I figured it was about time to give an update on what I’m working on. Having completed my 3 concurrent projects over the last 9 months I have finally got some free time in my schedule to work on new projects. As I mentioned in my last post 3fficient low powered computing is one of them and I will have much more time to invest in that over the next few months. But what I would like to talk about today is one of my other new projects – The Open Hardware Hackers Group (OHH) and how it has come about.

Curiously I didn’t start of in computer science like many of my colleagues, I actually studied systems engineering which was a mixture of analogue + digital electronics, control systems and programming. Thus recently when I started construction around 3fficient I realised I would probably need to start wielding my soldering iron once more. I was actually quite keen to do so as had gotten re-interested both in industrial and embedded systems.

Whilst doing the 3fficient research and getting back into hardware I discovered some great work being performed around opensource hardware, imagine my joy – OpenSource and Hardware hacking how cool is that. So it is no suprise that I have dived deep into OpenSource hardware there are some great projects out there, here are couple of the things I’m hacking around with :-

• Arduino – This little Microcontroller board is big and getting bigger all of the time, it has spurred so many other projects its created it’s own eco system.
• BeagleBoard – Low powered ARM Cortex 8 board, This thing is the start of something big, SI’s OMAP series are definitely going places

There are many projects out there to many too enumerate here, but check out Opencircuits for more clues. My point is that there is a great deal of energy being contributed to open hardware and hacking hardware and I can see this having the same kind of influence in physical electronics as OpenSource software has in I.T. With this in mind I thought it might be a good idea to get together with others having similar interests, and helping those who may be new to hardware hacking. That is why I have set up the Open Hardware Hackers group (OHH). Its not just a Google group we actually plan on meeting regularly (in London initially) to get together to tinker/discuss/share etc..

The Point of OHH is to help each other, to collaborate on projects, to share ideas, help others enter into hardware hacking. As such we would also invite members to contribute energy towards building a set of tools to help new entrants get into the digital-playground as well as for our own mutual benefit. That way we can give back to the community as well as take adavantage of it.

So what are the OHH members up to well Thats a question I’m about to kick off on the group, but I already have some clues, they are hacking utility meters, wheather stations, virtual/physical computing, low powered servers and controlling household appliances as well as working on gadgets and tooling, its pretty diverse. So if your interested in electronics, hardware hacking or just tinkering join the group and maybe even meetup with us. We will be getting together to setup the physical meeting agendas at the ICA Cafe on Tueseday at 2pm, your welcome to come along and contribute at an early stage if your interested. If you can’t make it, leave any suggestion on the group and well make sure to cover it.

Anyhow that just a quick update to let you know about OHH, hopefully I might even post a little more now that the work has let up a little.

One of the best feelings I get is when I look into one market where it’s edges are starting to rub up against other markets or forces that they have previously been distanced from. It’s a bit like gene splicing only it happens with entire markets and industries. I have had the good fortune to experience this first hand in the pc software market, first with it’s commoditisation and then with the amazing evolution resulting from the forces of OpenSource the internet and free speech.

More recently I have been involved with the 3fficient projects (partly the reason for slower posts here!). This has taken me from my decades work in the PC and web software industry back into the hardware and embedded industries. It’s beeen a fascinating journey over the last few months and I see radical changes afoot as both of these markets collide along with mobile technologies.

It’s like the coming together of 3 great continents : PC desktop/server meets embedded meets mobile and mixed into the whole boiling pot is the magic ingredient of OpenSource, shearing off complete business models and opening a multitude on new opportunities. To be honest I haven’t been this excited since the late 90’s when I discovered linux and the internet, given the changes OpenSource and open standards brought to bear on those emerging markets, the scope for embedded and mobile space innovations are absolutely huge. At this early stage there are great deal of opportunities for change and invention, I’m not just talking about iPhones, I am talking about the wider picture, complete re-invetion of ubiquitous computing itself.

There are already key signs of things changing, a good example is the Netbook, I love it’s emergence and adore it’s underlying philosophy of ‘just enough’. But it isn’t just netbooks that emerge from this thinking as we will see ‘just enough’ changing many niches and even entire markets. Take servers for example, although many see these just getting bigger and more powerfull, at 3fficient we are building ‘just good enough’, adequate, sufficient and requisite and turning a few heads. In the enterprise we are also seeing OpenSource as being ‘good enough‘ and I don’t mean that in a bad way, good enough is really important and is a definite requirement for commodity and rapidly expanding value driven markets.

But there are many other great things that cross over from these different markets, embedded’s efficiency brings a welcome breeze of fresh air to an industry obese with it’s own wastefulness, yes I’m talking about the PC industry, it’s fat margins and greedy consumption of resources and power are a folly waiting to be exposed by an efficient army of adequates. The artificial walls erected by the greedy vendors are about to be kicked in by a band of decent,fair and capable new innovators and value driven green entrepreneurial anarchists. I’m not joking, these fat bastards are going to see their knees shattered by the crippling depression unfolding beneath them, they will not survive unscathed.

The Age of endless consumption’s collapses beneath us is revealing it’s true lack of value creation. But built upon the consumerist rubble from its collapse will come a new efficient age. Instead of consumption, innovation, dedication and collaboration will bring efficiency and value, business itself will be reborn to construct and deploy value back into the global eco system. Contrast this to the worlds resource strip mining of the 19th and 20th centuries, its about bloody time and I am glad to be instrumental in it, what about you lot what are you doing to help?

Anyhow it’s been a while since I blogged here and had a few things to get of my chest sorry and hope you don’t mind my occasional rants

I have been thinking a lot about virtualization and emergent web based software recently, trying to put them into context together.

My suspicion is that virtualization is really just a transitionary technology that gets us over the open & concurrency hump rearing up in the technology road ahead of us.

It’s not that this hump poses a problem to everyone, many developers are well ahead and have been riding it’s crest for some time, building concurrent and or multi-tenant solutions that run natively on the internet.

But organizations of all sorts have a great deal invested in pre-hump technologies, a transition to post-hump is going to take time. In the interim, cloud vendors, shower us with their virtualization rainbows to lead us to the open native internet pot of gold on the other side.

So what is at the end of the rainbow? Although its difficult to see (primarily due to the cloud marketing fog obscuring it) one would imagine it looks a lot like the internet does now only bigger and better. That is it will be built around open standards like TCP/IP, http, html, xml, javascript, ajax and perhaps some newer emergent ones. We should also expect to see REST rather than WS* hairball, view source rather than binaries and most likely OpenSource rather than proprietary. Whatever is there, it will be used to build the new native internet software and services world post-hump.

What is fascinating is what happens to the current diversity of native web production which emerged from CGI grew up through LAMP evolving into the popular state of the art frameworks like RAILs, DJango and cornucopia of similar solutions in other languages. We already see emergent post-hump candidates like Google’s App Engine and Microsoft’s Azure tools + platform, can these succeed or will diversity rein, perhaps running on more diverse plays like Amazon’s AWS or a Eucalyptus fork. I personally have a difficult time imagining any single one of these dominating, I would expect diversity to continue but with some consolidation. I also have an inkling that something else is likely to emerge soon that changes the game around concurrency, something that makes it central to its architecture. In many ways it will be an anti virtualization force, it will also likely be a highly efficient development environment and solution consuming less and delivering much more bucking the historical trend to date, it really would be development gold!

What do you think might emerge, have you seen the signs yet, anyone got some clues to throw us?

Well yesterday brought the PDC 2008 keynote with Ray Ozzie finally explaining Microsoft’s compute on demand strategy. However after following it and reading analysis I became very disappointed. I know, I know, its a Microsoft keynote it will be around the Microsoft toolbox and thus is unlikely to be relevant to me. But This time I had heard rumours and expected something a little different, elements that would extend way beyond the visual studio toolbox.

Microsoft have been talking about being more open and talking about things outside of their regular dev toolbox. The words I had heard were ‘PHP’ and ‘Eclipse’ amongst others. Not only that but for these two at least I had seen a great deal of confirmation from other sources, like Microsoft working with Zend and the Eclipse org. Thus I was expecting their compute on demand offerings to include at least PHP and possibly others outside of the visual studio regulars. It was a surprise to me that these outsiders were not mentioned in the keynote or subsequent analysis. You see unlike 5-10 years ago where Microsoft pretty much 0wn3d Developers, there are now many large parties of devs outside of their toolbox/language reach. It has therefore got to be a priority for Microsoft to some how leverage at least some of these out lying groups and to entice them into their new strategy. At the least I would expect Microsoft to play their familiar embrace and extend card, but there was no sign of it.

Luckily after following through on the commentary I came across a channel 9 video (silverlight less version) by Manuvir Das (Director in the Windows Azure team) that provided a much more in depth explanation of Azure. Not only does this video better explain Azure and it’s infrastructure but it also alludes to those missing pieces I expected to hear about. Just after halfway through the real elephant in the room is revealed, as the virtualisation is explained the presenter reveals (around 22 minutes in) that other languages do actually run within their new virtualised platform. Not only does he use the ‘PHP’ word and Python but he also drops the real anvil he mentions ‘RAILS’ ! not just Ruby but ‘Ruby on Rails’! That would mean they have gotten rails running on their virtual machine and will have ActiveRecord ported to their virtualised infinite storage – Bingo!! If this is true it could be big, it would mean Microsoft could attract PHP, Python and Rails devs into their cosy cloud play. It could be very attractive much like like Google’s AppEngine is for Pythonistas, infinite indestructible storage, instant scalability to as many systems you can shake a stick at, all in the releative safety of your favorite web language or DSL.

So what do you think about this huge cloud based hug to web developers, is this a master stroke from Microsoft, their worse kept secret, or are we being invited to put our heads inside the lions mouth ? Let me know your thoughts. Any links to further info or analysis about this would also be appreciated.

P.S. Yes I know this doesn’t mean it is a pure ‘Open’ play and I know that still hasn’t emerged from any player yet, but it is a still a very interesting story from a developers POV.

Just a quick post to mention a new blog 3fficienct that I am working on. This blog rather than a personal blog like this one, is actually serving a specific purpose. As part on my day job I have been dealing with small datacenter requirements for many years in order to manage the software we engineer for our clients. Recently we have embarked on a project that scratches an itch we had within the datacenter around high efficiency servers. It’s a really interesting project that will be sharing both hardware and software developed during the process of solving the challenges. If your interested in open hardware and or software or just I.T. efficiency and reducing your carbon footprint check it out.

They do it already indirectly via your revenue from them, so why not go the whole hog and let them pay for it outright. At least if they are paying for it they will make sure it is focused on delivering value for them and hence is likely to result in much greater ROI than the I.T department could ever muster. So what happens to the I.T department? Well your customers become the I.T department, all of them! just imagine that, all of those folks providing you with support.

Here is a scenario, someone inside your organisation (Alice) has a great new idea for a widget, but doesn’t know how to implement the processes or systems to produce, package and deliver the widget. At the moment the widget is just an idea, not an actual product, so first Alice needs to talk to the early adopters support department (ASD) to refine the product idea. So who are the ASD folks? they are of course the elite task force members of the same department as I.T Alice’s customers. So Alice collaborates with ASD, establishes that it’s a go product and refines the widget requirements. She then hands over the widget reqs to the buying department (BD).

The members of BD actually have two roles, the first is to coordinate the just-in-time (JIT) manufacture and supply of widgets. Their second role is of course as the I.T department for a number of Widget manufacturers. Because Alice’s widget has never been made before a few of the BD folk are acting as the JIT supplier’s ASD task force. After collaborating with the JIT suppliers via your I.T systems a widget solution emerges to meet the costs and quality targets established by Alice’s ASD task force.

Alice is now happy to move forward with widget production and delivery, so she engages with the marketing and communications department (MCD). Who are the MCD? well the MCD are the same department as the I.T. department, her customers of course. What Alice needs to do is collaborate and engage with her customers in order to help them understand the new widget. She is hoping that they will like the new widget as much as the ASD folks. Of course the ASD folks are also members of the MCD themselves and collaborate with other members of the MCD by engaging in conversations around the new widget, assisted by Alice and here colleagues. But Alice has been here before and knows this is no time for sitting on your laurels, there is still much to do. So she listens to the MCD and tweeks the widgets to help them slip through the MCDs more quickly and in growing numbers, the widget becomes more and more refined and more and more slippy until one day Alice realises she has a hit. But she doesn’t go all Britney Spears about it, because she knows it wasn’t her achievement, she recognises she was just helping to Teflon coat the tubes, so she makes sure that all of the departments know how insanely great they were with this widget. Just as she is doing this one of her colleagues engaged with an MCD, notices they are doing something different with the widget and suddenly has this brilliant new idea….

Examples of customer I.T : Blogs, getsatisifaction, twitter, wiki’s, social networks, VRM and lots more coming…..

Well it’s been a while since I have posted on what I have been working on, but figured it was about time to give you all an update. First of all I’ve ben busy as hell the last few months and it seems that it isn’t likely to change in the foreseeable future.

Second a little history is in order, last year as some of you are probably aware we built the first prototypes for Rel3. Rel3 was originally a framework that I was designing to build Folknology projects. Instead of just building a framework, I figured I should actually build something useful with the frame work concurrently. Doing things this way means you build a useful framework that does something concrete rather than just an endless series of components built without scope or constraint. Turns out this is a good way to build stuff because you end up scratching itches that exist. The downside is it seems to take forever, one of the reasons I called the project code name rel3 was because I had already built the thing twice so logically the next version would be release 3 AKA ‘Rel3’. We also gave a sneak preview of a rel3 app last year at wiki wednesday which some of you guys attended. In the interim we got some commercial interest from a couple of paying gigs and proceeded to build a prototype for one of them. That prototype based on rel3 is still in testing and has been going through several revisions.

In the meantime I was still not happy with rel3 the framework, it needed to be more robust, scalable and extensible. In addition I was getting requests for commercial projects that I wanted to build using the framework. Thus over the last few months I have completely rebuild the framework to meet it’s architectural goals and commercial requirements. The new framework is built using Erlang/OTP and I (with help from Phil) have named it Reactor, to be precise the project is actually called Reactored and the framework engine is called reactor. here is a potted history

1. 2005 Rel1 – Java/Xml based framework – To complex and unwieldy
2. 2006 Rel2 – Java + Groovy/Grails based framework – Simpler but messy
3. 2007 Rel2.5 – Ruby/Rail based framework – Failed, Rails got in the way
4. 2007 ReL3 – Erlang/ErlyWeb – Success but messy (wouldn’t dare show code in public!)
5. 2008 Reactor – Erlang/OTP – Everything we ever wanted and more, it just Rocks!

Reactor is the core of OTP components that do the heavy lifting. Reactored expands the scope to combine the Reactor engine with the following components in future:

1. Web server Yaws and ErlyWeb,
2. Messaging ejabbered and RabbitMQ
3. Non native CGI/FW Python 1st then maybe Php ,Ruby..
4. Whatever anyone wants and is willing to contribute

Some advantages we are already benefitting from:

1. Yaws is native in the framework language unlike Apache
2. Highly perform-ant, scalable, redundant and eventually reliable!
3. Component, modular and simpler to extend to requirements.

So what the hell is Reactor and what is Reactored for?
I will take the second first, Reactored will be the community that I hope we can build around Reactor and it is of course OpenSource (GPL’d). As for Reactor, well that will probably take a number of posts and examples to explain, but here is a brief description in the meantime.

Reactor is a new angle on building web based projects. It focuses on packets, patterns and events. It’s a reactive framework built around REST based cached/distributed storage, queues/sinks and domain based pattern matching.
Perhaps the best way of visualizing it is comparing it to existing domain patterns where we store and then post process using techniques like search and query. With a reactive storage we do the queries in realtime (as data enters) using pattern matching. The framework also allows for common post storage queries using search, tags and identity avoiding the need for a separate query language.

Reactor is not a web framework, but is something that can be integrated into an existing web framework. I will however be adding Yaws and ErlyWeb support as a matter of personal preference. Next likely stop is a python framework integration, but this largely depends on some help with the Python, that also goes for any other language frameworks such as PHP, Ruby etc.. You could think of it a new type of backend for frameworks, except if you did you would miss out how frontend it can be!

It goes without saying of course that if any of this is mildly interesting to you and you would like to find out more or contribute in some way please tweet/comment/email me and let me know, here are some indications of skills that could really help:

1. Erlang geeks – anyone looking to join an OpenSource erlang project, I don’t just mean experts if you already have Python/Javascript and are learning Erlang count yourself in.
2. Javascript,AJAX,Air geeks that want to play with interesting new frameworks
3. Testers, documentors, evangelists, bloggers and general participants if your interested your in!

In terms of code and project status, Reactor will be functionally complete at version 0.1 on Sunday June 1 2008 (probably midnight!), if you are impatient,just request it and I can send a tarball. For everyone else if you could wait a few days/weeks whilst I get the code out of my private GIT repository and into a public repository (GitHub/GoogleCode?). I will also be setting up the project website/blog/tracking stuff as and when I can over the next few months using the reserved reactored.org domain.

I guess you can consider this the unofficial announcement of Reactored!

* Update It is now available from the public Git repository at Reactored on GitHub now

So if Umair really is correct regarding evil DNA leading to industrial strategic incompetence in the 21st century and that Facebook really is Anakin Skywalker, we can as DJK proclaims, predict the inevitable outcome. Lets play along with the supposition for a little fun..

After Facebook’s meteoric rise it is taken under the wing of the emperor, in this case Microsoft, led toward the darkside, betraying its original underlying principles. Here Facebook is taught to use the darkside of the force – ‘competition’ rather than the ‘collaborative’ side of the force. It is now using the darkside to try and dominate the universe. But The darkside has a fundamental weakness and Facebook’s Glass Jaw is showing us its Achilles heal, this is providing the rebellion and the Jedi a fighting chance.

At this point we are up to date in the story, I think Steve Gillmor might have us believe that luke is Mesh or ‘Twitter’, but Mesh and Twitter are not of Facebook’s loins, I think however Steve may be Obi-Wan and could help lead Luke from anonymity to center stage. Later Luke will visit the wise Yoda to train as a Jedi and fight for the forces of good, he will be taught to use the collaboration and not fall foul of the darkside by controlling his competitive feelings. So who is Luke and how will we recognize him, well he is to become a Jedi, standing for good and using the ‘collaborative force’ to fight the ‘competitive darkside’ so we will judge him by his actions, trust will be our compass. And who are the rebellion? well that one one is easy, it’s you and me fighting for what we know is good, helping and supporting Luke. In this sense Luke may turn out to be the first of many Jedi showing others the way with VRM.

Of course the burning questions is that in Facebook’s last minutes will it turn and save luke from Microsoft and show that it was not all evil, but as Luke believed, it had some good left in it..

*Update If what Scoble says is correct that makes this story all the more interesting.

After my speculation last week on Google’s cloud play, yesterday they announced Google Application Engine (GAE), I figured I would wait a day before providing a response. Overall the speculation was about right but the language implementation was some way off, here are my initial thoughts.

Guido van Rossum (GVM) obviously pulled rank on Steve Yegge (SY) and presumably GAE was already under way before GROR. I would certainly imagine SY’s GROR seeing light of day along with Google’s CVM (Cloud Virtual Machine) with JVM languages. I’m now thinking the language order might even be Python (obviously), Java, Javascript (GROR) followed by the rest and excluding C++, my assumption here is that they build their CVM on Sun’s JVM. Although they could pull an android and not use the JVM but instead use there own Java runtime. If Google was paranoid and wanted complete control in their cloud infrastructure, using their own Java engine removes the third party reliance on Sun for the JVM. The disadvantage to this route is they loose all that has been built on the JVM, like extra language support etc..

But what do you get with GAE, what’s the real killer benefit of using it? As someone who has been building and maintaining web applications for nigh on a decade I have come to appreciate the advances in frameworks and libraries. When Ruby on rails (ROR) appeared web app developers suddenly found they could create basic prototypes in record time. In many ways ROR was the climax of MVC domain modeling based around the combination of web server, MVC code and SQL backends. Unfortunately ROR is the climax of an old paradigm that does not scale as easily as it could. If you look at the backend of successful web players like Ebay, Amazon, Google etc..Their architectures are very different from the traditional 3 tier model ROR was built on. The architectures that are used by these organisations are designed with rather different goals for example.

• Huge distributed storage
• Load balanced storage
• load balanced models/views
• Distributed session replication
• Joins replaced by indexes
• Map reduce rather than SQL
• High fault tolerant
• Transparent failover
• Multi datacenter and location

All of these features solve issues that we (My companies & clients) have had to deal with manually in the past. Building solutions to these features is hugely time consuming and implementation is extremely costly. Google with GAE have just delivered most of these absolutely free of charge, with GAE you don’t need to worry about this stuff anymore it’s done for you. This isn’t just evolution it’s the next logical stage in web app development and what’s more it will be available to anyone with an PC, internet connection and rudimentary knowledge of Python. Oh and for the traditionalists they even provide GQL so you 3 tierers feel right at home! So guess what, if you are a small web apps developer do yourself a favour learn python and get coding for GAE it’s a lot easier than building everything on the list, you will be laughing all the way to the bank at your ROR competitors. There are also some great killer development features such as instant deployment and version control along with an administrative console.

Of course anything thats is as innovative as this is bound to put a few noses out of joint, those that have most to loose by its arrival. Already I hear negative rumblings in the ROR community, my take on that? Do what Google has done with python on their infrastructure, build something scalable and competitive that supports your beloved framework. The biggest problem for anyone competing is likely to be ‘Free’, you could build a ruby applications engine using AWS, but who would sponsor the ‘Free’ version?

Where is Microsoft in all this, well I guess they have their own cloud (red dog?) ideas based around similar features and using their own preferred languages like C# and Basic/ASP on their CLR. They might even throw a bone to the ROR folks via an ironruby cloud infrastructure, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

But we also need to consider what we are getting into with GAE, if we build into GAE we are locking ourselves into Google’s future. During the campfire announcements the presenters kept using the ‘P’ word (‘Platform’,’our platform’ etc..),so lets be careful out there folks, we know how it turned out with the Microsoft Platform don’t we..

P.S. Anyone spot my purposeful error in this post regarding GAE features?

So if data is the new currency (microcurrency), Information Technology (I.T) can be seen in a much clearer light. Information Technology therefore moves from a cost centre to a value provider or enhancer. That is I.T if correctly applied will turn your current data currency into an even more valuable microcurrency, a process of adding or leveraging the value of your data via I.T value engineering.

Now remembering of course that the purpose of business is to deliver value to customers, then it would suggest that your I.T should be adding value to your customers using the microcurrency of data. Obviously the data value your are delivering to your customers may not be the only form of value delivery, but it is an important part of the overall package value. For example Amazon.com delivers value in terms of convenience and data (user recommendations etc..) as part of any physical product it ships. Amazon ensures that it’s I.T delivers maximum value to it’s customers and that is how it makes decisions about what I.T to employ. It is also fair to say that different businesses offer different levels of data value to their customers, but it is also key to note that in any given market those maximising the data delivery components of the package are likely to provide greater value to their customers. With the obvious benefits that is likely to bring in terms of competitive advantage.

It is important to consider what information technology one employs or implements when focusing on customer value delivery. Historically much software has been built on the cost model rather than the value add model. Luckily that model is changing and I.T. is now moving towards service provision rather than software licensing. This is important as a focus on service provision is aligned with measured value delivery rather than some mythical ROI estimate that the vendor has conjured. When the service providers and internal value delivery network (formely I.T dept) are aligned on the common goal of customer value creation and or maximization, the business execution becomes economically focused, amplified and agile. The I.T performance can actually be measured, monitored, tweeaked and optimised to gain the maximum benefit for the customer and hence one’s strategic advantage.

Simplistic Delivery model

Data_delivered = IT_strategic + Data_input

and

Service = Human Capital + IT_utility

Thus :-

Customer value delivered = Data + Service + Product ,

= IT_strategic + Data_input + Human Capital + IT_utility +Product

Where product may be omitted in pure service organisations.

I would also suggest that strategic I.T be implemented as a combination of service provision and customization to provide strategic difference, enhancement and advantage. The types of strategic I.T service provision will vary but I would imagine some core services will include collaborative and communication tools alongside a new generation of analytical and even intelligent agents. Strategic I.T also favours multiple sources and customisation rather than single source, as that is how maximum value can be derived, unlike utility I.T where single source provision is likely to remain the norm. One other interesting point to those responsible for strategic I.T, you are likely to be sourcing your service providers much closer to those at the bleeding edge, you are in fact taking part in early adoption which is a very different position to your utilitarian counterparts. Further do not expect these service providers to supply R.O.I collateral like their utility brethren. Your focus must instead be on tacit knowledge capture and sharing, data transformation and leveraging as well as data discovery, these are good candidates for strategic data value advantage.

Innovation and trust will play critical and symbiotic roles for strategic service partners, so expect them to provide creative tooling on top of data standardisation and offer provisions upon scalable and trusted networks. In otherwords, expect these providers to supply innovative tools, yet have their operations running on proven trustworthy facilities or networks, then you get the best of both worlds. Also expect them to offer the flexibility to stage the provisions internally, collaboratively and externally in a seamless fashion. These providers should bend like the wind to your strategic requirements, but also operate symbiotically with trusted infrastructure providers.

As we peer into Information Technology’s crystal ball I see great opportunities for businesses focused on value delivery, greater value for customers and a golden period of I.T innovation around data as a microcurrency. I expect this to be fueled by a heady mix of entrepreneurs and developers, we really do live in interesting times.

Notes – Product itself may also have some indirect I.T component which could be indirectly expressed as : Product = Raw materials + Service

But I have omitted that for brevity, as I have also omitted the recursive nature of value add in service (service_out = service_factored + service_added)

*Note this post was originally posted here