had a great lasagna dinner and watched the best football game of our college careers. Epic performance by all the football boys. Now its time to calm down again and try to get to sleep. Its going to be difficult but with 6 hours before we have to wake up at 8 hours till race time, we’re hoping to get a few hours in to carry us through the day. The weather report is looking nice with a high of 76 and sunny for the day.

LETS GOOOO

Ironman Arizona Tracker

The second project I completed was for a Human Computer Interaction class, CS 147. In this class, we built a web application called MusicMarket. The application creates a marketplace for music enthusiasts to invest in songs using monopoly money. The application was an attempt at creating a fun application to discover new music. In addition, users could brag about their music selecting ability before songs become mainstream. Investing in a song before others allows you to build your net worth and show other users you can select the songs before they hit the big time.

The application is built entirely in Javascript and HTML. The entire app is client side code and not one line of backend php, sql, etc. This was accomplished using Parse platform and their Javascript API. JQueryMobile was combined with Backbone.js to tie everything together and make it look decently nice.

www.musicmarket.us

A Conference on the Developments of SDN

This afternoon I attended the VLAB event at Stanford Campus. The conference was focused around SDN and included panelists from Juniper, PLUMgrid, Vyatta and Accel Partners. This post is broken down and touches on SDN currently and investment in it, VMWares recent acquisition of Nicira and opinions on that and closes with predictions on the future pricing and business models within the area.

As it currently stands, the main use case for SDN is Datacenters. This is due to the fact that the Datacenter market is maturing well and the business necessities are growing rapidly. Datacenters have allowed companies to deliver applications at scale that previously weren’t feasible. In the short term, datacenter management and networking requirements can be simplified with some of the innovative SDN technologies.

Investment in SDN is currently held back due to a few factors as outlined by Jake Flomenberg of Accel Partners. As of right now, Jake believes investment is hindered due to what he refers to as a sequencing issue. We must wait and see where the development of controllers goes which will in turn determine the direction of investment. Additionally, we must find abstractions so that applications dont care what switches, protocols, etc. are above and below them.

Towards the end of the conference, the question about Nicira’s value arose. All the panelists had their own points of view and I will attempt to summarize the general takeaways from the various views.

With the recent acquisition of Nicira, VMWare is now firmly grounded in the network “ring”. If they didn’t already have the technologies to make money in the networking space, the argument that they do now is a lot more compelling. With the technology comes the business question of how to develop and market it. One possible tactic that VMWare might pursue would be the provider of thought leadership and subsequently account control for mid to large size enterprises. It is clear that most believe they now have the technology and resources to exert a significant influence on how networks will be built in the future. Based on what has already been developed, it is clear that networks can be done in software, something very illuminating for the industry as pointed out by Kelly Kerrell of Vyatta. He also points out that it is time that portions of networking are done in software. Recently, businesses have started reevaluating their alliances which will not only change the landscape of the networking industry but will hopefully bring about what he refers to as a de-anchoring and further innovation.

Before closing, the panelists touched on a question regarding pricing of these services and the business models of the future. There were two dominant pricing models predicted, the first being a usage/term based pricing and the latter being more of an enterprise subscription/license model. Michael Beesley at Juniper Networks noted that hypervisors and databases already have an established monetization model where customers pay for solving problems. He also mentioned that future pricing strategies will have to be based on market segments and believes no single strategy will dominate. In addition to SDN, there will still be needs for switches, routers, gateways, etc. which will play some factor in the future on those pricing strategies. Regardless, it is becoming more and more apparent that the traditional capital model where large capital expenditures are charged and slowly depreciated will fade.

The conference was a very interesting learning experience and provided interesting opinions on the future of networking and what part SDN will play in it. It was also pretty cool seeing what the interest in this space looks like. The conference room was packed with close to 300 seats and plenty of people standing in the back, one of whom was me.

Interesting thoughts on residential real estate. Maybe a little extreme but some food for thought. mauldineconomics.com/images/uploads…

— Sean OBrien (@SeanMonaghanOB) September 12, 2012