TheCube crew attended this week’s Velocity conference to bring you the latest news and analysis from the web development scene. Co-hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante kicked off the first day of the event with an in-depth discussion about web application performance and the impact of cloud computing on Silicon Valley startups.

Dave says that time is money when it comes to website loading times. He recalls that the Obama campaign staffers who appeared on theCube in an earlier interview said they saw a 14 percent jump in campaign donations after they reworked their site for better performance.

The internet is getting faster, Dave notes, but the complexity that is being introduced by cloud and mobile is offsetting its advance. Nevertheless, web developers are doing their best to maintain a lead in what he calls a tug of war between complexity, speed, performance and risk.

John changes the topic to Velocity. He highlights that the event differs from other tech gatherings in that it focuses on the underlying technology that drives business value rather than on the competitive vendor landscape.

“Velocity conference is about what technology is powering the infrastructure of the future, and to me that’s the key message we’re seeing early on in the keynotes,” John explains. “People talk about DevOps, developer operations, what we’re gonna hear from Theo [Schlossnage, founding CEO of OmniIT] who’s been on theCube is OpsDev. Operations and web development are merging…that’s the new future, that’s the new normal. What’s interesting about the Velocity conference is that it’s not going to be [about] catchy buzzwords, it’s gonna be meat and potatoes technology.”

Vellante reiterates his point about added complexity and mentions that the average size of web pages has increased to 1.5 megabytes. He then asks John to elaborate on the impact of cloud computing and Big Data on the web. John replies that these trends are disrupting the market in two big ways: they’re driving hyperscale adoption, and they’re changing the startup economy. He highlights that investors expect entrepreneurs to do more with less because scale, in the cloud and beyond, is more accessible than ever.

Wrap-up

Several hours and many more interviews later, John and Dave recap the highlights of Day One. John starts by noting that the conference has a very strong cloud vibe to it even though the main theme is performance. The reason, he explains, is that web performance ties in with app design on the front end and with DevOps on the back end.

Dave agrees, and adds that the developer community is vital to the growth of the
enterprise. He goes on to say that mobility is at the epicenter of the performance discussion because mobile apps have not yet caught up with web and desktop applications. In his view, the cloud provides developers with the means to accelerate their apps into the future.

John explains that web and mobile will become one and the same from an
application standpoint. This is why he believes O’Reilly Media will increase its focus on applications and cloud computing. Vellante expects that business value will also become a major focal point over time.

John concludes the discussion by highlighting that mobile, social, Big Data and other trends addressed at Velocity are becoming increasingly relevant for CIOs. These technologies are transforming enterprise IT and disrupting traditional workloads.

Get details on all the Day One highlights in the video below.