Summary
I am an Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge, working on local-first collaboration software and distributed systems security. I teach Concurrent and Distributed Systems and Cryptography and Protocol Engineering, and I’m one of the people behind the Automerge open source project.
In 2017 I published a book for O’Reilly, called Designing Data-Intensive Applications. It covers the architecture of a broad range of databases and distributed data processing systems, and it has thousands of five-star reviews on Amazon. A second edition co-authored with Chris Riccomini is due to appear in late 2025, and is now in early release.
Source: Website
GOTO Conferences (27:51)
This interview was recorded at GOTO Amsterdam for GOTO Unscripted.
Martin Kleppmann – Researcher at the Technical University of Munich & Author of “Designing Data-Intensive Applications” @kleppmann
Jesse Anderson – Managing Director of Big Data Institute, Host of The Data Dream Team Podcast @jessetanderson
OnAir Post: Martin Kleppmann
News
… the Bluesky team and I published a paper that’s a bit like a long blog post in PDF format. It’s called “Bluesky and the AT Protocol: Usable Decentralized Social Media”; it describes the architecture and of the Bluesky social network and the underlying AT Protocol, and more importantly, it explains the rationale of why things are designed that way. The paper is a result of me advising the Bluesky team over the course of the last two years.
Social media requires lots of difficult choices, because humans are complicated, but I believe Bluesky does a really good job of balancing the trade-offs. It’s also getting quite popular, having just jumped from about 3 million to 4 million users yesterday!
About
Biography
I was previously a research fellow in the Systems Research Group at TU Munich (2022–2023), and at the University of Cambridge (2015–2022). Before that I was a software engineer and startup founder: I co-founded Rapportive (acquired by LinkedIn in 2012) and Go Test It (acquired by Red Gate Software in 2009).
I have composed several musical works, including “Die Türme des Februar” (in German), a musical-dramatic adaptation of the book by Tonke Dragt, which premiered in 2007 with a cast of 150 people.
Web Links
Videos
Designing A Data-Intensive Future: Expert Talk • Martin Kleppmann & Jesse Anderso
December 12, 2023 (27:51)
By: GOTO Conferences
This interview was recorded at GOTO Amsterdam for GOTO Unscripted.
Martin Kleppmann – Researcher at the Technical University of Munich & Author of “Designing Data-Intensive Applications” @kleppmann
Jesse Anderson – Managing Director of Big Data Institute, Host of The Data Dream Team Podcast @jessetanderson
Books
Designing Data-Intensive Applications
Source: Amazon
Data is at the center of many challenges in system design today. Difficult issues need to be figured out, such as scalability, consistency, reliability, efficiency, and maintainability. In addition, we have an overwhelming variety of tools, including relational databases, NoSQL datastores, stream or batch processors, and message brokers. What are the right choices for your application? How do you make sense of all these buzzwords?
In this practical and comprehensive guide, author Martin Kleppmann helps you navigate this diverse landscape by examining the pros and cons of various technologies for processing and storing data. Software keeps changing, but the fundamental principles remain the same. With this book, software engineers and architects will learn how to apply those ideas in practice, and how to make full use of data in modern applications.
- Peer under the hood of the systems you already use, and learn how to use and operate them more effectively
- Make informed decisions by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of different tools
- Navigate the trade-offs around consistency, scalability, fault tolerance, and complexity
- Understand the distributed systems research upon which modern databases are built
- Peek behind the scenes of major online services, and learn from their architectures
