The Next Generation of Emerging Technology ChallengesStephen FeldmanBlackboard, Inc.Product Development

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Why is it important to forecast technology in the future?

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o In many cases the technology is already here, but not adopted.

o The adoption curve is low, but needs instigation.o Bracing the population for transition before it is forced.

Forecasting Technology in the Future

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Interesting Misses from the Past

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RIP Pluto…we hardly knew you as a planet!

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Almost…but the deck’s been reshuffled!

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Apple Newton and the Palm Pilot

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What does the technology future really look like for Blackboard customers?

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Distributed Caching Systems

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What You Have Now You Won’t Miss!

Self-Contained Cache Per Server

Embedded CacheSystem

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Distributed Caching Engines

MEMORYSAVINGS

Traffic Reduced

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Distributed Caching Engines

SharedCaching

TransparentFailover

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Elastic Java Virtual Machines

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What is EM4J?

•Elastic Memory 4 Java

• Technology by VMWare through SpringSource Acquisition

• Memory ballooning capability

• Interaction between the application process and the guest operating system

• EM4J communicates at a VM level to share and move memory when needed.

• Can be used to “save” a process on the verge of capacity or workload spikes.

• Not required to reserve memory, with EM4J can over-commit memory resources beyond physical allocation to ESX.

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VMWare ESX Server: EM4J

Virtual Machine

Virtual Machine

Virtual Machine

Guest OS

Guest OS

Guest OS

JVM

JVM

JVM

Java Heap

Java Heap

Java Heap

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On-Demand Elasticity

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Why Elasticity On Demand Is Here to Stay

o Application adoption is aggressively increasing• In 2003, average user logged into Bb 3X per week and

spent an average of 7 minutes between 1st and last click.*

• In 2012, average user logged into Bb 1X per day and spent an average of 21 minutes between 1st and last click.*

o Maturity of LMS usage by faculty and students o Handling periods of predicted and unpredicted usage

• Periods of seasonality

• Spikes of usage

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Strategies for Elasticity

Push to the Cloud Solutions

Co-Locate Your Own Cloud

• Cost of Inventory• Sharing Infrastructure• Over-subscribing

resources• More universal control

c

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Third Party Analytics and Services

Analytics as a Service (AaaS)

o Market is wide open and looking for a market leadero Products like Google Analytics tell so little about what

really happens in an application• Need more than generic dashboards of hits, views, geo-

location, etc…

o Need companies that specialize in data scienceo Reduce Costs

o Support the Storage Demands

o Expertise in Data Science

o Accessibility of Analytics Findings to Community

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Other Services to Consider

o APM as a Service: New Relic and AppDynamicso Security as a Service: McAffee (Sentrigo for DBs),

Symantec and Simplifiedo Behavioral Analytics as a Service: Google Analyticso Infrastructure Monitoring as a Service: Pingdom,

Compuware and KeyNote

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