Bits And Buzz, by @JeremyChone

One of the biggest fears of any IT manager about cloud computing is the lack of openness. In other words, they ask, “How easy is it to get in and out? Or they might ask, “How portable is a cloud application?”

Ideally, enterprises should be able to take applications and data in or out of a cloud as business requires without having to rewrite the application or transform the data.

As discussed in the article “Don’t Get Stuck in a Cloud ,” cloud portability tends to be a factor related to the type of cloud one uses.

Here is a quick portability analysis of the three big Clouds on the market:

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Now that we have established that cloud computing is a real phenomenon that provides real technological and business value, the next question is how does it apply to the enterprise market?

To fully analyze this market opportunity, we need to realize that there are two related but different types of enterprise customers for cloud computing.

The first type is internal information technology (IT) organizations within the enterprise that are looking for more agile and cost-effective ways to manage their Internet application and services. The second type is the enterprise SaaS providers who want to leverage proven, highly-scalable architectures and integrate them into some cloud applications to increase functionality and maximize distribution.

IT and SaaS cloud customers have similar requirements but different priorities.

Here is a high-level view of some of the differences.

Mysterious, comforting, scary, and attractive are all possible adjectives to describe a cloud. Interestingly enough, this is true of all kinds of clouds, from the meteorological to the computing. During the last few years, we have a seen a proliferation of clouds forming from every corner of the Internet. Nowadays, it is very rare to see any Internet technology presentation without at least a few clouds.

So is cloud computing simply vaporware, or something tangible?

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Jon Davis posted an interesting article discussing whether the Microsoft stack is really more expensive than open source alternatives.

Jon has a point; Microsoft’s restricted (i.e., Express) editions are as free as the open source alternatives. This is undeniably true, since the purpose of many software vendor’s “Express” edition is to compete against open source on price. However, the difference is that with open source you get the full-powered editions. For example, Linux (e.g., CentOs), Xen (for virtualization), PostgreSQL/MySQL, Apache, Java, Tomcat, AspectJ, Lucene, Hibernate, and Eclipse are all robust, full-featured, and powerful technologies available for free to developers. The variety and the quality of product available from the open source community are just astonishing.

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While many see Microsoft Silverlight as an Adobe Flash killer, I actually think Adobe should rejoice that Microsoft is competing with Adobe on its own turf (i.e., media plug-ins) rather than putting all its energy, as it once did, into Web standards and innovation (IE 5.0 was the most robust and compliant Web browser of its time).

If Microsoft were to take a similar approach to the one it embraced in 1995, when it actually took the lead in Web technologies and provided the best Open Web browser implementation, new media functionalities such as video and 2D/3D would become an intrinsic part of the Web, making media plug-ins irrelevant to its future. In other word, if Microsoft were to go full Open Web (with SVG, Canvas, Smil, HTML 5, Video, and CSS3) Adobe Flash would be history in couple of years. However, Microsoft decided to follow Adobe’s plug-in strategy by forking visually rich capabilities into the plug-in world and throwing itself into a completely new market.

Why? Why follow when you can lead?

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Nowadays, building [rich] Web applications can be quite challenging, as the proliferation of Web technologies has become overwhelming and confusing. The real challenge is that many interesting new Web technologies are being promoted by various groups, and it can be quite difficult for a developer or architect to filter the practical and future-proof ones from the cool and volatile ones.

As a rule of thumb, open technologies tend to be more pervasive and longer lasting (especially for the Internet) than proprietary technologies, which tend to bring more advanced capabilities early on. Consequently, Web application developers need to be pragmatically-open, by choosing open technologies whenever possible, but also by not hesitating to use proprietary ones when required. It is not about being religious about openness or anything else, but rather about being diligent so that one is able to choose the right technology to maximize the chances of success of the target application. In other words, it should not be a personal and emotional decision, but rather a business and rational one.

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At JavaOne, Larry Ellison has made some very encouraging statements about Oracle’s commitments to Java, JavaFX, and the mobile developer market. It is certainly good news that Oracle (i.e., Larry) sees the significance of the Java platform in its integrality. However, there are many misunderstandings about the relationship between Java, JavaFX, and Android that even confuse the new Java owner. Here are some clarifications.

1) JavaFX is NOT Java.

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So, here we go again; I am starting my second venture. The first one, Sportner, did not work as expected and, thanks to some discipline, I managed to fail fast.  Learning from this great experience, I am co-starting a new one, www.ijuris.com. I will talk more about what IntelliJuris actually does later, but for today, I wanted to reiterate my core values going into this venture.

As well explained in the “Built to Last” book, core values can be a critical factor in the success or failure of an organization. Having been a player in this industry for more than 10 years now, I also strongly believe that core values need to be openly defined and shared, and we need to remind ourselves of them. They often tend to be relegated to the shadowy depths of the hiring binder or put on corporate accessories. 

 “Build to Last” also has a nice equation defining the relationship between Core Values and Core Ideology:

Core Ideology = Core Values + Purpose

I truely like this formula, and today, I will define and share our core values. They are only three of them:

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