"From Amoebas to Clouds -- The Journey to Ubiquitous Data Access"
Users today have very high expectations for access to their data. They expect it to be always available, from any place and any device; for it to be transparent to share, but protected from mis-sharing and abuse; and for it to be (effectively) cost-free and unlimited in ability to grow. Such ubiquitous data access was once a holy grail of computer science, but technological advances over the last several decades have made it largely a reality. In this talk I will discuss a sequence of CMU-related efforts that have been significant contributors to this progress.