tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002155536567328879.post6406728819996944581..comments2023-10-05T08:20:50.906-07:00Comments on Pete's Thoughts on Cloud Computing: Ebay: Scale!Pete Perlegoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14095800037925750463noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002155536567328879.post-37872082262967582752009-02-10T23:10:00.000-08:002009-02-10T23:10:00.000-08:00It is more than inertia when deciding to make the ...It is more than inertia when deciding to make the transition to clouds; it's whether it makes business sense or not. Franco's point that you need to consider all the costs associated to the transition is an excellent one!Ionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11828725301112896896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002155536567328879.post-14094501866085800172009-02-09T18:58:00.000-08:002009-02-09T18:58:00.000-08:00Franco Travostino talkHere is a summary of what I ...Franco Travostino talk<BR/><BR/>Here is a summary of what I learned from Franco:<BR/><BR/>eBay only embraces fundamental change when it experiences disaster; otherwise the Titanic only turns very slowly. Franco’s description of himself as Odysseus listening to the sirens while making sure he is tied down is a good analogy for his role at eBay. I spoke to Franco after class and was able to understand the reasoning behind such inertia. There is a large overhead to any change and a new approach must be able to overcome the cost not only of resources, but of the change of mindset and training of people to handle the change. Also, the solution must be readily reversible. So, eBay looks for solutions that are already proven and can be readily taken up by a consumer.<BR/><BR/>I will soon add some info about eBay’s challenges.Pete Perlegoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14095800037925750463noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002155536567328879.post-84928992499178700392009-02-07T23:37:00.000-08:002009-02-07T23:37:00.000-08:00It's very impressive that Ebay managed to go from ...It's very impressive that Ebay managed to go from .com boom startup to carefully-managed application built on solid design principles when so many businesses failed that transition. I think it will be especially interesting to ask them what this transition entailed and whether they have any interesting war stories from it. As the first slide set says, there is a need for "feature velocity" and adaptability - changing and adding features - on a competitive website. How do you reconcile this with solid engineering? I'd like to know what the process for building a new feature in ebay is, e.g. what kind of design documents and tests you have to go through to show that it's scalable and safe.<BR/><BR/>I was also pleasantly surprised like you about their positive view of clouds. If ebay thinks it may be worth pushing some work to an external cloud, this makes a very strong case for utility computing. I'd like to know what features exactly they are thinking of pushing out. One advantage of ebay in this regard however, unlike something like Facebook, is that most of the data on the site is public, so for example they can push out things like search without fear of endangering users' privacy.Matei Zahariahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02704912324109028388noreply@blogger.com