The Keene View on Cloud Computing

The Web is the New App Store

2011-10-04T09:35:00.000-07:00

I attended the GigaOm Mobilize conference (where VMware was well represented by CTO Steve Herrod) and came away with a few observations that are relevant for our overall mobile strategy:

The web is the new app store. I had dinner with the heads of mobile for two large retail chains. Although each of them have multiple App Store apps, the vast majority of their mobile business is coming through the safari browser and not the app store. Consumer behavior is to go to the web to buy things, even on mobile.
There are only two mobile markets, native iPhone and mobile web.The shift to HTML5 (+Phone gap if necessary) is happening rapidly. Almost every speaker talked of the html5/jquery/phonegap stack with a few native iPhone holdouts (e.g., gaming, iPhone only apps like Hipmonk). Phone gap allows html5 apps to access native smartphone features and be packaged for native app stores, effectively erasing the lines between html5 and native. There was zero discussion of native development for Android or any other non-iPhone platform.

Here are some intriguing, but less well formed conference themes:

Notifications are the "home page" for mobile apps. Mobile apps force developers to rethink and simplify enterprise apps - making them more modular and "attention-driven"
iPad is rapidly changing expectations about how web apps work. SalesForce's Do.com is using the iPad as their primary web platform and porting from there to browsers and smartphones.

Darwin's Cloud

2011-09-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

RedHat conducted a survey of over 1,200 VMworld attendees on their cloud plans. Here is the question that I found most interesting:

What primary development framework are you planning to use in the cloud?

Java EE 32%
.NET 29%
PHP 14%
Python 6%
Spring 6%
Ruby/Rails 5%

If you take this at face value, the ideal PaaS for the enterprise would support Java EE, .NET and PHP. So far, this is well beyond the capabilities of the existing PaaS vendors.

In particular, there is no PaaS vendor bridging the Java/.NET divide. This raises a natural question: what is the fastest way to evolve cloud platforms?

There are two approaches to filling in these PaaS framework holes:

Do it yourself: Heroku just added Java support to their cloud. Because PaaS offerings from Amazon and Heroku are proprietary, they are pretty much stuck with the go it alone approach.
Create an ecosystem: Cloud Foundry just added PhP and Python support through partners. A huge advantage for open source clouds is that they can leverage the work of their communities to move farther and faster than closed-source competitors.

Open source clouds should be able to sustain a faster rate of revolution, provided that they can continue to build vibrant communities that contribute back to the core project.

Cloud Foundry is the LAMP Stack of Cloud Computing

2011-08-25T11:31:00.000-07:00

Just as the LAMP stack provided a core foundation next gen for web applications, Cloud Foundry is providing a core foundation for next gen cloud platforms.

Cloud Foundry announced today that two new startups are building their clouds based on Cloud Foundry.

Cloud Foundry is proving itself to be truly the foundry for creating entirely new cloud offerings:

ActiveState is building a cloud for Python and Django and contributing code to support Python back to the Cloud Foundry open source project.
Appfog is building a cloud for PHP developers and contributing code to support PHP back to the Cloud Foundry open source project

The beauty of this is that innovative startups are able to start with a scalable cloud "stack" that gives them a multi-language PaaS without locking them into a particular cloud provider.

So for example, Appfog gets to use Cloud Foundry's best in class PaaS services and then target deployment to Amazon's EC2 and services like S3. Appfog CEO Lucas Carlson blogged here about how standing on the shoulders of cloud computing giants will allow Appfog to win in the cloud by providing the most compelling user experience.

Expect to see the pace of innovation accelerate dramatically going forward!

DevOps and PaaS - Friend or Foe?

2011-08-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

DevOps, which I will arbitrarily define here as "automating SysAdmin tasks to streamline application lifecycle management," raises important questions about the cloud.

Developers may ask: "if I have a self-service portal for deploying applications (aka PaaS), do I need SysAdmins at all?"
SysAdmins may ask: "isn't PaaS just a monstrous black box that prevents me from provisioning the specific services we need to deploy real-world apps?"
VMware asks: "what if you could get a PaaS that wasn't black box, enabling developers to deploy apps easily while still giving SysAdmins the ability to provision any services they needed (aka Cloud Foundry)?

I had a good conversation recently with John Willis of DTO Solutions (twitter feed here) in which he waxed eloquent on how DevOps and Cloud Foundry can live together in harmony. Here were the key points I took away:

SysAdmins distrust the black box nature of PaaS: Typical sysadmin thinks that they can get to 75% of PaaS functionality with DevOps tools like Chef without giving up any systems architecture flexibility. In contrast, PaaS solutions like Heroku provide developers an easy to use PaaS but gives SysAdmins zero ability to add services that Heroku doesn't support.
Cloud Foundry solves the SysAdmin aversion to cloud vapor: CloudFoundry runs anywhere, incuding on your laptop. Cloud Foundry's service container concept is particularly strong, kind of an appliance on steroids.

There is a strong natural between DevOps and PaaS. Products like Chef and Puppet are strongest for installing and configuring the OS and middleware stack. PaaS solutions like Cloud Foundry excel it deploying application architectures.

The holy grail is to use Chef or Puppet provisioning Cloud Foundry services that can then be easily consumed by developers. DTO Solutions is putting on events to show SysAdmins how to make this happen.

You can also register for the a DevOps HackDay featuring CloudFoundry. The first one is being put on at VMware, September 8, 2011.

PaaS is a Cloaking layer for clouds

2011-07-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

We seem to be coming to the end of the definition of Platform as a Service (PaaS) blog posts and are now moving on to the more pressing question of what is PaaS good for?

In a recent Paul Maritz talk at GigaOm Structure conference, he referred to PaaS as "a cloaking layer for clouds." This is an elegant definition for a rapidly expanding market of add-on cloud services.

If Cloud 1.0 is a set of servers in the sky (think Amazon EC2), then Cloud 2.0 is a layer of services that hide the complexity of developing, deploying and managing applications in the cloud (think CloudFoundry).

The API for Cloud 1.0 is the virtual machine/OS. The API for Cloud 2.0 is the application container itself - services like CloudFoundry, Elastic Beanstalk from Amazon and Heroku allow a developer to hand over an application to the application container without having to know anything about what operating system that application is running on or how it communicates with other services like load balancing, failover and database.

Here are several examples of PaaS cloaking to simplify cloud development:

Dev/test environment: WaveMaker pioneered the market for cloud-based development of standard Java applications. In addition, simply virtualizing the provisioning of servers has huge value for development and testing purposes. Today, this is a major driver for developer adoption of cloud in general and PaaS in particular. I have talked to CIOs who claim that over 30% of their resources for new projects goes into provisiong and managing the dev/test environment.
Scalable application deployment: Amazon EC2 has made its mark by providing a highly scalable data center in the sky. Zynga uses Amazon as a safety net when it has no idea how popular one of its games will be. Once Zynga has a handle on demand, they move the game over to their own data center. Just a year ago, getting this kind of scaling required detailed understanding of cloud architecture and a whole lotta scripting. Now it's as easy as "vmc push --instances 8"!
Resilient application deployment: infinite scaling is great, but what happens when a network configuration error brings down in your infinitely scalable data center? In that case, having a PaaS service that automatically mirrors applications across multiple data centers makes a critical difference.

In a sense, PaaS is just a new kind of virtualization, one that operates at the level of an application container instead of an operating system. No wonder then that VMware has a lot of firepower to bring to the PaaS market.

Where is the Killer App for PaaS?

2011-06-02T16:08:00.000-07:00

Over the last month, I have had lengthy discussions about developer adoption of Platform as a Service with two of my favorite cloud computing analysts - John Rymer of Forrester and Michael Cote of RedMonk.

The net of these conversations that we are still early in the adoption curve for PaaS. In particular, developers are not yet demanding PaaS the way operations people are demanding Virtualization.

Here is my summary of these discussion:

Developers are wary of PaaS: developers are not overly keen on PaaS at the moment. They are not yet mentally prepared to give up the middleware layer of their applications. Lacking a compelling reason to use PaaS, developers are sticking with tried and try development stacks.
PaaS for existing apps has limited benefit: For existing applications, there's not much to gain by simply moving from non-cloud modes to cloud modes. This is the foundation of Cote's Cloud Rule - "if it ain't broke, don't cloud it".
PaaS fits best for new apps: with new applications, the benefits of PaaS (cost and agility) all seem to line up.

This means that cloud vendors need to "connect the dots" for developers and business managers to accelerate their adoption of cloud platforms. In particular, there are two

PaaS lowers the bar for web development: PaaS solutions like Cloud Foundry and WaveMaker make the cloud's benefits available to everyone, not just the A-Team. Of course, this requires significant education to let business developers know that easier web dev tools exist.
PaaS speeds the delivery of apps for all developers: Michael Cote recently argued that speed is the killer app for cloud. Again, this requires market education to get the word out that quantifies these benefits.

The World Is Your Oyster: Installing and Using Cloud Foundry on Windows

2011-04-18T16:48:00.000-07:00

CloudFoundry is an incredibly cool way to build and deploy cloud apps to any target cloud using very simple commands.

The basic api has just three commands:

vmc target cloud.url //select cloud provider
vmc login // login to cloud
vmc push app.name // run cloud app

Three commands and the (cloud) world is your oyster! Very cool.

This may be just me but I found it difficult to follow the install guide for Cloud Foundry on my windows machine. For those of us trapped behind corporate firewalls and proxy servers, things got even more complicated.

After scurrying around the cloud foundry forums and stackoverflow, here are my slightly revised notes for getting Cloud Foundry running on a Windows machine using a proxy server:

1. Apply for a Cloud Foundry account at www.cloudfoundry.com you will be notified by email when your account is activated

2. Install Ruby from www.rubyinstaller.org. The Cloud Foundry cloud controller command line is built in Ruby so this is required. As the installer runs, make sure to check the boxes to add the ruby directory to your command path

3. Start the Windows command line client on windows by typing "run cmd" in start menu

4. Install the Cloud Controller software. Type:

gem install vmc

If you are behind a firewall, you will get a nasty error message:

ERROR: Could not find a valid gem 'vmc' (>=0) in any repository

5. Install vmc gem through a proxy server, type:

gem install --http-proxy http://proxy.vmware.com:3128 vmc

Congratulations! The Cloud Foundry Cloud Controller is now installed. From here on, you can type Cloud Foundry commands into the Windows command window.

6. Tell Cloud Foundry which cloud you want to connect to. Type:

vmc target api.cloudfoundry.com

Again, if you are benhind a firewall, you will get the error message

Host is not valid: 'http://api.cloudfoundry.com

7. To communicate with Cloud Foundry through a proxy server, set the environment variable "http_proxy". In the command window, type

set http_proxy=http://proxy.vmware.com:3128

vmc target api.cloudfoundry.com

8. Login to Cloud Foundry

vmc login

Enter your email address and password

9. Create a simple Ruby application.

cd \

mkdir hello

cd hello

The above commands create a "C:\hello" directory. Using a text editor type the following and save the file as "hello.rb"

require 'sinatra'

get '/' do

"Hello from Cloud Foundry +VMware and may I add you look dashing today?"

end

11. Publish the application to the cloud. Type:

vmc push

The following prompts will appear :

Would you like to deploy from the current directory? [Yn]

Assuming that you are in the hello directory hit enter (this answers Yes)

Application Name: hello_username

NOTE: use a unique name for your application best to concat your user name and "hello"

Application Deployed URL: ‘hello_username.cloudfoundry.com’?

Press enter to accept default

Detected a Sinatra Application, is this correct? [Yn]

Press enter to accept default

Memory Reservation [Default:128M] (64M, 128M, 256M, 512M, 1G or 2G)

Press enter to accept default (128MB)

Creating Application: OK...

Would you like to bind any services to ‘hello’ [yN]:

Press enter, you don’t want to bind any services for this example

12. Launch a web browser and go to your Application Deployment URL.

Now wasn't that easy?

Troubleshooting Problems With CloudFoundry

In deploying or updating an application, you may get the following error:

Uploading Application:
Checking for available resources: OK
Processing resources: OK
Packing application: OK
Uploading (2M): OK
Error (JSON 500):

The workaround for this is to make sure that the application is stopped (vmc stop foo) before you update the application (vmc update foo).

Death by Cloud - How Amazon is Killing Open Source Software

2011-04-13T10:24:00.000-07:00

The mood at last week's Open Source Think Tank was surprisingly somber. Two years ago, the open source community was celebrating huge acquisitions such as Sun's purchase of MySQL (and even the VMware acquisition of WaveMaker). This year, the consensus was that the economic model which led to success for companies like MySQL and RedHat is being fundamentally disrupted by cloud computing.

For example, Amazon recently launched a successful Relational Database Service (RDS). This hugely profitable service is based on MySQL, but Amazon doesn't pay MySQL a penny for it. This spells death for the traditional open source business model.

To understand why, let's look at how the open source model used to work. The open source business model has traditionally been based on two revenue streams: 1) revenue from OEMs who embed an open source product into their commercial offering and 2) revenue from providing support services for production systems that embed an open source product.

Whenever a company embedded MySQL into their commercial offering, they had to either license their own product under an open source license like GPL or buy a commercial license from MySQL. Just as importantly, a company using MySQL in a production environment would purchase support from MySQL as an insurance policy.

Now let's look at Amazon RDS. First of all, Amazon gets around the GPL license because they are not delivering binaries to their customers. This means that Amazon can deliver a commercial service without being forced to open source their own software. Next, Amazon has sufficient internal expertise on MySQL that they can provide their own support.

The open source community has tried to fight back. For example, the new Affero GPL license (AGPL) was supposed to fix the loophole which allows Amazon to deliver MySQL as a commercial service. However, since almost nobody is using the AGPL license, every OSS project faces the prospect of seeing someone else deliver commercial services based on their product for which they don't get paid.

New open source companies are trying to get ahead of this trend by offering their own cloud-based service - such as Cloudera (Hadoop). This is a good idea, but it is not clear how these stand alone services will be able to compete with Amazon's Elastic Mapreduce service, also based on Hadoop.

Of course, none of this is going to stop the success of the open source movement in general. There are many projects which have no commercial aspirations. However, until open source companies can articulate a business model that can thrive in the cloud, this does cap the potential valuations of open source companies and hence their access to venture capital.

Cote's rule: If it ain’t broke, don’t cloud it

2011-04-05T10:45:00.000-07:00

I took the title of this post from a recent blog entry by Michael Cote. Cloud enthusiasts (often people with limited operations experience) talk in grandiose terms of moving the entire data center to a public cloud. Cloud naysayers (often people with extensive operations experience) talk in detail about all the things you can't get in the cloud, like latency, lack of multi-cast, weaker security etc.

In general, cloud computing fits modern web architectures very well, by which I mean any app built to support a web browser client. These applications are "cloud-ready" and require little effort to move to a public or private cloud.

In general, any application not build to support a web browser client is going to be problematic to move into the cloud. These applications often rely on technologies that are not readily available in the cloud, such as multi-cast.

The decision to cloud or not to cloud is not a binary decision made at the data center level. Instead, it is a more nuanced decision made at the app level.

Similarly, the decision to go public cloud or private cloud is a decision made at the app level.

At the margin, be governed by Cote's Rule of Cloud Migration: If it ain’t broke, don’t cloud it!

WaveMaker Springs To VMware

2011-03-08T09:15:00.000-08:00

We are announcing today that WaveMaker has been acquired by VMware. This partnership is the result of discussions that have been going on between WaveMaker and the SpringSource division of VMware for more than a year.

I have always had great respect for how Rod Johnson revitalized and simplified the Java market with the Spring framework and developer projects. When we started development of WaveMaker over three years ago, we chose Spring as our foundation.

WaveMaker is based on the Spring framework but targets a different audience: non-expert developers looking for the easiest way to build web apps.

It turns out that this is a very large market. According to Gartner, only 20% of IT staff have expert app development skills - WaveMaker is the tool to enable the other 80% of IT to build web apps quickly and deploy them to the cloud with a single mouse click.

As WaveMaker went from 3,000 downloads a month in January, 2010 to 135,000 downloads a month in December, 2010, we realized that we had created the perfect "on ramp" for cloud computing. WaveMaker can play a big role in bringing large numbers of developers to the cloud, but only if we team with the right cloud partner.

With VMware and SpringSource, we have found that partner!

The good news here is that VMware will continue to support and provide services to the WaveMaker customers, via the same team that provided it before.

For Rod’s perspective on the acquisition check out his blog post here.

PaaS Takes Center Stage

2010-11-30T11:04:00.000-08:00

Over the last week, Platform as a Service has moved out of the shadows to become big news in the cloud world. Here is a quick roundup of recent events:

RedHat acquires Makara: this is a great move by RedHat, who has been hitherto a peripheral player in the great cloud game. Makara gives RedHat a platform that makes it much easier for developers to deploy cloud applications while also providing rich debugging capabilities. The Makara founding team came from Wily and brings deep understanding of application lifecycle management for cloud applications.
Cloudbees gets funding for a Java PaaS: this breathes life into the Java PaaS market, bringing the same kinds of turnkey cloud management to the Java community that Engine Yard and Heroku bring to the Ruby on Rails Market. Cloudbees was founded by the former CTO of JBoss and has tied their Java PaaS to the Hudson

The first phase of cloud computing was focused on the hardware side of things and Infrastructure as a Service. In order for cloud computing to gain widespread adoption, a software management layer is required to simplify the process for deploying and managing applications in the cloud.

Powerful Web 2.0 Alternative to PowerBuilder

2010-07-21T13:03:00.000-07:00

Rich Bianco over at the Displaced Guy blog just wrote a post entitled WaveMaker delivers for the cloud like PowerBuilder did for client-server. In it, he talks about using WaveMaker to migrate PowerBuilder applications to Java.

He makes a number of great point in his post. Here are the key take-aways

1. PowerBuilder is a powerful product but developers need a rich internet alternative.

"I’ve spent most of my career doing PowerBuilder development against every major DBMS and I still believe it offers productivity beyond anything on the market for client-server applications. But the writing is on the wall for client-server and rich internet applications and WaveMaker are the future."

2. WaveMaker is particularly easy to learn for PowerBuilder developers because it uses the same visual development and data window-like concepts

"WaveMaker is the first development tool since PowerBuilder to catch my attention and keep it. WaveMakers’ claim of building a functional enterprise web application without needing to write Java code is for real. In a single day, I’ve taken an existing PHP / MySQL web 1.0 application and re-created a good portion of the core functionality using WaveMaker."

3. WaveMaker is just plain fun, particularly for PowerBuilder developers!

"From the day I downloaded WaveMaker and gave it a test run I knew that it was the next step for me as a former PowerBuilder developer. Not and not only am I still having a blast but I feel as confident as ever to tackle the challenge of developing enterprise web applications, or robust SaaS solutions."

It has taken WaveMaker almost 3 years to build a worthy replacement for PowerBuilder. We certainly have not achieved the full breadth of functionality that developers can get from mature client/server tools like PowerBuilder, MS Access and Oracle Forms. However, for developers who want a fast and easy way to build Web 2.0 applications, WaveMaker rocks!

Migrating from Microsoft to Open Cloud Tools - Mind the Gap

2010-07-14T16:32:00.000-07:00

A recent survey of WaveMaker's 15,000 developers found that over 20% had moved to WaveMaker as an alternative to Microsoft development tools like MS Access and MS .NET.

"Microsoft shops" typically employ a variety of Microsoft products and have dozens to hundreds of applications that now need to be migrated.

Having worked with many companies going through this migration process, here are some best practices I have seen:
1. Triage, triage, triage - figure out which apps are really critical to your business/users and focus on them. Often, as you migrate them from Microsoft to WaveMaker you will find that you can combine several clunky client/server apps into a single rich internet application.
2. WaveMaker makes open a lot easier - WaveMaker hides most of the alphabet soup web technologies from the user (html/css/javascript/java etc). This flattens the learning curve to get out from under all those MS technologies. From our survey, we found that fear of the steep web development learning curve is one of the main reasons companies stick with the proprietary Microsoft tools.
3. WaveMaker is a lot more productive - we find that MS .NET apps can typically be rebuilt in WaveMaker with 80%+ fewer lines of code. See the Nationwide video on the WaveMaker web site for a case example that resulted in 98% fewer lines of code! That translates to big savings in productivity and quality, both in development and maintenance.
4. Open is still a bit messier - even though WaveMaker hides most of the hard stuff, it can't hide all of it. Microsoft's great advantage is that everything is tightly integrated into one convenient but proprietary package. In contrast, WaveMaker integrates with many databases, report writers, etc, which is more flexible but puts more work on the developer to manage their environment.

In short, WaveMaker provides a much gentler path for migrating from the Microsoft Borg to the wonderful world of open standards, but there is still a cost for all that flexibility.

Citrix & WaveMaker - A Little Leverage Goes a Long Way

2010-07-08T15:49:00.000-07:00

Citrix and WaveMaker's partnership to deliver a complete cloud developmentplatform is gaining attention.

This week, John Abbott of the 451 Group wrote a piece on how the Citrix Cloud Center strategy is coming together, thanks to a little help from WaveMaker (registration required).

The Citrix/WaveMaker development and test solution gives Cloud Hosting Providers a way to build a cloud ecosystem that will help them attract and retain customers. As John says:

"Telcos and service providers want the elbow room to differentiate their services from competitors by adding their own intellectual property."

With WaveMaker's cloud development platform, Cloud Hosting Providers make it easy for developers to build applications that deploy seamlessly to their cloud and can take advantage of their unique services for security, scalability and manageability.

Finally, the 451 Group points out that WaveMaker gives Citrix an easy-to-use PaaS solution that can leverage the Citrix cloud stack, much as SpringSource can leverage the VMWare stack. All in all, WaveMaker is shaping up as a game changer for cloud solution providers!

WaveMaker in the Warehouse

2010-06-24T14:36:00.000-07:00

Althought the iPad is getting all the press these days, WaveMaker customers are building pretty compelling apps with plain old ruggedized PCs.

This week we announced an application built using WaveMaker that meets the demanding requirements of warehouse loading docks for grocery stores and retail chains.

The Costa Solutions warehouse loading dock application runs on handheld tablet PCs from Motion Computing. Because internet connectivity is not reliable on warehouse loading docks, where, the WaveMaker app is architected to run in both connected and offline modes.

When the tablet is offline, data and pictures are collected and stored on the tablet PC. When internet connectivity is re-established, WaveMaker automatically synchronizes the changes back to the logistics data center.

The application includes digital signature capture, digital camera integration, counterfeiting protection and automatic application update.

Free Alternative To Microsoft Access - WaveMaker

2010-05-28T16:01:00.000-07:00

Getting somewhat adventurous, I started a new blog and created a post on Free Alternatives to Microsoft Access.

We see it as our patriotic duty ;-) to make the world safe from proprietary client/server platforms.

Enterprises are increasingly moving from proprietary platforms like Microsoft Access to open Java platforms. Yet training Microsoft Access developers to use complex Java tools can be time consuming and costly.

WaveMaker provides a unique solution for migrating Microsoft Access developers and applications to open Java standards. WaveMaker's visual development tools are easy for Microsoft Access developers to use, while generating standard Java code that runs in any Java server.

WaveMaker's visual, drag and drop studio is ideal for developers who want to focus on creating enterprise applications, not coding. In particular, WaveMaker flattens the learning curve for moving from proprietary platforms like Microsoft Access to open Java.

WaveMaker 6.1 - Cloud Development On A Roll!

2010-05-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

WaveMaker is on a roll - having hit profitability at the end of last year, we are now targeting 300% growth for 2010. This week, we announced the latest release of WaveMaker.

With our 6.1 released, WaveMaker truly delivers on our "PowerBuilder for the Cloud" vision. We are the only company offering visual, browser-based development of cloud applications that comply with enterprise Java standards.

By eliminating the complexity of building and deploying cloud applications, WaveMaker 6.1 enables these Citizen Developers to take advantage of cloud computing. Cool new features include:

One-click deployment to Amazon EC2, Rackspace Cloud, Eucalyptus and OpSource.
Automated multi-tenancy and secure, tenant ID-based data isolation
Dynamic widget loading for up to 500% faster performance.
Rich text editor, Twitter feed and other widgets.
Improved SVN integration for team development

In keeping with Gartner's prediction that cloud computing will create a major shift in how "Citizen Developers" build applications, we are seeing the bulk of our growth come from companies migrating from proprietary platforms to open Java. WaveMaker is an ideal open Java alternative for Oracle Apex, Microsoft Access, Microsoft .NET, PowerBuilder, Lotus Notes and Coldfusion.

Get started with WaveMaker today by going to www.wavemaker.com/download!

CIOs Beware: Citizen Developers are on the Loose

2010-03-26T17:26:00.000-07:00

Gartner this week released a report entitled "Citizen Developers are Poised to Grow." The report by Gartner Analyst Eric Knipp describes how forces like more computer literate employees, cloud computing and better tools are fundamentally changing the role of IT.

Eric paints a vision that in one stroke could eliminate the feared IT backlog: "Citizen developers leverage shared services and 4GL-style development platforms, releasing IT resources to do what they do best, if IT leaders allow it."

Gartner argues that CIOs should enable business analysts to build "self-service" applications that can be managed centrally by IT. This puts IT in the role of providing a secure infrastructure while enabling business developers to implement business processes using 4GL-like tools.

According to Eric, "CIOs who attempt to block citizen developers are fighting a losing battle."

Of course, arming citizen developers will require new tools. In particular, the Gartner report calls out "the latest crop of 4GL products such as Oracle APEX, WaveMaker and Zoho Creator provide a compelling AD environment for citizen developers."

While much of the focus on cloud computing has been on the heavy duty, mission-critical applications, it is likely that the truly disruptive impact of cloud computing will be on enabling non-expert developers like business analysts to prototype, create and maintain applications with minimal direct IT involvement.

It takes a community

2010-02-12T16:33:00.000-08:00

Open source companies live or die by the health of their communities. WaveMaker's proudest achievement last year was creating a passionate and rapidly growing community.

Thinking back, probably our most important decision affecting community health was made early in the year, when we decided to dump our AGPL license in favor of Apache.

Although we had never gotten direct feedback that the community didn't like AGPL, we had more forum posts than we thought was healthy that asked pointed questions about our licensing. This let us know that people were confused, and if there was any doubt in our minds, the licensing debacle at Ext js convinced us that Keep-It-Simple-Stupid is the only way to go here.

Once community developers felt confident that they could do what they wanted to do with our Community edition without somehow triggering a commercial fee down the road, the community literally exploded. Together, here is what we accomplished in 2009:

Stunning community growth: 18 months after our product launch, the number of registered developers for WaveMaker (15,00) is about one third the size of the Spring community (49,000)!
Profitability: WaveMaker closed 2009 as a profitable company and saw revenue growth of 53% in our last 3 months!
Gartner recognition: WaveMaker was featured in 9 different Gartner reports last year, including one which identified WaveMaker as the only open source platform for cloud development!

Why the tidal wave of support for WaveMaker? That's easy - WaveMaker makes it ridiculously easy to build great-looking, standards-based Java applications.

Web 2.0 enabler: at companies like Macy's, National City Bank and Pioneer Energy, WaveMaker enables non-Java developers to create Java apps with minimal training.
Productivity multipier: at ISVs and systems integrators, WaveMaker reduces development costs for Java and Web 2.0 applications by over 75%.

WaveMaker Finds Pot of Gold On Top of Cloud

2010-01-07T19:27:00.001-08:00

WaveMaker started 2009 staring into the abyss and ended the year on top of the clouds - funny how things work out in the startup world. During the year, WaveMaker doubled annual revenues and achieved profitability while also increasing quarterly sales by over 53%.

The biggest momentum driver came from the success of our Cloud Quick Start Partnership with IBM, Amazon and RightScale. We also started seeing significant sell-through from SaaS ISVs and systems integration partners.

WaveMaker's position as the only open source cloud development platform makes it a "must have" cloud ecosystem partner. WaveMaker is ideal for ISVs who want to SaaS-enable their offerings and enterprises who want an easy way to take advantage of cloud computing's compelling economics.

Analysts groups are jumping on board as well - Gartner alone produced 9 reports featuring WaveMaker in 2009! Here are some of my favorite quotes from the year:

"Our walk into the cloud with WaveMaker turned out to be a very short journey - and a pleasant one!" - Mark Angel, CTO KANA
"Consider WaveMaker Cloud Edition if you want a 4GL-style development tool that uses standard technologies and open-source frameworks, and you wish to create new SaaS-style offerings." - Eric Knipp, Research Analyst, Gartner Group
"I predict that WaveMaker will be an important cloud company to watch in 2010!" - Judith Hurwitz, President Hurwitz & Associates
"2010 just might be the year to crown WaveMaker the PowerBuilder for the web" - Brian Gentile, CEO JasperSoft

2009 was a tough slog - we are determined to make 2010 a victory lap!

Where To Hide a Dead Horse and Other Uses For the Cloud

2009-12-14T10:50:00.000-08:00

With full credit to the Geek and Poke blog, the funniest nerd cartoon I have seen all year!

Cloud Computing - It's The Destination, Not The Journey

2009-12-09T12:32:00.000-08:00

I have had some interesting conversations recently with partners about how cloud computing will affect the developer tools market.

I don't believe developers jump on a band wagon just because they like the wagon. They jump on the wagon because they like where the wagon is going!

Roughly every 10 years, a technology disruption changes developer aspirations and drives them to adopt new tools that get them to new places.

With client/server, developers aspired to build "modern" apps and break free of the bureaucracy of central IT. Cloud computing offers a similar, updated, value - deploy web applications without the hassle of central IT.

Developer aspirations are changing - this is the underlying market driver for WaveMaker.

At the same time, IT vendors are seeing their value disrupted. As the data center morphs into a set of APIs, decisions which used to be made by sys admins and DBAs are made by the developer (Cloud Foundry is a good example of this).

The developer platform is becoming the control panel for the data center - this is the WaveMaker's value to partners. This is also the basis for our cloud quick start program with IBM, Amazon and RightScale.

One company that has realized the competitive opportunity in cloud computing is Microsoft. By integrating Visual Studio with Azure, they have created a powerful engine from which to attack the entire data center infrastructure.

If business developers really do "take to the clouds", the challenge I see for IT infrastructure providers is how to harness changing developer aspirations to ensure that the cloud deployment stack includes their solutions.

A Few Things To Be Thankful For

2009-11-25T15:50:00.000-08:00

Before I head off for my favorite holiday, I wanted to send out an update on Wavemaker.

Our big news of course centers around the release of Wavemaker 6. This release was over a year in the making and represents the first open source cloud development platform on the market (hook up wavemaker with eucalyptus and you have your own open source answer to Force.com and Azure!).

On the business side, WaveMaker continues to drive strong revenue growth in a down economy, putting us in reach our objective to achieve profitability by the end of the year!

Just to brag a bit, here are some analyst quotes from our WaveMaker 6 press release:

"WaveMaker's open source cloud development platform provides an important approach for customers adopting cloud computing," said Judith Hurwitz, author of Cloud Computing for Dummies and President of Hurwitz & Associates. "WaveMaker's ability to create partnerships with IBM, Amazon and RightScale also illustrates the value of an open source business model."
"WaveMaker is easing the migration path for Java developers who want to bring existing application logic and data into a SaaS environment, while still retaining control over their deployment options," said Phil Wainewright, industry analyst at Procullux Ventures. "With automated support for robust multi-tenant databases, WaveMaker 6.0 advances software developers even further along the path towards realizing the full benefits of the SaaS model."
"Cloud computing is fast maturing, but one lagging indicator is developer tools designed specifically for cloud deployment," said James Governor, principal analyst at RedMonk. "WaveMaker aims to change that with their 6.0 release, an open source toolset, and relationships with key players such as IBM, Amazon and RightScale."

WaveMaker 6.0 SaaS-enables Web Apps in Minutes

2009-11-18T09:43:00.000-08:00

Until today, web developers creating SaaS apps have been faced with an ugly choice: use proprietary development platforms like Force.com or build an open solution from scratch.

WaveMaker today released the first open cloud development platform. WaveMaker 6.0 is a visual development platform that runs in a browser.

WaveMaker makes it ridiculously easy for anyone to prototype, develop and customize great looking web applications.

How easy you ask? Well, how 'bout:

With all this open and cloudy goodness, it is not surprising that the momentum behind WaveMaker continues to build.

What kind of momentum? Well, how 'bout:

WaveMaker's open source community now numbers more than 15,000 active developers
The Cloud Quick Start Partnership teams WaveMaker with IBM, Amazon and RightScale
Citrix makes WaveMaker available as an integrated development platform for NetScaler

Let the fireworks begin!

Vendors Will Have To Climb Higher To Reach Clouds

2009-11-04T11:02:00.000-08:00

Hard on the heels of the VMWare/SpringSource acquisition, VMWare entered into a grand alliance with Cisco and EMC (although technically, VMWare announcing an alliance with EMC is like Buick announcing an alliance with GM).

Once the data center is fully virtualized, resilient and automated, it becomes the proverbial black box. As long as it is secure and performant, where it is located or what the hardware layer looks like is unimportant.

Any company whose value proposition is centered around feeds and speeds is going to have to scramble higher up the stack. If your target customer is hardcore data center guys, you are going to find fewer and fewer of those folks to talk to.

As customer IT shifts from hardware to solutions, vendors will have to climb higher up the value chain to keep engaged with their customers. With its Unified Computing System, network vendors like Cisco are becoming data center solution vendors. With Spring, virtualization vendors like VMWare are becoming development solution vendors.

At the top of the cloud stack is Platform as a Service (PaaS), which manages both how applications are developed and how they can be customized by end users. At WaveMaker, we see PaaS as the primary lever for delivering value from the cloud.

As IT vendors climb higher to deliver more complete solutions to their customers, PaaS will emerge as the heart of the cloud ecosystem.