Joakim Nejdeby

It's raining Apps and Devices

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 07:50:00 +0000

Recently I had a discussion with some fellow from CIOs, both the Public sector and Universities, about this summers news on the "End of the PC era" and "Bring your on device". Some are calling this Consumerization of IT.

Naturally this is very interesting and a potential ground shaker in many IT-organizations around the globe. Control is a key word in many enterprises, not only to regulate information security but also to better provide support to end users. At many universities this control has never truly existed, in many "standard platforms" the end user is Administrator (or should be) and can alter programs and settings at will. This should mean that universities are well equipped to handle this shift if/when it truly arrives.

So will this be realized and if so when? I guess there are a few things that point in this direction. My first example is the news from Nvida CEO Jen-Hsun Huang who claims that Windows 8 will be able to run Windows Phone 7 Apps (http://www.winbeta.org/?q=news/nvidia-windows-phone-7-apps-will-run-windows-8). If this is true I would assume these apps will be bought through the App Store that will be in Windows 8.

There also seem to be devices that tries to close the gap between "tablet" and "pc". An example is Samsungs Slate PC as presented at the IFA in Berlin (http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/tablets/samsung-slate-pc-series-7-is-a-tablet-and-a-notebook-1007398). Some argue that the entire release of Windows 8 is about removing this gap. And then we have iPads, where the gap has already been removed.

Both these examples points in the same direction. The end user will loose control over the operating system (OS) of their device. The OS will be deployed over the internet and controlled by the manufacturer of the OS. Much like Apple do in the case of iPads. I think many end users will welcome this development, especially if this mean the computing device will be more stable and fast.

This means that the end user will provision apps on the device, and these will naturally vary from individual to individual and be a combination of personal and business apps. But in order to help the end user it would be great if the business can provision (and pay for) apps and also perhaps even restrict access to some apps or documents.

An interesting video on this topic is from Microsoft, "How consumerization is changing the role of IT " http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nNe8BbXDj8 (take a few minutes to watch that video).

So in the potential future where the lines between personal and professional life has been blurred or removed and the devices comes with a prepackaged OS; It will rain Apps and Devices, it will virtually pour down. We can only embrace the risk and the following change and help usher both the end users and our vendors in a direction that are somewhat safer and perhaps less chaotic.

Battle of giants

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 18:20:00 +0000

This last week and even month has been quite interesting from an IT perspective. We have been able to see the announcements at Apples WWDC, the new user interface (UI) of Windows 8, Google+ and Microsoft Office 365.

Google vs Facebook

Looking at the soft launch of Google+ the big issue would be, is this another Buzz or Wave? Two services that simply failed but perhaps for different reasons. Buzz because it tried to copy Twitter and Wave because it either was to innovative that nobody understood it or because it simply wasn't needed.

Well, Google+ takes another approach than Facebook in several areas. But perhaps the biggest problem will be to get a large enough user base so that the service will gain a self momentum. Facebook is a lot of things but it is now the largest Social media player (even if some has started to leave the service).

In any case it was quite interesting to read that Google+ is supposedly Google's attempt in "killing" Facebook. I guess that will not happen and that Google will integrate more or less with Facebook. Isn't that Google's core business: Aggregation of information across different services?

Edit: I found this good blog entry about Google+ from SiliconFilter.

Microsoft Office 365 vs Google Apps

The announcement from Steve Ballmer regarding Office 365 was also presented in the press as an attempt to "kill" Google Apps. Having used Google Apps since 2007, LiU launched Apps for our students back in May 2007, I welcome Microsoft's challenge in this area. It will spur both solutions. For students Google Apps still seems better, there is no need for integration at a desktop level and there are more support for various clients (Smartphones, Pads/Slates etc). For faculty and staff where Microsoft already have a big installed user base Office365 makes more sense and definitely rival on-premise solutions.

Apple vs Microsoft in Touch interfaces

When looking at the new UIs from Apple and Microsoft it is clear that they envision a future where you are more tactile with your computer. It is fascinating to see how similar they seem to be at first glance.

I have to say I have more faith in touch than voice. I can't really see how we could use voice as a primary UI, even though I know Google et al has ideas in this area. Just imagine the scenario: You are in the train writing an e-mail to someone, or searching for information in the subway. Even sitting alone in ones office talking to the computer feels strange (perhaps that is a generation issue and todays youth can't see the problem with that).

However I can definitely see that I would touch the screen or use gestures to control the computer. Even better would be to replace the keyboard and mouse with something that combine touch and gestures. Even eye tracking might work well.

My dream would be large screens in conference rooms with a "Minority report" style of UI. I often catch myself pointing at a projection of my presentation or word document wanting to interact with the computer.

In all the cases above we as customers and end users benefit from the competition between the giants.

A humble wish regarding calendaring

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:47:00 +0000

With the launch of Microsoft Office 365 and the ease of use of Google Apps I have a humble wish regarding calendaring. It is simply: Integration!

I attend a lot of meetings both within my organization and outside. Within the organization this works quite easily, my calendar is accessible for everyone in our Exchange environment. However it is not easily available to people outside the organization. That means I get meeting invitations from Doodle.org, Tungle.me, Foodle or simply an email where I am supposed to respond what times are available. This process takes a bit of time and is cumbersome. For me it is also impossible to reserve timeslots in my calendar for potential meetings, I would simply have no time slots left.

Now for the request. I would like to see a super simple solution of a standardized way to expose my calendar (or the one I choose in Exchange or in Google Apps) to different services. Naturally it should only be the free/busy and for X months in advance. Naturally this should be able to be exposed to various services on the web using a web interface.

It should be as simple as providing a URL, x.x.x.x/username/freebusy/calendar with some type of OAuth style of authentication.

If this is implemented throughout many services one could also imagine ways of exposing different organizations free/busy to all end users in an Exchange or a Google Apps environment. Or even a federated approach where all universities expose the information with in the federation.

In the end it is these types of quite "simple" integrations that makes life easier (or not) when using different services.

The university storage challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Sun, 08 May 2011 17:40:00 +0000

I challenge all online, hardware and storage vendors in particular too attend the university storage challenge!

At many universities around the globe there is need for massive amounts of storage. In general the storage solution has to have the following properties:

Be fairly safe - some sort of redundancy is needed
Be fairly fast -we are talking about massive amount of storage so access time is not the priority, but the end user must not fall asleep. Ie transfer speed (read / write) should be equivalent to USB 3 external hard discs.
Have a life expectancy of at least 3 years. Some discs might need to be swapped but not so the storage integrity is damaged.
Be fairly scalable - we are basically talking about a huge amount of storage, that can be expanded when need arise
Be accessible by any computer via standard file access protocols (like SMB).
Have an extremely low price, at a maximum, equivalent to a USB 3 external hard disc.

The target price formula is simple! The price for 1 TB in the solution must be the same price as an external USB 3, 1 TB disc bought at your local hardware store, per year. Today that is around 800 SEK, €85 or $120. This means the price for 1 TB in the solution can cost no more than $360 when the system is bought i.e. a depreciation period of 3 years.

The reason for the price is simple, when talking to a professor it is hard to explain that our super duper good storage solution costs 10 or even 100 times more when they can go out and by one 1 TB disc at any local hardware store (or actually any larger supermarket).

The expected use case is storage of end user files or other files (like massive data sets collected in a research project) where high speed or redundancy is not top priority. Basically it is a solution that rival an USB 3 external hard disc.

Are there any viable solutions out there? Either something on premise or in the cloud.

The cloud based university - Day 2

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 16:35:00 +0000

Day 2 kicked of with some reflections from day 1. Among them the trust issue.

Microsoft

Microsoft then presented their vision and strategy for productivity in the future. Different aspects of that future are unified communication, Business Intelligence, Content delivery, Collaboration and Enterprise Search. These aspects can be delivered either on premise or online.

The presentation then focused on Office 365 which includes Office Professional Plus, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online.

In conjunction with Office 365 Microsoft's adopts a new type of release cycle. It will have a 90 day cyckle for the Microsoft Online offerings. But Microsoft keeps a larger buzz (launch etc) when a new wave of products arrives. An example will be Office 2013 (or under which name it will be sold).

The audience had a huge discussion about security. First talking about physical security. But the physical security seems not to be the issue (most cloud vendors are likely secure enough) but rather the discussion started to revolve around logical security. How can we as customer be certain that there is no leakage of data? Or how can we be certain that support personnel in the US (or where ever) access our data without a support request. It boils down to a trust issue. Which naturally can be regulated in a contract. But even with a contract eventually you have to trust the vendor.

In Microsoft's offering for Office 365 there will be a special education version that will include various templates. Unfortunately we didn't see any examples of these templates.

Before a short demo the Swedish pricing was presented. The most interesting is A3 which is offered at 94 SEK per user, i.e. around $14 per month per user. And that lies in line what was presented earlier this year.

Cisco

Our last speaker for the day was from Cisco and he also started with the statement "Trust is the key to cloud adoption". According to Cisco the trust is built on four pillars: Security, Control, Compliance and Service Level Management.

The presenter claimed that todays infrastructure is trusted, controlled, reliable, secure and that the cloud offering are flexible, dynamic, on-demand and efficient. Cisco's solution is trusted clouds that try to bridge the gap between internal IT and cloud services.

A Cisco slogan: "The network is the Cloud Experience! " and that the cloud computing is just a journey that has started. Foundations for the journey ahead is consolidation and virtualization. After that the crux is automation and self service.

The presenter then outlined different types of clouds: Private cloud, Community cloud, Public cloud and hybrid clouds. Most interesting is the term community cloud which makes sense in a university and public sector perspective.

Cisco identify candidate application for cloud by three characteristics: Non-Core, Standardized and Dynamic. Examples are Multimedia services, Grid computing, virtual desktops, e-mail, storage & backup.

Cisco can see that different NRENs (national research and education networks) offering off-site backup for entire datacenters.

Cisco's concept of the trusted cloud infrastructure is built on three building blocks: Platform (network, compute, storage), Services (security, virtualization, optimization), Architecture (Secure, Multi-Tenancy Architecture).

Summary

The two days has been intense with lots of interaction and discussions. A conclusion that can be drawn is the huge trust issue, how to establish trust and how to make sure trust is there. As a fun comment Google has employed a Trust manager, which is to the point! I guess we will and must see more trust managers out there.

When it comes to technology the simple answer seem to be that everything is possible and given the rate of innovation the journey towards the cloud (or what ever it will be called in the future) has just begun.

The cloud based university - Day 1

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 05:58:00 +0000

This is my first attempt to blog from a conference so it might contain various errors and so on. But I have tried to capture some key points and observations but naturally I haven't tried to capture everything.

The discussions kicked off with a heated debate on different clouds, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. I have blogged about this earlier, see The cloud - some definitions.

A first observation some in the audience made is that the internal IT organizations often are outpaced by vendors and customers. The internal IT organization is simply too slow to provide and adopt new services. Especially when it comes to new services like Dropbox etc.

Per Sedihn from Proact and SNIA talked about storage in the cloud or perhaps it should be called DaaS - Data Storage as a Service.

A key point was that the user must be able to do self provisioning of storage and virtual servers and more. And naturally only pay for the resources the user uses. The service ordered must be available almost instantly. The user doesn't accept a waiting time of days or even hours. An acceptable time is perhaps only minutes.

Obstacles against cloud services are emotions, legal issues, SLAs and perhaps more important control.

"Internal clouds is built by internal IT organization that has been around for a while". The argument is that it is more likely that a traditional (older) IT organization builds an internal cloud rather than use a "public" cloud. As an observation most seem to define a public cloud as something provided by someone else.

A good idea is likely to outsource (move to the cloud) things you do well and not things you do bad. Infrastructure or highly standardized services is perhaps a good place to start.

What is the acceptable price for storage? Is it the same price as can be obtained by buying an external sata disk?

But the long term largest cost for cloud services is integration! If you have a lot of different islands of clouds you likely need integrate them. The users probably expect the services to integrate to some extent.

The old file protocols (like CIFS, NFS) should perhaps be replaced by things like HTTP (REST etc..) or some sort of hybrid web protocols.

Some very interesting numbers for storage:

A few % was only written to disk
7-8 % was read only once after creation
1 % is read frequently

Microsoft

Microsoft has several different offers. Amongst them are

Microsoft CRM online
Intune
Windows Azure Platform
Office 365

One of the things that unify different clouds and solutions are Identity management. So a good identity management is key for any organization.

An interesting option to the cloud is the Azure appliance. It is basically the Azure platform but sold as a physical container that is installed locally.

But perhaps the cloud should be called:

IT as a Service - Helps you deliver!

WMware

WMwares primary idea has been to decrease cost and increase agility when it comes to servers.

Reason why users round internal IT and go to public cloud services:

Pooling
Elasticity
Automation
Self-service

Reason for internal IT to not allow public clouds:

Control
Security
Compliance

WMware has created a set of APIs in order to create a hybrid cloud. Ie the possibility ensure things like compliance, control and security but still use a public cloud.

End User computing provides a user centric perspective. Basically pulls applications, data and settings to the (a) cloud. Wmware calls their product Wmware view.

Summary

To summarize the day there has been a lot of discussions and ideas. I hope some of the universities can join forces and test one or more solutions in the future.

The legal, contractual and security aspects are naturally questions that pop up all the time. So it is good that we have a seminar planned to cover just those issues.

The cloud based university

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 07:04:00 +0000

I have set up a program for a small lunch to lunch conference in Stockholm with the theme The cloud based university. The venue is Stockholm university and the target audience is CIOs and IT architects from Swedish universities.

We will have a program that combines a more internal discussion with different presentations and perspectives from different vendors.

Amongst the speaker we have Per Sedihn from Proact. He will talk about SNIA (www.snia.org) and Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI, http://www.snia-europe.org/en/technology-topics/cloud-storage/index.cfm). I also hope Per will have time to cover some of the new interesting products coming to the market, like Cloud storage gateways.

Microsoft will also present both Windows Azure and Office 365.

Wmware will talk about their experiences in the cloud area. I guess we can have an interesting discussion about private vs public clouds.

We will also talk about the cloud ramifications for the network infrastructure and listen to Cisco talking about the cloud and their talk on that.

These two days will focus on technical possibilities. A future seminar will investigate legal and policy questions that arise when using cloud services.

Mac App Store released!

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:59:00 +0000

Today the Mac App Store was released. You can access the App store at http://www.apple.com/mac/app-store/ and in the press release Steve Jobs claims there are over 1000 apps from start.

The App store is integrated into Snow Leaopard 10.6.6 (it's is bundled into the update). Now I have to admit I am not a Mac user so I can only try it at work and read the news. But from what I have seen thus far I must say it looks very promising. If this plays out as I expect it we will see something similar from Microsoft too. And if not, I do believe Microsoft will loose market share.

Naturally there are some press coverage too. Idg / Macworld has some interesting articles, overview, 1000 apps and Twitter in App Store.

Trends / Hot Topics 2011 in Higher Education

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 17:18:00 +0000

Last year I wrote a post about trends and hot topics for the coming year. It has turned out to be one of the posts most people have read. Below I write about what I believe is trends and hot topics for 2011.

The teaching and learning revolution

Higher education is both a dynamic and conservative sector. Many areas is changing fast but some not. The most significant trend for the coming year(s) is the forthcoming revolution (or is it evolution) in teaching and learning. This area is one of the more conservative areas within HighEd. Many teachers teach in the same way as teachers did over 100 years ago. However, the students are starting to learn differently, and they are getting other expectations than a simple teaching scenario. An interesting example I have heard was from a university where they have started to capture lectures, the students still took notes but instead of writing what was being said they simply wrote the time where the interesting bits took place.

Higher Education is also getting less and less funds, this is a global trend, however Sweden has so for far done well with increasing government budget allocations, but it might change and regardless the amount of students available for HighEd in Sweden will decrease in the coming years. With depleting funds the only way to survive is to increase revenue or decrease costs. In Sweden tuition fees for non EES students will become a reality autumn 2011. But I guess that won't really increase funds (rather decrease it). So for the educational side of the house a long term decrease of costs might be more plausible. However, education has gotten less and less funds over the years and eventually the funds will reach some point were the result is either in a significant worse situation than today or it reaches a paradigm shift in teaching and learning.

Most industries seem to have passed through several phases from an immature resource intensive phase to a more mature less resource intensive phase (automation). Some argue that HighEd has not yet evolved beyond the first immature resource intensive phase. In some aspects this seem valid, like the teaching example above, other areas are at least adopting new technology and paradigms (like some research projects). With this reasoning we will continue to see new ways of delivering education to both campus students and online students. I do believe the solution is not in "classical" learning management tools/systems but rather something new, not yet fully seen. Perhaps it is an evolution of the personal virtual environment, but more likely I guess the solution is within an "apps approach to learning" where the future will be social, on demand, online, time shifted and place shifted. See my blog post from August.

Next to some predictions about IT and especially IT in Higher education.

Apps

Apps are generally interesting… With an App in this context I mean "a program that is delivered over internet and runs in its own virtual/separate space". Ie the App can't easily contaminate the device on which it is executed on. An App can naturally be either local or hosted online (and accessed over the internet). Just to put my neck out (and likely be proven wrong) I claim that in a not distant future the computer as we know it is dead as a stone. There will be no such devices, there will be more or less advanced devices on which you access Apps. There will be sleek nice looking devices like the iPad, there will be tiny ones like clocks or smartphones, there will be specialized computers like the Chrome notebook Cr-48, there will be solutions that works offline (on airplanes (until they will get reliable internet), and on trains (that do often have internet but are not very reliable)), there will be huge ones in the shape of tables (like a Microsoft Surface) or even covering a wall . Now you say, "what is the difference with programs?". And well, the change is not necessary a technical one but rather a packaging one, the underlying OS is gone (no more talk about Windows vs MacOS vs Linux etc), the delivery of Apps is either strictly done over the internet (using things like HTML5 etc etc) or is installed on the device using a good App Store (like Apples App Store). The days were you walked in to a store and purchased a program will be gone, gone will be the days were you phone a software company (like an ERP solution provider) and asks for the CD media to install their product on your own servers. In the future the ERP solution provider will provide a solution with your organizations data on your organizations devices (any type of them) and they will do it for a fee (perhaps X dollars per month per user, or Y €uro per year). The access to the ERP system will be via one or more Apps. And the ERP solution provider provides the service in a cloud computing setting.

Look at the coming "Mac store" where Mac OS users will be able to buy and install Apps from Apple in the same way as users do on their iPhones (etc). With this type of solution in place for Mac OS there will not take long before we will see a similar solution from Microsoft (for Windows) and Google (for Android and perhaps Linux as well). The ramification for the IT industry is huge, if the underlying OS is gone the need for support , servers, data centers etc decreases.

There are many problems, the real technical potential show stopper is Integration. Integration between different Apps, your data, your files etc. Without it this prediction will fail, but given the rate of innovation and the business incentives out there I wager that it will be solved. Most other problems or perceived problems will be solved, legal aspects will be dealt with as will integration aspects, security aspects, migrating into a service and out from it and so on.

Cloud computing and especially Cloud Storage

Given the evolution above, cloud computing is a already here or is coming soon. The interesting thing will be to solve storage. There seem to be a massive need for storage. The saying goes something like "either a hard drive is new (and empty) or it is full". But what is storage? Storage is simply the need to access your own data (in the shape of documents, media files (like music, films etc), data (within systems or databases) etc. The access to the needed information must be sufficiently fast and reliable. I do believe the big paradigm shift needed is the realization that each user should not store individual copies of everything and start acting to make this happen. Common examples of copies are music files, recorded TV-shows etc. Services like Spotify and Voddler will eventually allow people to decrease that type of duplicate storage needs.

So in the ideal future the need of storage should be limited to unique data, master copies (and backup of those). Even within an organization the need for duplicate data must decrease, ie each member in a workgroup must be able to access the master copy and not store a local (or server based individual) copy of it. I guess the problem with storage is two aspects, both accessing the information and retrieving it (finding it when the need arise).

In any case, during 2011 I expect to see more offerings for cloud based storage. I also expect to see different solutions to issues like latency (perhaps memory/ssd cache-servers close to end users).

Input problem

If we will see more different types of devices, that are specialized on different tasks the need for better and faster input solutions need to be created. I have used smartphones for 10 years and the input solution is basically the same (T9 and keyboards), for computers the keyboard has basically looked the same for ages (the only change I can recall is the addition of the €-uro symbol in the keyboard, and some special keys for sound or something like that). The evolution of speech recognition has not picked up a lot of momentum, besides speech is slow and perhaps not the best solution on a train. Gestures like on the Xbox 360 Kinect might be something, but the Kinect is not very fast (yet?). During 2011 I expect to see experiments trying to address the input problem, likely things like combination of adaptive keyboards, like the ones from Microsoft or perhaps projections on a surface.

The Social media hype is over

During 2011 we will see stabilization of the social media hype. It will simply mature into yet another channel of communication. Organization will use Social media just like they are using email, phones and the web. Consumers have already started to adapt to the existence of social media. That said, the importance of Social media will not diminish just mature.

iPad officially in Sweden!

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 19:18:00 +0000

I just can't miss out on the opportunity to comment on the reports that the iPad is going to be officially launched tomorrow (or actually tonight see also Expressen, Aftonbladet), Tuesday November 30. The media coverage is naturally a part with articles covering the use of iPad in an enterprise or on the "Tablet war" . There is an interesting article in SvD on the Apple iPad hype. Talking about the secrecy being used as part of the hype building process.

An interesting thing is also the different magazines in Sweden that has prepared for this moment by building different apps for their publications. There seem to be a coming app for most large publishing houses. The examples are DN+, SvD, Expressen Extra and so on.

I talked to a CIO at another large Swedish university and he estimated that they had a backlog of at least 300 iPads in their organization. I can't say that LiU has that but I would say we already have at least 50, even before the official launch.

At the Swedish university CIO meeting last Thursday the consensus was that we need to look into the possible need for changes in our infrastructure to support tablets. One obvious aspect is the need for secure enterprise file synchronization.

The cloud - some definitions

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 18:53:00 +0000

Over the last week I have been talking to quite a few people about the cloud and the potential ramifications. There seem to be a lot of issues and quite a few services out there. And there is a lot of buzz, marketing etc so sometimes it is hard to say what is what. Thus I decided to write down some definitions, just to make things clearer (hope it will help someone).

Let's try to group the different aspects of the cloud somewhat (from Wikipedia):

Software as a Service (SaaS) - It is simply the delivery of a software over the internet.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) - The delivery of a computing platform
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - The delivery of computer infrastructure

So now let's look at a few examples:

SaaS - Google Apps (including Google Docs), Microsoft Office 365

PaaS - Google Apps Engine, Microsoft Azure AppFabric

IaaS - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Windows Azure

To access the cloud the user need a client. Normally this is naturally a PC or Mac or Linux or… But there are more options out there. The most notable would be the iPad (and derivatives) and ChromeOS. The last is admittedly not a device, but points in an interesting direction. In a cloud based future the device the end user use to interact with cloud services needs a few distinct characteristics: Ease of use, connectivity (to the Internet), Fast storage (for offline storage) and Graphics (to be able to show video, games etc) and sound plus video camera/camera (for online communication) .

So the stack would be (from the user), the client, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS. Ie you can build a SaaS on top of a PaaS which use IaaS to operate. You can naturally also build a SaaS on top of IaaS. And sometimes connect your client directly to a IaaS (like file storage).

With these definitions you might want to argue that the cloud is not something new? And yes, in some aspects it is not something new. The example of a mainframe from the 70's deliver software over the internet. We had Application Software Provider (ASP) in the 90's, it is basically the same thing as SaaS but it took some time (and a new acronym) before it caught on.

But the paradigm shift is in the ease of use, the massive (and growing) amount of services, the hype, the scalability and the cost. Most notable is the scalability, a good cloud services allows a lot of users to use the same solution (in a multi tenancy environment).

iPad - a few weeks later

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 17:55:00 +0000

I have been using an iPad for a few weeks now. I must admit I like it, it is small, reliable and has a long battery life. I mostly use it for output of information. The iPad is truly a great output device, the input is a bit trickier. But taking notes on the iPad usually works well, you get used to the keyboard (it just lacks Swedish characters right now, comes in the next release in November).

iOS on the iPad is highly intuitive. The kids got used to the devices almost immediately and can now play games and look at photos etc.

There are naturally a lot of Apps on the Ipad. An App I use regularly is Flipboard. It is a good mashup for the new digital media age. It makes Twitter lists very useful!

When it comes to taking notes I must admit I miss Microsoft OneNote. I hope Microsoft will release Microsoft Office programs to the iPad. Until then I use Plaintext and Dropbox.

Dagens Nyheter quotes some interesting news from Gartner about the sales of media tablets (like an iPad). During 2010 sales will be 19,5 million devices, and 2011 a staggering 54,8 million an increase with 181 percent. I have also seen numbers that predict that tablets will beat the PC sales in 2012. Electronista claims it will be 2014. Regardless I can understand why people are buying tablets.

Educause10

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 00:17:00 +0000

I have spent two intense days at Educause 2010 in Anheim. I guess it is hard to summarize all the impressions but I can at least provide a few observations.

1. Change! Change! Change!
There is a lot of change going on, and more is coming. To all sectors, industries and none are spared. And if you believe Gary Hamel, the change to Higher Education is coming and most likely sooner than later. Likely sooner than most want.

I attended a presentation where the presenter showed a TV-clip from CBS where a few "experts" questioned the value of Higher Education from a strictly economical perspective. The investment in form of tuition fees etc did not match the future income. The ROI was simply not good enough. And if that is true or becoming true HighEd institutions around the globe need to reinvent education, much like Hamel was talking about.

I also had an interesting discussion with a colleague about the largest cost saving aspect in HigherEd, streamlining the education. Most business has evolved, and when questioned in an economical perspective, streamlined/standardized. Neil Gershenfeld touched on this in his presentation.

2. Ipads - There are Ipads everywhere. Apple is doing something right… but curiously enough Apple as not present in the Exhibit hall. Is Apple abandoning HighEd or are they simply content with the market share?

3. The economic downturn is over? The economics are stretched for most, but if you simply count the number of exhibitors in the Exhibit hall the downturn seems to be over.

4. Exhibit hall - Why are there so many companies selling network stuff? Or hardware? If the future lies in the cloud, the exhibit hall in the future should consist of vendors selling services and functionality rather than physical hardware.

5. Gershenfeld also talked about FabLab. I must admit it is a very interesting initiative. But most interesting was his comment about teaching kids to use new technology, ie to bypass all the education we often instill on our students. The normal case is often that we start to explain why something works, why it is soo complicated. And not, as Gershenfeld exemplified, to simply show how to use "advanced" technology to build something even more advanced. In all honesty, you don't have to know how to build a computer when you are using it, you don't have to know how to do advanced Java programming when you are using a cloud-service.

6. The Secret Sauce - I have attended a few presentations where the sauce recipe has been discussed. The sauce is supposed to a few different things but often it is all about governance of IT. Well, I can give you my secret sauce too - IT should never be governed differently from any other part of a university. If we as IT professionals expect a President or CFO to get IT, we can't respond with ITIL, COBIT or weird looking Scorecards. We must allow IT to be a part of the university. I argue this is true in any organization, but I'll spare you that for now.

The cloud based university - the requirements

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 07:12:00 +0000

I am embarking on a journey towards the cloud based university, or at least towards a discussion about what can and can not be done in the cloud. I have been talking about the cloud and software as a service (SaaS) since 2006 but it is only in the past couple of months viable alternatives are showing up for more and more services. But are they really ready? Are we ready to start use them? Are they secure enough? There are in all honesty more questions than answers regarding the possibility to use cloud based services.

The prerequisites:

It has to fulfill a need from users! The service must meet a need from the users.
It has to be user friendly! If a service is supposed to gain widespread use it has to be user friendly.
It has to be secure! This is also a no brainer I guess, but difficult. How you be absolutely certain about what is secure when you do not have internal access to a service.
It has to have good privacy! How do you ensure good privacy? Legal aspects is one thing, but it is also about trust for the supplier of the service.
It has to be possible to integrate with services either in-house or in the cloud! In the long run integration is key.
It has to exist! No vaporware, if a service is to count, it has to be something out there now.
It has to be less expensive than an in-house alternative! It doesn't have to be free, but it has to be less expensive than using an in-house alternative.
It has to scale! It has to scale to a full sized organization. In this case around 6.000 employees and associates and some 30.000 students.
It has to be legal! It is naturally quite obvious, but it is not always easy to know what is legal given a certain context. In this case I am talking about a Swedish university which is part of the government.
It has to be possible and easy (?) to leave the service! It is likely quite easy to start using a service, but you have to be able to leave the service as well. A good exit strategy has to exist.

iPhone - one week later

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 17:51:00 +0000

I have been using a Windows Mobile phone since the beginning of the century. I never had any huge issues with either the OS or the phone. But I have to admit that lately my old Sony Xperia X1 is well, old.

So last week I decided to start testing an iPhone to get hands on experience. I have been using an iPhone 3GS so no 4 yet, but since I was more interested in the experience etc. I hope it was good enough.

There are only a few things that I really "miss":

Mini-USB - since I have had a similar telephone for a while a lot of my hardware infrastructure is built on top of Mini-USB. As an example I always charged my phone in the car. Well… I hope this will change with the upcoming standardization to micro-USB for phones.
At a glance view on the look screen. I have a lot of meetings etc. I have really grown accustomed to simply power on the phone and immediately see when and where the next meeting is. From what I understand this can only be done if you jailbreak your phone, and I haven't.
Dialing experience - In my address book I have a lot of short internal telephone-numbers. On my old phone it simply expanded to the correct contact when I entered the numbers, or used SMS-style input. On the iPhone I have to search for contacts in a separate view.
Front-facing video camera - I know this is on iPhone 4, but I realize that would be really useful and fun to have and it's not on the 3GS I tested.

Things I really like:

All sensors… Naturally it is more fun to have a modern phone with gyro, fast GPS etc.
On screen Keyboard - I admit it took me a while to get used to the keyboard, but after a while it works fairly ok, and with more practice I guess it will work well.
Apps… do I need to say more?

Eventually I guess I should also test an Android phone, why not the HTC Desire. But I am also waiting for Windows Phone 7. And with iPhone 4 and HTC Desire HD looming around there is lots of interesting gadgets around the corner!

Higher education is not leading technology but rather trying to catch up

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 08:16:00 +0000

I attended a meeting last week that revolved around technology and the use of new technology, like Social Media, within Higher Education. After listening to what LiU is doing and what others are doing, the members of the meeting realized that we need to face the fact that Higher Education is not leading technology but rather trying to catch up with it. And that this fact is likely not something new, but for some our leading position is deeply rooted in our self-image.

Higher Education has set the pace and the direction for a long time. Simply look at the internet, the world wide web and email. These days we do wondrous things at our higher education institutions, like massive parallel computing, but this is technology not being transferred to the general public (not yet anyhow). Naturally there is a lot of work done around social media, app development, the social impact of new technology and much more. But where are the new revolutionizing ideas?

Must Higher Education realize that we do not drive change any longer but rather consume change done by others?

iPad - tablets done right

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 07:47:00 +0000

Sweden is not one of the lucky countries where iPad is being sold yet (edit: It might come soon as production is catching up). However I have been able to briefly borrow an iPad and been looking at it. It is truly an impressive device. It has a great form factor, it is around an A4 in size and weighs 670 grams. The screen is great with good contrast. It has a good battery performance (around 10 hours). Multi touch screen and good network connectivity.

The interesting bit about iPad is that has revolutionized the tablet market. And will continue to do so. There will naturally be similar devices from all other vendors.

This trend means that any company must ponder about how to safely deliver the information and the tools the user needs to work. Cloud services and terminal servers are likely part of this development and solution.

But the most interesting aspect to consider is: iPad is easy to administer for the user. It is essentially a phone. The OS is administered by Apple, updates being sent over the net and the user doesn't really have to care about it. A true bliss for most users. The device being used should just work (this is true about any device: computer, phone, tablet).

Will this be the future delivery mechanism for OSs for devices? If a company can control some aspects of the OS, like security and integrity of information/data and that the user can access it many obstacles is solved. I would welcome this development if the users life is simplified.

The social, on demand, online, time shifted, place shifted future

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:00:00 +0000

I have for the past couple of years been using a Home Theater PC (HTPC) solution built on top on Windows and Mediaportal . It has posed several interesting technological problems, ranging from hard disc space, failing power supplies, to integrating DVB-T cards. The next challenge will be integration of HD transmission using DVB-T2 and MPEG4. But this post is not about all that but something more interesting… and the true paradigm shift in entertainment and learning.

My 4,5 year old daughter and my 3 year old son has always had this solution available to them. They have truly grown up to a on demand online media entertainment. Our TV-ritual is simple, they take turn wishing for something to see. Sometimes it is Pippi Longstocking, sometimes Postman Pat. From time to time we also introduce new experiences to them like a new series. The way I do this is simple, I record interesting TV-series and store them on the computer and serve them on demand to the children. However sometimes they wish for something else, often I can find it on online sites like svtplay.se, Voddler or YouTube. An example was the wish to see some motorcycles, a simple search on YouTube found enough video to satisfy a three year olds heart desire. This has naturally introduced a problem, when we visit others without this kind of solution, the children has learned the term "Live TV". Live TV simply means not watching what you want when you want it.

A very good feature using this kind of solutions is the availability to pause everything , including live TV (a life saver for anyone with the desire to see the news and having small children). In the future I expect I will make sure we go from a single stand alone solution to a central media server and clients in different rooms or even mobile. Enabling an on demand, online, time shifted and place shifted media experience.

But the above is also true when it comes to music, images etc. We buy music either on CD or online and store that on the computer. But since there is good online services out there the need for local storage is rapidly decreasing. A good example of a online service is Spotify and more will be created in the future.

The social aspect of all this comes in form of the possibility to share what you are watching or listening to using your favorite social network. Spotify integrated with Facebook not long ago.

When I started to build this solution most seemed to be more technologically skilled than me, almost developers themselves. These days the software and hardware is getting better and easier making this technology available to everybody. Either as a stand-alone solution like a TiVo or as a PC-solution. I expect to see server solutions in the future taking advantage of solutions like Windows 7, Windows Media Center, XBOX 360 (with Kinect) and Windows 7 phones (and naturally the equivalent on Apple or Linux…). That is, an integrated kit of appliances and applications .

Now to the interesting bit - My children will enter the school system and eventually (I hope) a university in 15 years. During this time other kids will have grown accustomed to this kind of solutions giving higher education institutions only a few years to prepare for the kind of students that expect an social, on demand, online, time shifted and place shifted learning experience. Some say this future is already upon us, some that it will take a little while longer, but only a few that it will never happen. There is need for much action to prepare for this future both in faculty/staff training and in technological solutions (mainly making things easier much much easier). Over the years the terms used for this new reality has differed, these days I guess Virtual Learning Environments is often used (at least in Europe). Naturally one can argue that the birth of this paradigm shift lies elsewhere, but from my perspective the key here lies in the perspective. My children doesn't understand live TV, it is unnatural, the abnormal behavior (even though I guess they will be forced to learn that there is a harsh world out there). Live TV is something as archaic as dinosaurs and black and white TV sets.

The normal behavior is the social, on demand, online, time shifted and place shifted experience!

RIP Google Wave

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:34:00 +0000

Google has announced (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html) that they will discontinue with Google Wave. The adoption rate has been too slow and too small.

I am not really surprised, is anyone? One interesting thing from my perspective is the lack of stamina from Googles side and the lack of willingness to integrate Wave into other products, like Gmail.

Another interesting aspect is the enthusiasm shown at the launch. I was also intrigued by the possibilities Wave showed but in general all communication plattforms need to be available to all an individual communicates. But real time communication is growing is it not? Look at instant messaging or MSN as some call it. An integration/paradigm shift around email might be possible and desirable. I can see how I am starting to use email at times and Office Communication Server at times when it comes to communicating internally the step to Wave is not necessarily that far.

In any case Google Wave did create ripples in media, I found over 300 articles about the closure. Some examples: Mashable, Sky, The Guardian, DN, IDG, SvD, SydSvenskan and many more.

Outsourcing statistics in Higher Education

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 06:58:00 +0000

I got a link (https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/itana/EA+in+Higher+Ed+Surveys) which is a survey about Enterprise Architecture but I thought I would extract two questions about Outsourcing and Cloud Computing. In total there were 93 Higher Education institutions that answered the survey.

12: Do you outsource activities like development, hosting of services etc.?

Significant Outsourcing - 4,3% (4)
Some Outsourcing - 32,6% (30)
Little Outsourcing - 57,6% (53)
No Outsourcing - 5,4% (5)

13: What extent are you actively pursuing "Cloud Computing" or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions?

We have implemented Cloud Computing or SaaS solutions - 24,2% (22)
We are moving to implement Cloud Computing or SaaS solutions now - 23,1% (21)
Cloud Computing or SaaS solutions are on our strategic plan but we haven't begun implementation - 25,3% (23)
We are watching and waiting to see what becomes of Cloud Computing and SaaS - 27,5% (25)
We are not considering Cloud Computing or SaaS - 0% (0)

So, based on these numbers, and the hope they are fairly representative (which they might be but it is hard to tell for sure) outsourcing in general within the High Ed community is practiced, almost everyone is doing something. However most are doing little or some.

These numbers differ significantly from Cloud Computing where around 50% has moved or are moving to a cloud service like Google Apps or Microsoft Live@Edu. The most interesting difference is that every institution that answered the question is considering Cloud Computing.

This seem to indicate the obvious shift in the outsourcing market where Cloud Computing is preferred over traditional hosting services. My best guess this trend will strengthen and within a few years most if not all vendors will provide a Cloud Computing option for their software solution.

A question: How will this effect open source solutions? Is there need for options where buyers can by an Open Source solution as a Cloud Computing service? This might be something that National Research and Education Network (NRENs - SUNET in Sweden) providers can/should provide.

Cloud Computing, Outsourcing

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 18:06:00 +0000

The Swedish government is expecting the Swedish authorities to have a Sourcing strategy. Eventually I expect it will be a mandatory requirement of the Annual Report. From what I can hear there are not many examples of full scale outsourcing (Is there any one else than University of Utrecht that has completely outsourced their IT?). More common is partial outsourcing, using different vendors, and naturally these days: Use the cloud! (or Software as a Service)

So, what are the obstacles of outsourcing in general:

Competence
Price
Organizational issues
"Political" issues
Legal issues

I guess there can be more issues but these are a good starting point. So lets examine the five issues listed above.

First lets address competence, I am not always a thrilled buyer of consultants and external services. All too often the competence of the supplied consultants are too low, in short they are junior consultants sent to a costumer or they simply has no experience using the technology in a large organization. In any mature IT-organization, and especially at a university the general internal competence is rarely the biggest problem (often the opposite). Naturally there are good examples too, and I still nourish the hope.

When it comes to price it is important that outsourcing comes to the same price or less, it is hard to advocate outsourcing if the price is higher. It is naturally possible if the outsourced service is superior, however equal or slightly better is simply not good enough. In the case of Google Apps for Education or Microsoft Live@EDU the price is not the issue, since it is "free" for higher education. Thus the reason for continuing to use an internal service should be extremely good.

Organizational issues can consist of several aspects, one is the lack of experience the organization have when it comes to collaboration with external organizations, others are . The key here is likely to establish trust between the outsourcing partner and the internal organization. A part of this aspect I also add "we have tried this before and it didn't work", it is often lack of experience, or simply it was a while back and the reality has changed.

When it comes to "political" issues there can be several aspects, one is "a technical university should (must??) be able to handle X" (where X can be email or something else) or "if we outsource we loose work opportunities". And all these can be true, or false, in the end it is up to the university management to decide the policy in the sourcing strategy. This is naturally extra interesting when it comes to offshore outsourcing.

The legal issues seem to be handled easily by remembering to add country specific wording. In Sweden the handling of the Personal Data Act (Personuppgiftslagen 1998:204) and "the principle of public access to official documents" (Offentlighets- och sekretesslagen 2009:400 ) is two examples. But there are of course several other issues that needs to be addressed. In Sweden we always live with the public procurement laws.

This is likely the first post about outsourcing with the conclusion that outsourcing is possible and that most universities (it seems) is not very large buyers of outsourced services. This can or must change in the future.

Google Apps vs Microsoft Live in Swedish HighEd - Winner Microsoft?

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Mon, 17 May 2010 16:34:00 +0000

Today Microsoft and Malmö University (http://www.mah.se/) announce that they will start to use Live@Edu (http://blogs.technet.com/microsoftnyheter/archive/2010/05/17/nnu-en-h-gskola-v-ljer-microsoft.aspx).

So I wanted to update the statistics a bit, it will clearly show that Microsoft is gaining momentum

In Sweden (during autumn 2009, according to http://www.hsv.se/statistik/statistikomhogskolan there were 384 741 students. From what I know the universities below have implemented a solution for their students. In total: 88 492 students are using Google Apps and 47 553 are using Microsoft Live@Edu.

Google Apps (23,00%)
Gotland University
University of Gothenburg
University of Linköping
University of Lund

Microsoft Live (12,36%)
Chalmers
Stockholm School of Economics
Malmö University
Umeå University

BYO - Bring your own computer

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 16:38:00 +0000

I had a chat with an Apple employee today about the concept "Bring Your Own computer" or "Employees choice".

Siemens has done some work in this area: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO_sGDeTAOQ and http://www.siemens.com/user-owned-devices. Interestingly enough is the headline in todays paper based Computer Sweden was "Boom för PC som tjänst" (Boom for PC as a service) (Can't find any link at their webpage). Which is the total opposite to BYO. I guess any CIO easily can muster a thousand consultants all claiming the future is in standardization and consolidation - in the IT workplace as a service. But in general the device is getting less and less important and less interesting. It is also harder and harder to see the difference between a PC and a telephone. And what is an iPad? A telephone without the telephone-part?

In the BYO example the employee will buy their own computer and get some sort of funding for that. In my perspective the biggest problem here is software licenses which often stipulate that the device where the license is installed on must be owned by the license holder. So in order to implement BYO that means all applications must be delivered using a virtual platform. And that feels a bit cumbersome today, it might work in the future though.

At a large university where flexibility is one of the keywords there is a need for some sort of golden middle way between the total anarchy and the total standardization. I have over the last couple of years proposed that any organization should select some reference IT workplaces. I suggest these three:

A Microsoft (Windows) based IT workplace using the strategy "All in Microsoft"
An Apple (MacOS) based IT workplace using the strategy "All in Apple"
A Linux based IT workplace using the strategy "All in Linux"

Then the employee can select any computer that matches the hardware requirements of the reference platform they want to belong to, i.e. following the concept of "Employees choice". A key idea being self-service, the employee should be able to get any application when they need to (all the time, anywhere) installed on their computer. This should be complemented by a strong virtual platform where users can access or install applications they don't want on their own computer for some reason, being resource, security or other reasons.

Now you can naturally argue that given all this the BYO perspective means that all applications should be delivered in a virtual platform or via the web thus nullifying the aspect of the IT workplace (both from hardware and an OS perspective). Yes, in the long run this is a plausible development, in the short run it seems any organization need to deliver an IT workplace, one reason being the reliability of the virtual platform or the accessibility (when on the train or airplane for instance) another being security.

In conclusion the short term future seems to be the golden middle way.

Turf war: Google vs Microsoft in education

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:30:00 +0000

The turf war regarding collaborative platforms in education is intensifying. The combatants are Google and Microsoft, the offerings are Google Apps for Education and Microsoft Live@Edu. The turf is also increasing with both companies offering their products to all education without regard of level or organization.

In an article from IDG (http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.305758/it-jattar-slass-om-skolbarnen) it is clear that municipals are a clear target for Microsoft and Google. Both are winning over municipals to their solution.

In the article Fredrik Paulsson (http://www.iml.umu.se/fredrik-paulsson?lang=en) says " Det har sannolikt betydelse för deras marknadsandelar inom arbetsstationer och operativsystem" (This is probably important for their market share in workstations and operating systems). He also claims that the schools should focus on what the service should be used for. A clear risk is that some pupils/students with special needs are overlooked.

So, lets try to comment on these aspects.

There is no such thing as a free lunch!
Regardless what Jeff Jarvis says in What Would Google Do? I mean there is always some sort of benefit for all parties involved in an agreement. In this case many companies giving things or services to a university or a school claims it is done by the goodness of their heart. In the most simplistic way that is naturally something that has a value to the giving company, they can use the gift in their marketing or corporate social responsible program. In some cases the value can be more direct, a lock-in or at least some sort of means for a company to influence the pupil/student in the long run by making sure they are getting used to a specific product. The result would hopefully, for the company, be that the individual would influence the future employer to start using that companies product. A product the company charge for. I can also argue that in Google's case another value was to show large scale rollouts of their platform including Google Docs. In short if you accept a gift or start to use a free service you have to ponder about the consequences.

As a side note the Swedish procurement laws and the sponsor regulations state that there should be no monetary transaction when it comes to a gift. There can also not be any significant return (motprestation) in form of advertising or other aspects. This is something both Google and Microsoft fulfill and thus there is no need for a formal procurement process.

The claims about Microsoft gaining sells / revenue for PC / software licenses because of Live@Edu is hard to comment on. But in reality it should allow other operating systems to adopt and provide good interfaces to the service. I can see comments online about Ubuntu and Linux being left out or discriminated on because of these type of services. I however do not share that notion, as I just said I believe alternative OSes can be a viable option anyhow.

When it comes to online services, or cloud computing, and pupils / students with special needs the available services are not perfect, not yet. But there is good hope the vendors will continue improving their support. At LiU we have been able to sort out every need this far, often simply by letting the student use their application of preference and Google Apps (example by using imap/pop in mail).

So... Will there be a need for schools and universities to provide this special solution in the future? I often encounter the claim that the student should be able to register their own email-address and simply point the university one to that. I have to agree that this is perhaps the case in the future, currently we provision Google Apps account but the student can forward their email to their own email provider should they want to (without passing through Google).

However I completely agree with Fredrik Paulsson that the education providers should focus on using the services available and try to avoid lock-ins. In Education 2.0 (or is it 4.0 by now) all the necessary services are online, "free" of charge. We should use them in education but there is also huge concerns when it comes to privacy, reliability, search ability etc. Another argument I often encounter is the time to learn new tools, both for teachers and students.

So, in Education 4.0 the openness and awareness is very important. But don't let old thinking get in the way of the future.

Google Wave in Google Apps

noreply@blogger.com (Joakim Nejdeby) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 07:31:00 +0000

Linköping university activated Google Wave in our Google Apps domain on Thursday the 18:th of Mars using http://wave.student.liu.se/. We enabled it for all of our 31858 users, the current average usage is 16825 users over the last 90 days.

There are no observed limitations in the interaction between our users and the public Google Apps domain.

I announced this in a public tweet (http://twitter.com/joakimnejdeby/status/10631207637) and a Facebook message on LiUs fanpage.

Joshua Nunn picked this up and wrote an article about this at http://firstwaves.org/google-wave-for-apps-being-rolled-out-to-some-organisations/