So little time ...

Alas, I've not been blogging recently due to a hectic travel, work and personal schedule. However, for those of you who enjoy my talks, here's the video of my OSCON keynote.

Chrome

There has been some recent discussion about Chrome as the Browser Operating System. This prompted a friend to ask a question - why would Google want to compete in the O/S world?

This might actually be a necessity.

As the I.T. industry shifts towards a service world, the "traditional" O/S will remain a vital but potentially less visible component (normal effect of componentisation) as a higher level layer of the computing stack (such as the browser on the client side and the platform on the server) becomes increasingly dominant. You can see this effect occurring today with many people simply living their working lives through the browser with applications being built in online platforms and mashup environments.

This, in itself, shouldn't impact Google as its search business depends upon the neutrality of the browser and access to data. What might impact Google is the rise to dominance of an alternative to the browser. For Google, there exists a dangerous scenario in which a proprietary environment such as Azure and Silverlight becomes dominant and the open protocols of the "free web" are slowly extended.

As with all scenario planning, this is simply conjecture and it depends upon the intentions of different players, economic factors, technology and attitudes. Nevertheless, if you're planning for the future, it's a scenario which can't be ignored.

The potential threat was first highlighted during the ODF / OOXML debacle and as Mr Edwards states, this could prompt a "wholesale, across the boards replacement of W3C technologies".

At the very least, he's right to highlight the possibility.

When Chrome first launched, it appeared as through Google was trying to influence other browsers to follow a route of becoming the future "cloud O/S". It's debatable now whether Google has changed track and decided it has to make this happen itself.

On tiredness ...

Terms often have relative meanings. Pre-Harry (our newborn), my definition of tiredness was :-

bleary eyed and a feeling of exhaustion.

Post-Harry, tiredness means :-

waking up to discover I've put my iphone in the fridge and the butter in my briefcase.

It's impossible to describe how all the tiredness, messiness, anxiety, stress, the "I can't cope!" moments and uncertainty are paid off in a single smile - but they are.

Our cloud offering is ... a stamp.

I was all excited about Red Hat's entry into the cloud computing space until I read the press release.

Here's my problem ...

Today, a whole range of public cloud providers offer Red Hat as a virtual machine operating system (along with every other operating system). Tomorrow, Red Hat will certify some of those cloud providers.

Either I'm missing the point, or this is just the same as before but with a stamp of approval from Red Hat? Is it me or does that just seem incredibly arrogant? We can fix the cloud by applying our magic pixie dust stamp of approval.

I've worked extremely hard with the Ubuntu team and Eucalyptus to provide users with their own open source cloud system for building private clouds. We've created official images which run both on your private cloud and a public provider (i.e. Amazon EC2) and an ecosystem of management tools (RightScale, CohesiveFT).

We've provided real products for real users and our aim has been to provide an open source reference model for cloud computing at the infrastructure layer of the stack.

Whilst I agree that the solution to many of enterprise concerns over cloud can be resolved by such a common substrate, this needs to be far more than just saying run our operating system in your VMs and here's our stamp of approval.

I'm seriously disappointed. However, disappointment collapses into despair at sight of the following statement:

"How can a CIO be sure that an application written for a Google cloud will work with Salesforce, Amazon, or another cloud?"

[Hint: You can't, they're completely different levels of the computing stack]

I keep on getting this horrible feeling that they haven't got to grips with the changes in the environment but that doesn't make sense because the changes are plainly visible. Every time I look at the landscape it gets me confused ... what on earth are they upto? Have they found some new area of value I just don't get?

Black is the new ... black.

My friend James is reported to have said :-

"as far as the enterprise is concerned, cloud [computing] is the new VMWare, and IBM wants a fat slice this time".

According to another friend of mine, James Urquhart, it looks like the new slice IBM is getting is based upon .... VMWare.

Numb Nuts ...

Numb Nuts are those people whose mental faculties have somewhat been pacified by the onset of an easy culture. It would be unfair to describe them as feeble-minded as it's more about an unwillingness to think.

In the "cloud" world there are many examples of second sourcing failure through proprietary technology (e.g. Zimki, CogHead & Virtual Iron). Equally there are many Numb Nuts who still believe that proprietary is the way forward.

A femtogram of thought would show that in the service world, competition and value should be around services whilst the bits are free.

If you're building a cloud or using a cloud, ask yourself where is the open source reference implementation of this? Where are my second sourcing options?

If you don't have this, then check your face in the mirror each day and look for the tell-tale sign of "Numb Nut" appearing in bold lettering across your forehead.

As the habitual users of Virtual Iron have discovered, it'll happen soon enough.

[El Reg talking about Virtual Iron]
"anyone that built their hosting infrastructure on VI...is now totally in the shit".

[MasterMark speaking about Coghead 'going tits up']
"that left its customers essentially in the unfortunate position of being 'shit out of luck'.

P.S. Before anyone whines that Amazon EC2 is proprietary - try Eucalyptus, Globus Nimbus or any of the other open source re-implementations of the API.

P.P.S. Before anyone huffs that their proprietary system is backed by a big company, in my view "financial safety" is either open sourced or much bigger than Lehman Brothers i.e. revenues above $20 billion and a headcount higher than 28,000 - 'nuff said.

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.

Double, double toil and trouble ...

It seems that the witches of Westminster have been caught with their hands in the cauldron. To avoid being burnt at the stake they've been resigning from the coven in an unnatural haste.

In some warped plot twist that would make Shakespeare squirm these blackened souls have decided that they have been wronged.

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair" these harpies cry as they organise the hapless master's doom.

You just couldn't make this stuff up. Are there no depths that MP's won't stoop to? Have they no shame? Not even a tiny sliver?

"Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting" - an MP's expense claim or a list of new job titles for them?

Making a big splash ...

All the buzz has been about wave recently.

The really smart bit can be gleamed from their statement to "help potential wave providers get started, our plan is to release an open source, production-quality, reference implementation of the Google Wave client and server, as well as provide an open federation endpoint by the time users start getting access.".

Oh, why oh why didn't they do that with Google AppEngine?

An unpleasant odour ...

The reason why a fish pie made with rotten fish and vegetables tastes foul is that the ingredients are rotten. No amount of fiddling with the recipe will ever fix this.

The farce with the MP's expense system has been known about for a long time. Its origins are from a time when the Government urged wage restraint by setting the example whilst secretly creating a lavish expense culture.

What's flabbergasting is that some of them couldn't even stick to such a lavish system and now they're claiming that the problem is they weren't paid a decent wage. It's shameless.

Of course this somewhat overshadows the more serious issue of expenses fraud. It seems an MP can repay that which is discovered to be stolen from the public purse and the punishment is simply a golden goodbye and a handsome pension. This system can't be fixed; the people and the culture need replacement and some of our right honourable should be spending time at her majesty's pleasure.

What parliament needs is new ingredients and not a fiddled with recipe.

Before anyone says that I shouldn't tar all with the same brush, where have the good MPs trying to replace this whole rotten system been hiding for the last decade? A few may be worthy of remaining but as for the rest ... they should be thrown overboard.

How is Fatherhood?

It's a wet nappy of exhaustion, chaos, confusion, anxiety and uncertainty punctuated by sporadic burps of bliss.

Project management in tweets ...

• All business activities are in transition from innovation (rare and poorly understood) to commodity-like (common and well defined).


• The characteristics of an activity vary during its lifecycle. An innovation is dynamic & requires deviation whilst a commodity does not.


• How to manage an activity varies with the stage of its lifecycle. Which is why no single project methodology is suitable everywhere.


• Successful project management is knowing when to use static (six sigma, prince 2) and when to use dynamic methodologies (XP, Scrum).