Amazon's Werner Vogels on Large Scale Systems

ChelleChelle writes "When it comes to managing and deploying large scale systems and networks, discipline and focus matter more than specific technologies. In a conversation with ACM Queuecast host Mike Vizard, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels says the key to success is to have a 'relentless commitment to a modular computer architecture that makes it possible for the people who build the applications to also be responsible for running and deploying those systems within a common IT framework.'"

'Duh'

[Dryanta]

Even after RTFA, the whole thing seemed like the guy sucking himself off.

WV: Yeah. So, I think there are two answers to your question there. The first part addresses autonomic computing, which is I think just like Web services or service-oriented architecture, one of those buzzwords, you know?

One of those 'buzzwords, you know?' was your entire interview buddy. Imagine that? Scalability is achieved through many different technologies with many different engineers? I would never have thought that. I guess you have won that argument.

Jeez, I'm glad this guy is just the CTO, not somebody important.

i think you missed the point

[Stu Charlton]

Vogels was a distinguished academic in distributed systems prior to Amazon. Read his blog [allthingsdistributed.com] some time. He is quite insightful, and this queuecast was a great one. Yours is the first comment I've seen in many forums over the past few months that seems to think it was tripe, so I find it curious.

His point is that Amazon has found that a decentralied archtiecture that can work reliably but still respond to new demands with agility. That's a huge deal, considering the contortions, pain, and centralized bottlenecks that most large IT shops have to deal with. Not to mention over-obsession with technological buzzes instead of looking at the business architecture of the firm.

Perhaps that's obvious, but perhaps it's important to restate the obvious when most people don't follow it.