In-Memory Computing Summit Q&A

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Terry Erisman, Vice President of Marketing at GridGain Systems tells us why the In-Memory Computing Summit is so important for our readers ...

 

Q.  Tell us about the In-Memory Computing Summit.  Why did GridGain Systems launch the conference series?  Why did you launch a European event?

A.  The In-Memory Computing Summits (https://imcsummit.org/) are the only industry-wide events of their kind, tailored to in-memory computing-related technologies and solutions.  They were launched three years ago in Silicon Valley after we searched for all of the conferences devoted to in-memory computing and found there were none!  The inaugural In-Memory Computing Summit 2015 was held in San Francisco and drew over 150 attendees.  The In-Memory Computing Summit 2016 drew over 300 registered attendees and we expect even more at the 2017 Summit in Silicon Valley, which is October 24-25.  We have found interest in in-memory computing to be high in Europe.  Based on the success of the first two In-Memory Computing Summits in Silicon Valley plus the interest in these technologies in Europe, we decided to launch a European Summit this year.  We have been supported in that effort by our strong Conference Committee (https://imcsummit.org/eu/conference-committee) which includes representatives from Barclays, ING Belgium, Databricks, FSB Technology, IHS Markit, and CG Consultancy.

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Q.  Why is In-Memory Computing important?

A.  As companies undergo a digital transformation, they often implement web-scale applications or Internet of Things (IoT) applications.  This transformation results in massive amounts of data which require real-time analysis to drive improved end user experiences and reduced costs.  In-memory computing offers the speed, scale and redundancy necessary to address these new challenges.  

In-memory computing delivers speed by maintaining a copy of the active data in RAM which removes the bottleneck of retrieving data from disk prior to processing, increasing speed by 1,000x.  Many in-memory computing solutions, such as Apache Ignite, are distributed computing environments which can be scaled out by adding more nodes to their cluster, allowing solutions to scale to petabytes of data in memory.  Also, because of their distributed nature, the systems can provide redundancy between the nodes.  The resulting solutions built on in-memory computing platforms can perform much faster and scale much larger than traditional computing approaches built on disk-based data stores.  This enables new levels of OLTP and OLAP performance and even enables HTAP (hybrid transactional and analytical processing) use cases.

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Q.  Who attends the conference?

A.  Attendees of the In-Memory Computing Summit include IT decision makers, IT implementers, and developers who make or influence purchasing decisions in the areas of in-memory computing, Big Data, Fast Data, IoT and HPC.  Attendees include CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, VPs, IT directors, IT managers, data scientists, senior engineers, senior developers, architects and more.  They represent industries including financial services, fintech, online travel, software, retail, healthcare, online gaming, and telecom.

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Q.  What are you looking most forward to for the first annual European event?

A.  I am personally looking forward to our keynote panel discussion on “The Future of In-Memory Computing”, taking place on the second day of the conference.  This panel of leading in-memory computing experts includes representatives from Barclays, JacTravel, ING Belgium, FSB Technology and GridGain Systems.  The panelists will discuss how in-memory computing has impacted their company.  They will then discuss their predictions for what comes next as the industry transitions from traditional disk-based data stores to the current in-memory computing technologies and ultimately to the emerging class of memory-centric in-memory computing approaches.  The memory-centric technologies are optimized for architectures which incorporate the emerging memory technologies.  They support approaches in which the in-memory data store is system of record and the underlying disk-based data store is a backup and enables fast restarts for the in-memory system of record.

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Q.  What are some highlights planned for the conference?

A.  In addition to the keynote panel discussion, we have some great keynote presentations scheduled on both days of the conference.  The CEO of GridGain Systems, Abe Kleinfeld, will kick off the keynotes with his talk about in-memory computing, digital transformation and the future of business.  Felix Grevy from Misys will talk about a new platform for collaboration between fintechs, academics and the finance industry.  Chris Goodall from CG Consultancy will talk about high performance, high efficiency web application scaling for the travel industry.  Alex McDonald from NetApp will talk about the Storage Networking Industry Association and emerging persistent memory technologies.

Following the first day of the conference on June 20, there will be a networking reception.  There will also be a presentation at the MySQL User Group NL entitled “Turbocharge Your MySQL Queries In-Memory with Apache® Ignite™” on June 20 and a presentation at the Data Science Meetup in Amsterdam on June 22 entitled “"Apache® Ignite™ SQL Grid: Hot Blend of Traditional SQL and Swift Data Grid”.

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Q.  Anything else you want to cover?

A.  The In-Memory Computing Summit 2017 will also be held in Silicon Valley, October 24-25.  The call for speakers is open for that event, through June 30.  The In-Memory Computing Summit Silicon Valley Conference Committee is looking for talks on a variety of topics including:

 

•    User stories and business use cases
•    What's new and upcoming in in-memory computing
•    Best design practices and performance optimization
•    High availability, clustering, and replication 
•    Monitoring, management, automation tools and best practices
•    In-memory computing in the cloud 

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Industry leaders, technical experts and visionaries can submit their proposals for the In-Memory Computing Summit 2017 in Silicon Valley via the conference website (https://imcsummit.org/us/call-for-speakers)