A Matter of Perspective

Architecture gem

2008-09-17T03:10:00.000-07:00

After a couple of months of forced inactivity I can now pick up blogging again. What better way to start again by writing about two of my favorite subjects:

Architecture and its practioners, and
Government IT.

Since I studied public administration back in the days, I occasionally read the magazines that are typically read by former public administration students. I came across an issue of "Digitaal Bestuur" (digital administration), of which the theme is "Government and ICT". This issue had an article by a lead architect (!) from a government body, with the illustruous title "IT is difficult. IT within government is extra difficult". Fascinated by this title, I started reading and came across the following excerpt:
"It is getting more and more difficult to control the increasing complexity of IT. Computers have become 1000 to 1500 times more powerful in the past 15 years, as a result the systems have become 1000 to 1500 times more complex, and to make matters worse computers nowadays all communicate with each other through networks."
After I had read the above excerpt 5 times (I really wanted to make sure that I really read what I thought I was reading), I finally understood why governments are struggling so badly with IT and why architects are still having trouble to get accepted or even taken seriously by other IT and enterprise disciplines.

Modernization 2.0

2007-12-04T03:33:00.000-08:00

When I was stuck in traffic again this morning and listening to the radio, I heard about the news that Belgium is facing tremendous trouble in forming a new government after the most recent elections. The same has been true in the past for The Netherlands, where the results of the elections provided the image of a very divided country, with quite some votes for the more extreme left-wing and right-wing parties. It took quite a while to form a government, and the Dutch voters are now stuck with a government that nobody is really enthousiastic for (except maybe the families of the new ministers and the memebers of the three coalition partners).
But enough about politics, this blog is about perspective on IT. But I think this trend in politics could have something to do with a growing structural differentiation in society due to technology. Let me explain why.

Somehow, I really have the impression that in many aspects in society and our everyday life we are experiencing the consequences of what sociologists call "modernization". This refers to a concept that describes a process in which society goes through industrialization, urbanization and other social changes that completely transforms the lives of individuals. Key elements in modernization are structural differentiation and cultural generalization, or in plain English increasing individualism and mono-culture. Lately, this modernization appears to be happening at warp speed, not in the last place because of the explosive growth of technology usage in Western society. The use of technology and new (IT) concepts, especially those branded as Web 2.0, accelerate the processes of structural differentiation and cultural generalization.

I wrote about culutural generalization before in a reaction to Nick Carr's claim that Web 2.0 is amoral. Former Internet boy wonder Andrew Keen goes as far as saying that today's internet is even killing our culture. Although I have some second thoughts hearing this from somebody who made a fortune on the internet (that's not "eat your own dog food", but "spit in your own dog food"), I have ordered his book for the Christmas holidays that are coming up. It should be an interesting read.

On the other hand, there appears to be some evidence that the explosion of internet usage is also accelerating structural differentiation I mentioned earlier. According to Oxford University Press, societies are seen as moving from the simple to the complex via a process of social change based on structural differentiation. The process may be imagined, in its simplest form, as an amoeba dividing, redividing, then redividing again. Society is evolving from quite simple structures into seperate institutions of education, work, leisure, government, religion and social contacts. Most people do not stay with the same employer their entire working life anymore, some even work at 2 or 3 different employers, churches see a declining number of people, small political parties are attracting voters from the traditional larger parties, mass markets are being replaced by niche markets (Long Tail, anyone?). In fact even identities of single persons are differentiating: John Doe who works as a loyal clerk during day-time, may be SuperVixen666 in his favorite virtual world at night.

Media is already heavily influenced by the 2.0 phenomenon (serious newspapers publishing movies of incidents that were filmed by readers with their cameras on their mobile phones), politics arguably also is facing the consequences of the wisdom of the crowd (some might say the power of the mob) and the collective intelligence. It will be very difficult to predict where this is all leading to, but for sure society is dealing with Modernization 2.0.

Oracle makes offer for BEA Systems

2007-10-12T03:36:00.000-07:00

Press release by Oracle:

"Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) today confirmed that it delivered a letter to the Board of Directors of BEA Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: BEAS) on October 9 in which Oracle proposes to acquire BEA for $17.00 per share in cash. The $17.00 per share offer is a 25% premium over yesterday's closing price of $13.62."

If I did not know anything about acquisitions, I would think that this is Larry Ellison's reaction to the Business Objects acquisition by arch rival SAP (don't get mad.... get even). But as these acquisitions and offers usually take quite a long preparation time, I do not think this is a reaction to the SAP activities.

Leaves me wondering though what the rationale is for Oracle to make the offer for BEA. Oracle states in its press release that "the acquisition of BEA by Oracle will enable an increase in engineering resources that will in-turn accelerate the development of our [Oracle's, LB - sic] world-class suite of middleware". Which might mean that Oracle is facing some challenges, maybe even problems with its current Project Fusion program. Putting it all together is one of the key challenges Oracle faces in its Fusion endeavor, and the acquisition of the brightest engineers from BEA could be considered a way to face this challenge. This should not come as a surprise as I have said before that one of the key drivers for Oracle's acquisition wave was "acquiring the people who created the technology".

Also, the potential acquisition of BEA supports my prediction and observation that increasingly pure-play vendors are disappearing, as the functionality of their products is incorporated into enterprise applications, OS and hardware.
Maybe this is the moment to say: integration middleware is now officially commoditized.

Why SaaS will make and why ASP didn't

2007-10-10T03:38:00.000-07:00

I picked up blogging again last week when I wrote that the acronym SaaS does not ring many bells yet with decision makers. Maybe ASP does, but that is something many decision makers do not want to get involved with as that is so 90's.
Still there are many people that think that SaaS is the same as ASP. Take this definition for instance which I found on the web site of the Dutch research firm that concluded that SaaS is not known by many decision makers:
"SaaS (Software as a Service) is software provided as a hosted service which is accessed over the Internet, and which is billed through a subscription structure. This is also called ASP(Application Service Providing)."

Let me explain why I think this makes no sense. To start with, the delivery model is completely different: with ASP, you pay a monthly fee for a fixed period (sometimes even for the duration of 3 to 5 years), while with SaaS you only pay for the usage ("pay as you go"). This may sound trivial, but it has consequences for the customer orientation of the provider: because a subscriber is not tied to a fixed (maybe long) period arranged by a contract, which is the case with ASP, it is easier to make the switch to another provider. This implies that the SaaS provider must do more for client retention, hence deliver great customer service.
The architecture of products is usually also very much different between an ASP and a SaaS provider, mainly because SaaS products have been developed from scratch to be used over the Internet (take Salesforce.com as an example). The ASP versions of products have usually been "web-enabled", but still have a typical client-server architecture. In the past, the ASP model therefore never fully delivered what it promised, because of the lack of bandwidth, or because of a performance degrade resulting from the web-enablement of the application.

In short: both the delivery model and the architecture of SaaS and ASP are different: SaaS solutions are generally speaking better prepared (optimized) for usage over the Internet, and its delivery model is more flexible than the ASP delivery model. So, we are dealing with different animals (that live in the same Zoo though, named Outsourcing). The key advantages of SaaS over ASP make that I believe that SaaS will succeed, as these are exactly the reasons why ASP did not succeed.

Are we dealing with GAF(general acronym fatigue)?

2007-10-06T03:42:00.000-07:00

Two recent news items have made me wondering whether we are dealing with GAF: a General Acronym Fatigue.

The first news item is from a Dutch IT newspaper, which quotes research from a Dutch IT research organization: 73 percent of all IT decision makers do not know spontaneously what SaaS (Software as a Service) is. Only after an explanation of what is meant by SaaS (a formal definition), 69 percent say they know SaaS. Which leads to the conclusion that only 4% of IT decision makers really have no clue what SaaS is about, and 69 percent are just confused by the acronym / terminology. An ASP (Application Service Provider, not Active Server Pages) expert in The Netherlands says this is due to the fact that companies, vendors and end-user organizations all have different names for the phenomenon: "Web 2.o", "internet-accounting" or "online services". Some people have even called it "ASP 2.0", which is really silly as there are substantial differences in the delivery models as far as I am concerned.

The second news item has been not on a single source, but in fact has been heard among many blogs: more and more people are seriously questioning the ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) is worth using. I have answered this question already some time ago: it is not! It is just replacing one low viability solution (CORBA or brokers) with another (service buses). I have plead before to use Apache for instance as a service bus (or rather I would name it service intermediary), and obviously more people have come to this conclusion. But then of course, we are talking about the design pattern, and not about the commercial product type some people considered to be the next generation application server. I suggest to drop the name ESB, and instead to name it what it is: a service intermediary.

The future does not look toto bright for people confused with acronyms, in particular because the aaS letters are pasted to any random technology or product category you can imagine: PaaS (Platform as a Service), CaaS (CRM as a Service), AaaS (Accounting as a Service) well, you get the idea... the good thing is that we run out of options at 26 acronyms...

If we (yes, everyone in IT is responsible for this GAF situation) are unable to come up with good names for new concepts, patterns, technologies or products, we should not blame those poor IT decision makers for not understanding our value proposition. In 9 out of 10 times we are not dealing with an ignorant decision maker, but just with someone suffering from GAF.

OK, I am off for now, I am going for a BLT.

The Second Life world is flat

2007-04-21T03:46:00.000-07:00

Some folks have gone really excited about the "news" that Linden Labs is going to open source the back-end of Second Life. The amount of attention this non-news has gained, confirms my observation that Second Life is at the peak of the hype. Why? Because there really is nothing new or spectacular here in the story most bloggers and authors refer to. It comes down to Joe Miller, VP for platform and technology development at Linden Lab stating the following at VW07:

"We’ll be open-sourcing the back end so sims can run anywhere on any machine whether trusted by us or not."

OK. When? Under which conditions? How? Just this statement is not truly shocking if you ask me.

"We’ll be delivering assets in a totally different method that won’t be such a burden on the simulators."

If I understand correctly, the move is primarily driven by the lack of capacity for the back end run by Linden Lab.

"Very soon we’ll be updating simulators to support multiple versions so that we don’t have to update the entire Grid at once."

Again my question: when? When is very soon?

"We’ll be using open protocols."

Which ones? I heard rumors that IBM is having talks with Linden Labs on protocol developnment. With the WS-* disaster in the back of our minds, of which IBM was one of the key creators, we should not expect any added value really here. In fact if I were in a very cynical mood I'd say this is the kiss of death for Second Life, but it's Saturday so I am not :-).

"SL cannot truly succeed as long as one company controls the Grid."

The bottom line, although it should read that SL cannot survive as long as one company controls the Grid (please note the uppercase G here. As if we are talking about the Matrix. Would have been even more striking if also an uppercase T was used).

Dana Blankenhorn wonders out loud if open source can save Second Life. He invites people to share their insights. My 2 cents is that Second Life is nothing more than a finger exercise for really successful 3D virtual communities, which will not be mainstream before 2009-2012. Linden Labs have done some pioneer work in the area, and they and the users of Second Life (I refuse to use the term resident), including the big companies that have jumped on the phenomenon will have learned for their experiences. But they will come (or already have come) to the conclusion that the Second Life world is flat, meaning they can fall off at any moment.

Beyond Kathy Sierra

2007-04-02T03:47:00.000-07:00

Quite frankly I never heard of Kathy Sierra before last week. I could say here thatg I have been a loyal reader of her blog for a long long time, but reality is that I first heard about her when all the blog postings came in about the death threats aimed at her. And obviously a lot of people are interested in this subject:
Most reactions throughout the blogosphere vary from supportive, to shocked, and in fact James McGovern was one of the first who had a somewhat skeptical reaction to Kathy's story. I think this was quite brave by James, and although his later postings about the subject were not as good in my opinion (but I suspect James is going quickly for the 1000th blog posting so he can retire as a blogger as he announced), he has brought up some very interesting points, that even go beyond the whole Kathy Sierra case.
I do not know Kathy Sierra so I do not have any opinion on how she has handled this whole situation, although generally I do feel that you should never bend to those that use violence. That was my opinion last year with all the fuss about the cartoons in the Danish newspaper, and that is my opinion now. But maybe it is different if it happens to you, I don't know. Nevertheless, I wonder what the motive is of people threatening a blogger. It wouldn't surprise me if we are "just" dealing with some bored teenagers who just want some attention, kind of the same breed as those people that write computer viruses (still can't think what's so gratifying about that).
The key about the whole discussion goes beyond Kathy Sierra as I said earlier. James pointed in his post to the single largest threat of the Internet in general:
"In cyberspace it is very easy to become someone else and very difficult at times to prove that you aren't really you"
This has proved to be very difficult in the past and present (phishing, threats on discussion boards, electronic voting etc.), and it will become even a bigger issue in the future. With the advancement and expansion of new forms of collaboration, social contacts and transactions that use the Internet, identity is becoming the key issue. Obviously there is a growing number of people that have a need to take on another identity when being on the Internet. How often do you see nick names, avatars or email aliases that reflect exactly the name or appearance of its owner? Even with some very popular blogs, the writers chose to use a nick name, probably because they were writing about quite some confidential information on their company.
Anonymity / namelessness is very valuable to many people on the Internet, but it will become a complicating factor in the evolvement of the Internet. Especially as it appears as though increasingly virtual spaces / worlds and the real world are blending, this becomes increasingly problematic. Particularly because legislation is still in progress and absent in this area. In fact some people will even argue that the Internet should not be subject to legislation from any country (tell that to China...), and should be subject to the self-cleaning capacity of the World Wide Web and its users.
Which leaves us with the very interesting observation that on one hand the current evolvement of the Internet has the promise of providing maximum transparency, but on the other hand it is threatened by the obscurity of its users. Information becomes transparant, users don't. All the ingredients are there for a dialectic process of change.

Making money with Web 2.0

2007-03-22T03:49:00.000-07:00

Loyal readers of my blog will remember that in the past I have written about the possibilities to make money with Web 2.0. Via a Dutch site I ran into a presentation by an Italian consultant who names himself BizMogeek (Business Model geek, real name Luca Grivet).

As I have not found his ideas on some other blogs on Web 2.0, I will give a very short summary of his findings here. Grivet identifies 5 business models for Web 2.0:

Free: the best known and near-classic model, in which revenue is generated by advertising
Free to use, pay for related service: the base product can be used free of charge, for example open source software (MoveableType). However, for additional services you have to pay (TypePad)
Freemium: the base product is free of charge (like with business model 2) to a certain extent. If you exceed a specific usage limit (Flickr), want additional service (LinkedIn) or want to buy extra items (SecondLife), it becomes a charged service
Freedom to pay: it is up to the users to decide whether or not they are willing to pay to use the service, or you can make a donation (Wikipedia)
Nothing free: the service will be charged anyway (iTunes), however you can get a share of the revenue that is generated (eBay, Google AdSense)

This is quite a good effort to describe the possibile Web 2.0 business models in my opinion. Grivet has even created a framework to help position service providers in the Web 2.0 market, as he has added the specific target market (or business area as he calls it) as well in this model: content, application / service or products / software. I find it somewhat questionnable whether or not you should draw a distinction between application / service and products / software, especially as SaaS is blurring the boundaries between those.
Nevertheless, I appreciate Grivet's work, and it is one of the best attempts I have seen so far to describe the different possibilities.
I have one key objection against his list and framework, and that is that there are quite some Web 2.0 startups that appear to have no other business model than attracting the big Web 2.0 players to get acquired by those players. These startups cannot be placed in any category mentioned by Grivet, as their key objective is to get noticed by Yahoo!, Google, MSN and [you name it], hoping that these big guys are willing to buy them out. I would call this business model the Big bucks buy-out (triple B?) model.
Basically, I think Grivet's model should be extended with this business model, but not at the same level as the 5 models he mentions. The framework could be extended with an extra layer, which could be called "Business intention". Here are 2 choices:

being self-supportive through either one of the 5 models mentioned by Grivet, or
going for the Big player buy-out / Triple B model

VC's should assess which type they are dealing with, before committing their capital to Web 2.0 startups.

Second Life on the hype cycle

2007-03-19T03:51:00.000-07:00

What if you had to place Second Life on a Gartner Hype Cycle? In which Hype Cycle would you place it? Hype Cycle for Virtual Worlds? Hype Cycle for 3D Web UIs? And at which position in that particular hype cycle would you place it? Technology trigger? Peak of inflated expectations?

I would definately say at the peak of inflated expectations, as not a single printed or online chronicle has not written about it yet. If even Dutch grocery stores are opening a complete mall in Second Life, there is no room anymore for denial: Second Life IS a hype.
However, there are already some first signs that the hype may be beyond its peak. Although the State of the Virtual World on the official Second Life blog still show quite some impressive growth figures, there are also some things that indicate that SL hype is nearly beyond its peak:

All media have already written or reported about it, a second wave of attention from the media appears unlikely (people will pretty soon show signs of Second Life fatigue)
Only a fraction of users actually stay. Many people try, only few keep coming to Second Life
Some companies have already announced to close their virtual offices in Second Life after the first forms of child porn were found in Second Life.
And, as my colleague Ray Valdes mentioned: "Do you want to have a virtual press conference in a world where your public event can be disrupted by flying animated body parts?"
Some people claim that Second Life is mainly driven (or should I say: populated) by people looking to gamble or for some erotic pleasure (hey, that does not sound surprising for an Internet platform)

My 2 cents on Second Life and Hype Cycles is that:

Second Life should be placed in a Hype Cycle for Web 2.0, as I consider it a social networking platform / community
Secondly, I think it should be placed just beyond the peak of inflated expectations.
Finally, "Years to mainstream adoption" will be the red circle with the cross in it ("obsolete before plateau"), because I think another contender will take the crown from Second Life and will create a highly successful "virtual world"*

* If I had to place "virtual 3D communities" on the Hype Cycle (instead of its most popular current incarnation, Second Life), I would say it takes another 2 to 5 years before mainstream adoption.
Yes, I do believe that virtual 3D communities have a quite bright future, I just don't think that Second Life will be THE future virtual world of choice. Second Life will suffer from the the 'dialectics of progress', in fact you could even say that it will become a victim of its own success.

Adobe Photoshop goes SaaS

2007-03-01T03:04:00.000-08:00

The news that Adobe is offering its flagship product Photoshop (or should we call Flash its flagship product after the acquisition of Macromedia?) as an online service has caused quite some speculation on the acceleration of SaaS (Software as a Service).
I find this news interesting for 2 reasons: what is Adobe's product strategy and plan with this move, and what are the consequences of a move to a true SaaS model?

As for Adobe's strategy: I predicted earlier this year that Adobe will be acquired by Oracle. Although there are still some rumours that Oracle's first acquisition priorities are with BI vendor Business Objects, I still believe that an Adobe acquisition by Oracle is very feasible, not in the last place because Oracle might consider Adobe as the doorway to the new, emerging market of rich user interfaces and desktop computing (Acrobat, Flash, Photoshop, video editing stuff). If Adobe manages to leverage its web presence with a Photoshop SaaS offering, it will probably become an even more attractive target for Oracle. This move by Adobe has not and will not go unnoticed, and the exposure Adobe is getting for its SaaS efforts, can create the right momentum for the acquisition by Oracle.

In the second place, I find this news interesting because it is a test case to see whether the open source business model works for software as well. We should not be mistaken about the Adobe plans: it is nothing more than offering only a limited set of Photoshop capabilities on-line, it is not like all the very sophisticated functions from the desktop version are incorporated in the online version. Add that to the fact that Photoshop online is what is called an "ad-supported online service", and it becomes clear that also with Photoshop as most people know it, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
In line with the Web 2.0 business model discussed before, Adobe is giving away something expensive but considered critical, hoping to get something valuable for free that was once expensive. It could be a way of attracting customers and make them want the full, desktop version of Photoshop, or it could be a true step towards "good enough" software offered via the Internet. The question with the latter is: what's in it for Adobe? Will they charge users in the future for using the online Photoshop? Will they gain income through support and services (I wonder if this will work: I predict that online communities will emerge that provide peer-to-peer support for online Photoshop users)? Are they only doing this for brand recognition or to win sympathy?

Many people applaud the SaaS model, because they feel it is important to cut down on physical media, and replace this with online storage. However, the SaaS model requires a much higher bandwidth, and not only that: it requires a reliable connection to the software that is consumed as a service. You do not want to be in the middle of editing your pics from your latest holiday, and all of a sudden find out that your connection is slow, and the HTTP request from your browser times out. Another aspect could be the enormous media exposure that such initiatives could get: are the online services prepared for the huge peak load when influential media have a story about it and all of a sudden everyone wants to check out that cool new service.

According to Adobe's plans, Photoshop should be online in 6 months. Enough time then to think about some of the above issues, and I will follow this with great interest.

How much is that Vista in the Windows?

2006-08-30T02:57:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Canada has accidentally published the prices for Vista on their web site. These prices give some insight in what to expect when Vista finally hits the market, but the prices have been taken offline already. Although Microsoft have already announced that the prices for Vista would be about the same as the prices for Windows XP, it is still interesting to see what this will really mean. They also announced that they will publish the prices after "Release Candidate 1" is released, which is planned for September. For those that cannot wait, here is the highlights of the list that has been taken of the Canadian MSFT site:

Windows Vista Basic Edition, the cheapest basic version of Vista which can be compared with XP Home edition, will cost 259 Canadian dollars, which is 233 US $ and 182 euro.
Side note: Windows XP Home cost 199 US $ in 2001. A difference of 34 US $, or 17%, which is not bad if we take the effects of inflation (approximately 3.5% per year) into consideration.
Vista Home Premium Edition, that combines characteristics of Windows Media Center and the Tablet PC-edition, will have a price raise of 13%, i.e. 299 Canadian $ (269 US $, which is 211 euro).
Vista Business would cost 379 Canadian $ (341 US $, 267 euro). This is 7 % cheaper than Windows XP Professional.
Vista Ultimate (what's in a name) will cost twice as much as the Basic Edition: 499 Canadian $ (449 US $, 352 euro).

SOA just vendor talk?

2006-04-19T03:06:00.000-07:00

"‘SOA’ may have meant something once but it’s just vendor bullshit now."

Very interesting yet highly questionnable statement by Tim Bray. Without giving any reasonable argumentation for this bold statement, he dismisses SOA as something that does not matter anymore, and he says we should rather focus on what he calls Web style. Of course, the highly fashionable term Enterprisey is used in his post, and increasingly people are using this term to dismiss SOA without giving any argumentation for dismissing it, other than "SOA is Enterprisey". It is kind of like what open source zealots throw at you when you talk about MSFT: "oh, that's FUD!".

I do agree with Tim that simplicity is a virtue when working with the web. After all, the Internet has been such a big hit because of its simplicity. However, Tim misses the fact that the services he talks about when discussing the Web Style thing, are a completely different thing than the services we talk about when discussing SOA. I wrote before that there is something fundamentally difficult when talking about "services". There are different kind of services, and probably the name "web service" has not been the best choice. The Web Style kind of services Tim speaks about are fundamentally different from services you will usually use within an SOA. I wrote about this before too: WS-* services and REST services are not competing, they are complementary. Web Style serves another purpose than SOA. Consumer-facing services have other QoS requirements than high-volume, cross-platform A2A transaction services. One service needs to be simple and flexible, while another service should seamlessly integrate with different platforms. Different requirements ask for different services, which in turn ask for different implementations. That is the reality of today's IT world.

Once again: it is all a matter of perspective.

SOA just vendor talk?

2006-04-19T02:58:00.000-07:00

The .NET boomerang effect

2006-04-11T04:39:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while somebody posts a blog or article on how the monopoly of Microsoft / Windows on the desktop can be ended, or at least be threatened. Of course I am also guilty of this, although I have said before that it will be quite hard to threaten Windows on the desktop. Keith Harrison-Broninski recently had a quite interesting discussion on his web log, and although I do disagree with him when he states that Eclipse will end the Microsoft monopoly on the desktop, his viewpoint sure made me think about other possibilities, stemming from the open source (.NET) community: Mono.

More and more Linux distributions have the open source .NET framework Mono incorporated, which means that these Linux distributions can run .NET applications that comply with the ECMA standard for .NET. Although key distributions like RedHat for instance do not include Mono (yet?), there are still signs that the Mono framework is becoming an increasingly important factor for Linux development.

I said before that one of the key barriers for a switch to a Linux desktop are the tons of applications that will only run on Windows. I also said before that a Windows emulator (such as Wine) could be helpful to run those apps, but the number of supported apps is still very limited.
As it is in Microsoft's best interest to have as much applications running on the .NET framework as soon as possible (to acceleratie the expansion of the .NET framework and runtime), many organizations will be forced to migrate their applications to this .NET framework. Which in turn makes it possible to run those applications on a Linux distribution with Mono included. So it could turn out that the rapid expansion of .NET that Microsoft is pursuing, could work as a boomerang as it opens up the possibilities of Linux (with Mono) ending Windows' desktop monopoly. And just like it is the case with Ajax, it could turn out that Microsoft started this themselves, by submitting their .NET stuff to the ECMA. Ironic again.

JBoss not Fusion-ized

2006-04-10T04:41:00.000-07:00

Despite Larry Ellison's attempts in the past, it is now safe to say that JBoss will not be Fusion-ized: today the news was announced that RedHat has acquired the open source application server producer for 350 million dollar.

When Ellison attempted to buy JBoss earlier this year, they boldly stated they were not for sale. However, RedHat succeeded in acquiring the open source company.
I think this news will create some disruption in the open source world, as RedHat competitor Novell uses JBoss database software in its Linux distribution Suse, a key competitor for the RedHat Linux distribution. However, as JBoss is open source of course Novell will still be able to use it, but the open source model sure can create some peculiar situations, especially as at some points a product / project is acquired by a vendor.

So it is now up to RedHat to make a tasty fusion of RedHat and JBoss capabilities. And Oracle will probably target Zend even more after failing to acquire JBoss.

Taylorism in IT

2006-04-07T04:42:00.000-07:00

Recently Gartner started a blog named Unconventional Thinking, and I was particularly triggered by a posting by Richard Hunter. He expects that although the concept of scientific management dates from the early 20th century, there is great potential in it for IT to change how executives run the show. He thinks the next big wave is automation that changes the way managers, not frontline employees, work.

Personally, I do not think this is going to happen because, in fact, it already is happening. Like with so many changes that involve IT, our IT organizations show the first signs of such a type of Taylorism. The most eminent example of the practical application of scientific management or Taylorism has always been the assembly line. And what have we done the past years in IT departments? Exactly, we have created assembly lines.
What do we want when managing IT departments? Speed and predictability. Exactly the same keywords that most are used throughout scientific management.

This of course applies particularly to the operational processes of IT (some might argue that this applies for the people that do the real work). However, at the tactical and strategic level there has also been an increase in Tayloristic management principles. Corporate Performance Management (CPM) and increased data mining capabilities fuel the more quantitative way in which departments are run. Managers and their superiors agree upon key performance indicators (KPIs), and are increasingly evaluated against those.

I think technology areas such as business intelligence and service-oriented applications will benefit greatly from this evolvement, as it relies heavily on having the right information at the right time.
The increased transparency in organizations and processes allow an increased emphasis on delivering results at the highest possible level of efficiency. This will not only be for the normal workers, but also for management.

However, one of the founding fathers of this approach (actually the synonym was named after him) Frederick Taylor does not have the best of perceptions of mankind:

Now one of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type.

All I can say is that for some reason I feel that this perception of people does not fit very well with the current culture in most organizations. Also, transparency has an undeniable other effect on organizations: there is no longer an information monopoly for top management, in fact there are numerous examples where the people on the work floor outsmart the executives, because they are better informed. So my prediction is that scientific management will certainly become an increasingly popular concept in IT, but the technology it needs for further expansion, will also limit its impact, as the mirror has two faces.

ajaxWrite, LimeWire and the digital divide

2006-04-03T04:44:00.000-07:00

First there was the news last week that the much talked about web-based word editor ajaxWrite has nothing to do with Ajax as it is fully written in Firefox-proprietary language XUL (the fact that it only runs in Firefox should have raised some suspicion...). Typical case of randomly selecting a hyped term and incorporating it in the name of your product. The web service tooling arena has suffered from this before, when every small vendor incorporated the term SOA in the name of its products, and now it is time for Ajax to suffer from these effects.

Then this morning when I was stuck for 2 hours in a traffic jam, I heard the news on the radio that a Dutch newspaper took the test, and searched on the Internet for confidential information people by accident had put on the web through file sharing programs such as LimeWire. It was shocking what they found within the hour: passwords, tax declarations, application letters, resumes, passport scans and even proposals for the Dutch national security agency and the Ministry of Justice and Defense. All this by just searching for the term "confidential" (but then the Dutch word for it of course).

These two news items, that do not seem to have much in common, show that a lot of people have no clue what they are doing or what they are dealing with. As with the Ajax case, a lot of (techie) people will think they have a cool Ajax app running, while in fact it is just as proprietary as MSFTs Word for instance. The results of the ignorance of the file sharing capabilities are worse however. I am sure that all those persons put their confidential data on the web, just thought that it would be cool too if they could download the latest music or movies just like their neighbor kid, and they never intended to throw half of their private life on the net.

Everytime when I hear such news, I get the feeling that maybe in some aspects we are too far ahead in IT with our newest technology stuff. A lot of people are having trouble catching up with the latest evolvements, and because sometimes they are not fully aware of the possibilities and power of technology (as with the file sharing item), the results can be quite bad. I wrote about this before, and not only within IT we can find the problem of a divide between the front runners and a large group that has trouble catching up, but this is also the case on a macro level, in society. This is often called the digital divide, and with the increasing consumerization of IT, which will be driven by a young group of very tech-savvy consumers, I think this divide will become even greater. The results will be likewise.

2006 prediction #2: consumerization comes in most unexpected areas

2006-01-04T04:47:00.000-08:00

Gartner has recently published some research on how consumer technologies fuel innovation. Former META (which has been acquired by Gartner last year) CEO Dale Kutnick for instance has published a podcast on the power shift resulting from consumerization. Consumerization is everywhere! Web 2.0 is just a container term for all kinds of innovations / concepts / technologies that are a result of this consumerization. Very often the results are very surprising, and the idea of mashup even adds to these surprises. Major innovation does not only come from R&D departments of large organizations (either commercial or academic), but also from clever and unexpected usage from consumers. By combining (this is what mashup is about!) concepts and technologies new tools, concepts and technologies evolve.

Take this article (in Dutch) in a major Dutch newspaper for instance, about how the Nintendo Gameboy can be used to increase the engine power of scooters. It writes about how some clevers kids and mechanics found out, that with a Nintendo Gameboy you can easily read and manipulate the software and chips inside scooters. This makes it possible to erase the speed limitation which is set within the software, so that scooters can go way faster than the legally allowed 50 km/hour (in fact they can go as fast as 90 km/hour).
That's not all: not only kids and mechanics are taking advantage of this, but it has also gained the attention of scooter manufacturers, who are now developing and selling special cartridges for the Gameboy to read the scooter's technical data. They also provide special cables to attach the Gameboy to the scooter.

The above Gameboy anecdote is just an example to show how consumerization works, and that the results of the evolution can be found in the most unexpected areas. So this is my second prediction for 2006: we will see that consumerization will continue to drive innovation, and the results will be very surprising.

Is Web 2.0 amoral?

2006-01-04T04:46:00.000-08:00

Nicholas Carr has written a quite influential piece on Web 2.0, already back in October 2005. The article is titled "The amorality of Web 2.0", and Nicholas saves the beef of his article for the last part. His point is the following (please read the full article too, it's well worth it!):

The Internet is changing the economics of creative work - or, to put it more broadly, the economics of culture - and it's doing it in a way that may well restrict rather than expand our choices. Wikipedia might be a pale shadow of the Britannica, but because it's created by amateurs rather than professionals, it's free. And free trumps quality all the time. So what happens to those poor saps who write encyclopedias for a living? They wither and die. The same thing happens when blogs and other free on-line content go up against old-fashioned newspapers and magazines. Of course the mainstream media sees the blogosphere as a competitor. It is a competitor. And, given the economics of the competition, it may well turn out to be a superior competitor. The layoffs we've recently seen at major newspapers may just be the beginning, and those layoffs should be cause not for self-satisfied snickering but for despair. Implicit in the ecstatic visions of Web 2.0 is the hegemony of the amateur. I for one can't imagine anything more frightening.

In "We Are the Web," Kelly writes that "because of the ease of creation and dissemination, online culture is *the* culture." I hope he's wrong, but I fear he's right - or will come to be right.

This last part of his point, is what sociologists call cultural generalization. This is one of the aspects of modernization or modernism, along with structural differentiation (a long-winded way of saying that the world around is is becoming more complex). Sociologists have been writing about this modernization process for decades, and from the works of Marx, Weber, heck even Ritzer (author of the bestseller The McDonaldization of Society), we can only conclude that modernization and its consequences are inevitable. Considered from this view point, it is safe to say that Web 2.0 does not cause this cultural generalization, but only accelerates it. So is Web 2.0 amoral? Nah, not more than other forces driving modernization.

Movie stars and SOA

2006-01-03T04:49:00.000-08:00

This morning I read on the sys-con website that in the Harrison Ford movie "Firewall" the main character is a security expert who reads SOA/Web Services Journal. As sys-con proudly writes on their web site:

In "Firewall" SOA Web Services Journal is Jack Stanfield's favorite trade magazine where you see Harrison Ford reading the magazine in one scene and on the coffee table in his office, in two other scenes.
SYS-CON Media granted permission to Warner Brothers approximately one year ago for the studio to have Harrison Ford's character to appear with the magazine in the movie.
"Firewall" will open in movie theaters on February 10, 2006.

Two questions for all of you:

Do security experts really read Web Services Journal (WSJ) from a professional point of view, or just for fun / leisure. I like WSJ, but quite frankly to me it is not famous for its articles on security.
Can anyone confirm that Harrison is reading the issue which has my article on BizTalk 2004 in it? That would be quite something for me and a great start of 2006, knowing that Indiana Jones had a look at my BizTalk decision tree ;-).

2006 prediction #1: web service standards

2006-01-02T04:49:00.000-08:00

Back in September I wrote that web services appeared to move away from WS-* protocols and standards. Looking back now I was partly right. It is certainly so that, especially with the emergence of Ajax and Web 2.0 in the second half of 2005, other non WS-* protocols have gained attention and are used more widely. In fact, both Ajax and Web 2.0 rely more on POX (Plain Old XML) and REST, than on WS-Security, WS-Transaction or WS-I and the like. What will further happen with web service protocols and standards in 2006?

The WS-* and more lightweight standards like POX, REST and Ajax will peacefully co-exist. As being part of an SOA and featuring heavily in the attempts by major vendors to improve their SOBA's and make them future-proof, we will need a robust framework for web services. The further elaboration of the WS-* stack can provide this, so for inter-application, inter-organization and any other service-oriented application, the WS-* will still be the best pick.
However, for services that are primarily user-centric, the best pick will be REST/POX/Ajax. Use these technologies for presenting the information that is being processed using protocols and standards from the WS-* stack.

My prediction is that both the WS-* stack and its lightweight counterpart will continue to evolve and mature, and that we will learn that these are not rival standards, but rather complementary standards that will feature heavily in organizations pursuing SOA / Web 2.0 success. Whether we like it or not, Ajax and Web 2.0 concepts are here to stay, and they provide an attractive alternative for presentation functions for which WS-* is over-bloated.

My second prediction is that the WS-* stack will be start to be consolidated in 2006, and the numbers of standards for web services will rather decrease, than increase. New joint efforts from vendors and standard bodies will be started to unify competing standards. Also, standards that overlap heavily, will be slammed together to increase the simplicity of the WS-* protocols.
Still the golden rule for WS-* standards applies: use SDKs and generators as much as possible, and do not go about adopting and implementing all WS-* standards out there. Do not even attempt to grasp all of them.

Being average is NOT good

2005-12-28T04:00:00.000-08:00

Two things I found out the last weeks, have convinced me that being average is NOT a good thing for IT organizations. The first was a good piece of research by CSC, which I found by browsing Christopher Koch's blog of CIO Magazine. The research stated that companies that spend according to the average in their industry are the worst performers. Furthermore, CSC found that companies that spend much less than the average are three times more successful than those in the middle. And companies that spend much more than the average are six times more successful. How about that! I have done some benchmarks, and most of the time our client wanted to be at least average, and the first question that arises when you present the numbers is: "how are we doing compared to the others?".

The second thing I found was the distribution of CMMI certification. The Software Engineering Institute (SEI), inventor and owner of CMMI certification, published figures on appraisal results every 6 months. The september 2005 version provided some interesting and surprising results, as it showed that more than half of organizations that requested appraisal, are level 3 or above. This could suggest that level 3 is average for the industry, but I can guarantee from experience that this is definately not the case, I think the average will be at most level 2. In an earlier post I already wrote that CMMI certification can be approached in different ways, but what the figures show I think, is that organizations that generally already have a more mature process, are more eager to go for formal appraisal, than organzations who are just getting started with their process. Our own figures indicate that the distribution of CMMI levels are:

Level 1: 50-60%
Level 2: 25-30%
Level 3: 10-15%
Level 4+: <5%

Earlier I already wrote that measurement data should always be interpreted within the context in which the data was collected. This is especially the case for CMMI certification. But also, the results from the CSC research show that you should never go for average, as first of all the does not make you stand out compared to your peers, and second of all, it may indicate that you are not doing as well as you think you might. So one good plan for 2006: not being average!

Ryanair: test case for Web 2.0 business model

2005-11-14T03:02:00.000-08:00

Last week the statement by Michael O'Leary of Ryaniar, saying that within 5 years airlines will offer free flights, as revenue will come from passengers gambling while on the plane, was breaking news on some web logs and web sites (yeah I am late again with this story).
O'Leary (it remains unclear whether he had too much Guiness when making his statement) said that introducing lottery scratch cards had shown that passengers were bored and looking for entertainment. O'Leary further believes that "entertainment is where the real money will be made in the future". So he launched the idea to give away free airline tickets, as money should be made by offering gambling through mobile phones

This sounds so much like the investment thesis I discussed in my posting on a Web 2.0 business model: you give away something for free, hoping to get back something valuable for free that was once expensive. Ryanair is expecting to trade seats in their air planes, for extra revenue that will exceed the revenue that will come from selling tickets for those seats. Will this work? Will Ryanair, that gained market share by taking on a different business model than their competitors (low margins, low service versus high margins, high service), succeed in expanding their market share?

It can go either way I think: either the Ryanair case will prove that the investment thesis on which Web 2.0 is based can work in reality, or it will show that in the beginning people will get interested because something is free, but once they find out it will cost them money (maybe even more than just buying a ticket) anyhow, they will lose interest and go for the safe bet (no pun intended ;-) ). Maybe it will only attract the kind of people you do not want to be on the plane with, but I must admit that I find it quite interesting what Ryanair is trying. At least it shows that they dare to be creative when looking for new ways to increase their revenue.

Should you embrace the Web 2.0 business model?

2005-10-10T02:54:00.000-07:00

It is always interesting to try to integrate two trends that seemingly do not have much in common at a first look. I got the idea for this blog posting when I was reading the very detailed article by Tim O'Reilly on The Web 2.0. On page four, he refers to an investment thesis on Web 2.0 by Paul Kedrosky. What he writes in his thesis is the following:

Another way to look at it is that the successful companies all give up something expensive but considered critical to get something valuable for free that was once expensive. For example, Wikipedia gives up central editorial control in return for speed and breadth. Napster gave up on the idea of "the catalog" (all the songs the vendor was selling) and got breadth. Amazon gave up on the idea of having a physical storefront but got to serve the entire world. Google gave up on the big customers (initially) and got the 80% whose needs weren't being met.

Now let's get back to April 2005, when I blogged about Microsoft and Open Source. Now, 6 months later, not much has changed on the MSFT / OS situation. There is still some intiatives from the Open Source community to create tooling for .NET, but it remains doubtful whether the combo of MSFT and open source will ever really take off, as there is so much cultural differences between OS developers and MSFT developers, and there is a lack of Microsoft focus in the higher education research, traditionally a cradle of many OS initiatives / innovations. Not much news here then.
What has changed though, is that Web 2.0 is in the center of attention, and that for the first time in a long period Microsoft is not the dominant player it once was and they admit/know it. Could they turn the tide by fully open-sourcing the C# language for instance? Should they give the full .NET framework to the IT / OS community? Have they investigated this possibility? MSFT's arch rivals (when it comes to development) Sun have taken the strategy to open-source all their new products / initiatives, so you could say that they have embraced the Web 2.0 business model. The same goes to a certain extent for IBM, who are actively participating in OS initiatives, although they still make a lot of money on licences for WebSphere for instance.

IT companies should ask themselves two key questions:

Should we adopt the Web 2.0 business model (in which the open source business model fits to a certain degree), where we give up something expensive but considered critical, hoping to get something valuable for free that was once expensive? (take into consideration that this could be a huge risk!)
If we do so, just exactly what should we give up? Is open-sourcing one of our products (maybe all?) enough, or should we come up with something different, as more and more companies are open sourcing their offerings.

This in fact could be one of the main challenges for CEO's and CIO's of IT companies / vendors in the next couple of years, and it goes beyond the open source discussion.