Telematique, water and fire.

De-nebulating "Cloud Computing"

While catching up on my reading (which is pretty daunting when Google Reader tells me that my "high priority" collection of virtualization and utility computing feeds is over 1000 new posts), I came across Alistair Croll's nine sector view of cloud computing.

Taking a look at that post, prompted me to revisit John Willis' post from February and the wealth of high quality comments he elicited. John's post, and now Alistair's, represent great "locations" in the blogosphere at which knowledgeable advocates and the loyal opposition convene to bring clarity to the conversation. What I also enjoy is that I've had and continue to have the privilege of knowing personally and working with so many of the participants.

I'm struck, as well, by what seems to be a gap ... or maybe several ... in their lists. And, being an amateur taxonomist and incorrigible entrepreneur, I view a gap as a puzzle to be solved and a potential market to be served. I'll take the time over the next few days to reflect on the gaps, and then pose a couple of questions and see if I can add to the fun. I'll be gratified if the result adds to the conversation established by John and Alistair, as well as those raised by James Urquhart, Greg Ness, Bert Armijo, Dave Durkee, and Rich Wellner (among others). (I'm most appreciative of Bert's most recent posts as well as the fun poked at the Cloud Computing Expo's Twenty Experts Define Cloud Computing piece.)


Inside the Cloud: 9 Sectors to Watch - GigaOM

There’s already a ton of activity taking place in the cloud computing space, so much so that it can be hard to know who to watch. In many cases, it’s too early to pick winners. But there are distinct sectors of the IT industry that are particularly well suited to the on-demand, pay-as-you-go economics of cloud computing. Here are eight segments — and one company that’s a segment all its own — that we’re tracking closely.

MyCMDB - the CMDB as a Wikipedia Plug-in to FaceBook

At the risk of piling on, I'll join the refrain regarding the recently announced MyCMDB from Managed Objects. As described, it makes no sense to me. I can't for the life of me figure out how one uses social networking and the "principles of Web 2.0" to solve the CMDB data accuracy and completeness problems.

myCMDB - Managed Objects

... Managed Objects myCMDB™ solves CMDB data accuracy and accessibility issues incumbent with today's CMDB implementations. By integrating principles of Web 2.0 and social networking into a new web-based application, myCMDB delivers role-based “communities” where users can more easily and effectively view and interact with CMDB data – and other CMDB users as well. ...

Jurisdiction - where in the world is that VM?

James Urquhart has an interesting post on a topic that's fascinated me for a long time -- namely, under what legal jurisdiction does a computed "transaction" take place?

The problem first came to my attention (sometime during the last ice age) with the advent of ATM machines with services offered by national banking and credit card concerns. If I withdrew money or paid a credit card bill at the ATM, exactly where (for the purposes of the relevant legal jurisdiction) did the transaction take place? Banking laws being what they are, the industry got around a host of problems by declaring an ATM machine to be a "branch bank", in order to make sure that the geographic location at which the financial transaction took place made it clear for purposes of law.

The days of dumb terminals and thin client computing brought with it a boatload of jurisdictional issues. And now, cloud computing and virtual server migration add to the puzzle. It's a great problem on which to reflect. James' discussion is well grounded and presents the salient issues in a very nice way.

The Wisdom of Clouds: "Follow the law" computing

A few days ago, Nick Carr worked his usual magic in analyzing Bill Thompson's keen observation that every element of "the cloud" eventually boils down to a physical element in a physical location with real geopolitical and legal influences. This problem was first brought to my attention in a blog post by Leslie Poston noting that the Canadian government has refused to allow public IT projects to use US-based hosting environments for fear of security breaches authorized via the Patriot Act.

Return of the Prodigal Blogger

I realize that I haven't been adding posts to the blog for quite a while. It's not that I haven't been working and certainly not that I haven't been writing.

Running a startup is time consuming, but I can now say that we're at the "next phase" of the company, in which everyone is not required to take responsibility for every function. With the enlargement of our engineering group and the establishment of a crack product management team, I actually find myself with time to think about strategy and actions with a time horizon greater than two weeks.

Among my other resolutions, I'll start to post more.

Adjusting the risk/reward dial.

Running a small (... OK, Oren... tiny) startup means that during the week I run windsprints.  On Saturday mornings, catching up on Google Reader (1000+), I get to stroll leisurely through the RSS, while (in the background) all my machines backup to the NAS.

Reading this reminds me of the times I've thrown my lot in with a bare-metal startup. The post mentions serendipitous moments, and I can attest to the fact that you'll never encounter more of them than while doing a startup. It's one of the great pleasures. 

All stages of a company have benefits.  I continue to be most thrilled, enjoyably challenged, and most engaged at this stage.  This is the phase in which I learn most, and for which I have the warmest memories.  Wecome, Oren.

Link: Ontic Oren � Modifying my own risk/reward.

Classical Music's Doping Scandal

This just in... too funny.

Newsflash at think denk

(Washington, DC) Former Senator George J. Mitchell released a blistering report Thursday that tied 89 performers of so-called “Classical Music,” including Mitsuko Uchida, to the use of illegal, non-musical cultural performance-enhancers. The report used informant testimony and supporting documents to provide a richly detailed portrait of what Mr. Mitchell described as “classical music’s thinking era.

The Mitchell report ran about 400 pages and was based on interviews with more than 700 people, including 60 former “classical” musicians, and 115,000 pages of documents. ...

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Componentizing IOS!! But ... when?

Cisco's reorganization of the development group is truly significant.  If the company can actually commit to this self-administered genetic engineering ... no mean feat ... they have my admiration.   I spent a day or two this past week thinking about it, and wondered what I would consider a clear indicator of commitment to the new path.  Well, folks, this is it... opening up IOS.

This is a game-changing move for the company, but only if it's a timely move.  How quickly will they do it? How quickly can it be done?

Cisco opening up IOS - Network World

... "It's a significant step forward for us," said Don Proctor, senior vice president of Cisco's newly formed Software Group, at last week's C-Scape 2007 analyst conference. "Software turns out to be a key way that we can do what [we've] been talking about for some time, which is link business architecture to technology architecture in a meaningful way."

Cisco plans to "componentize" IOS – developing only one implementation of a specific function instead of several, depending on the image – dynamically link IOS services and move the software onto a Unix-based kernel. Cisco then plans to open up interfaces on IOS to allow third-party and customer-developed applications to access IOS services.

However, no timeframe for doing so was provided.
...

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Gartner advises IT execs for 2008

Although it comes as no surprise that Gartner's top 10 for 2008 made sure that virtualization showed up on the roster, David Marshall points out that virtualization was closely related and an enabler for many of the other items that show up on the list.

David Marshall | InfoWorld | Gartner's Top 10 for 2008 - Outlook Virtual and Green

... When talking about Gartners top 10 list, Hillier made an interesting observation when he said that virtualization has become the unwitting enabler for many of the top 10 items listed by Gartner. And he added that many of the top 10 issues didn't even exist when virtualization was first conceived, yet its advantages in efficiency and flexibility make it an obvious choice to deal with many of them.

When asked about virtualization specifically, Hillier noted that "Firstly, virtualizing the 'low hanging fruit' is completely different than tackling the complex mission critical systems that reside deep in the data center. This will cause organizations to place more rigor on the planning and execution of these initiatives, and to integrate this more seamlessly into the long-term management of the environment. In addition, virtualization is only truly transformational if the paradigm is embraced fully, and quick-and-dirty implementations will leave you with a 'virtual physical' environment, that looks and smells like a physical environment but takes up less rack space. This may be expeditious, and indeed is warranted in certain situations, but it completely undersells the potential of the technology." ...

Back in harness...

After a week hiking in the mountains of northern Mexico, it's time to get back to work.  But, hopefully the afterglow will live on for a while.  What a great experience, and what a wonderful group of people we've found there.

Email and the Five Conversations

Isabel Wang has an interesting post on her blog in response to Google's announcement of their Postini acquisition.  (BTW: Congrats again, Tim!)  In it, Isabel makes the point that email (like many of the newly arrived interpersonal and group messaging technologies) is a means to an end.  She then references Matt Howard's (and SMBLive's) concept of the 5 Conversations, of which I wasn't aware until now. 

Worth the read and the follow up to 5 Conversations.

isabel wang's blog: Email is not a killer app!

...But email is NOT a killer app (let alone THE killer app)! Instead, what SMBs really want is a coherent, 360 degree solution for managing their front- and back-office operations. As SMBLive CEO Matt Howard puts it, running a business is all about maintaining 5 conversations: you use office productivity apps to organize your own ideas, collaboration platforms to share information with colleagues and partners, transaction and contact management tools to keep track of current vendors and customers, sales/marketing/networking services to connect with new ones...

While email can play a role in these interactions, it's a means rather than an end. A means whose usefulness may one day end. As Dennis Howlett writes on ZDNet: "I see a combination of Twitter and Facebook as having the potential to replace 90% of the email I receive while improving my personal productivity." ...