What a Flock of Seagulls and Next Gen Cloud Computing Have in Common: Interview with Barry Morris, CEO of NUODB
When a flock of seagulls flies, no single bird is leading the way. They navigate collectively, and together share the journey. No bird is in charge of the other. An entirely new development in cloud database computing, modeled by NUODB, emulates the flocking gulls.
Technorati had the opportunity to speak with Barry Morris, CEO of NUODB, at this week’s All About the Cloud Conference, hosted by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA). 
His company is focused on solving elastic scaling of OLTP systems on the cloud. Unlike most other databases, NuoDB was built for the cloud from the ground up on an Emergent Architecture – a shared nothing, asynchronous, peer-to-peer approach that is ideal for the cloud, yet it delivers the power, reliability and functionality of a traditional database.
NUODB studied the most successful distributed algorithms, systems, and techniques of real world systems that provide scalability of service without proportional costs. They’ve taken those concepts and recombined them into a newly innovated client/cloud system that supports all the features necessary for client/server RDBMS systems. Meaning, the company’s solution is specifically architected to scale effortlessly on the cloud, without compromising on any of the features or guarantees of relational databases.
One of the key themes from the cloud conference was a reminder to not lose sight of the business challenges you are trying to solve first, followed by the technology to do it. “It’s not technology, it’s business,” one panelist shared. Along those lines, Barry identifies five key elements that are necessary for a truly open, effective cloud computing experience.
1. Elastic Scalability
This is where the bird analogy comes in. In the NUODB database model, no one computer manages, or is "in charge" of the others. You can add a low-cost node to the system to increase performance, but at the same time, removing it, doesn't collapse the system. It's a completely peer-to-peer system. That type of flexibility allows businesses to scale out or in according to their needs, without massive capital outlays.
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