Changing Phone with Orange

I recently changed phone to the O2 network and started the process of transferring my old phone number. O2 was very helpful in the process and told me exactly what I needed to do.

I called Orange and asked for a PAC. I was asked lots of questions about why I wanted to leave, wouldn't I prefer to stay and that I'll lose the credits on my phone by transferring. I made it clear that I wanted to move.

Eventually I was transferred to another number. When I say transferred, I was actually placed in a phone queue where I was bombarded with awful music. I waited ... 5 minutes ... waited ... 10 minutes ... waited ... 15 minutes. After a painfully long time, I managed to speak to someone.

I insisted on them providing me with a PAC. They obliged.

The O2 bit was easy, phone them up, quickly get to who I need to speak with and give them the PAC. They gave me a date for the transfer. Simple.

Day of the transfer, it seems that Orange hasn't quite handed over the number. I now have a phone which I can call from but to which all incoming calls go to my Orange answer-phone. It has to be easier than this. I'm hoping this isn't going to turn into one of those awful Mercedes-like customer support experiences. Fortunately for me, O2 is on the case.

I note that I have also received a letter from Orange addressed to "Dear Other Unregistered". It states they are sorry that I've decided to leave and that their service is flexible enough to meet my needs. This actually isn't quite true, they don't offer the phone I want and it seems that they can't be bothered to remember my name after all these years.

I'm starting to wonder whether others have problems with transferring. I'm curious to how this will develop because if portability of a phone number in a regulated industry is so non-trivial, what does this mean for "cloud computing"?

Does anyone know of any industry statistics around portability in the telecoms market? Success rates on first attempts etc?

Cloud Adoption Model

I've been reading some posts about cloud adoption models. So in a blatant bit of recycling from February this year, I once again bring you, the now renamed (from Utility SaaS to "Cloudy"):-

Cloudy Maturity Model
(click on image for larger size)

P.S. This model is simply a humorous diversion and I don't want to discourage people from thinking about real adoption / maturity models.

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

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

Two things of note.

I read the following post on the shenanigans at salesforce.com with some interest. I've long argued the need for second sourcing in the SaaS world and this example adds just further weight to that argument.

We need open sourced standards, portability and interoperability between vendors.

In the long run trust, reputation and honesty will be everything in the SaaS world. I note that Craig Heartwell calls for someone to have the strength of their convictions and quit Salesforce over this treatment of customers. Saying you have principles is one thing, having the integrity to stand by them is another. However, that said, resignation is always the last option and whilst Chris might be annoyed at his treatment and his lack of choices, this situation is not irreversible especially if customers group together.

Don't Panic ...?

According to Pingdom and Network World, Amazon was down, kaput, not working and generally having an unplanned event.

Have no fear, in the world of "national grids" the failure of one power station isn't going to stop the provision of electricity. So, in the world of "cloud computing", I can just switch over to another provider.

Alas, No.

I exist in a world where portability and interoperability are replaced with an abundance of lock-in. Let's imagine we were consumers of Amazon's EC2 & S3. When they are down do we sit here twiddling our thumbs whilst wondering :-

• Has any data has gone missing?
• How am I going to find out?
• What if they don't come back?
• When are they coming back?
• Should I start building my own infrastructure?
• Should I have really fired my systems team?

In short do we just sit here thinking panic, panic, panic, panic .... phewww it's back again.

Now the people of Amazon are smart, so they will be taking every precaution. A long time ago, I spent a short amount of time doing complex risk analysis using a mix of quantitative and qualitative analysis. Amazon is bound to have hundreds of risk analysts doing the equivalent of Hazop and Hazan on their systems. Making sure that every system has a mass of redundancy, that every redundant system is different from the original and that every fault tree conceivable has been analysed. Systematic failures can be very painful when they hit and when the fault is the standard component you've implemented everywhere ... ouch. Despite all the precautions and measures they take, they will one day see their Black Swan.

When that happens we better have a simple switch over to another provider or we will be receiving the unpleasant lesson of second sourcing ourselves.