XTech

I've been extremely busy for last two weeks, hence the lack of any posts. I'm now heading off to XTech.

Building an Interoperability Layer ...

Over the last few years, the question of portability in the cloud computing world, has been growing steadily louder. I tackled this particular issue at OSCON in 2007. It is good to hear that Tim is advocating the building of an "interoperability layer".

With one exception, the only way that we can achieve such portability in the cloud (whether at the application, framework or hardware end of the stack) is to have open sourced standards, where the standard is a fully operating open sourced piece of software.

The Open SDK for Google's AppEngine is a fledgling example of this concept. The Open SDK is the standard and AppEngine merely one implementation of it. Within a few days of its release, it had been re-implemented elsewhere.

BungeeLab's move could see the creation of a fully fledged open sourced standard.

Open source is an essential part of portability. Though I'm supportive of the general aims of groups like DataPortability, I'm opposed to their approach. Focusing on "open standards" diminishes the value of "open source" and provides a simply marketing tool for describing a computing cloud as "open". This approach may well lead to more not less lock-in. Open standards are necessary for portability but they are not sufficient for it.

Now an open sourced standard doesn't mean that what is built upon it has to be open sourced. However as we move towards a more service based economy in IT, this is likely to become more common. This shouldn't be seen as somehow diminishing the software industry, but instead allowing for the creation of entire new industries based upon an ecosystem of competing providers. Such competitive utility computing markets will require monitoring and compliance services and allow for exchanges and brokerages. Innovation within those providers will occur at the operational rather than the product level, with competition based upon price vs QoS (quality of service) rather than feature set. This will allow for more efficient use of resources, a more effective balancing of supply and demand, and further innovation within society.

This move towards commoditisation of ubiquitous and defined services isn't a negative thing. It's going to create a wealth of opportunity, as long as we avoid the interoperability disaster of different clouds all built on different "secret sauces" with no open source standards and hence no functioning marketplace.

Few companies are ready to enter this world which competes on service rather than product. Few are ready to encourage competitors and to create an ecosystem.

This is an opportunity that is ripe for harvesting - "Carpe diem"

Ready, Steady, .... Dither ....

I first came across BungeeLabs at Web 2.0 Expo (April 2007), when I was presenting a re-run of my earlier talks on commoditisation, competitive utility computing markets and SaaS.

After handing over several T-Shirts of pre-shaved Yaks, I had a long discussion with them over why I thought their decision not to open source was a mistake and my company's plan to release an open source federated grid at OSCON'07.

So I was interested to read recently that BungeeLabs have "announced federated hosting to expand adoption of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) among enterprises" which will enable users to "self-designate the hosting location"; that's good news. They've also got round to looking at that open source question again.

BungeeLabs have a chance of creating a small piece of an enormous pie (rather than all of a small one). This opportunity depends upon them moving quickly to open source, encouraging other providers to setup as competitors and hence creating an ecosystem with users choosing and swapping between hosting providers.

If they get such an ecosystem up and running, then once it reaches a certain size of providers and consumers, it will become self sustaining. Huge new opportunities will arise in the management and maintenance of this marketplace. The utility hosting aspect is small fry when compared to the potential exchange, brokerage and futures opportunity.

Technically this is all fairly easy, however, it does take a significant force of will and conviction to make such a move. They have left it late to make such a move and a big player may enter this space before they can get started, I wish them good luck.

Fortune favours the bold, opportunity is fleeting and don't dither!

What's the future ...

The golden era of the internet has been built on a culture of open source. This culture has removed barriers to adoption of technology and heralded in an age of unprecedented innovation in society.

As technology has become ubiquitous, we have tended to view it as more of a commodity, a common and re-usable component or service.

We are now seeing the growth of a service based economy (SaaS) and more service oriented approaches to development. These changes will encourage further innovation and open the door to competitive utility computing markets, more effective and efficient usage of resources, portability between providers and competition based upon service rather than product.

This is a living nightmare for those who have seen their competitive advantage as being their technology. Many are simply not prepared for competition based upon service.

As with Google, Microsoft has now entered the field with the launch of their Mesh. I'll note :-

• there is no open SDK (yet) with the Mesh, the backbone of the technology is 100% Microsoft.
• the Mesh is described as a platform for the web equivalent to how windows was for the PC.
• it provides many opportunities for collaborative business benefits (a highly attractive feature for adoption).
• Microsoft has a strong channel of ISVs and is looking for ways to support this.
• it describes a future hybrid model between in-house and cloud infrastructure (the P2P aspects seem to go beyond file sharing).
• it can mesh multiple devices and the cloud, and presumably allow ISVs to become resource providers (hence creating a marketplace within the Mesh).
• they are seeding this Mesh with their own significant infrastructure.

What we don't know is whether Microsoft will be adopting an open approach, encouraging an ecosystem of providers and competing solely on service.

Interesting times lie ahead ...

More *OA with your *aaS?

Hot on the heels of * as a Service is the new and exciting name game of * Oriented Architecture.

This time, the game is a bit more tricky as you need to redefine old terms in order to allow new terms to fit in. So Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is no longer about Service Oriented Architecture but instead about the use of acronyms like SOAP & BPEL, excluding other acronyms like REST & RIA

Lost? You should be.

This new package holiday of confusion even comes with colourful jargon like:-

"On a cruise ship, the WOA folks would be the recreation directors, chefs, entertainers, and cruise directors making it a fantastic journey. The SOA folks are working down in the hot, noisy engine room, making the ship go forward.".

Wow, let's hope you end up with the fun loving recreation people rather than those smelly old engineers (see figure 1 & 2).

Figure 1 - A typical recreation loving WOA Architect.
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Figure 2 - A typical hidden-in-the-engine-room SOA Architect.
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(Scenes of Morlocks and Eloi from the The Time Machine.)

For anyone requiring a bit of sanity, let me simplify it all for you.

Software as a Service is a delivery model for providing software. In today's world, the software stack is undergoing commoditisation from a product based economy (i.e. Software as a Product) to a service one (i.e. Software as a Service). This can be at any level of the stack including but not limited to application, data, framework and hardware, hence all the derivative *aaS's.

Service Oriented Architecture refers to the use and construction of services (or common, higher order components) in the construction of new services or products. The important things to remember are architecture (a deliberate or planned approach) and oriented (organised around) and services (using services). In other words, a deliberate or planned approach organised around using services.

These services might be internal or external or they might be SOAP based XML or RESTful web services using a REST architectural approach. The other *OA variants are simply subsets of SOA.

This is where the pantomine usually starts; "oh no they're not, oh yes they are" and so on. To avoid this argument, simply raise your hand if you are using an ROA or WOA. Now drop your hand if it uses services of some form or another. If you've still got your hand up, you're a *OA variant that is not a subset of SOA and I'd like to hear from you.

As for the hip and cool cruise directors and the engineers hidden in the depths of the dungeons, I prefer the somewhat less controversial terminology of Pioneers (Eloi) and Town Planners (Morlocks) when describing the people who deal with different types of organisational activities (see figures 3 & 4).

Pioneers explore the unknown and boldly go whilst Town Planners build cities. Both use common services if they've got any sense.

Figure 3 - Less controversial roles.
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Figure 4 - Different stages of activities.
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Preparing for XTech ...

XTech is in two weeks time, so I've been busy preparing my talk.

As part of the process, I've provided a preliminary paper on the topic I'll be covering.

What's your perfect job?

Recently, I was asked the question: "if you went back to working for a company, what would be your ideal or perfect job?"

Obviously this will change with time, but today it would be a role which played to my strengths and interests both in management, strategy, innovation and commoditisation. So I wrote down my perfect job and discovered that it doesn't exist ... yet.

To make matters more complicated, the two roles it would work alongside - Chief Innovation Officer and Chief Planning Officer - are rare themselves.

Fortunately for me, the life of a freelancer is one that you create yourself. It's less of a job and more of a lifestyle. If you want to find out more about Going Solo, then I'd recommend attending Stephanie Booth's conference.

Still, at least it's interesting to know what it would be. What's your ideal or perfect job?

U.S. vs us ...

In some European technical circles, the U.K. is sometimes considered not relevant to Europe and just a poor cousin of America. This poor cousin attitude is often reinforced by the claims from numerous bandwagon hopping analysts that if you want to make it big then you need to go to Silicon Valley.

Contrary to such blatant stereotypes, the U.K. (and Europe as a whole) has a thriving technical and entrepreneurial community with companies such as Dopplr, Last.FM and Xing to mention but a few.

Despite this, the government body UK Trade & Investment, has provided financial support to web mission 2008 for "20 UK Web 2.0 companies [to] travel to San Francisco to explore new opportunities for growth with key people in Silicon Valley".

As Ryan points out, whilst the intention is good, the whole web mission basically declares that "we don’t have what it takes over here”. The reality is we do, so why not invest in a U.K. based activity and promote the start-up culture here?