I’ve remarked in an earlier post that the usage of data is changing and new applications are on the horizon. Over the past few years, we’ve observed or invented quite a few interesting design patterns for business processes that use data.

There are no books or tutorials for these new applications, and they are certainly not being taught in the classrooms of today. So I figured I’d share some of these design patterns on our blog.

Let me start with a design pattern that we internally call “The Automated Feedback Loop”. I didn’t invent it but I’ve seen it being applied successfully at search engines during my research days at Stanford University. I certainly think there is a lot of power that remains to be leveraged from this design principle in other verticals and applications.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am glad to share the news that one of our first customers, MySpace, has scaled their Aster nCluster enterprise data warehouse to more than 100 Terabytes of actual data.

It is not easy to cross the 100TB barrier, especially when loads happen continuously and queries are relentless, as they are at MySpace.com.

Hala, Richard, Dan, Jim, Allen, and Aber, you have been awesome partners for us! It has been a great experience for Aster to work with you and we can see the reasons behind MySpace’s continued success. Your team is amazingly strong and capable and there is a clear sense of purpose. Tasso and I often remark that we need to replicate that culture in our company as we grow. At the end of the day, it is the culture and the strength of a team that makes a company successful.

And to everyone at Aster, you have been great from Day 1. It is impressive how a fresh perspective and a clean architecture can solve a tough technical challenge!

Thank you. And I wish everyone as much fun in the coming days!

Have you ever discovered a wonderful little restaurant off the beaten path? You know the kind of place. It’s not part of some corporate conglomerate. They don’t advertise. The food is fresh and the service is perfect – it feels like your own private oasis. Keeping it to yourself would just be wrong (even if you selfishly don’t want the place to get too crowded).

We’re happy to see a similar anticipation and word-of-mouth about some new ideas Aster is bringing to the data analytics market. Seems that good news is just too hard to keep to yourself.

We’re serving up something unique that we’ve been preparing for several years now. We’re just as excited to be bringing you this fresh approach.