D'Alesandre: Hi.
Welcome to "Building Enterprise
Applications on App Engine."
I know it's a session,
getting late in the day,
and there's been a lot
of excitement today,
but, um, we have a, um,
a number of things
we're excited to talk about,
and, uh, hopefully,
we'll be able to,
even in the late afternoon,
keep your attention.
Um, so building enterprise
applications on App Engine--
specifically what we're
gonna be talking about today
is, um, why this year
is becoming,
um, the best time to build
enterprise applications
on App Engine.
Um, my name is Greg D'Alesandre.
I'm a senior product manager
on Google App Engine.
Schalk: And my name
is Chris Schalk.
I'm a developer advocate
on Google App Engine.
Okay, I got it right there.
And, uh, so just to get started,
I wanted to give you guys
a little bit of information.
Uh, there's my Twitter handle,
so feel free to--you can follow,
uh, and of course--
D'Alesandre: I still use e-mail.
I'm--I'm old school.
Schalk: Yeah, so feel free
to shoot him some e-mail.
And, uh, if you're ever--
if you're a little bit confused
where you're at, we have this
handy, uh, session short link.
You can click on that,
and that actually tells you
you are here watching our show.
Um, we have our
hash tags, as well,
and, of course,
the session feedback.
So, cool, guess we'll jump
right into our presentation.
Um, so mainly, the presentation
today that we've put together
is essentially--
the high level is,
we're wanting to convey
the trajectory of App Engine,
where it is today,
and how it's essentially heading
in an enterprise direction.
So to do that,
what we're doing is,
I'm gonna go ahead
and give you through--
step you through a brief
history of App Engine.
So how many people here
are currently
using App Engine today?
Cool. And how many people
are not using App Engine yet,
but are still looking at--
Okay, good.
So we definitely want to speak
to you guys, as well,
and if you guys are--
are from the enterprise--
how many enterprise--
would you consider yourselves
enterprise developers?
Okay, exactly.
So I think we've got
a good crowd here,
at least for the stuff
that we're gonna try to cover.
So anyway, for folks who are not
familiar with the history,
I'm gonna give you
some history.
I'm also going
to hand it over to Greg,
so he can actually get
into a little bit more detail
in what we are
announcing today.
You may have actually seen,
uh, something on our blog,
but, uh, we'll be getting
into more specifics about that.
Um, I'm gonna also talk about
the App Engine for business,
uh, technology
that we announced last year,
and explain, essentially,
what we learned
from that whole program,
and how it actually pulled us
to where we are here today.
Um, and then finally,
we have some key partners
that we're gonna invite
up onstage,
and they're gonna give us
a little bit of, like,
their experience
with App Engine,
and also the overall, um,
what their experiences were,
especially for App Engine
for Business and so forth.
And that's pretty much what
we're going to be doing
for today, so we'll
go ahead and jump into it.
So let's look back
a few years--
a long time ago--
just three years ago, actually,
um, when we launched
App Engine.
So we literally just passed
our 3-year birthday, um,
so it's relatively young/
But, um, as you can see in a lot
of these different features,
we've been continuously, uh,
putting out some really
excellent features,
and getting a lot
of great feedback.
So I'd kind of like
to summarize, like,
our last 3 years as,
obviously, 2008 was a--
the major milestone was actually
launching App Engine.
Um, and then moving on to 2009,
we had a general over, uh,
overall platform expansion,
especially with the launching
of the Java Runtime.
How many people here--I think
I've got a pretty good idea,
but, anyway, for folks
coming from the enterprise,
Java is obviously key,
and, uh, I actually come from
Java and enterprise, as well,
so that was also when I, uh,
came into the App Engine team,
and so that was obviously
extremely important, as well.
And then, of course,
moving on into 2010,
uh, we had a series
of limitations removed,
just essentially making
the overall platform,
uh, more user-friendly,
more adaptable and pluggable
into a lot
of different technologies,
and essentially more liberal,
I guess, in that way.
Um, 10 minute Tasks,
for example--
that's obviously a great
improvement for people
who were having to do,
like, long-running tasks.
Uh, Channel API, even,
for doing some cool
comment type of interactions
with browsers.
And, of course, 2011, uh,
we have the High-Replication
Datastore, which we launched,
and we're getting extremely
positive feedback so far,
so positive that we actually
have an announcement
that we'll be talking about
later today.
We even have one of our partners
that was one of our key partners
in helping us, uh,
with the early adoption
of a High-Replication datastore.
And, of course, today,
we also introduce
some really cool features.
So in the current version
of 1.5.0,
uh, we have this new technology
called Backends--
D'Alesandre: And, uh,
if you can go back in time,
there was a talk about two hours
ago on Backends, so...
Schalk: That's right.
So, exactly.
Um, Backends,
if you're just
learning about it today,
if you ever wanted to run,
like, a continuous process,
have, like, say a search engine,
or just essentially, any kind
of, like, a demon process,
that is what you get
with Backends,
so definitely some
cool technology.
Pull Queues is also another
technology that we've, uh,
introduced today
with the latest version,
so you can essentially
string up a series of tasks,
and line them up
and let them execute,
and they will execute,
essentially,
as they're ready
to be, uh, executed.
And then, of course,
the big change
that we're introducing today
is High-Replication datastore
is actually becoming
the default technology,
and this is coming
as a result
of an abundance
of empirical information.
Um, all of our trusted
testers out there,
uh, and even our own work
with the technology,
is just really proving to be
a highly reliable architecture
for data storage.
Okay.
And then, before we kind of
jump in a little bit more
on some, like, overall metrics
that Greg's gonna jump into,
uh, I always like
to pull up a slide
just to kind of give you
a general feel
for our overall partners,
and especially in this context.
You may not see a bunch
of enterprise, uh, companies,
but we actually partner
with a lot of companies
who are directly relating
with enterprise companies.
Uh, I mean, sure, there are
some enterprise companies
there, like Best Buy
and some other guys,
where we actually interface
with them quite a bit,
where they may not run
their entire infrastructure
on App Engine today,
but they are now experimenting
and taking core components
of their overall
architectural, um,
enterprise architecture,
and pulling in and replacing it
with App Engine components.
In that sense,
we find App Engine
extremely pluggable technology
in larger,
heterogeneous types of, uh,
enterprise architectures.
Um, but, yes, you can see
from--from our partners,
that we have more of our
also traditional partners
that came when we launched.
So Social, Gaming, Mobile,
all that kind of stuff--
and all those guys
are still quite happy,
and continuing to crank out
some really cool stuff.
Okay, so let me hand it over
to, uh, Greg.
He's gonna talk a little bit
about our growth,
and, uh, and where
we are today.
D'Alesandre: So as you
can imagine,
with all of the things that, um,
Chris was just talking about
that we've been doing
over the years, um,
a number of people have decided
they wanted to use App Engine,
and this, uh, this curve
is exactly the kind of thing
we love to see.
Um, as of today, there are over
100,000 active developers
every month
using App Engine.
Um, there's over 200,000
active applications every week.
Now when we say
"active applications,"
we don't just mean somebody
built a HelloWorld app
to see how it was,
and--and count that
as an application.
We actually mean
200,000 applications
that are serving traffic
every week.
We also serve, um,
over 1.5 billion
pageviews per day.
Um, to give you a sense
and a scale of this--
Schalk: Can I repeat
something really quickly?
D'Alesandre: Of course.
Schalk: Per day,
so let me interrupt
for a second.
D'Alesandre: To give you
a scale of how quickly
we've been growing,
I believe last year at I/O,
we announced half a billion
pageviews per day,
or over half a billion
pageviews per day.
Um, then in December,
we started talking about,
we were over a billion
pageviews per day,
and now in May, we're--
it is May--yes--
now in May, we're over
a billion and a half.
So that's the--that's the tra--
the growth trajectory that, uh,
App Engine has been on.
Um, also wanted to call out
a specific, uh--
well, a specific wedding
that happened recently,
um, but, uh, more specifically,
uh, App Engine, um,
served a few apps
for, uh, the official
Royal Wedding,
um, and we--
we, uh,
we were excited about doing it
primarily because
it really showed, um,
the kind of traffic
that App Engine can serve
in a really short
amount of time.
Um, on wedding day, uh,
we served up to 32,000
requests per second
on one of the apps
that we were using.
Um, they--sorry, one of the apps
that we were running.
Um, 37.7 million pageviews,
13.7 million visitors,
and the best part
of all of this is,
this ran, um, without us having
to build a completely
new stack for them,
or to go totally out of our way
to make this practical
and feasible.
This ran on the same
infrastructure, um,
that is shared between
all App Engine apps.
And hopefully,
no one saw anything
really slow during that time.
[laughs]
Schalk: Yeah, and I think
the main thing there is, like,
sure, these are just numbers,
but, you know,
in an enterprise context,
you know,
enterprises can actually
feel secure
that they have a truly scalable,
to massive numbers--
both in traffic
as well as daily requests
and stuff like that, so...
D'Alesandre: Exactly. And so,
you know, that's all great--
so we've been through--
we've had a few years, um,
that we've been going through,
of building out features that,
um, gaining traction,
getting a lot of traffic.
Um, what this all leads us
up to today
is that App Engine
is actually going to be
leaving preview
later this year.
Um, leaving preview
is a massive step for us,
because it's essentially saying
that Google is completely
behind App Engine,
that they feel
it's a product
that we want moving forward.
Um, drilling down into some
of the details around this,
um, leaving preview
means a full Google product.
This includes 3-year
deprecation support.
So when we talk about
deprecation support,
what we essentially mean
is that even if we, um,
decide that we're no longer
going to, um,
continue development
on one of our APIs
or even App Engine as a whole,
we'll still continue
to support it and run it
for three years
down the road.
And I know it's a little weird
to talk about--
um, I know it's a little weird
to talk about deprecation
right when we're about
to launch a product,
but we also know that
one of the main things
that enterprises and businesses
worry about is that--
is that they don't want
to be betting on a platform,
be building on top
of a platform,
and worry that it might
just disappear tomorrow.
Schalk: That kind of reminds me,
what product did you
work on previously?
D'Alesandre: Google Wave.
Why do you ask?
Schalk: Oh, okay, never mind.
I was just kidding. Yeah.
D'Alesandre: Um, anyway--um, so
we know that this is a concern,
and this is why we think
it's so important, um,
that we come out of preview
and become a full
Google product.
Um, so this--
when we come
out of preview,
this will also include
a 99.95% SLA,
um, for all paid users.
Um, Chris will talk
a little bit more about this,
but last year, we were--
when we talked about App Engine
for business, we said that, um,
there's going to be an SLA
with App Engine for business.
When it came down to it,
we just realized all paid users
should get an SLA.
Operational and developer
support available,
um, a new business-friendly
terms of service--
billing by invoice--
the kinds of things
that you would expect
coming from a business.
Um, rounded out feature set,
including Frontend
and Backend capabilities,
and a new sustainable
pricing model.
So, um, just to dive
a little bit more into the SLA,
um, when we talk about an SLA,
it's important to us, um,
to really be as transparent
as possible
about what
we're trying to measure.
So for instance, um, uh--
well, and I guess for the sake
of transparency,
the SLA is only going to cover
High-Replication datastore
applications.
Um, we, uh, we--
High-Replication datastore,
um, as Chris mentioned,
is now the default
for all applications today,
and we know we can count on it.
Um, but High-Replication
datastore--
and I'm going to start
saying HRD--
Schalk: Yeah, I like that.
D'Alesandre: HRD does not need--
Schalk: Dan started us on that,
so we're good with it.
D'Alesandre: Yeah, exactly...
Um, so it doesn't need
planned downtime,
so when we talked about
an SLA,
we're not saying this is the SLA
outside of the planned downtimes
you're obviously going
to have to absorb anyway.
Um, uptime is going
to be measured
by thousands of various probes
from around the globe,
so it's not just us saying,
well, within out data center,
um, that we're looking at,
everything looks fine.
Um, we're also, um,
working on a way
to give customers a way
to contribute their metrics
back to us,
so that it's not just us
monitoring ourselves,
but essentially,
all of the applications
that you're running
are also monitoring our service,
and then feeding
that data back to us.
Um, last thing I wanted
to mention about this
is, um, there is an upcoming
monitoring API
that we're actually
going into trusted tester,
um, as of today,
to automatically monitor
your own applications.
Um, so this is really, um--
we understand that
what businesses need
and what enterprises need is--
is more transparency into what
their application is doing,
being able to monitor that,
and being able
to trust that it's--
that it's actually going
to be staying up.
Um, there are two sessions
that I want to highlight.
Uh, if you're interested
in learning more about this,
"More 9s Please" is, uh,
both these sessions are
tomorrow--no time travel needed.
Um, "More 9s Please" and
"Life in App Engine Production"
are two sessions that
will help you understand
both how we run things
on the Backend,
as well as, um,
how the High-Replication
datastore works,
so that when we say
that we're giving 3 1/2 9s
as an SLA for it,
why we can
be confident in that number.
All right,
Frontends and Backends.
So we talked about,
as we leave preview,
Frontends and Backends
are an integral part of this.
Um, this is because the, um,
over the years,
all of the feedback
that we've gotten
in terms of, uh,
both the way code runs
and the way we bill
for that code,
uh, essentially had been leading
us up to a point of,
we actually need to have
a better sense of both CPU
and memory that
applications are using.
Um, so what we're doing is--
Frontends and Backends
have instances.
This is essentially
the running unit.
It's a set amount
of CPU in memory.
It's what runs your code.
Um, if you're already an App Eng
user--App Engine user--
you're probably, um,
accustomed to this.
If you're running Java,
it's basically
a JVM running your code.
Um, so Frontends
use these instances,
but they scale them dynamically
based on traffic.
The App Engine scheduler
determines when to spin up
and down, um, Frontend instances
based on your traffic.
There's an algorithm
that we talk--
spoke of earlier--
in a session earlier today,
um, about how to scale
your application,
that essentially,
the algorithm we use
has something to do with
the latency of your application
and the number of--
and essentially the, uh,
the latency of requests
coming in.
Um, one of the things
we are going to be doing,
because we know that instances
are a really important concept,
um, we're going to be putting
some controls in place
to allow customers to optimize
the scheduler
for their particular usage.
So for instance, um,
if you'd rather
tailor your instance usage
so that it spins up
instances very quickly,
because you always want
really snappy response,
you'll be able to do that.
Uh, so then there's Backends.
Backends are launching today
with 1.5.0,
as we briefly discussed.
Um, the main difference is they
run based on admin control,
so admins can start them,
stop them,
uh, they can set them
to be dynamically started,
um, when requests come in.
The other thing you can do
with Backends
is choose CPU
and memory size.
Um, this, again,
is really important,
if, um, if you're trying
to run something
that is very memory intensive--
Um, and they're all also
long-running processes.
So that's essentially the upshot
of Frontends and Backends.
Um, all right,
so new pricing model overview--
Now I know this is actually
a really important
and really impactful
aspect of leaving preview.
Um, essentially, again,
taking the feedback we had
from, um, from the three years
we've been running App Engine,
uh, there's a couple big--
pretty big changes we made.
One is in usage types.
So today, we have free apps
that you can run forever,
um, to try out App Engine,
to see how it runs,
even to have a couple apps--
I know people who run
their web sites
and things like that on it.
Um, we feel that's really,
really important and critical,
uh, to allow people to try out
App Engine and use it.
There's still going to be
free apps--that's not changing,
um, very similar
to what they are today.
Um, the quotas are going to be--
are going to go down somewhat,
um, on those free apps,
but again, the goal is
you should be able to run, um,
an app on App Engine
for free forever.
Paid apps are actually similar
to what we have today
in terms of apps that have
"billing enabled."
In other words, you can pay
for scaling on paid apps.
Um, they do cost $9 per month,
um, in addition to the usage,
but that also
now includes an SLA.
Um, and then lastly, there's--
there are premier accounts,
and this is $500
per account per month,
um, in addition
to the usage you use,
but this includes
operational support.
Again, um, operational support
is really important,
because one of the pieces
of feedback
we get from our customers
is they like what we build,
they want to use it,
and the two major pieces
of feedback we often get
are, "We don't want it
to go away."
Um, and in fact, when we talk
to a number of our customers
about this, uh,
about leaving preview--
we sent them an e-mail and said,
"Hey, we have something we want
to talk to you about."
Then we got on the phone,
and they were like,
"Don't tell us App Engine
is being canceled."
Schalk: Yeah, that was the--
D'Alesandre: And, uh,
we didn't, we told 'em we were
leaving preview, which everyone
was much more excited about.
Schalk: Yeah. I was partially
at fault for that--
"I kind of have
an important announcement,
that we need to talk
with you very soon."
And so... [laughs]
Doom and gloom.
D'Alesandre: Um, but, um,
the second thing
that we constantly hear
from our customers, um,
is they want to be able to have
guaranteed response time
from someone within Google
to be able to answer questions,
um, especially if there's
operational issues,
potential downtime
on their application
that they don't understand.
They want to be able
to ask somebody a question
and get a guaranteed response.
Schalk: And I can probably
highlight that a little bit,
because obviously, if you've
worked with App Engine,
you have the forums, but then
sometimes you're lucky enough,
like some key people
here that know
some people's e-mail addresses,
and so for those guys,
we've been actually pretty good,
but we actually feel guilty
because there's thousands
of people out there that
we obviously just can't cover
from our own, you know,
sheer number of hours per day,
and so we're really happy
that we're actually
putting this program together
and launching it
for a full operational support
that it should be, so...
D'Alesandre: Indeed.
And, in fact,
this operational support program
is currently
in trusted tester today.
Schalk: Yeah.
D'Alesandre: Um, the other thing
you get with premier accounts
I should mention is,
as many apps as you want,
and all of them can scale,
and you don't pay
per-app fees for those.
Um, second big change--
no more CPU hours.
I know CPU hours, uh,
were--were elegant
in their simplicity.
Um, unfortunately,
they did have a downside,
in terms of people
who were trying
to do memory-intensive
applications.
Um, or people
who had applications
that just had
very high latency.
Um, we didn't necessarily
know how to tackle
some of these applications,
because essentially, all we did
is charge for CPU,
um, so instead,
we're going to be charging
for size and number
of running Frontends
and Backends,
and this incorporates
CPU and memory,
as I spoke about before.
Um, so essentially,
anytime your code is running,
um, we're going to be charging
for the size.
Um, APIs,
which today,
we're charging CPU hours for,
instead, we're going to actually
be just charging
based on
the operations themselves.
So if you're using
the Channel API,
and, um, and you, uh,
you open up ten channels,
we charge you
for ten channels opened.
Um, we will charge you
for ten channels opened.
Today, if you open up
ten channels,
we translate that into the CPU
that it takes us,
and then charge you
for that CPU.
Um, part of the reason
we did this
was because we wanted
a much more transparent way
for people to estimate what
their actual bills would be,
um, and as we get, uh--
there's, um--with the blog post
that Chris mentioned today,
there's a detailed list
of the operations
and the cost for those,
and as we get closer and closer
to leaving preview,
more information will be
available about some of those.
And then the last thing
is add-ons.
Um, I say, for example,
SSL for custom domains will be
available for a monthly fee,
um, because we know that this
is a very, very,
um, heavily desired
feature for App Engine.
People tell us this every day.
Schalk: Yep.
D'Alesandre: Um, and we're
working on it every day.
Um, it's, in fact, one of our
top priorities to work on.
Um, unfortunately,
we don't have a specific date
that we can say when it'll--
when it will launch.
Um, that being said,
when it is launched,
it'll be available
for a monthly fee,
partially because it uses
a resource--IP addresses--
um, that is--that we can't just
sort of pay usage-based.
Um, that being said,
we heard loud and clear
that people loved
usage-based modeling,
so that's why, um,
everything else
is going to be usage-based.
So this is a list
of the prices we have.
One of the things that I--
or, excuse me,
the prices we will have
once we leave preview.
Schalk: Right.
D'Alesandre: One of the things
that I should mention
are reserved instances,
and so, um, reserved instances--
it's actually pre-reserving
a number of instance hours
that you will use in a week.
It's not reserving
the instances themselves,
if that makes sense.
I also wanted to highlight
datastore storage,
um, which we're
actually lowering
the High-Replication
datastore price
from, um, from 45 cents,
where it was before,
down to 24 cents today.
Um, so if you log in
to your admin console,
um, today, you'll see
that price has gone down,
if you're using
High-Replication datastore.
Um, that as well as us,
um, setting it as default today
just shows our commitment to it.
Schalk: Right.
D'Alesandre:
All right, so, Chris...
Schalk: Cool.
D'Alesandre: What's going on
with App Engine for business?
Schalk: So if you actually
did see the blog post,
and actually went over
to the, uh, App Engine URL
that we've had--
App Engine for business URL
that we've had
for about a year now,
you'll see that it's kind of,
uh, disappearing.
So to give you the long--
the short story, I guess,
um, when we launched it,
essentially, we announce--
well, I should say
when we announced
that App Engine for Business
was going to be entering
a preview period, uh,
we basically embarked on
a fairly long
trusted tester phase.
And so as we started
rolling out the features,
I was actually in charge
of getting together
a very large audience
of trusted testers out there,
uh, to provide feedback.
And probably--um, obviously,
you know, the features that we,
you know, plan to put out there
are still very popular.
People were very interested
in the core features.
But as we got into kind of,
like, getting the core feedback,
we found that there were
definitely some things
that we needed
to kind of address.
Uh, we obviously just
found out that people--
they want
the features themselves.
They don't necessarily want
to kind of fit in
to what we had actually
projected earlier
for the overall
App Engine for Business model,
meaning that it was
kind of a segmentation,
or a special class
of App Engine,
whereas what we're announcing
today--it's all the same.
It's just App Engine.
So as we launched
the trusted tester program,
uh, we had our hundreds
of developers,
they were, you know,
trying it out,
we signed them up for early
preview to some of the programs,
ran some external workshops,
had people give us feedback.
And so what we were finding,
essentially, was that, um,
the App Engine for Business
model
was a little bit restrictive
for some of our--our testers.
Not all companies
were essentially focused
on building internal apps,
and that was what
the original thinking was
with App Engine for Business.
And, uh, we also found that
many of our trusted testers
were not necessarily, um,
we found that the per user
per app pricing
was not necessarily compatible
with their usage pattern.
Um, we also noticed, like,
even companies that
were not officially part
of our App Engine for Business
trusted tester program--
they ended up kind of
becoming a trusted tester
by, uh, the necessity of, say,
having an SLA, for example,
so we actually had
to kind of modify
what we were doing to work out
with some of our
key trusted testers.
All in all, that provided
some great feedback.
This feedback was fed right
directly back into our overall
strategic, um, you know,
directions for App Engine,
and here we are today,
essentially announcing
what we're doing with the, uh,
the leaving the preview,
and, of course,
keeping the core, uh,
very popular aspects
of App Engine for Business,
the SLA, support,
hosted SQL,
all that kind of stuff,
but just making it available
for anyone.
And, of course,
anyone can do it,
as long as they go ahead
and, you know, choose which--
what app model
they want to use for it.
So what does this mean
for customers?
Obviously, the timing,
as Greg mentioned, as well,
the timing is--
so for you guys,
you don't have to worry
anything about it right now.
It's gonna be down the road,
sometimes the latter part
of the year.
Um, we do have a new
terms of service
for you guys to work through,
and, of course, the pricing
is something that
you'll have to look into
a little bit more closely.
We are going to have a tool
that will allow you to have,
essentially, on the fly
comparative bills,
so you can see
what it was before,
then what it's going to be.
So we're basically working out
to help all existing customers
to understand what, essentially,
um, what it's going
to mean for them,
and mainly just
to kind of facilitate,
or make sure that it's not that
big of a change for you guys.
And we're definitely
counting on the fact
that you guys
are going to benefit from
all of the additional features
and the SLA and so forth.
D'Alesandre: One of the things
I should mention is,
the reason we haven't--
um, we're not showing
comparative bills today
is because now that
we're going to be billing
based on instance hours,
um, our scheduler...
Schalk: Right. Right.
D'Alesandre: Which decides how
many instance you're running,
is--becomes
a much more critical,
um, aspect of your bill.
Um, it also means that, uh,
that we need to optimize
our scheduler around
ensuring that your instances
are being used effectively.
And so part of the reason
we're not showing you
what your new bill
is going to be today
is because we're still
in the process
of changing our scheduler
around to make sure
that we're using instances
more efficiently
so that you're only paying
for what you actually need.
Schalk: Yeah, and this change
also helps you be more efficient
on your side, as well,
so, I mean,
we're obviously fixing
the infrastructure
to guide you in that way,
but you can also
benefit from it, as well.
All right, so at this point,
um, to kind of explain, um,
some of our, you know,
key trusted testers,
and allow them
to kind of, uh, you know,
describe in their own words,
you know,
what the experience has been
with App Engine,
and also what they
think moving forward,
what this direction's gonna,
you know, have for them,
we'd like to invite Dan Murray,
our co-founder
and managing director
and web clients. Thank you.
Murray: Thanks, Chris.
Thanks, Greg.
D'Alesandre: Thanks, Dan.
Murray: Well, uh,
before I dive into this
and talk about GAE,
and what GAE's been for us,
and how excited
we are about the direction
App Engine is taking
over the course
of the next year here,
I want to talk a little bit
about our company
and what we do,
so you can put this in context.
What, uh, WebFilings does,
we, uh, build collaborative
software that helps,
uh, financial reporting teams
and public companies
to streamline the process
of submitting
and filing their financial
reports with the SCC.
This is a process that, uh,
every public company
goes through.
About, uh, 10,000 companies
in the U.S. that do this,
and they have to do it
every quarter.
It's a really challenging
process, uh,
something that these companies
have struggled with for decades,
using, uh, more traditional
word processing
and spreadsheet applications--
I'll put it that way--
um, and what we've done is, uh,
you know, we've really looked
carefully at that space,
looked at the market,
and looked at the problems
they have with collaborating,
um, the problems that they have
with just updating
complex documents
that have a lot
of repeated information,
and we built
a collaborative solution
that really, um,
binds the entire reporting team
and other members
of the company together,
and for them to collaborate
and really reduce
the amount of time
it takes to, uh,
produce these reports.
In fact, uh, we've managed
to cut, in some cases,
20 days off the time
it takes to file.
Um, we have many companies
that, uh,
we brought up over the past
several years--
or past few years,
and just in the past year,
we've gone from, I think,
zero to, uh,
several hundred companies
in a very short amount of time.
And App Engine--
we started on App Engine,
and, uh, really, I think
we started looking at it
in, uh, right after it came out
in April 2008.
Um, I remember--
we've got several
WebFilings developers
here in the audience.
And, uh, we--several of us
drove to Bozeman
and taught ourselves Python,
and taught ourselves App Engine
in the drive
on the way there.
And, uh, App Engine we selected
for its ability to scale,
and also, uh,
with our customers,
they're very sensitive
about the security
of information.
And so we looked at Google,
and, uh,
at how seriously Google
takes security,
and the underpinnings
and security in depth
that App Engine practices,
and really felt that it was
the right, uh, platform for us.
And again, it's helped us scale,
just over the past year,
from zero to several
hundred customers,
and, uh, I think we've gone
from 30 to 180 people,
with, I don't know,
close to 60 developers,
all developing, and, you know,
deploying new apps
with a very agile method,
um, you know,
every few weeks.
Schalk: I hope you don't mind.
I just want to say that,
when we invited you guys over
to share your technology
with our overall team, uh, we
were just completely blown away
by how the rich aspects
of your application.
So it's a really awesome
application, and I think,
you know--
hats off for you guys,
and obviously, you guys
have had a great track record
with your Fortune 100 companies
that are now using
your technology.
Murray: Yeah, yeah,
just mention real quick
that we have companies like
eBay, Sprint, Valero Energy,
United Airlines, and many
other Fortune 100 companies
that are using our product
every single day.
And like I said, we were,
you know, GAE-based,
you know,
from the very beginning,
and it's really simplified
our approach to development.
We've been able to focus
on innovation
for the market that we serve,
uh, rather than on managing
the infrastructure,
and it's really, you know,
done great things to support
Agile development.
I've been doing software
development for over 20 years,
and I can tell you
I've struggled
with a lot of
different platforms,
and this one has, uh,
you know, I can't tell you
that we haven't had our bumps
along the road,
but they're minor
in comparison to, uh,
anything that I had
experienced before that.
Um, some of the things
that we're--
we're very excited about
with App Engine,
um, is--are the new features,
and, you know, I really wish
that we had the Backend
a few years ago
when we started, but, uh,
we're gonna make very good use
of that very soon.
Uh, we've had to take
different approaches
to long-running processes,
so this is a really welcome,
uh, welcome new feature.
And then, you know,
we actually, uh,
with our customers,
reliability is very,
very important.
I mean, we've gotta be up.
We've gotta be up 24/7,
and since we've made the switch,
and Chris and, uh, Lie Hakon
and several others at, uh,
on the App Engine team,
really helped us out
with the migration to HRD.
And since we've made that move
to HRD,
we've actually experienced,
uh, 100% uptime,
and so that's been really
wonderful for our business,
and, you know,
our stress level, uh, company,
uh, is, you know,
nice and even as a result.
Our customer support calls
don't relate to the stability,
reliability
of the platform at all.
They're really
more helping them solve
their financial
reporting problems.
And then, of course,
we're excited about
the expanded support,
and, uh, really,
the 3-year deprecation,
and the move out
of the preview is, uh,
just validation
of the choice we made,
and the fact that we bet
our business on App Engine,
uh, three years ago,
and, uh, you know,
we've taken a hard look,
and worked with
Chris and Greg and crew
on the, uh, pricing model.
And, uh, really,
from our perspective,
the cost/value benefit is there,
and we don't, uh, you know,
it--it fits our business model.
And so we see the pricing
changes really as more,
uh, validation,
and we're excited,
because Google's
really getting behind us
and putting a lot into, uh,
Google App Engine's
growth and development.
Schalk: Cool. Well, thanks
very much. Uh, there you go.
We heard it from Dan,
who's, uh, quite happy.
[applause]
Schalk: Have a seat there.
So for--our next partner that
I want to bring up to the stage
is, uh, Matt Fowler,
and he's actually from Jabil,
and he was also one of our,
um, trusted testers
who actually came on-site. We
had a workshop back in November,
and he provided some really
excellent feedback
that actually helped us
guide App Engine
to where we are here today.
So here you go.
Fowler: So, uh,
my name's Matt Fowler.
I'm a systems engineer with
the global I.T. architecture
team at Jabil circuit.
Um, just real quick, Jabil,
um, we're a contract electronics
manufacturing company.
Uh, we've got about
85,000 employees,
and last year, we did over
$13 billion in revenue.
Uh, we are also
a Google apps customer.
We have about
40,000 licenses,
um, and, um,
you know, we started using
the App Engine platform
after we began, uh,
transitioning over
to, uh, Google apps,
so, um, you know, it was just
kind of a natural extension
of the rest of the platform.
Um, you know, the, uh,
we have
Java developers on staff,
uh, so being able to develop
in a language that we were
already familiar with
was a huge plus.
Um, you know, up to this point,
um, you know, some of the things
that we really like
about App Engine, um, it kind of
simplifies development.
Um, you know, a typical
development cycle,
you've got, you know, different
infrastructure to support,
you know, dev--
you know, dev work,
QA or testing,
uh, and then, uh,
the move to production.
Uh, with App Engine,
in the versioning
and the way the datastore
is set up,
you can actually within
one app instance,
have multiple versions.
You know, developers can get
their own--
their own, uh, you know,
section of that app.
Um, and so, uh,
it makes it simple
to promote those different
versions into production.
Uh, you just, you know,
you can follow
the same patterns
that you use today
for other tools,
but, uh, it's just a little bit
easier to manage.
Um, you know, the, uh,
the scaling of App Engine,
you know, the built-in ability
to scale up,
uh, as you roll out
to more users,
or, uh, you add,
you know, additional--
additional functionality
that opens up, you know,
additional use cases internally.
Um, you know,
you don't have to--
you don't have to worry
about getting additional--
additional servers in place,
additional network
connections in place.
You, uh, you know,
as long as they have
decent connection
to the internet,
um, you know, you get
the scaling built in.
As Chris mentioned,
we, uh, we participated
in the App Engine for Business
trusted tester program.
I was here at I/O last year,
and, uh,
after that announcement,
I-I signed up
just about immediately.
Um, it was something that we,
you know, we definitely
wanted to look at, um,
and some of the stuff added
by the business offering, uh,
really enabled us to be able
to get into it.
Um, you know, over the course
of the participation
in the, uh,
in the trusted tester program,
we, uh, you know,
we looked at the original
pricing model,
which was, uh,
you know, per user,
per month,
which, for us, didn't really
work that well.
Um, you know,
we really wanted the, uh,
the utilization and, uh,
you know, tracking cost
by utilization, and, uh--
Schalk: I remember
you had mentioned
you had, like, thousands
of people on the shop floor,
right, and so it just wouldn't
work out for you guys
in that sense, right?
Murray: Right, right.
Um, so, uh, you know,
the team took that
into account, uh,
with the new pricing model.
Um, you know, also the, uh,
during the trusted tester,
uh, phase
for the business product,
um, authentication was locked
to a single Google apps domain,
and, um, you know, we, uh--
we needed the ability
to have other domains
access the applications
we had developed,
so that was another item...
Schalk: Right, right.
Murray: That, uh, we fed back.
Um, so with, uh,
today's announcements,
um, you know, we, uh,
we've got a lot of new stuff
to look at.
Uh, we're pretty excited
about new functionality
in the platform.
Um, we have some development
groups that, you know,
are looking at the--
at using this to, uh,
kind of augment what--
what they've already done,
and definitely, uh,
some of the changes here
are gonna enable them
to move into that.
Um, taking the preview
label off, uh,
kind of adds a level
of comfort to people
who are, you know,
just now getting ready
to, uh, to start getting
familiar with the platform.
Even internally,
we have groups that,
you know,
haven't looked at it yet,
um, and they were
kind of hesitant to.
Because it was
considered preview,
they weren't sure
if it was gonna be here,
but, uh, definitely, yeah,
with today's announcement,
you know,
the commitment's there.
Um, you know,
operational support in SLA,
that's very important for us.
Um, you know,
our internal support
is, you know, 24/7.
You know, we have follow-the-sun
support internally,
and being able to have, uh,
the ability to push back
and escalate issues,
uh, you know, through
operational support
is definitely something
that we would want
for this, as well.
Um, the hosted SQL--
um, that's important
for us, as well.
Most of our applications
internally, um,
use relational databases, um,
and adding relational,
uh, database support
to the App Engine platform
would, uh, allow our users
to, uh--
or, our developers to more
easily transition those apps,
um, over to, uh,
the App Engine platform.
Um, you know,
a lot of our developers
are more experienced with
relational databases, um,
and moving to
a non-relational model,
you know, you kind of
have to redo some code,
and, you know,
re-architect some apps.
Um, the new cost model,
you know, it definitely
allows us to better forecast
the cost based on utilization.
Um, you know,
and as we look to scale up,
you know, we can kind of do
those calculations internally
before we do it, and, uh, plan
on what we're gonna be, uh,
what we're gonna be spending.
And, uh, the centralized billing
and invoicing--
that's definitely something
we were looking for.
Um, you know, now we can,
uh, get all the costs,
you know, invoiced to us,
rather than having
credit cards on file.
So, uh...
Schalk: Cool, yeah, I'd like
to--you know, obviously,
when we had our discussions,
and as we were,
you know, briefing you on
essentially the new direction,
it was such a relief to see also
that you guys
were really jumping on board,
as well as Dan,
and, uh, had
a very positive, um,
feedback with the rest
of the direction.
Um, so we're gonna--
I'm gonna go ahead
and summarize really quickly,
and then we're gonna switch
over into, like, a Q&A mode.
So, um, you might want to grab
that mic, just in case.
Um, but all in short,
just to summarize,
Greg and I are both,
you know, super excited,
the entire App Engine team,
which--see 'em right here--
uh, are very excited, as well,
to leave preview.
Um, you know, and I think,
probably the biggest thing,
is that, you know,
not just the--a focused
or core set of people,
but really anyone
can take advantage
of the upcoming features,
and, you know,
it's not, you know,
just this one particular
class of people.
And I think probably
the biggest thing is,
obviously, App Engine
is locked in,
it's here to stay,
you can definitely bank on it.
Enterprise companies can really
put that down as, you know,
a major cause for why, you know,
they can go ahead and move ahead
with App Engine
in enterprise scenarios.
So anyway, let's go ahead
and switch over into our--
obviously, there's
our information, as well,
that you want to keep handy,
but let's go ahead
and switch into Q&A mode.
And it looks like
we have two microphones--
we have one over there,
and it looks like we have
a few questions queuing up,
and then this one
over here is still open.
So I'll go ahead
and act as emcee,
uh, so feel free to jump in
and ask questions now.
man: What is the best practice
that you recommend
for backing up your data
from your applications
and data that's stored
in the datastore on App Engine?
Schalk: So for backing up
in general, or...
man: Backup, yeah. Backups.
Schalk: Yeah--
D'Alesandre: You want to--
Schalk: Eh, the best practice--
I don't know what--
would you guys
have any particular one
that you would say that--
just, you know...
man: [speaking indistinctly]
Schalk: Yeah.
man: Map Reduce library
is getting really good.
Schalk: Yeah,
so Map Reduce library,
in case you can't hear him.
man: [speaking indistinctly]
Schalk: Yeah, Map Reduce
to blobstore,
I guess, is what we're using.
D'Alesandre: Um,
one of the things, uh,
just as an aside
on that question--
we've heard loud and clear
that backup and restore
is a very much-needed feature
of App Engine,
and so we've heard that,
and it's--
we've added it to our list
of things to do.
Schalk: Mm-hmm.
Yes--oh, let's go
on the left side--yes?
man: I have, uh,
two security questions.
Remember back, um,
in Google Apps for Business,
uh, you had a secure VPN
back into the enterprise
for local data.
I was wondering if that's still
a part of the new release.
D'Alesandre: Um, absolutely.
So that is indeed
still available.
Um, there are, uh,
we're in the process
of working on,
potentially, other ways
to connect
back to your on premise.
Um, but secure data connector,
which is specifically the thing
you're referring to,
is indeed still available,
and available for, uh,
for PIG users to use.
man: Okay. My next question
is, uh, for
Google Apps for Government,
or federal government users--
um, does the new release,
um, take advantage of any
of the sort of security--
higher security standards
required from FISMA,
and the additional, um,
CODIS requirements
for keeping your data
within the datacenters
in the United States,
or does, uh, um,
Google Apps have--
or, App Engine,
um, have those, uh,
boundaries for
federal commissioners?
D'Alesandre: Um,
so we don't currently have--
or--I'm sorry--
we're not currently announcing
additional, um, certification.
I believe--
Schalk: We're on track for--
like, some of the stuff
is in progress, like, now,
like, SAS70, for example.
D'Alesandre: Right, exactly--
SAS70's in progress,
and I believe it's FISMA
level 1 is in progress--
I'm trying to get
a head nod from...
All right, FISMA level 1
is in progress.
That was a good enough nod.
Um, so we're not--
we're not announcing
any additional, uh,
um, additional, um,
compliance with this launch.
It is one of the things
that we know, again,
is very necessary
for government customers,
and enterprises in general,
and so we are working
on better compliance.
Schalk: One thing that we
actually have been doing,
and Dan can chime in--
is, uh, even though, we're--
for example, the option core
product is on track for SAS70,
type 2 certification,
I believe.
Uh, we also go through
and have helped some specific,
you know, enterprise customers
with their security audits,
and so, for example, Dan,
we've had numerous, like--
uh, we would provide you
white papers/
We would provide you
essentially access to
a lot of our security staff to
go over some of these things,
if you want to--
Murray: I mean, we've had to--
Is this on?
Schalk: Yeah, you're good.
Murray: We've had to complete,
uh, you know,
BITS SIG questionnaires,
and, uh,
work with I.T. security teams
from some of the largest
companies in the world,
and, you know, Google's
been very supportive of that
by providing, as Chris said,
the material,
and being able
to answer questions,
but at the same time,
uh, you know,
we take an approach of,
you know, making sure that,
you know, we have appropriate
security processes
and standards,
and, uh, really black-box
what Google does,
so that the boundaries
are well-defined,
and that's really key
to, I think successful--
success with security audits.
Schalk: Mm-hmm. Thanks.
Good. Question over here.
man: With regards
to the new pricing model,
what exactly qualifies
as a datastore operation,
or, put differently,
what exactly do I get
for my 1/10,000 of a cent?
D'Alesandre: [chuckles]
Um, that is
a really good question,
and it's one of the details,
uh, that we're still, um,
working through
the precise definition
of what that operation is,
so that's one of the things that
we'll be talking more about
in the coming weeks.
Schalk: Question on this side?
man: Thanks. I'm curious,
for the two companies--
have you built the model
for the new pricing structure,
and are you willing to share
whether that model,
based on existing use
of your apps--
does that say that
you are gonna stay
at your current cost
for infrastructure,
or is it going up
or going down?
Murray: You want to start?
Fowler: Sure.
Uh, so, uh,
we have a spreadsheet
that we put together,
uh, internally,
um, that, you know,
we could punch in
some of the statistics
for, you know,
the past, you know, couple
months of utilization for, uh,
well, this was for one
specific app that we had--
um, and, you know,
we've tweaked it
to account for the change,
you know,
from a per CPU utilization
to, you know, per--
per instance hour, really,
or per instance, you know,
that's online.
Um, but, uh, you know,
for some of our apps,
you know,
compared to the original
pricing model
for the App Engine for Business,
these costs would be lower,
but, uh, you know,
the, uh, the cost for, um,
we have a couple apps
that take advantage
of some of these more
specialized APIs,
um, that the billing
is being changed on--
um, for example,
the, uh, the XMPP--
um, those may change,
but overall, the--
there's not that much
of a difference for us.
Murray: Yeah, we have
a spreadsheet that we run, too,
and, uh, looked at this
pretty closely.
You know, really, uh,
for our application,
compared to what we would pay
through other providers,
I mean, we're--you know,
it's considerably less.
Uh, price gonna go up?
Yeah, it's gonna cost us
more money to do it,
but compared
to the value we get,
it's really not significant.
D'Alesandre: And I know
the question
wasn't directed at me, but, uh,
I think, you know,
to be straightforward and clear,
um, it likely will be
more expensive
for most customers.
Um, we're not--we're not
doing this as a way to--
to make App Engine cheaper.
We're making it--
we're doing the pricing change
as a way to make pricing
both more transparent,
but also to price it
for the value of the offering
that our customers are getting,
so most customers will see
some increase in price.
Schalk: It essentially allows us
to lock it in long-term,
so it's a sustainable
pricing model.
man: No, that's fair.
So that's the first time
I'd actually seen that matrix,
and talking about XMP
brings up another question--
Sorry, just one more thing--
was that a typo,
or did the number
of e-mails per day--
does that really go
from 2,000 down to 100?
D'Alesandre: Uh, yes,
so the number of e-mails per day
has actually changed, um,
from 2,000 down to 100,
and that effect is
taking place immediately.
Um, we're doing that, uh,
to ensure everyone is using
the API appropriately.
man: Is there a white listing
program, though, that you--
man: Free e-mail.
D'Alesandre: Oh, sorry,
free e-mails.
Yeah, this is for free e-mails.
man: Okay.
D'Alesandre: You can still--
you can still pay for more,
but, right,
the number of free ones.
As you can imagine,
a lot of people saw 2,000
free e-mails per app, per day,
as a way to take advantage
of the program.
man: Right. So basically, it
punishes the good guys, right?
It doesn't fix the problem.
D'Alesandre: Um,
we can talk afterwards.
man: All right.
Schalk: [laughs]
man: Thank you.
Schalk: Question on the right.
man: Yeah, thanks,
I've got two questions.
One is on deprecation.
Is depre--is the three years
at the all-out App Engine level,
technology level,
or API level?
D'Alesandre: Okay,
so the deprecation is, um,
it can be at
any of those levels,
so if there's a specific API
that we're deprecating
and saying that we are
no longer developing on,
we'll be very explicit that,
this is now being deprecated,
we're no longer going
to continue development,
and then that's when the clock
starts for the three years.
Um, it is possible,
let's say, in some
future crazy world,
that App Engine, um--
that Google stops development
of App Engine,
then App Engine itself will--
will be under that
deprecation policy, as well.
So it--it's at all levels
of the stack,
but essentially we'll explicitly
say, "X" is being deprecated,
and that starts
the 3-year clock.
man: Okay, that was
my big question...
[speaking indistinctly]
...it might break my app,
and how long do I have
to actually fix that?
D'Alesandre: Um...
You said something three years.
D'Alesandre: Uh, so, yes--
well, that's for depre--
that's for deprecated,
um, full APIs.
In terms of versions,
we're going to be, uh,
there's a deprecation policy
for major versions.
Um, so it's--
it's hard to tell exactly,
um, from your question,
if, like, there's a specific
area you're worried about,
but it's gonna be
major versions,
the whole product, and whole
APIs that are being under--
man: But I think, like,
a specific issue is,
I've got an app that's
running on version 1.0.
D'Alesandre: Mm-hmm.
man: Version 2.0 comes out,
and the API actually changes,
which means, the question is,
Does that automatically
shift forward,
and if it does,
then it breaks my app,
so how much time do you give me
before I have to make
that change?
D'Alesandre: Um, so, uh, if--
if we're adding, um,
if we're adding a new API,
that doesn't sort of start
the clock for deprecation,
as long as the old
one's supported,
and I believe
we're still supporting
old APIs--
man: I understand.
D'Alesandre: Yeah,
I was gonna say...
man: [speaking indistinctly]
D'Alesandre: Right.
man: Occasionally, you'll see
that we wrote something,
we say, "Oops," and we fix it
as quickly as we possibly can,
so if we're gonna introduce
anew version of
the datastore API, for example,
we're not gonna
just remove the old one.
We would say, "This one's
deprecated, here's the new one,"
and that deprecated one
would be around
and serviced for three years.
D'Alesandre: Right.
man: So the other question
I have is, um--
Schalk: Did you guys get that
in the back of the audience?
man: No.
Schalk: Okay. Here you want to--
D'Alesandre: Just--
I can repeat what Max said.
Um, what Max said
was, essentially,
the way our APIs work
is we don't make
backwards incompatible
changes, um,
and so if we did make a
backwards incompatible change,
that would fall under
the 3-year deprecation cycle,
but currently, we don't
and haven't been making those.
man: The other question I had
was, a lot of enterprises
are .NET and Java...
[speaking indistinctly]
so .NET or...
[speaking indistinctly]
Any thoughts on whether
you guys would support that?
I was really surprised
you supported Go versus
something that was more
mainstream for the enterprise.
D'Alesandre: Um, so frankly,
we're looking at a number
of different runtimes
to be able to support.
Um, we don't have any additional
ones that we can talk about
or announce today.
Um, Go is the one that it was
ready for us to talk about
and announce today.
man: Got you. Okay, thank you.
D'Alesandre: Mm-hmm.
Schalk: Yeah, question?
man: So at last year's I/O,
the big App Engine for Business
bombshell
was SQL,
relational databases
for App Engine.
I didn't hear very much
about that today.
I didn't see any pricing for it.
So from Google,
I would like to hear,
where are we with hosted SQL?
And from Jabil, uh,
I'd like to learn
a little bit more about, uh,
your experience with it,
uh, response time,
uh, reliability,
how it compares to
an on-site SQL database.
Schalk: Yeah, so I was
just gonna say that, uh,
yeah, we're still
in trusted tester mode.
We have, like, a number
of people out there
that are trying it out--
I don't believe we've actually
locked down specific pricing.
D'Alesandre: So remember
how I mentioned earlier
that SSL is one of
our top priorities?
As you might imagine, SQL is one
of our other top priorities.
Um, we are working hard on it.
We don't have a specific release
date that we can state yet.
Um, but we're absolutely
working on it,
and as Chris mentioned, we have
trusted testers today.
Schalk: Yeah, and anyone is--
you know, just let me know,
or you can, like--
there's an online form
you can request access,
and then essentially be set up,
and then you can turn on your
instance and start using it.
Also just--
it is MySQL compatible,
so it's essentially
the, uh, flavor of SQL,
essentially MySQL, um,
but, yeah, that's basically it,
so if you want to try it out,
definitely welcome
to try it out.
Did you have anything further
to add on the SQL part?
Fowler: Uh, yeah, so with
regard to the difference
between the hosted SQL
and on-premise,
uh, with the tools that have
been made available so far
under the trusted tester
program,
they, uh, they make it
very easy to work with.
You know, you have--
Schalk: I mean, it's basically,
like, embedded into the SDK.
Fowler: That's what
I'm talking about here.
So, uh, yeah, so, you know,
there's command line access
to the SQL environment.
Schalk: Right.
Fowler: And it is
MySQL compatible,
and so it's--it's very easy
to work with.
man: And your experience
with its reliability
and, per Dan, response time?
Fowler: Uh, yeah, so far, uh,
we haven't encountered,
you know, any major issues,
but, you know, it is still
in development, so, you know...
D'Alesandre: Yeah,
and we'd encourage you
to join the trusted tester
program if you want to join.
Schalk: Definitely looking
for a good feedback,
or feedback in general.
man: Thanks.
Schalk: Question on the right?
man: So my question has to do
with the algorithm
for determining what priority
to give a particular app
in App Engine,
and the reason
I'm interested in that
is because the app
that I'm currently running
that I'm considering
moving to App Engine
is something that's event-based,
meaning there's
very little traffic
for a long period of time,
until June 18th shows up,
or whatever that
event deadline is,
and all of a sudden,
it just spikes.
And will
the App Engine algorithm--
is it responsive to that?
And then a related question is,
was the Google I/O
registration system
running on App Engine?
D'Alesandre: [laughs]
Schalk: Um, I can't comment
on that, but...
I can--some of our slides
that we do when I--
like, I regularly
give overviews--
we do cite some of our partners,
even one of our cites today,
the Royal Wedding,
where you get this...
[makes launching sound]
shoot up,
um, so App Engine
is specifically geared
to handle those types of things.
It's not--Go ahead.
man: For the Royal Wedding,
though,
I would imagine that it--
it didn't really shoot up.
It just went kind of
over a week's time
or two week's time.
D'Alesandre: You'd be surprised.
It, like, of the day of,
it just sort of shot up.
Schalk: Yeah, like--
man: That's what I'm wondering
about--so it's able to adapt.
Schalk: Yeah, and right
during the kiss, you know,
those little key moments--uh,
Gigya is a partner of ours.
They have sporting,
a lot of events,
that, you know, they'll
shoot up in traffic,
and then very quickly,
just drop right back down,
and that's one of the key
strengths of App Engine,
that we have been touting
for a long time.
D'Alesandre: And you only pay
for that traffic, right?
So when it shots up,
you pay for that spike in usage,
and then when it goes
down to nothing, you're...
Schalk: You're gonna
lock up there.
man: If I know that traffic's
gonna happen,
can I somehow or other
give some indicator to say,
ramp up, prepare
to ramp up for this,
or force it to instantiate more
or something?
D'Alesandre: So without going
into too much detail--
so the scheduler doesn't
sort of prioritize applications
against each other, um,
in any visible way, so to speak.
Um, what it does do,
though, is it--
based on the number
of requests coming in,
it figures out
how many instances
that you should have
for that traffic.
Um, one of the things
that we're doing
in our work
on the scheduler now
is essentially allowing you
to tweak that,
to basically say,
"I want applications to spin up
very, very quickly as soon
as traffic is coming in."
And that's--
I think that's essentially
what you're asking for,
is the ability to do that
so that you can say,
"I know there's gonna be
a lot of traffic tomorrow,
so I'm gonna turn
the scheduler up to make sure
that we're spinning--you're
spinning up instances quickly."
man: Yeah, good.
And you're not gonna answer
my question, though?
D'Alesandre: Oh,
what was the other one?
man: Was Google I/O--
I was probably the only one
that had problems
getting into the system.
D'Alesandre:
So the session feedback,
the speaker feedback system
is running on App Engine.
man: Oh, excellent.
Schalk: Yeah.
But the registration,
I'm pretty sure was--
well, not--was not, right?
Yeah, that's right,
'cause I remember--
Anyway... [chuckles]
Some internal discussions
about that. Sorry.
man: Thank you.
Murray: Hey, Chris, I'll jump
in here real quick.
Um, just as part of the spikes
you were talking about,
you know, that's something that
we experience quite a bit
with our customers.
Schalk: Oh, yeah.
Murray: We have these
crunch times that--
where many, many companies
are trying to file their 10Q's
and 10K's at once,
and, uh, you know,
we've experienced
pretty smooth scaling, uh,
with respect to App Engine,
but there are a couple guys
sitting here in the front row--
Dave Tucker and Mike Wesner
who are experts
from our company on this,
and have done a lot
of statistical analysis
and looking at the graphs
and charts,
so I'd encourage you
to talk with them to learn
a little bit more about
what we've experienced.
Schalk: Cool. There you go.
man: So, uh, for those
of us who have started
on the App Engine only,
um, and have allowed data
and no datastore,
and want to switch to
the High-Replication datastore,
are you guys planning any tools
to make it easier?
D'Alesandre: Absolutely.
We're currently working
on tools to make that easier.
Um, I-I don't know
if there's anything
we can talk about today.
man: Existing tools...
[speaking indistinctly]
Schalk: Yeah, exactly.
It's a little bit manual right
now, but yeah, definitely.
We hear you on that one.
D'Alesandre: And thank you
for being around from early on.
Schalk: Yeah, awesome.
Good to see you again.
Uh, on the right.
man: Yes, I just had a question
actually on domain names
for the AbsPot.com.
Is, uh, we have our company name
has basically been taken
and used in a bunch of things
that aren't--
that are just hanging
out there,
and I just wonder if there's
any way you could--
or has anyone ever talked
about setting up something
either reserving names,
or to request getting
something back?
So, like, we have Liberty Fund,
and somebody has
libertyfund.abspot.com,
which would be great,
I think would handle some
of the SSL needs for us,
but I can't get that one back
from anyone.
Schalk: Interesting.
D'Alesandre: Um, so--so
if that is a trademarked name...
man: Yeah.
D'Alesandre: Um, uh,
let's talk afterwards--
I think trade--in general,
trademark infringement
is something that
we have to tackle
on a sort of
case-by-case basis.
man: Okay, it was more like,
you know, like, after 90 days,
if they haven't--they're not
actually running anything on it,
and so forth, if someone
could ask for it--
at the very least, be able to
ask for the name at that point.
Schalk: Yeah, makes sense.
D'Alesandre: In general, no,
but, again,
specifically for trademark
infringement cases. We can talk.
Schalk: Yeah. So about
a minute left, but go ahead.
man: That's good.
I just have a quick question.
Schalk: Yeah?
man: What's gonna happen
with "always on" instances
with the paid apps?
I noticed it's a quote of $9,
so I didn't know if that's...
D'Alesandre: We're still
working on determining exactly
how "always on" is gonna work
under the new model.
We understand that it's--
the usefulness of it,
um, and we're working
to sort of fit it in
under the new pricing law.
Schalk: Cool. Anyway,
so it looks like we're, uh,
coming to the end
of our session here.
I want to thank you guys
especially for sticking around
and asking a lot
of great questions.
I also want to thank our
guests--Dan from WebFilings,
and Matt from Jabil, and,
of course, Greg is awesome.
D'Alesandre: Thank you
very much. Thank you.
