The past few years have been exciting ones for the database and distributed systems communities. Justin will explain what all of this "NoSQL" stuff is really about, and then he will introduce Riak. Riak is a scalable, available open source database. We will learn about what makes Riak special, when and why to choose it, and how it has worked in a few concrete production use cases.

Justin Sheehy

CTO,
Basho Technologies (creators/developers of Riak)

As Chief Technology Officer, Justin Sheehy directs Basho's technical strategy, roadmap, and new research into storage and distributed systems. Justin came to Basho from the MITRE Corporation, where, as a Principal Scientist, he managed large research projects for the U.S. Intelligence Community including such efforts as high assurance platforms, automated defensive cyber response, and cryptographic protocol analysis. He was central to MITRE's development of research for mission assurance against sophisticated threats, the flagship program of which successfully proposed and created methods for building resilient networks of web services.

Before working for MITRE, Justin worked at a series of technology companies including five years at Akamai Technologies, where he was a Senior Architect for systems infrastructure, giving Justin a broad as well as deep background in distributed systems. Justin was a key contributor to the technology that enabled fast growth of Akamai's networks and services while allowing support costs to stay low. Justin performed both undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Computer Science at Northeastern University.