James Hamilton

Bio:

James is Senior Vice President and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon serving on S-team, the cross-company leadership team. He joined Amazon in January 2009 first on AWS, where he focused on infrastructure efficiency, reliability, and service scaling. He now holds a similar role across Amazon.

Previously James was at Microsoft for 12 years where he served as Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services leader, GM of the SQL Server WebData team, and held many other positions on Microsoft SQL Server. Prior to that, he was at IBM for 11 years where he led the IBM C++ Compiler team and was Lead Architect for IBM DB2. Before joining IBM he worked as a professional auto mechanic servicing Italian cars and exotics such as Maserati, Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Alfa Romeo.

He has a Master of Mathematics (Computer Science) from the University of Waterloo and a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) with honours from the University of Victoria. James holds over 200 patents in more than 20 countries in server and datacenter infrastructure, database, and cloud computing technologies.

Recent Talks and Papers:

• 2024.01.15: Constraint-Driven Innovation (talk), CIDR 2024, Santa Cruz, CA

• 2022.10.11: IoT at Sea (talk), HPTS 2022, Asilomar, CA

• 2022.10.10: HPTS Comes Full Circle (abstract, talk), HPTS 2022, Asilomar, CA

• 2022.10.05: The One Percent (talk), Cruising Club of America PNW Branch October Meeting

• 2022.09.21: NAE Frontiers of Engineering (blog), Amazon Web Services

• 2022.05.25: Graviton 3 General Availability Announcement (video, blog), Amazon Web Services

• 2022.05.11: Great Product Managers (video, blog),

• 2021.08.30: 15 Years of EC2 Innovation (video, blog), Amazon Web Services

• 2021.04.20: Reinventing Operational Resilience (article, blog), Wall Street Journal

• 2020.06.11: AWS Graviton 2 Announcement (video, blog), Amazon Web Services

• 2016.11.29: Tuesday Night Live with James Hamilton (video, 46MB PDF), AWS re:Invent 2016, Las Vegas, NV

• 2016.11.29: Global Partner Summit (video 41:00 through 1:00:00), AWS re:Invent 2016, Las Vegas, NV

• 2014.11.12: AWS Innovation at Scale (talk, video), AWS re:Invent 2014, Las Vegas, NV

• 2014.11.12: The Cube at AWS re:Invent 2014 with James Hamilton (video), AWS re:Invent 2014, Las Vegas, NV

• 2013.11.14: Why Scale Matters and How the Cloud is Different (talk, video), AWS re:Invent 2013, Las Vegas, NV

• 2013.11.13: The Cube at AWS re:Invent 2013 with James Hamilton (video), AWS re:Invent 2013, Las Vegas NV

• 2013.01.22: Infrastructure Innovation Opportunities (talk), Ycombinator, Mountain View, CA

• 2012.11.29: Failures at Scale and how to Ride Through Them (talk, video), AWS re:Invent 2012, Las Vegas, NV

• 2012.11.28: Building Web Scale Applications with AWS (talk, video), AWS re:Invent 2012, Las Vegas, NV

• 2012.10.09: Infrastructure Innovation Opportunities (talk, video), First Round Capital CTO Summit, San Francisco, CA.

• 2012.09.25: Cloud Computing Driving Infrastructure Innovation (talk), Intel Distinguished Speaker Series, Hillsboro, OR

• 2011.11.08: Internet Scale Storage (talk), Microsoft Internal Storage Community, Redmond, WA.

• 2011.11.01: Internet Scale Storage (tak), University of Washington Distinguished Lecture Series, Seattle, WA.

• 2011.10.27: Internet Scale Infrastructure Innovation (talk), Open Compute Summit 2011, New York, NY.

• 2011.10.24: Internet-Scale Datacenter Economics: Costs & Opportunties (talk), High Performance Transaction Systems, Asilomar, CA.

• 2011.09.14: Cloud Computing Driving Datacenter Innovation (talk), Global Semiconductor Alliance Board Meeting, San Jose, CA.

• 2011.06.14: Internet Scale Storage, (talk), SIGMOD 2011 Keynote, Athens, Greece.

• 2011.06.07: Cloud Computing Is Driving Infrastructure Innovation (talk), Amazon Technology Open House Keynote, Seattle, WA.

• 2011.05.17: Cloud Computing Is Driving Infrastructure Innovation (talk), Western Digital Corporate Board Meeting, Mountain View, CA.

• 2011.04.12: Cloud Computing Is Driving Infrastructure Innovation (talk), Stanford 2011 Computer Forum, Stanford, CA.

• 2010.11.11: Cloud Computing Economics (talk), Amazon Cloud for the Enterprise, NY, NY.

• 2010.10.28: Datacenter Networks Are In My Way (talk), Principals of Amazon Series, Seattle, WA.

• 2010.10.20: Datacenter Infrastructure Innovation (talk), Leading Edge Forum, San Francisco, CA.

• 2010.06.23: Datacenter Infrastructure Innovation (talk, video), Velocity 2010 Keynote, Santa Clara, CA.

• 2010.06.08: Cloud Computing Economies of Scale, (talk), AWS Genomics & Cloud Computing Workshop Keynote, Seattle, WA.

• 2010.03.15: Cloud Computing Economies of Scale, (talk, video), Microsoft MIX10, Las Vegas, NV.

• 2009.10.23: Data Center Networks Are in my Way, (talk), Stanford Clean Slate CTO Summit Invited Talk, Stanford, CA.

• 200910.23:  It's the Ecosystem Stupid, (talk) Stanford Clean Slate CTO Summit Panel, Stanford CA.

• 2009.08.17: VL2: A Scalable and Flexible Data Center Network, (paper), SIGCOMM 2009, Barcelona, Spain.

• 2009.06.23: Internet-Scale Service Infrastructure Efficiency (slides), International Conference on Computer Architecture 2009 Keynote, Austin, TX.

• 2009.06.17: Where Does the Power Go in High-Scale Data Centers, (slides), USENIX Technical Conference 2009 Keynote, San Diego, CA.

• 2009.06.16: Where Does the Power Go in High-Scale Data Centers, (slides, video), SIGMETRICS/Performance 2009 Keynote, Seattle, WA.

• 2009.04.01: Data Center Efficiency Best Practices (presentation, video), Google Data Center Efficiency Summit 2009, Mountain View, CA.

• 2009.03.28: RDBMS Loosing Workloads in the Cloud (presentation), Panel, Self-Managing Database Systems, Shanghai.

• 2009.03.28: Cloud Computing Economies of Scale (presentation), Self-Managing Database Systems Keynote, Shanghai.

• 2009.02.26: Service Design Best Practices (presentation), Principals of Amazon, Seattle.

• 2009.02.20: Cost of a Cloud: Research Problems in Data Center Networks (paper), ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communications Review, Feb. 2009.

• 2009.02.19: Where Does the Power Go and What to do About it (presentation), AFCOM Seattle Chapter.

• 2009.01.07: CEMS: Low-Cost, Low-Power Servers for Internet-Scale Services (paper, presentation), Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research Keynote, Asilomar, CA.

• 2009.01.01: The Cost of a Cloud: Research Problems in Data Center Networks (paper), SIGCOM Computer Communications Review, 1Q2009.

• 2008.12.02: Designing and Deploying Internet-Scale Services (slides) &  Where does the power go and What to do About it (slides) University of Washington.

• 2008.10.06: On Delivering Embarrassingly Distributed Cloud Services (paper), SIGCOM Hotnets 2008, Calgary, Alberta.

• 2008.09.16: Internet-Scale Service Efficiency (slides), Large Scale Distributed Systems & Middleware (LADIS 2008) Keynote, Yorktown Heights, NY.

• 2008.07.12: Where does the Power Go in DCs and How to Get it Back? Foo Camp 2008 (.ppt), Sebastopol, CA.

• 2008.06.26: Expedia Presentation on High Scale Service Deployment (.pdf), Redmond, WA.

• 2008.06.04: Increasing Data Center Efficiency by 4x (.ppt), Berkeley RAD Lab Retreat, Santa Cruz, CA.

• 2008.04.11: Cloud Computing Imperatives (.pdf), International Conference on Data Engineering 2008, Cancun, MX.

• 2008.01.30: Jim Gray Tribute, (.doc), Microsoft Research, Seattle.

• 2008.01.17: Designing and Deploying Internet Scale Services (.pdf), Amazon Internal Developer Conference, Seattle.

• 2007.12.16: Architecture of a Database System, (.pdf), Foundations & Trends in Database Systems.

• 2007.11.15: Designing & Deploying Internet-Scale Services, (.pptx, .pdf), LISA 2007, Dallas.

• 2007.10.09: Modular Data Center Design, (.ppt), HPTS 2007, Asilomar CA.

• 2007.10.08: Designing & Deploying Internet-Scale Services, (.ppt), HPTS 2007, Asilomar CA.

• 2007.04.16: Commodity Data Center Design, (.ppt), Web 2.0 Conference, San Francisco, CA.

• 2007.01.17: Modular Data Centers, Amazon Internal Developers Conferences, (.ppt), Seattle Wa.

• 2007.01.08: Architecture for Modular Data Centers, (.doc, .ppt) Conference on Innovative Data System Research 2007 (CIDR 2007)

• 2006.04.05: Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services Keynote (.ppt),  Chicago, Il.

• 2006.03.30: Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services Keynote (.ppt), Toronto, Canada.

• 2005.11.15: FrontBridge Business & Technology (.ppt), Microsoft Enterprise Computing Series (Microsoft internal).

• 2005.03.11: .NET Show: SQL Server 2005 (video), Microsoft .NET Show Episode 049

• 2004.12.16: Oracle Real Application Clusters and Industry Trends in Parallelism and Availability (.pdf).

• 2004.06.17: The Security Economy (.ppt), Berkeley Recovery Oriented Computing Retreat, Santa Cruz.

• 2004.05.25: SQL Server Yukon (.ppt), Scientific Data Intensive Computing Workshop, Bellevue.

• 2004.04.15: User-based Innovation & Communities Drive Commercial S/W Innovation (.ppt) MIT Innovation Lab.

• 2003.10.29: Overview of what is New in Yukon (.ppt) Washington Software Alliance Best of the PDC Conference, Seattle, WA.

• 2003.10.30: Security Process and You: SQL Server Case Study (.ppt) Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, Denver, CO.

• 2003.10.29: Overview of what is New in Yukon (.ppt) Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, Denver, CO.

• 2003.02.10: Slammer in Detail (.ppt) SQL Server Yukon Technical Preview, Seattle, WA.

• 2003.01.05: Active Server Availability Feedback (.doc), (.pdf) Conference on Innovative Data System Research 2003 (CIDR 2003).

• 2002.11.13: SQL Server Security (.pdf) Searchdatabase Webcast.

• 2002.10.16: Commercial Database Security Issues (.ppt), IDA/FBI Law Enforcement Forum 2002.

• 2002.08.20: Challenges in Large Enterprise Data Management (.ppt), VLDB 2002.

• 2002.08.20: Active Server Availability Feedback (.ppt), VLDB 2002.

• 2002.07.23: Multi-Language Extensibility in SQL Server (.ppt), Microsoft Research/Academia Conference 2002.

• 2002.06.12: Availability Data Collection (.ppt), University of California at Berkeley Recovery Oriented Computing Retreat.

• 2002.03.01: Key Challenges in Information Processing (.ppt), IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering 2002.

• 2001.12.01: Microsoft SQL Server Full-Text Search (.doc), IEEE Bulletin of the Technical Committee on Data Engineering, Dec. 2001.

• 2001.04.12: Multi-Language Extensibility in MS SQL Server (.ppt), University of California at Berkeley Systems Seminar

• 2000.09.12: Microsoft SQL Server Relational Engine Enhancements (.ppt), MTB 2000

• 2000.03.03: Data Management in a Highly Connected World (.ppt), Data Engineering Workshop, 2000.

• 2000.02.03: A Database View of Intelligent Disks (.ppt), National Association Storage Devices Meeting 2000.

• 1999.09.27: Software Testing Doesn't Scale (.ppt), HPTS 1999.

• 1999.09.07: Network Data Management Design Points (.ppt), VLDB 1999.

• 1999.04.07: Fault Tolerance vs. Fault Avoidance: Testing Doesn't scale (.doc), HPTS 1999.

Conference Program Committees:

• ACM SOCC 2010, Program Committee

• SIGMOD 2010 Industrial Program Committee 

• NetDB 2009 Program Committee

• ISCA 2009 External Experts Review Committee

• HotCloud 2009 Program Committee

• HotPower 2009 Program Committee

• HPTS 2009 General Chair

• CIDR 2009 Program Committee

• ICDE 2007 Industrial Program Committee

• HPTS 2007 Program Committee

• VLDB 2006 Industrial Program Committee

• ICDE 2004 Program Committee

• SIGMOD 2004 Program Committee

• HPTS 2003 Program Committee

• VLDB 2002 Industrial Program Chair

• HPTS 2001 Program Chair

• SIGMOD 1998 Industrial Program Committee

• SIGMOD 1997 Industrial Program Committee

• IEEE CASE '95 Workshop Program Committee

• SIGMOD 1995 Industrial Program Committee

Curriculum Vitae:

• Resume

Hobbies:

• Recreational boating

Last update: 2017.11.04 (jrh)