To that end we wrote a small script that can be used to automate the restarting of MySQL in such scenarios.

The script is called mysqlrestart.sh and is listed below. You need root access to be able to use it. If you use it and  ever reboot the server you will need to login as root and run nohup ./mysqlrestart.sh  & to restart it.

Set the script to run every 30 seconds using Cron. It will then check for a number of connections and if it cannot get a connection or the number of connections is greater than the number defined (defined as 90 in the example below), it will restart mysql.

#!/bin/bash

SQLCONNECTION_THRESHOLD=90

echo `date`  sqlrestart started >> run.out

while true; do

        sqlconnections=`mysql –skip-column-names -s   -e  ”SHOW STATUS LIKE ‘Threads_connected’” -u root | awk ‘{print $2}’`

        #exclude myself from the number of thread connections             

        sqlconnections=$((sqlconnections – 1))

        echo `date` sqlrestart connections  $sqlconnections  >> run.out

        if [ $sqlconnections -gt $SQLCONNECTION_THRESHOLD ] || [ $sqlconnections -lt 0 ]

        then

                echo `date` restarting mysql server $sqlconnections  >> restart.out

                service mysql restart >> restart.out 2>&1

                echo `date` restart  complete   >> restart.out

        fi

        sleep 30

done

This is the third set of certifications Amazon has recently announced coming on top of VPC ISO 27001 certification and SAS 70 Type II certification.

The accreditation covers EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud), S3 (Simple Storage Service), VPC (Virtual Private Cloud), and includes Amazon’s underlying infrastructure.

AWS’ accreditation covers FISMA’s low and moderate levels. This level of accreditation requires a set of security configurations and controls that includes documenting the management, operational and technical processes used in securing physical and virtual infrastructure, and a requirement for third-party audits.

Other vendors who recently announced FISMA certification recently where Google with Google Apps for Government and Microsoft with the Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite among cloud services (although there was a spat between Microsoft and Google regarding these claims).

Expect to see further certifications as these are a pre-requisite of expansion into lucrative government and private sector contracts as vendors feels more comfortable choosing Cloud resources as commoditisation marches on.

“A user buys some software over the Internet or Shrink wrapped. They receive it and install it. It either does not work for them or they cannot figure out how to use it so they basically write off the cash and don’t use the App. End of story.”

Now lets looks at what happens on Cloud:

“The user either buys an Application from an App Store be it desktop or mobile, or a holiday from a holiday store, and then decided either the application is rubbish, does not work for them (or they have not RTFM) or has a bad experience on holiday. The user then use Social networks and/or the review forum on the App Store to comment on the bas experience”

In the latter case this “review” and negative experience puts off other people of trying the App / the holiday / the hotel etc. In some cases it can mean the difference between continually selling product or selling nothing as users look at the last bad review and then move somewhere else to continue their search to buy. One person can have the power to seriously undermine your whole product marketing and application strategy.

Even worse, many of the review forums (Apple’s App Store and Google Marketplace come to mind…) don’t even let you post a counter-review to explain that either the user has got it wrong, or misunderstood, or to genuinely offer to correct a bug. Worse still, some vendors can use a strategy of targeting competitive products to “put people off” purchase. In some cases this has led to the vendors involved seeking out legal action.

So what can you do to protect your product and your reputation ?

Well the first step has already been taken, you are at least thinking about it and conscious of it which is half the battle. What you should do is have your marketing or support team have a strategy that includes:

- Monitoring App Stores and review forums where your product features
- Monitoring social media for keywords about your product or company
- Set up Google Alerts keywords to inform you of keywords about your product and company
- Ensure you check your Twitter messages and also posts on LinkedIn and Facebook pages.  These are easily missed.

When you see responses, always make sure to try and follow up with the user and engage and resolve their issue, even if this means refunding them, Even if a refund seems like the last thing you want to do, offer the refund, it is not worth your reputation. As part of the process try and see if they will change their review, even if it is only to neutral.

The Cloud brings power to the masses in more ways than one and a single user can have a dramatic network effect on your business if you are not careful !

Clustrix launched in early May with the claim that it’s DB technology, which features MySQL like transactionality and reliability, could scale to billions of entries. All four customers announced by Clustrix in the press release announced that this was the case.

Clustrix provide this as an appliance as an option for online services that do not want to have to invest time and effort in figuring out how to a) shard their data for better performance or b) move to something relatively new such as MongDB, or Cassandra.

Further details (which are worth reading) can be found on the original post on GigaOM.

This is further exacerbated in the cloud storage space as their is no ubiquitous API (see our prior post on Amazon S3 becoming a de facto standard interface).

To this end we are starting to see services an applications that themselves are offering interesting aggregations of access to data clouds. We look at a few of these below:

GoodReader, Office2 HD , QuickOffice , Documents to Go, iSMEStorage, iWork:

The iPad,  iPhone, Android have some interesting applications which function on top of existing data clouds. All the aforementioned application work in this way, either letting you view the files (in the case of GoodReader) or letting you view and edit the files (in the case of Office2, QuickOffice, Documents to Go, iWork, and iSMEStorage). The premise is that if you have data stored in an existing cloud then you can load and view or edit it in this tools and store it locally.

Tools such as iWork (which encompasses iPages, iNumbers, and iKeynote) only work with MobileMe or the WebDav standard, although the iSMEStorage App gets around this by enabling you to use iWork as an editor for files accessed through it’s cloud gateway , that can be stored on any number of clouds, using WebDav, even if the underlying cloud does not support WebDav.

In fact some companies are making data access a feature in pricing, for example,  charging extra for increased connectivity.

Gladinet.com and SMEStorage.com :

Both Gladinet and SMEStorage are unique amongst the current Cloud vendors in that they enable aggregated access to multiple file clouds. They essentially enable you to access cloud files from multiple different providers from a single file system.

Gladinet is inherently a windows only solution with many different offerings whereas SMEStorage also has windows software but also has cloud drives for Linux, Mac and also mobile clients for iOS, Android and BlackBerry. Gladinet is  a client side service whereas SMEStorage is a server-based service using it’s Cloud Gateway Appliance ,which is also available as a virtual appliance for VMWAre, XEN etc.

Both offering support a dizzying array of Cloud, such as, Amazon S3, Windows Azure Blob Storage, Google Storage, Google Docs, RackSpace Cloud Files etc, plus many more.

Such solutions don’t just aggregate cloud services but bring the cloud into the desktop and onto the Mobile / Tablet, making the use of cloud data much more transparent.

As data become more outsourced (to the cloud) for all types of different applications and services I expect we will see more such innovative solutions, and applications that give access to aggregated cloud data, and extend the services and tools that are provided by the native data provider.

Apparently the passwords where encrypted in the torrent but as Gawker used an outdated encryption scheme they are relatively straightforward to crack. If you have ever registered on any of these sites then and tend to use the same username and password then you should change your username and password anywhere else you have used it on the web. Some sites are already pro-actively forcing you to do this. I receive an email from LinkedIN today that made me go through the lost password security mechanism to reset my account.

So what does this mean for Cloud ? Can one site damage the concept of storing and accessing information on the Cloud ? I think for sure, yes. It will make companies who were reticent about going to Cloud because of security concerns even more reticent, and such a breach has an effect on other sites, and I am sure we have not seen the full fallout of this yet. As for Gawker’s brand, well I think it is hugely damaging, although the web can be a fickle place, it remains to be seen how badly affected the Gawker brand will be. I can imagine potential advertisers do not want to be associated with it.

What can you do to protect yourself ? Well first, for sure change any username/password combos that are the same as the one you registered on this site, and in future consider having a separate username/password combination for each site you register. I create email addresses specifically for a registration for such sites on the web and I file them in KeepPass to be able to remember them. Ulitmately, remember, as a user don’t rely that such sites will protect your data, and as a vendor, revisit your security mechanisms to ensure the next Gawker is not you !

As stated on WikiPedia:

SO/IEC 27001 requires that management:

Systematically examine the organization’s information security risks, taking account of the threats, vulnerabilities and impacts;

Design and implement a coherent and comprehensive suite of information security controls and/or other forms of risk treatment (such as risk avoidance or risk transfer) to address those risks that are deemed unacceptable; and

Adopt an overarching management process to ensure that the information security controls continue to meet the organization’s information security needs on an ongoing basis.

“Amazon Web Services is continuing its commitment to provide further assurance of AWS security controls and practices through third-party audits and certifications such as SAS 70 Type II and ISO 27001,” said Stephen Schmidt, Chief Information Security Officer for Amazon Web Services.

“Via ISO 27001 and other certifications, we continue to provide our customers with confidence that our security controls and practices follow internationally-recognized security standards.”

You can learn more about Amazon and it’s compliance and security provisions here.

We have quickly seen other providers such as RIM, and Google quickly adopt the same model, with Nokia lagging behind and then news filtering out that they would launch an App Store at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona and when they did,  well lets just say that it was not exactly a success.  Microsoft, late to the party as always, are also jumped on the bandwagon with the launch of their “My Phone” service . Samsung have also now launched their own Mobile Applications MarketPlace. This shift has hugely changed the whole model of the Telco market. Nokia, the 100 pound gorilla, is losing market share hand over fist as it struggles to get to grips with this new model. Motorola has lost $3.6 billion as they too struggle to get to grips with this new consumer model.

In 1 year Apple has become the eighth largest mobile phone vendor in the world (source: strategy analytics). This whilst only competing in the smartphone market and, at the time of the report, not selling into markets such as China. Overall during the past March quarter mobile phone sales fell 13% worldwide, the fastest rate of annual decline since record began, but in contrast sales rose 10% in the US, largely because of Apple. The top 5 handset vendors saw their market share fall from 83.5% to 78%, a decline that is predicted to continue as Android comes of age and Apple continues it’s dominance with low-end entry points into the consumer market.

The whole notion of how to sell to an individual has changed, it has become from the edge and back rather than the reverse i.e. it has proved that users are wiling to not only pay for real-time services and just-in-time applications, but will actually choose their handset provider based on the perceived value and breadth of those services. How many times have you read of a competitive phone review, “In some ways it is a better handset than the iPhone but it just cannot match the App Store for breadth of Appllications”. Interestingly not everyone agrees. MobileCrunch recently ran an article, “Not every Company needs an App Store“.  I believe they miss the point. The rules have changed and the humble phone has changed to become a platform to deliver services aided by on-demand cloud applications and services.  

I agree that ideally we would be able to write against one platform for services delivered. Unfortunately the mobile phone OS market is very segmented with lots of players such as Symbian (Nokia), Microsoft, Google, iPhone etc. Having said that their are some initiatives to try and provide some abstraction to allow code / services written for one platform to run on others, such as PhoneGap, which supports iPhone, Android and Blackberry. Ultimately the Genie is out of the bottle and new mobile companies can see the carrot that is new revenue and business models that Apple has made reality. Ultimately the will have no choice, with an Open Source OS model in Android squeezing them from one side, and Apple on the other, the landscape is being changed and the 100 pound gorilla is starting to look like an endangered species. Figures compiled by Gartner show that Apples Market share more than doubled in 2008, whilst Nokia’s Market share of the global smartphone Market fell from 47% in 2007 to 31% in 2008, and based on projections in the Gartner analysis, this would make Apple the leading global smartphone provider by 2011.