OSCON 2010

I thoroughly enjoyed the OSCON cloud summit and the talk that I gave at OSCON - the audiences were fantastic and the organisation was superb (huge thanks to Edd, Allison and the O'Reilly crew for making this happen).

I'm really proud to have played my small part in this event as the MC for day, along with John Willis.

I haven't yet talked a great deal on my research, but the keynote at OSCON gives a taste of it - so I thought I'd link to it here. Those who know me, also know that this had been a hobby horse of mine over the last decade. It's finally good to spend some focused time on it though of course these ideas are far from new.

A couple of final notes :-

• Utility services are just a domain within the commodity phase of an activity's evolution. There are constraints which will prevent a commodity being provided through services. I sometimes plot on the graph a wider "services" stage, however for the sake of simplicity I've left this out.
• The stages of lifecycle are approximate only i.e. this is where products appear, this is where utility services generally appear etc.
• Multiple activities can be bundled into a single product. For example the iPhone is a combination of different activities from personal communication to digital recorder to web surfing to time keeper to ... the list is quite long. These activities are all evolving and being implemented by others, which forces Apple to focus on two areas :- the bundling of new innovative activities into the iPhone and application innovation through the App Store. The former is expensive and risky. The later requires development of a strong ecosystem, ideally with users being allowed to create and distribute their own applications. The manner in which Apple manages this is less than ideal and they now face severe disruption from Android. As there is also little exploitation of the wider manufacturers' ecosystem, Apple has cornered itself into creating highly costly & risky innovations with weak leveraging. IMHO, they are in trouble and this should become painfully clear in the next five years unless they change.
• The ILC model is generally applicable. I picked examples from cloud providers but equally I could have discussed Canonical with Ubuntu. Canonical ruthlessly commoditises activities to provide a stable core and I'd strongly argue that Rackspace & Canonical point to the future direction of IT.
• Open source is the natural end state for any activity described by software which is ubiquitous and well defined. This doesn't mean that open source can't be used earlier, of course it can and there are numerous tactical advantages of doing so, along with benefits such as increased collaboration. However, what I am saying is that by the time an activity has reached the commodity phase then only open source makes sense. Those who have been questioning whether "cloud is the death of open source" have a poor understanding as to what is actually happening.
• Open core is in general a tactical anomaly. On the one hand, if successful, it will cause widespread distribution (driving an activity towards more of a commodity) and yet it attempts to generate revenue through proprietary elements which is against the natural state that open core is forcing activities towards. A number of companies have used this approach successfully and have even been bought for huge sums by large companies. However, it still remains a tactical anomaly which attempts to achieve both the benefits of open and closed by being both.
• The S-Curves I use are not time based. If you follow the evolution of an activity through specific phases of its lifecycle and plot adoption against time, you will derive a set of non-uniform S-Curves for Roger's diffusion of innovation. It's important to realise that the accelerators I mentioned (open source, participation, network effects) along with others I didn't mention (communication mechanisms, co-evolution etc) alter the speed at which an activity evolves. Whilst, this doesn't impact the S-Curves I use, it does compact Roger's curves of more recent innovations when compared to earlier diffusions.
• The speed at which an activity moves across the profile graph (i.e. through its lifecycle) depends upon the activity.
• None of these ideas are new. The nearest to new is company profile which I've been refining in the last year from earlier work (between '04-'07) and this refinement is simply a formalisation of already existing concepts. If you watched the video and thought, "that's new", then my only advice is be concerned.
• On the question of science, the models presented (S-Curve, Profile) are part of a general hypothesis on the evolution of business activities. Whilst data exists, there is neither the volume of evidence nor independent observation to validate beyond this. Furthermore, whilst the models show some usefulness and can be falsified, they are not predictive (and hence this cannot be considered scientific but remains firmly within the field of philosophy). The reason for this is that in order to generate the graphs and avoid asymptotic behaviour, a definition of commodity is required. The consequence of such is that an activity can only be plotted in terms of relative historical position i.e. after it has become a commodity. This means, all positions of activities which have not become a commodity are uncertain (as per one of the axis of the graph) and therefore approximations. The models do not create a crystal ball and the future is one information barrier we can't get past. Even though the new pattens of organisation are testable it should always be remembered that fitness does not guarantee survival.

That's enough for now, I'll expand the topic sometime later.

The cloud isn't just vapour.

I was recently asked whether I thought cloud was vapour, whether open sourced cloud systems could solve many of the adoption concerns over cloud computing, whether it was likely that such systems would appear, what standards would they support and which distribution would make the first move? I know I haven't been blogging much recently but I was surprised by the questions.

First, regardless of whatever definition you use to describe cloud computing (a fairly hopeless task in my view), the term merely identifies an underlying shift of I.T. from a product to a service based economy. It's a consequence of :-

1. Certain I.T. activities becoming suitable for service provision through volume operations (i.e. those activities are well defined and ubiquitous
2. The existence of mature enough technology to support this (Popek et al wrote the book on virtualisation back in 1974)
3. A change in business attitude towards I.T. (Carr and others, namely Strassmann, pointed out that much of I.T. is simply seen as a cost of doing business.)
4. The concept of utility computing provision (i.e. the provision of suitable I.T. resources much like other utility providers, as forecast by McCarthy back in the 1960's.)

Take away any of these elements and cloud computing wouldn't represent the upheaval and the disruption that it does today. As for trying to precisely define it, try first coming up with a short and punchy description of industrial revolution without hand-waving and referring to numerous tomes. The problem with cloud computing is that it isn't one thing, it's a transition caused by many factors.

I do believe that open source reference models (or what I used to call open sourced standards) are key to the development of the cloud industry because of the second sourcing concerns of enterprises. I strongly believe that private and hybrid clouds (using both private and public resources) will help develop this industry in the short term. Open source should also dominate this change as it is the only viable route to utility computing marketplaces with competition based upon services rather than lock-in. I've not changed my tune since 2006, I see no reason to change now.

During this time of transition (which is after all what is happening) standards will be incredibly important. Despite all the noise we already have a defacto standard at the infrastructure layer of the computing stack - it's called the Amazon EC2 API.

As for when open source systems will appear that match such emerging standards, the first truly credible system was released almost a year ago. It's called Eucalyptus and it's backed by a commercial company.

As for which distribution would make the first move. Well Ubuntu Server Edition has included Eucalyptus since 9.04. Building a private cloud using open source technology that matches the EC2 API is almost as easy as apt-get install and it's going to get easier. We call this concept Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud and you can find details here.

It's also worth noting that Ubuntu Server Edition is also provided as official images on both UEC and on Amazon EC2, so you can run the same base image in both environments. Matching standards and using uniform images brings us a step closer to portability between environments but most importantly simplifies the process of bursting. It takes us a step further away from the dangers of the cloud net neutrality style argument that I highlighted at E-Tech'07.

It's also essential to build ecosystems around open source cloud computing which is why we work with companies like RightScale and CohesiveFT as well as our own tools like Landscape. Everything we do is around openness and freedom in the cloud computing space. This is not some ideological pursuit but simply a realisation that the future cloud markets will depend upon such openness to form. There is plenty of revenue opportunity without the need to tie people down in an old product mentality.

In short :-

• You can already build clouds with open source technology matching the emerging standard of EC2.
• You can already use single images across both private and public environments.
• The technology is entirely open sourced technology and there exists no lock-in to a proprietary framework or solution.
• It's free.
• It's supported.
• It's already in a distribution, go check out Ubuntu Server Edition.
• You can already use a range of different management tools.

Ubuntu already dominates the linux desktop market, and from the reports I've seen recently we're going great guns on the server market as well. As far as I'm aware, we're the only distribution which provides you with a simple means of creating an open source private cloud and images spanning both private and public environments. Maybe we should get a bit better at shouting about it.

Well, I'm going to be speaking at Velocity and then I have a keynote at OSCON. I was thinking of a tag line for what we've being doing and a friend of mine, Alexis Richardson, chipped in with the following :- "Ubuntu is Cloud for Human Beings"

Perfect.

Happiness ... is a Koala

I've been fairly quiet on work and cloud activities recently because I've been flat out with planning. I don't think I've ever worked so hard in all my life nor enjoyed it so much. It's pure bliss.

Mark Shuttleworth recently announced that Ubuntu 9.10 will be Karmic Koala and as we all know Koalas love Eucalyptus.

As Mark says "A good Koala knows how to see the wood for the trees, even when her head is in the clouds. Ubuntu aims to keep free software at the forefront of cloud computing by embracing the API's of Amazon EC2, and making it easy for anybody to setup their own cloud using entirely open tools."

I couldn't be happier.

A week of interesting developments ...

The week started with the announcement that Joyent had acquired ReasonablySmart. This extends the range of Joyent's offering into the framework space and it's a very smart move. There is a real opportunity here to push for the creation of an open source standard especially since Jason Hoffman, co-founder and CTO at Joyent states "Unlike competing Platform-as-a-Service offerings, we intend to keep this new Joyent offering completely open-source". Good move.

During the week I was invited by Redmonk to the Cloud Interoperability Forum. I'll be landing in San Francisco on Monday. This event promises to be a gathering of some interesting players in the open source cloud computing space. It's one to watch.

Lastly, the week ended with Jesse Robbins' announcement of Chef, an open sourced configuration management tool.

Open source is really starting to make some progress in the cloud computing space with companies like Aptana, 10Gen and the team behind Eucalyptus. Obviously I've been concerned that the Azure framework, which is about to make its entrance this year, might create a marketplace built around a proprietary stack. If this happened it could create years of lock-in under the guise of a functioning market.

However the bold moves made by the open source community and the other actions which I know are in the pipeline give me cause for comfort. In fact, it's so positive that I'll make another prediction for this year.

This is the year of open source and when open source cloud computing becomes the rule and not the exception.

One step at a time ...

It was several years ago that I started to talk about portability and interoperability (what I later cheekily called patration) with large scale computing providers (what is now called the 'cloud').

I used the ideas of componentisation (Herbert Simon's work on the theory of hierarchy) to describe the acceleration of business evolution on the web that will result from the shift of the computing stack from a product to a service based economy.

I raised most of these points in various discussions at web 2.0 summit in 2006, hence I was pleased to read the following ZDNet post about this years summit in which industry executives such as Cisco's Chief Technology Officer, Padmasree Warrior, described the need for federated clouds and portability at all layers of the computing stack.

I couldn't agree more with the posts comment that "eventually, cloud computing providers at all of the layers will become more open and adhere to standards that allow for federation and movement between clouds. Maritz sees cloud computing as helping to drive the information economy and stimulate new information marketplaces."

Marketplaces, open source ... absolutely. My only word of caution is that people need to carefully consider why the framework layer of the computing stack is so important and especially the dangers that exist within it.

I provided a link to my OSCON 2007 talk on commoditisation, federation, utility computing markets and the need for open source standards - it's a bit old and tired but still covers most of the main points.

Awesome ...

Have a read, have a play and then spend a few moments to consider how powerful an open sourced JavaScript everywhere framework provided by a marketplace of cloud providers could become.

Now take a look at ReasonablySmart.com.

I wandered lonely as a cloud ...

First wander ...

Over the last few days, there has been a lot of to and fro between Tim O'Reilly and Nick Carr over cloud computing. I'm sure more is to follow.

The debate over network effects at the hardware (what is commonly called Infrastructure as a Service) level of the stack (from bare bones to virtualised images to operating system) is of little value to me. The shift of the computing stack from product to services will inevitably accelerate the process by which these lower level orders of the computing stack become invisible. The lower levels will find themselves pushed to a low-margin standardised high-volume business based entirely upon open source.

What interests me is that the argument for portability, interoperability and transparency in the "cloud" will inevitably shift to the framework (development platform, messaging system, database, templating system and so forth) level of the stack (or what is commonly called Platform as a Service).

The framework layer will consolidate to a few large marketplaces with each marketplace based upon a standard framework. A few of these frameworks will be proprietary but most will be open sourced. For each standard framework there will be many homogeneous providers with portability between them.

This framework layer (which Tim hints at) is where the real battleground is. This is where the real network effects are. This is where the trillion dollar company exists. Why on earth do you think I started Zimki back in 2005-7? Why do you think MSFT is releasing Azure?

Anyone still needing help to work out where all this is heading, just think about Ballmer's comment on enabling "Microsoft partners to create their own cloud infrastructure", think about a marketplace of ISP's all providing the same framework, think about how over the last decade the lower levels of the computing stack have become invisible to most developers and then go read my old blog post.

However, a marketplace based upon a proprietary cloud technology vendor has lots of attractions from the acceleration of innovation (through componentisation) to the more mundane capex to opex conversion. James Governor said in a recent tweet that "no amount of assertive statements from thought leaders will prevent customers from adopting proprietary technology". He is absolutely right. This is a gilded cage that some CIOs are not going to walk but rush into.

My only advise is that if you're the CEO of a company and your CIO is talking cloud, find someone with a senior level background in manufacturing to check their reasoning. If you hear the words "lacks second sourcing" then consider upgrading the CIO. It'll pay in the long run.

[For reference, my reasoning for Zimki was derived from Tim's earlier work on Infoware and the Open Source paradigm shift]

[Dennis Howlett has a really interesting piece on this whole topic.]

Second wander ...

When I worked for Canon (2001-2007), along with Zimki, utility computing and open source, I used to write endless reports about the dangers of mobile phones to the camera business, the future of 3D printing & fabrication technologies along with being fairly vociferous against SED. I've always believed it to be dangerous to focus exclusively on the core or with what you are comfortable with. That's a lesson I learned from reading Schumpeter.

This is especially true during recessionary times. It should never be forgotten that such times do create opportunities, not just for industry but government as a whole.

Despite the neocons desperate denials, as we've seen from the banking fiasco, the laissez faire school of economic lunacy has turned out to be a house of cards. However, there is always a silver lining. Our Government appears to be slowly turning away from the mumbled dribblings on money supply of those Chicago School ephors and back to an eminently more sensible and direct Keynesian approach of investment.

This is good news ... assuming it lasts.

Beyond the positive buy-out and part nationalisation of banks and the promises of public building works, the government should look towards bolder measures including the wholesale plunder and pillage of the weakest industrial sectors to the benefit of society.

The building industry and auditing professions are prime-time to be pushed towards nationalisation and bought up on the cheap and invested in. There are lots of measures such as the enforced auction of land banks with unused planning permissions which could be introduced in order to assist with this transfer.

Furthermore, since lots of parents are no longer sending their little darlings to those expensive private schools, a quick dropping of the charitable tax status plus a few extra regulatory burdens should force a few of these schools towards bankruptcy. Picking these up on the cheap would be an excellent way to bolster the national education system. This is to say nothing of the potential to buy-up private hospitals on the cheap.

If the government sets her mind to it, it could make a nice little earner. Despite the nay-sayers professing doom should the government take such action, there will always be plenty of entrepreneurs keen to rebuild after we get through these tough times. A bit of piracy might also help with social mobility, for people to go up others also have to come down.

A Keynesian approach of control, intervention and ruthlessness and a mix of the skull and cross bones combined with a healthy dash of "ahoy there, me mateys!" is what we need. In the long run, it is also the only sensible way forward.

[Update Nov 2012 - Alas those pesky monetarists weren't quite as dead as I hoped QED QE.]

Third wander ...

As any biologist or sociologist will tell you, the fastest growth of any population is normally the generation before it collapses due to environmental degradation. The "golden" age always happens just before the fall. It happens with populations from bacteria to wolves. It also happened with the Mayans and the Romans.

We're next.

The laissez faire ephors would have us praying to the invisible fable that is the pareto optimality whilst we burn and plunder natural resources and ponder how we can turn the vast reserves of methyl hydrates into a viable source of fuel. I'd rather trust to reason than such gods of future-discounting lunacy.

This is why the latest debate that the worldwide limit of 450 ppm CO2 (a level which will cause runaway climate warming) is not achievable in economic terms is just madness. We've discounted the future long enough. Without a hospitable environment there are no future trillion dollar companies. Without a hospitable environment there is no economy.

Our choice is simple. Either we choose to do something on a grand enough scale or we choose to let nature decide our fate. Whilst many are hopeful that serendipity will conjure up some magic to solve our problems, I fear that many Mayans and Romans probably did the same.

Whilst I'm all for a gamble, if the upside is more gadgets and the downside is possible extinction ... it just doesn't seem worth it.

Head Conference

I'm speaking Aral Balkan's most excellent Head Conference later this evening. It's the first totally online conference and it really has been fabulous so far.

Anyway, I like to experiment in formats, as with my use of Hegelian dialectics at FOWA. So this time, I'm going to try something completely different.

I've already recorded my talk which I'll broadcast during my slot, and while it's playing I'll answer questions and stop and explain bits where necessary. Of course people can watch the talk at their convenience and if you want to watch beforehand then please feel free. I've provided the video below.

Why open matters from innovation to commoditisation

Far from the Madding Cloud ...

Today I was faced with a challenge.

Explain cloud computing and why interoperability, portability and markets based upon open sourced standards are important IN layman terms!

Now as James' says, I've done this subject to death over the last few years. So I thought I'd try to explain all of this using example for cloud computing and an analogy to explain why interoperability, openness and so forth is important.

So here goes ...

Imagine that average Joe has taken out a big loan to buy lots of very expensive computer hardware.

Tom rents this hardware from average Joe and uses his technological wizardry to make it all appear as one big computer.

Dick rents this big computer from Tom and uses his virtualisation technology to make it appear as lots of small virtual machines.

Harry rents some of these virtual machines and creates a multi-tenanted storage service and messaging system.

Alice also rents virtual machines from Dick to provide a multi-tenanted framework for developing applications in. Rather than building all the elements of the framework she rents Harry's storage and messaging system however she provides access to it through her own API.

Bob rents an instance of this multi-tenanted framework from Alice in order to build a multi-tenanted application which provides transport routing information based upon user provided data, some super smart algorithms and an external cartographic web service from Dave.

Sue, who runs IT for a multi-billion dollar transport company, decides to use Bob's new transport routing system as a key part of her business processes. It's provided on a software as a service basis and marketed as "cloud" which is the latest hot thing, so Sue is happy.

Sue has never heard of Dave, Alice, Harry, Dick, Tom or average Joe. That's cloud computing!

The downside is that average Joe forgets to pay a bill and his machines get repossessed.

As for the analogy;

Imagine that average Joe has taken out a big loan to buy lots of very expensive houses.

Tom uses his financial wizardry to make it all appear as one big security.

Dick divides this security into smaller ...

... you know the rest.

Almost .... but not quite

So according to James Urquhart's post, Google App Engine is going to be supporting JavaScript.

Well, it's about time. JavaScript everywhere (browser and cloud side) will open up the framework to a much wider pool of talent.

Well it's a positive move in my book seeing that I've been there, done that and bought the T-Shirt.

The one major downside is that they're not opening up all the other ancillary components of the framework including bigTable. If they did this, then we might actually start to see an ecosystem of providers develop in the cloud.

I might actually find a cloud service that I'm happy with.

Stop dithering ... you're going to have to in the long run.

Three Rules Happy ...

When it comes to cloud computing, I have three basic rules of happiness. However, before we get to my rules, I have some absolute minimum requirements that any service must meet before I'd even consider it to be cloudy. These include :-

• I have readable access to all my data, code, frameworks and meta data that may have been created as a result of me using the service. It's my data after all, not yours.
• The service is appropriately secure, scalable & resilient and must be charged for on an "as use" basis. I certainly don't want to pay for something that I'm not using, which means I also don't want to pay for using my own machines.
• The T&Cs should be clear and provide me with some guarantee that the service will not be terminated nor fundamental elements changed without reasonable notice and an alternative solution.
• Pricing should be transparent, efficient and competitive.

Assuming the service meets my basic requirements, then I have three basic rules of happiness:-

Rule 1: I want to run the service on my own machine.
This enables me to trial out a service before even considering adopting a cloud version and gives me a last resort fall-back option. I certainly don't want to be in an environment where I can't do this for whatever reason, including vendor failure or discontinuation of a product.

Rule 2: I want to easily migrate the service from my machine to a cloud provider and vice versa with a few clicks of a button.
If the test went well then I'll probably consider dipping my toe in the water. Hence I want an easy to use transfer mechanism for my data (including any code or framework elements) from my machine to an external cloud provider and vice versa. I do not want to learn any specialised skills nor require any technical knowledge beyond pressing a button.

Rule 3: I want to easily migrate the service from one cloud provider to another with a few clicks of a button.
If I'm going to use a cloud service then I want a choice in providers and an easy mechanism of switching between alternatives. I do not want to discover that switching only covers half of the service and fails to cover other elements like the storage subsystem or a messaging service.

For these reasons, I'm not very happy with most of the current cloud offerings.

Gang up now before the *aaS cloud gets you

Back in July, I gave a general talk at CloudCamp London on how consumers will need to push vendors towards interoperability and portability in the cloud.

At FOWA during the session on the important bits of cloud computing, a member of the audience - Terry Jones - put a similar question of portability and interoperability to both the speakers and the crowd. I happen to be in agreement with Terry that the consumers of cloud services have an important role to play here and so far have been remarkably silent on the issue.

What I suspect we need is some form of consumer association providing unbiased information and supporting the needs of consumers. Such an association should primarily consist of cloud consumers and to a lesser extent service providers or technology vendors. Well, as a starting point, there is Google Cloud Users group started by Sam Johnston.

Anyway, I've finally got around to creating a video of my talk.

CloudCamp Jul'08 - Gang up now before the *aaS cloud gets you

Busy, Busy ...

The last two weeks have been extremely busy for me. Along with working on the business case and funding for an interactive book company, I've started a new job and been a co-chair of a major London conference.

So in quick order ...

The interactive book company is Amphilab (I now work as an advisor having finished an initial three month stint). The company produces books with printed electronics. Let me just note one thing, these are not one page e-readers BUT real BOOKS with real paper pages which interact with computers. So it's old fashioned paper and ink (which we all love) AND turning pages (which we all love) PLUS text that interacts with computers & mobiles. We've already got a book deal and I'm now helping Manolis look for some funding that he needs.

I've also started a new job with Canonical as the software services manager. This role combines my passion for cloud computing & open source and puts it to good use for a great company. I know I was not intending to do any more work in the cloud computing space but then I met Mark and the Canonical team. It's a great place with great people - life just seems to be getting better and better.

Lastly, I've just finished co-chairing the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) conference. It was an absolute blast with some great talks by people like Kevin Marks, Gavin Bell, Suw Charman-Anderson, Julie Meyers, Ben Huh and the list goes on. The crowd was amazing, the venue excellent and Carsonified put on a grand show for everyone. Brilliant.

P.S. I've linked to my FOWA talk below. I know that I haven't yet created a video for my "Gang up now before the *aaS cloud gets you" talk at CloudCamp, London - I'll get around to it soon.

P.P.S. I'm also still writing, speaking, doing some ad-hoc work, building a bio-reactor and I'm in the process of moving home!

FOWA Talk - Innovation, the future and why nothing is ever simple.

The obvious dangers of the cloud ...

We've had numerous instances of downtime, changes in TOCs and services disappearing in the cloud computing world. To this list of shenanigans can now be added Nings unilateral closing of WidgetLaboratory.

I'm not going to go on a rant about the need for open sourced standards to protect the interest of businesses built upon such services, because both James Urquhart and those smart guys at Reasonably Smart have already said what needs to be said.

It seems that Reasonably Smart are also planning to raise further investment. If you're looking at getting into the cloud computing space, I'd strongly recommend you talk to them. To be open in my dealings, I know James Duncan very well but I have no vested interest in the company; I just happen to strongly agree with what they are doing.

I want to clearly emphasise one important point. The value of large scale utility computing provider of a JavaScript based application platform can be measured in the tens of millions. By following an open source route, the value of the technology is in effect zero. However, the potential value of a marketplace of utility computing providers based upon an open sourced standard (with revenues from utility sales, switching services, maintenance contracts, brokerages and exchanges) can be measured in the tens of billions.

If I had the cash I'd invest in the company myself, unfortunately I don't. They have a reasonably good chance, with a little bit of luck and support, in hitting the big time.

Finally, I'm overjoyed to see this post by Tony Lucas (the guy behind FlexiScale) on the importance of Interoperability and Portability in the cloud computing world. I couldn't agree more, and I believe that FlexiScale (at the infrastructure layer of the software stack) and Reasonablysmart.com (at the platform or framework layer of the software stack) have the potential to be real game changers in this service world.

To James Duncan and Tony Lucas, fortune favours the brave ... I'm cheering for you both.

We can see what you're upto ...

We might not yet have our plethora of open sourced standards and compliance authorities, but we're starting to see more and more monitoring services appear for the cloud.

A slight drizzle ...

There has been a lot of noise created recently about the downtime in GMail and the issues this has caused. Alan Patrick posts about how this is "pouring rain on the cloud computing parade".

Let's be clear, this is a minor hiccup compared to the potential black swan event that could occur. We desperately need some resolution on the issues of portability and interoperability between different providers for what are, after all, ubiquitous activities.

I've argued many times for the need for open sourced standards at different levels of the software stack as it moves from a product to a service based economy. These arguments are based upon the concepts and dangers caused by a lack of second sourcing. I've also argued that many technology vendors (except the most enlightened) are unlikely to shift willingly to a service based world without trying to maximise their position through lock-in.

In the past, the usual response I received was that this would limit innovation and competition. This has never been true, as innovation in the service world should be in operations and not product differentiation. Competition can be created by encouraging operational excellence whilst maintaining a standard reference model, hence my argument for AGPL as the ideal license. Whilst some agree with such a view, few are willing to accept that business consumers need to form associations to push vendors towards open sourced standards.

If you want interoperability and portability, you're almost certainly going to have to fight for it.

For those who haven't seen my talk from OSCON last year, I thought I'd re-post it here. It covers some of the basics.

Oscon talk, July 2007

Caveat emptor ...

In a blatant attempt to add more wickedness into the world of aaS ("as a Service"), I thought I'd create the pointless terms of PaaS? and PaaSee (I hate the acronym wars anyway).

So here are my two new definitions:-

PaaS? (Product as a Service?): A PaaS? vendor, is a vendor who has not yet quite grasped that a utility-like service world is only suitable for those activities which are well defined and ubiquitous. As such, competition should be based on price and quality of service (service differentiation) rather than features (product differentiation). Without an ecosystem of vendors competing around the provision of an open sourced standard (i.e. an operational open sourced reference model of what it to be provided), then consumers will be faced with serious strategic concerns regarding second sourcing, security and competitive pricing which will in turn increase the barriers to adoption of this new technology. Due to this lack of understanding, PaaS? vendors attempt to bring their products into the service world with little or no thought regarding the questions of interoperability, portability and competitive ecosystems. PaaS? vendors tend to focus on:-

• The innovative benefits of their Product as a Service : the reality is that any componentisation of the IT stack will create such benefits.
• The competitive advantage that their Product as a Service brings : the reality is that as the activity in question is ubiquitous (i.e. suitable for utility-like service provision) then there will be little or no strategic value in the service as it is more of a cost of doing business.
• The ability to customise their Product as a Service: the reality is that customisation, new features and any activity which shifts away from a core reference model of the service will decrease interoperability and portability. The strategic gain for a consumer of customisation of a ubiquitous activity is likely to be far less than the strategic loss caused by a lack of second sourcing.

PaaS? vendors are obviously clueless and not to be trusted with your data.

PaaSee (Product as a Service - extremely evil): A PaaSee vendor is one who is well aware of the commoditisation of IT and the shift to services for ubiquitous activities and hence is actively attempting to bring lock-in into a service world in order to protect and maxmimise revenues until such time as they forced to change their behaviour. PaaSee vendors assume that business consumers of IT lack the strategic wit to see the game that is being played and they are quite willing to sell your grandmother to turn an extra buck. PaaSee vendors are definitely not to be trusted with your data.

So what should a budding adventurer in the world of cloud computing do? Simple, unless you have marketplace of service providers with interoperability and portability between them, then make sure you have a plan for a complete loss of service.

Raging Clouds ....

There have been some interesting debates on cloud computing over the last few days. I thought I'd mention Tim O'Reilly's and Hugh MacLeod's posts.

I left a comment and I've summarised my thoughts here just in case my comments don't make it onto their blog posts (this happens quite often).

Comment =====

The question of large scale monopolies in what is today called "cloud computing" has been raised many times before in the past by Tim O'Reilly and others. There does exist a real danger here of network effects particularly through mechanisms such as aggregated services (i.e. market reports, preferential pricing or performance) along with the more obvious danger from the creation of a large proprietary technology based cloud.

None of this has been kept secret, it however has only just recently (in the last few years) become more popular. My reasoning, back in 2006, for the need to open source Zimki (a now defunct utility computing cloud) was based upon much earlier conversations that were raging about the dangers of a lack of portability & interoperability in a future utility computing world. None of this was new stuff then, it was just not widely known.

The move towards the cloud is almost inevitable (the business equivalent of the Red Queen Effect) due to cost efficiencies and speed of new service release. The use of open sourced standards (operational open source reference models of services to be provided) such as Eucalyptus (as Tim points out) is a way to prevent the formation of artificial markets, though as JP notes it does require concerted community action. Such action is in the interest of general business consumers for all the reasons of second sourcing.

As for the connection between cloud and services (as in service oriented design, architecture and "as a service") this is simply the shift of a number of business activities along the S-Curve of transformation from innovation to commoditisation. This is also allowing for greater componentisation and hence new innovations such as mashups etc. It is all connected by the same underling process and a tri-partite effect of participation, network effects and componentisation which is both accelerating innovation in the IT field and commoditising that which is ubiquitous. The pipeline of creative destruction has accelerated and this is what connects it all.

Finally, James Governor's comment that "Customers always vote with their feet, and they tend vote for something somewhat proprietary" whilst insightful is also somewhat unfair. It was clear from CloudCamp London that potential consumers are concerned about the issues of interoperability and portability and none thought that proprietary technology would resolve this issue. I feel compelled to defend those users, as the assertion that James puts forward is that the average CIO lacks the strategic wit of their counterparts in manufacturing.

This might be true, James might be right and maybe CIOs of today have become lazy on the easy pickings of IT. In such a case, the move by some companies over the last few years to put former heads of manufacturing in charge of IT and to bring in those skills honed through years of cut-throat commoditised activities and the strategic imperative of second sourcing may well turn out to be wise moves indeed. It would be unwise however to simply focus on the commoditisation of IT as both extremes of innovation and commoditisation need to managed simultaneously.

I remain hopeful, that those governing consumption of IT within business will realise the need to form consumer associations to push the industry towards open sourced standards for ubiquitous activities. What I cheekily called "Gang up now before the *aaS cloud gets you"

Time will tell.

We own your clouds ...

I've long argued that we need open sourced standards combined with compliance authorities using trademarks in order to ensure a functioning utility computing market.

However, companies trademarking generic terms like "cloud computing" is not that helpful. Thanks to James for spotting this.

Trust the Government ...

According to Alastair Otter of MyBroadband, whilst the South African government has been a long advocate of open source software, 72% of IT "companies that supply technology to government favour open standards".

Minister Fraser-Moleketi was spot on the money by noting that open source and open standards were important to government because they ensured interoperability and portability. If my straw poll at Cloud Camp London is anything to go on then this is a concern for almost all business users of SaaS and the cloud computing world.

Obviously vendors want to create some form of competitive advantage for themselves, so some sort of compromise is needed between interoperability, portability and vendor competition. A solution to this conundrum is the use open sourced standards, as in the standard itself is an operational piece of open source code.

Whilst compliance to the standard means matching the open source code exactly in terms of functionality, this still leaves plenty of room for operational advantages in how the code is implemented. This approach is suitable for those activities that are ubiquitous, well defined and in reality a cost of doing business i.e. those suitable to an "as a service" world. However despite this, many vendors and their pundits seem prepared to champion SaaS as a new sales vehicle but at the same time they appear unwilling to engage in a world of service competition.

This is why we need people like Fraser-Moleketi fighting our corner.