Final rant in November.

Well it has been ages since I've posted anything about "The internet is killing our culture" debate. To be honest, I've been ignoring it again. However I was talking to Jonathan Laventhol recently and we wandered onto the subject.

The bit I hate about this debate is that it implies that somehow "our" culture is static. What is "our" culture - 1970s? Victorian? Edwardian? 1450s? 10 minutes ago? which country? which region? whom in particular?

Now I can discuss the debate "Is the internet killing the pre-internet culture" in the same way I can debate "Did the renaissance kill the pre-renaissance culture". We still need a bit more definition but it's a better starting point than "our".

The idea that a previous culture is some "golden age" compared to our own is a continual myth passed down throughout history. Our culture includes the internet and whilst I'm sure that many professionals lament its creation there was probably once a large number of wandering minstrels and town criers lamenting the printing press.

It makes no difference, culture changes, it's not a static thing. There is no "our" culture to begin with. It's temporal, and if "our" means today then today includes the internet.

So "Is the internet killing the internet culture" ... blah.

Give me strength .... rant over ... mischief managed .... time for December.

Flexing Plexus ...

Plexus, a provider of SaaS in the manufacturing industry, has released a paper on how 'How Manufacturing Software Enables Companies to Improve Quality Operations and Control Warranty Costs'.

It describes its product, Plexus Online, as a competitive advantage.

Since enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, manufacturing execution systems and supply chain management are fairly ubiquitous in most industries, then you really need to consider them as becoming more of a cost of doing business. This is no bad thing for a SaaS provider who can show a serious cost advantage over competitors due to its utility based charging mechanism.

On the other hand this is not so hot if you are a customer who is stuck with some expensive traditional licensed system, or if you are in the process of building one. The competitive advantage from these systems has already long gone because of its ubiquity: you really should be focused on cost and utility like services.

Of course, this could be even more of a problem for a provider of expensive traditional licensed type systems.

Fortunately there is a silver lining for those providers and customers. Plexus is a proprietary system. There is no ecosystem of Plexus providers competing around a standard. As there is no market of providers, this means all the usual fears of adoption and questions on what happens when a disaster occurs. One of these days though, companies are going to cotton on that having a small piece of a really big pie is way better than all of a small pie.

What would happen if Plexus open sourced their system or help developed an eco-system of competitive Plexus providers or created a competitive market of manufacturers? Plexus itself could become the 3rd party assurance service that such a market needs - they have already got an incredible reputation. Customers would have choice which could include hosting it themselves in the interim whilst they become comfortable with the market of providers, overcoming any adoption fears.

Do it right and such a market might possibly give SAP / Oracle / Salesforce a run for their money. In any event, Robert Beatty (founder of Plexus) seems a smart cookie and they are an interesting company to watch.

--- 10th June 2014

Looks like Plexus is going great guns. Haven't been following but others have.

"Collectively we're the world's largest manufacturing cloud community" #powerplex pic.twitter.com/i1df0ZdaJr
— Dennis Howlett (@dahowlett) June 10, 2014

Build or wait?

Back at E-Tech, Mar'06, I talked to Artur Bergman about building a mood map of the world. He was going to look at feeds, I ran off to buy a monkey .... long story .... it was all about getting the monkey to react according to the world mood.

Anyway, in the end I fiddled about with some code on Zimki and put it online collecting some very basic data - I'd totally forgotten about it until now.

Well, thanks to Björn Negelmann - I've just come across Wefeelfine by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar.

This is utterly wonderful, captivating even.

Oh, yes ... why moods? Well Artur and I were both interested in information markets - we'd even started messing around with the idea of one in Fotango, sometime in 2005. Anyway, mood and location seemed an interesting combination for highlighting whether something was happening somewhere in the world.

Don't know if anyone has done this, I'd be interested to hear the results.

Insane in da membrane ...

Thanks to Basti Hirsch for sending me a link to this video. I don't think it could ever be funnier.

What's in your web 3.0?

What's in web 3.0? or web 4.0? or web 4.5.1.0? Any ideas? No?

Go on, have a go and play the "What's in your web x.0 game"

Normally historical classifications are given post event, however in the brave new web world let's define classifications pre-event and decide what the future will be called before it is even here.

It's a sort of history 2.0, or is that history 3.0 or .....

Just ranting at some of the pointless debates on minutiae which occur in the blogosphere.

Open Source vs SaaS?

I am amazed to discover lots of discussion about a so called "Open Source vs SaaS" debate.

Surely it is obvious that the barriers to adoption of SaaS and the fears about the uncertainty of provision of service will be reduced through greater patration(as in portability of service). The fastest way of achieving this is through providing an operational means of implementing an open standard - which means Open Source.

It is not a this vs that debate, as Open Source will accelerate the adoption of the XaaS stack and it is complimentary to it.

Next I'll be hearing about the great "Salt vs Vinegar" or "Fish vs Chips" debate ....

I'll have mine "Fish AND Chips" please.

What terms mean ...

Wow, it's amazing how something as publicly spirited as wikipedia can be used as a sales tool. I was looking up some stuff and noticed term wars, blatant marketing by groups and some really snide attacks.

Anyway, as I still dabble in the XaaS world I checked out a couple of terms and thought I'd better get involved.

First, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is defined exactly the same as Hardware as a Service (HaaS) except it was invented afterwards. I was late to the party having borrowed the HaaS term from other people, most likely Nick Carr. Looks like some were even later, I've made some corrections.

[Added: I know I shouldn't but I cannot help myself. The thing about IaaS is that not only is it identical in concept to HaaS, it was invented significantly later and differed by only one letter. It's a bit like me running around saying I've just invented:-

• The Vheel - a circular device that is capable of rotating on its axis, facilitating movement or transportation or performing labour in machines
• The Selephone - a telecommunications device which is used to transmit and receive sound.

You get the picture ... it's just plain silly.]

SaaS Platform - missed this one, it is what I call FaaS or Framework as a Service. I prefer FaaS only because I've probably pinched it from someone else and it fits nicely into the XaaS terminology (see the video below) by Scott Maxwell from April'06.

SaaSu is not a term worth repeating - it's far better to use the phrase "utility computing" and let the term SaaSu be forgotten ... quickly.

[Added : Whilst I dislike the term SaaSu and prefer the term "utility computing", I am speaking of the term rather than the company - SaaSu.com. I also note that they have made a call recently for simplification back to the SaaS term. Thank you Peter for pointing that out.]

Now, as for who invented the term Software as a Service (SaaS). Well Tim O'Reilly used the term in "The Open Source Paradigm Shift" in 2004 but it had been used before by many others. It's worth noting that "SaaS" was used by Amy Mizoras Konary in a 2004 IDC report.

However it was a common term well before then.

Hmmm, XaaS must be a hot topic otherwise you wouldn't need so many rewrites of history.

Utility computing is good for ducks ... OFFICIAL

Those boffins at Accenture Technology Labs apparently believe that utility computing is good for the environment (and hence as I said good for ducks - thx to Suw for the notes.). They even talk about a future spot market in computing resources.

Of course, resource brokers is old news to any readers here who hopefully are well versed in the impacts of commoditisation. I can't really claim any credit - I take my ideas from history, whether it's Petrarch, Schumpeter or McCarthy.

In any case "anytime you think of an idea it is likely that someone, somewhere else in the world is independently thinking or has thought of the same idea".

Damn, nicked that one too.

The only downside is the potential for more consumption but in the short-term it should hold some benefit. Longer term, we're going to have to solve those thorny energy production issues.

--- Update 6th October 2013

Many years later, at the Royal Society, we're still talking about utility computing and sustainability.

Anywhere, Anytime ...

... Any Application.

This talk on the future of virtualisation by James Hamilton is worth watching.

I couldn't agree with him more, especially with the essential need for open source and open standards in this field. Just see any of my previous talks including OSCON.

Open standards is a big topic today - it's even a blue beanie day.

It affects all layers of the XaaS stack, and there are groups such as Data Portability which have formed to champion the need for such standards in particular areas. You also have the DMTF who announced an Open Standard for System Virtualization Management.

James Urquhart has an excellent blog post covering the issue of application and data portability. I happen to personally agree with James that unless there are open standards, then in most cases the sensible approach is to use utility like services behind the firewall.

However it's all good news as we all need more patration and as Adalio Sanchez said:-

"the adoption of standards-based technologies is a sound business strategy that helps companies minimize time to market, reduce costs, generate differentiated offerings, and drive a business model for sustained growth"

The most important thing about open source and open standards is that they level the playing field. I happen to agree with Kogut and Metiu that open mechanisms of development recognise "that distribution of natural intelligence does not correspond to the monopolization of innovation by the richest firms".

You never know where that next big idea is coming from ... it could be some surfer dude.

Acceleration or Velocity?

Last year I attended a conference in which one of speakers suggested that utility computing was a far off subject (2012+). This I found mildly interesting because it was already becoming established, however the speaker's point was that large companies wouldn't take it seriously until that time.

So I was interested to read Joe Tucci's list of the top 7 priorities for 2008.

• Virtualization
• Storage
• Security
• VOIP
• Enterprise 2.0
• Software in the Cloud
• Green Computing.

Now if I look at somewhere like Fotango then each of these had become priorities some 2-6 years beforehand, for example the company has organised activities around an internal wiki since 2003/04.

This would be fairly normal as larger corporations tend to lag the smaller software companies. What is unusual is that this lag is normally considered to be around 7-10 yrs and I find it unlikely that there are companies who can say that the above list was their priority between 1998-2001.

So what has happened? Joe Tucci says that this list is "something to consider for anyone who contends that business technology moves too slowly."

Rather than looking at the speed at which technology moves, the really interesting question is whether the spread of technology is accelerating.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles ....

Fly around the world on solar power?

Travel to space in a balloon?

Sounds great, but I want a car which does 100 km per litre.

I saw the car in Berlin, it's absolutely wonderful but it looks like I'm going to have to wait until 2010.

Can I borrow a cup of silver colloid solution?

Back at EuroFoo 2004 I ran a couple of sessions; one on worth (and commoditisation) and the other on fabrication technologies. Apparently at the latter session, I stated "home printers to be here within three years".

Well it looks like I was out by six months or so. DeskTop Factory has won Popular Science Magazine's Best of What's New Award.

Cool. So the first home 3D printers will be available next year at $4995 a piece.

Still it's not cheap, but then the first mass produced inkjets - the HP ThinkJet (1984) - was priced at $495 which is between $950 and $1,700 in today's terms (depending upon which measure you use).

These days you can pick up a high resolution inkjet photo printer for less than a $100. I expect the same to happen with 3D printers, and over the next decade the capability of these home fabrication machines to include not just form, but multiple materials and electronics.

[Added : Objet Geometries have announced Polyjet Matrix and a 3D printer capable of printing out in multiple materials]

They will become commonplace as well as cheap. Of course the real money will be in materials and design.

With the commoditisation of the manufacturing process itself and a further reduction of the barriers to participation, we will start to see the extension of the consumer as producer into new industries.

I look forward to the day, that my neighbour asks to borrow more exotic materials than sugar.

P.S. Watch the video .... there is a duck in it!