Name: Krishnan

Web Site: http://www.krishworld.com

Bio: Krish dons several avatars including entrepreneur in exile, analyst cum researcher, technology evangelist, etc.. His research spans many high impact topics in the fields of Open Source, Cloud Computing and the interface between them. Krish also evangelizes Open Source and Cloud Computing on various media outlets, public speaking and blogs. Krish is part of a boutique analyst firm that offers strategic advise to both Cloud Computing and Open Source vendors. They also help buy side businesses take advantage of Open Source and Cloud Computing.

Posts by :

    Can OpenSocial Be Resurrected In The Enterprise?

    February 3rd, 2012

    Picture Credit: Picupper.com

    For most of the pundits out there in valley, OpenSocial is dead and meaningless. However, at Lotusphere 2012 last month, IBM was highlighting how they have used OpenSocial in their image makeover towards Social Business. They have relied on OpenSocial for activity streams and gadgets. When I was speaking to Suzanne Livingston from IBM if she anticipates OpenSocial to be resurrected inside the enterprises (which I personally think is going to be the case), she sounded affirmative. I thought I will do a brief post highlighting this view and get the feedback from other pundits.

    Remind me, what is OpenSocial?

    Simply put, OpenSocial is a set of APIs (containers) that helps add social component to web services/applications (for example, activity streams are a good example of this) and also in integrating different web pages by using OpenSocial Gadgets. For “interactions” that are not done using the browser, it also offers a REST API. Google threw OpenSocial as an alternative to a walled garden like approach taken by Facebook few years ago. Then Google didn’t have a social DNA and this move was seen as a hail mary pass to stop Facebook from getting a run away lead in social. However, it didn’t get enough traction in the consumer side and Facebook did run away with the kind of lead which Google feared at that time.

    However, as the so called consumerization of enterprise started to happen and enterprise applications started getting socially aware (a core attribute as I have pointed out in this position paper), OpenSocial looked like a great opportunity for enterprise software companies. From Atlassian to Jive to IBM to SAP, many companies were embracing OpenSocial for injecting social DNA into their software. OpenSocial did start to gain traction in the enterprise.

    Even though Lotusphere was all about IBM’s Social agenda, I didn’t fail to notice how effectively they have used OpenSocial to make their applications socially aware. In short, IBM has bet heavily on OpenSocial and I don’t expect them to go back from this moment onwards. They have tied their social future so closely with the future of OpenSocial.

    But will it accelerate?

    However, things are changing on the consumer side. Facebook has a strong runaway lead and Google is trying to catch up with their own approach to Social, Google+. This time they are doing few things right and Google+ seems to be gaining traction. Google+, even though it doesn’t have a good set of APIs at this moment, is built on top of OpenSocial and the relative success of Google+ is going to keep them heavily engaged in the OpenSocial community even as Larry Page keeps pruning their own services. Also, Google wants to take Google+ to enterprises and their approach with Google Apps offers some insight into where they are heading. If they want to really get some traction for Google+ on the enterprise side, they have to make Google+ the “social messaging bus” for enterprise application. It implies that they need to invest more on OpenSocial efforts. When you have companies like IBM and Google focussing their energies on OpenSocial, there is a very high likelihood that it will gain further traction and get further adoption. I am always in favor of open standards and I am realistically optimistic about the chances for OpenSocial in the enterprise. What do you think?

    disclosure: IBM took care of my travel and stay for Lotusphere

    The article was originally posted @ CloudAve

    No Comments "

    Follow-Up Post: TweetChat On Cloud Computing For SMBs

    February 3rd, 2012

    On Jan 26th, we had a TweetChat on Cloud Computing for SMBs with the support of Dell and TrendMicro. The idea behind the TweetChat was to make SMBs understand how they can benefit from Cloud Computing. The biggest obstacle to SMBs adoption of cloud computing was summed up in a tweet by an user @clinfoot.

    @krishnan #dellcloudchat I can define cloud computing in 13 characters. Misunderstood.

    Yes, misunderstood is the right term. If anything, SMBs should be embracing cloud based services in large numbers but we are seeing some resistance still. In that sense, this TweetChat served as an eye opener for SMBs. We had a pretty good participation with folks from both the vendor and buyer side chipping in. There were some really good questions raised during the TweetChat and I thought I will pick five of them and answer here in this blog post.

    1) Are cloud systems becoming a part of an organization’s overall ITstrategy? If not, should they be a part of it?

    Though we are still in the early days of the cloud adoption, we are seeing more and more organizations bringing cloud computing to be part of their IT strategy. I would even claim that use of cloud based services will turn out to be a competitive advantage in most situations.

    2) Can the cloud really make life easier for SMBs? If so, how? What are some first steps you would recommend?

    Yes, cloud makes life much easier for SMBs. In fact, it goes even further and offers SMBs an opportunity to use enterprise level IT at a cost affordable to SMBs. The first steps SMBs should consider before moving to cloud are the following.
    Check which applications can move to the cloud without disrupting your business workflow. In some cases, you may even gain some long term advantages even with some short disruption. Identify these applications as the first ones to move to the cloud
    Have a fool proof data migration plan

    These are the two essential first steps for any organization to consider.

    3) What are SaaS, PaaS and IaaS? What are the major differences between them and what are advantages and disadvantages of each for SMBs?

    SaaS, known as Software as a Service, is nothing but application delivered as service. Some of the well-known examples are Gmail, Salesforce CRM, Workday, etc. The advantage of SaaS for SMBs is the availability of application for consumption via internet using devices such as laptop and mobile devices. The subscription model associated with PaaS helps SMBs in a big way. PaaS, known as Platform as a Service, is the application development and deployment platform. Examples include Heroku, CloudFoundry, Engine Yard, etc. With PaaS, SMBs can develop and deploy applications without worrying about the infrastructure operations. IaaS, known as Infrastructure as a Service, is the availability of compute infrastructure delivered as a service. Amazon Web Services, Rackspace Cloud, etc. are good example for this category. IaaS lets SMBs get unlimited compute power for the time they need and only pay based on their usage. This offers them to have IT capabilities similar to large enterprises without incurring the capital costs associated with these activities.

    4) What are some of the biggest values cloud gives the SMB?

    There are many advantages to SMBs but the two I want to highlight here are:

    • Business Agility
    • Cost Advantages

    5) What are some common compliance regulations that SMBs must be sure to look for in cloud systems?

    If your business is required to be compliant with any regulations, please make sure the cloud provider is also compliant to these regulations. Even if your organization is not responsible for any compliance, it is important that you check the cloud service providers’ terms to ensure that you own your data and not the cloud provider.

    To emphasize once again, SMBs should embrace cloud without any hesitation and it will offer them competitive advantage. As I finished my tweet chat, I want to end this blog post with the mantra “Leverage the cloud but control your destiny”.

    No Comments "

    IBM’s Worklight Acquisition: Few Thoughts

    February 2nd, 2012

    Image representing IBM as depicted in CrunchBase

    Image via CrunchBase

    Two days back IBM announced their plans to acquire Worklight, the Israel based mobile development platform, to beef up their enterprise mobile strategy. IBM realizes that in this era of BYOD/Consumerization of IT, they need to had a strong mobile strategy supporting various platforms. In fact, at the recent Lotusphere 2012 conference, IBM showcased their mobile strategy. They have built mobile apps that offer seamless feature set across different mobile platforms, a core attribute I highlighted in my position paper on enterprise software. IBM understands the need to have a development platform that will help enterprises and ISVs implement this core attribute in their applications.

    With the Worklight acquisition, they can now offer a mobile development platform that will let enterprise IT or ISVs write hybrid apps that can work seamlessly with IBM’s enterprise offerings. Worklight platform is pretty powerful and versatile offering wide range of features including

    • an easy way to develop HTML5, Hybrid and Native apps.
    • allows for code reuse, pretty important in enterprise development
    • an easy and secure way to deliver these applications
    • an integrated feature to manage mobile and infrastructure

    It will be interesting to see how it plays out and I hope I get to see some numbers on how this development platform is used by the enterprises and other ecosystem partners.

    Related articles

    The article was originally posted @ CloudAve

    No Comments "

    Future Of GlusterFS – From Open Core to Open Source

    January 30th, 2012

    Picture Credit: Gluster.org

    In October of 2011, Red Hat (previous CloudAve coverage) announced the acquisition of Gluster, the company behind GlusterFS (previous CloudAve coverage) open source distributed storage solution. Even though Red Hat is a company based on open source philosophy, there were questions about what is in store for GlusterFS under Red Hat. Last week Red Hat held a webinar where they talked about their plans for GlusterFS and it is turning out to be similar to another Red Hat story, Fedora Project.

    What is GlusterFS?

    GlusterFS is an open source POSIX compliant software based storage solution that can be slapped on top of commoditized hardware pool that can scale on demand. It can easily scale out to petabytes and has high throughput comparable to other enterprise grade proprietary systems. It can be deployed either on premise or on public clouds. Since it is POSIX compliant, it can easily fit into an existing IT environment. GlusterFS has gained widespread global adoption with more than 300K downloads from 45 countries. To recap, some of the features of GlusterFS include

    • Distributed Storage with global namespace
    • High Availability
    • Geo-Replication
    • Self-Healing

    etc..

    GlusterFS was born due to the need for a low cost, highly scalable distributed file system that is also future proof. Since then, a company was formed around the platform and they could successfully monetize using an open core approach. Since it was open core and they required the copyrights to be assuaged to Gluster, there was very little participation from the open source community.

    What is Red Hat’s plan for GlusterFS?

    Red Hat is planning to make GlusterFS more towards open source than open core. The idea is to make GlusterFS bigger than Red Hat and be community driven. It will open up the collaboration in a big way with increased outside participation. Unlike before the acquisition where the commercial Gluster products had all the features of open source GlusterFS, there will be a shift under Redhat. Open Source version of GlusterFS will be the upstream to the commercial Red Hat storage. Much like RHEL to Fedora Project, Red Hat storage will have fewer features than GlusterFS but will be hardened, more secure and thoroughly tested. To put it bluntly, GlusterFS will first be tested on the free users before a robust and mature system is offered to paying customers. In a way, it is a win-win situation for the users of open source software. Depending on the license terms, we may even see a CentOS equivalent of the mature Red Hat Storage product.

    Conclusion

    It is a smart move from Red Hat to take the Fedora Model. It not only gives them a very good testing ground in the form of smaller organizations who will deploy the apps for free but it will also help them reach larger enterprises with a more mature and secure product. As large organizations enter the big data age, GlusterFS gives Red Hat a strong play as they take their end to end open source solution to the enterprises. With HDFS compatibility coming in GlusterFS 3.3, due later this year, Red Hat has a very good big data story to push. The 2-3 years will show if this strategy is going to help Red Hat in the big data age.

    Related articles

    The article was originally posted @ CloudAve

    No Comments "

    IBM’s Social Agenda

    January 26th, 2012

    Last week IBM hosted the annual Lotusphere event at Orlando. Last year, they made a strategic shift and started pushing heavily on the idea of Social Business and followed it up this year by not only brining last year’s announcements into fruition but also moved out of the Lotus brand to remove any legacy tag the name might bring in. Overall it was an impressive show put up by IBM and I will dig in a bit more on what I heard during the show.

    First a brief look at the announcements

    IBM is moving IBM LotusLive, business collaboration tools that enabled collaboration, into the IBM SmartCloud for Social Business brand. Lotus brand is deeply tied with the legacy applications and IBM hopes that the new brand not only gives them a chance to push hard in the cloud but also helps remove them from the legacy umbrella in the market. However, IBM is still continuing with their legacy products hosted inside the organizations but their next version will bring many of the features in social and mobile that are usually associated with cloud based applications. Most of the announcements made during the conference centered around IBM Connections, their social business platform. Announcements like activity streams, contextual information through OpenSocial, mobile support, integration of connections to notes, etc. brought IBM’s solutions to meet the needs of modern enterprises.

    First, why I am excited

    As I believe in the great compute convergence of cloud computing, mobile, social and big data, IBM’s strong social push during Lotusphere 2011 excited me. This year they showed the world that their social talk is not talk but they are very serious about it. Their IBM Connections Next platform, even though it will not be generally available till summer, has been architected in a way similar to message bus used in development platforms. While talking about Social as one of the core attributes for an enterprise cloud application, I argued that social features should be deeply integrated to all the dimensions of enterprise cloud applications (applies to all of enterprise software if social is going to be a factor) and it should extend to third party applications in the ecosystem. IBM connections is well architected to meet these needs of modern day enterprise software. Their use of activity streams and OpenSocial standards makes IBM connections truly modern. Even though Lotus Notes is predominantly used by IBM customers, I could see that IBM is taking necessary step to help them move away to modern day social tools. The integration of IBM Connections Next to Notes is the first step in this regard.

    IBM also signaled that they see cloud based enterprise applications as the future and they are taking steps to push it hard in the coming years. I see their renaming of LotusLive to IBM SmartCloud for Social Business as a first step in this direction. Their integration of IBM Connections platforms to all the applications in their LotusLive Suite shows seriousness of their social business push. The way they have integrated social to LotusLive Symphony, cloud version of their Lotus Symphony product which I talked about last year, bodes well for their Social Business vision. Their seriousness about betting their future on cloud was evident from the fact that they were pushing their client Newly Wed Foods both on their website and during analyst briefings. I had a chance to talk to the person responsible for Social Business rollout and I will be doing a case study in the future based on what I understood during out conversation. But I have to tell you that their existing clients like Newly Wed Foods who want to take advantage of social and cloud, will help IBM in the cloud based future. Organizations like them want to take advantage of benefits offered by cloud, mobile and social technologies but want the assurance of a company like IBM before they roll out. I will dig more into this point when I do the case study sometime in the near future.

    Another interesting aspect of IBM’s announcements is about their plans to tightly integrate analytics on top of social data. While talking about the next iteration of PaaS, I highlighted the importance of a powerful analytics engine in the future PaaS offerings. IBM is approaching PaaS from the applications side by integrating analytics engine tightly with the organization’s data (social and others). If they execute it right, this will be one powerful platform in IBM’s kitty which will keep them as an important player in the years to come.

    But

    After talking about why I am excited with the direction IBM is taking, it is time to point out to the hurdles they are facing. As in the case of companies having a baggage from the traditional IT world, IBM is finding it difficult to disrupt themselves even though they show their intent to do so. Their announcements related to Social and Cloud clearly indicate their eagerness to disrupt themselves and be relevant in the future enterprise market. However, the biggest obstacle to such an evolution is going to be their sales team. It is going to be difficult for IBM to convince their sales team that they should sell low margin cloud solutions instead of high margin legacy solutions. Even if they manage to convince their sales side about it, it is going to be difficult for IBM to convince the younger Youtube generation about their services. There are two reasons for this and, in fact, I was highlighting this in my discussions with someone from their Sales team.

    • It will be difficult for IBM to change the perception with this generation. Most of them see IBM as a legacy vendor. Their continued push for legacy software (which they have to do till organizations are comfortable with the cloud) will make them attractive for the younger generation
    • More importantly, the younger generation don’t want the IT to dictate them on their compute resource consumption. They want to try out the newer solutions first before they can accept IT’s mandate to use any new technologies. Also, in many organizations, IT realizes the value of newer technology (it happened with open source, it happened with social and it also happened with cloud computing) only after many in their organizations use as a part of day to day activities. The reason why modern applications from startups or even infrastructure solutions from Amazon Web Services are famous with this group is because of the ease of access. They could go to their website and try out the services for free or by swiping their credit card and paying much less than their daily coffee consumption. This ease of access helps these modern compute resources get adopted in enterprises against the marketing and sales push by traditional IT vendors. IBM gets a F grade on ease of access and hence they are finding it difficult to get the attention of Youtube generation. I highlighted this fact to the Sales person who asked me how they can get the AWS and Rackspace users for their cloud offering and, also, to the IBM executives whose attention I could grab.

    So

    Believe me. IBM has got the technology right. Their social platform is very well architected and they have powerful analytics platform which they can use to build futuristic platforms which developers will use to build self organizing intelligent applications. However, they have a big image problem with the Youtube generation. They need to fix that fast because these are the people who will become decision makers in the coming decade. I am cautiously optimistic about IBM because technology problem is the difficult part and they have managed to get it right. If the top management really focus their energy on fixing this image problem, IBM will stay highly relevant for decades to come (just like how they managed to stay afloat for one century).

    Disclaimer: IBM took care of my travel and stay during the conference.

    Related articles

    The article was originally posted @ CloudAve

    No Comments "

    Tibbr Leaps Forward With GEO Feature And HTML5

    January 25th, 2012

    Tibbr (previous CloudAve coverage), Tibco’s social tool competing with the likes of Chatter, released a new version, Tibbr 3.5 with two new features which makes the product pretty hot in the market. In fact, I have been pretty impressed with Tibbr by the time it came into the market. Unlike many companies who were totally clueless (then) about how to do social in the enterprise segment, Tibco had the right approach from the beginning. Today’s release goes on to confirm that Tibbr is one step ahead of all their competitors in the Social Business game.

    The two new features in Tibbr 3.5 that makes the platform really interesting are:

    • Tibbr GEO: This is foursquare turned upside down for the enterprises. Unlike in the case of consumer oriented foursquare, Tibbr GEO taps into users’ location and offers contextual information from the data available for the location. Organizations can easily tag different locations and add all the relevant data. As the user approaches a specific location, he/she is presented with all the information useful for the user. For example, airlines or airports using Tibbr can turn a gate into contextual relevant data hub to give agents, pilots and flight attendants critical insights as they approach the gate. In fact, the possibilities are endless with such a feature and organizations can take advantage of this feature to provide their increasingly mobile workers all the relevant data to make them more efficient and productive.
    • Tibbr Mobile: Tibbr mobile is now leveraging HTML5 to offer a consistent mobile experience across all mobile platforms (which we have defined as one of the core attributes of any enterprise cloud application). This is a hybrid app that leverages both HTML5 and native apps to offer a very consistent mobile experience across mobile devices of all form factors. They have also added offline support making it useful for users in the absence of internet connection

    Check out this video on the new GEO feature. This is pretty interesting and useful feature in Social Business.

    Though Salesforce’s Chatter, IBM Connections, Yammer, etc. are doing a great job in making their social platform more useful for enterprise users, I feel that Tibbr always stays one step ahead of the other players. In less than a year since their launch, the platform has matured a lot and it will be interesting to see the kind of adoption they are getting with Tibbr. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to take their briefing call but I will talk to them about adoption in the future and report back. I love competition in the market and these companies vying for enterprise attention are going to compete against each other by innovating hard. In this regard, today’s announcement by Tibbr is good for Social Business.

    The article was originally posted @ CloudAve

    No Comments "

    ServicesAngle and Wikibon Roundtable Discussion: Integration Activity Streams and Applications, Mobile Platforms

    January 24th, 2012
    Lotusphere 2012

    Image by p_a_h via Flickr

    During the recently concluded Lotusphere 2012 event, ServicesAngle and Wikibon conducted a Roundtable discussion on IBM’s various cloud, social and mobile initiatives. The participants include myself, IBM executive Suzanne Livingston, Bob Sutor from IBM, Alex Williams, Klint Finley and Jeff Kelly. It was a good discussion. They had the roundtable live (and recorded it) using Google+ Hangouts. There were some technical glitches because they are doing it using this tool for the first time but it has come out pretty good. Check out our discussion in this video.
     


    No Comments "

    SOASTA Ready To Help Enterprises Embrace A Mobile Dominated Future

    January 23rd, 2012

    Image representing SOASTA as depicted in Crunc...

    Image via CrunchBase

    SOASTA (previous CloudAve coverage), Mountain View based cloud testing company, today announced the availability of performance and functional testing for continuous multi-touch, gesture based mobile applications. It is based on their TouchTest technology and offers precision testing of such mobile platforms while also ensuring stability of automated tests across releases. Right now it is available for iOS and Android devices and they might expand to other platforms over time.

    There are two trends that are gaining traction in the enterprise IT due to what pundits call as consumerization of IT. These two trends are going to fundamentally alter how organizations work in the coming years. They are:

    • Availability of cloud based applications on all mobile platforms either as a native application or as a mobile web application (or both in some cases). In fact, in the position paper I published last week, I have argued that such a mobile support is one of the core attributes of any modern enterprise application.
    • We are seeing increased funding for startups that build “mobile first” enterprise applications. As I have noted in my position paper, the application consumption model in the enterprises has fundamentally changed. Instead of using a desktop based monolithic applications, users are consuming functionalities from many different devices, mostly from smartphones and tablets.

    These two trends not only add pressure on enterprise software vendors to test their applications thoroughly on many different devices but they should also make sure that the experience is seamless irrespective of whether their users are in the headquarters or somewhere on the other side of the globe. Cloud testing platforms, like the one built by SOASTA, offers a great way for these vendors to test their applications. With more and more mobile adoption, it becomes an imperative for vendors and ISVs to test their applications on various mobile devices. Enterprise users not only expect to use the pre-packaged applications with their mobile devices but they expect any custom applications to work seamlessly on such devices. As iOS and Android devices sell much faster than desktops and laptops, organizations are forced to test their custom built apps for seamless experience across the devices. SOASTA, with this new TouchTest Technology, is well positioned to grab a large chunk of this market.

    SOASTA is also announcing the SOASTA “Private Device Cloud,” a low-cost way of using the devices you already own to test end user experience from real devices around the world.  It enables enterprise companies to use their own mobile devices, including employees’ existing devices, in their own private test network. With this new release, the CloudTest Platform delivers a complete solution for performance and functional test automation of mobile apps across real, distributed mobile devices.

    Related articles

    The article was originally posted @ CloudAve

    No Comments "

    Next Iteration Of PaaS: Will Amazon Join That Race?

    January 20th, 2012

    I have been critical of “me too” approaches to PaaS by current breed of PaaS providers and have been calling for some differentiation which will take innovation to the next level. Some people have been asking me how the next generation of PaaS will look like. I have framed a simple model to explain where the next iteration will take PaaS but haven’t published it so far because I still haven’t tightened some loose ends in the model. With Amazon releasing DynamoDB this week, I thought I will just push the idea into the wild and use the feedback to tweak my model. The result is today’s post and I am expecting a barrage of criticism to my claims here which will help me fine-tune my ideas.

    A simple model for PaaS v1

    Even though individual PaaS services/software may differ in how they are architected, most of the current iteration of PaaS players can be modeled, in a simplistic way, as shown in the diagram below. Keep in mind I am trying to portray a simple picture to make a point and please don’t pounce on the nuances that are missing in the following diagrams.

    PaaS v1

    The current PaaS layer completely abstracts the complexities associated with the infrastructure underneath and offers a very simple interface for developers to deploy their applications. The PaaS layer encompasses runtime frameworks, messaging services, data stores, monitoring services, etc.. Even though different PaaS services/software allows the use of different types of data sources based on the application needs, the data component (for all practical purposes) is “integrated” in the PaaS layer itself. The action in today’s PaaS mostly lies in this integrated layer that abstracts away most of the complexities underneath from the developers. This lead to the current bunch of PaaS players scrambling to add support for many languages, many cloud providers, different messaging services, different data sources, etc.. However, in the next generation of PaaS I am hoping to see in the coming years, the action will be centered around the data with the current PaaS layer relegated to the background just like what happened, in a way, to the middleware in the traditional development model.

    A simple model for PaaS v2.0

    In the next iteration, the entire action will be centered around the power of data. Instead of data sources being one of the many components of today’s PaaS system, the next iteration of PaaS will be dealing with a more powerful “Data as a Service”, which will include data sources, data cleaning tools, data management tools and, more importantly, a very powerful analytics engine. It is this analytics engine that will sitting on top of the data components which will make data as a service vital component to the IT of the future. The applications we will have then will be much different from the ones we have today. These next-gen applications will not just be consuming/producing raw data like today’s applications. The next-gen applications will be consuming the insights gained from the data it produced, fine-tune itself and produce better data. These data, in turn, will be fed into the associated analytics engine which, in turn, will offer better insights to the application which will, again, fine-tune itself to produce even better data. This cycle will continue with better data being produced as more and more good data is collected. Essentially, this will lead applications to self organize itself to become more intelligent applications.

    In order to build these next-gen applications, we need next-gen PaaS which has the “Data as a Service” component tightly integrated within. Yes, we are seeing some analytics components that are built on top of different data sources like MongoDB, etc.. Some may even argue that these can be plugged into the current version of PaaS to get what I am talking above. Even though it is possible, I don’t think it will be powerful enough to handle the needs of next-gen organizations. The data as a service component I am visualizing will get their data from many different applications and most of them will be hosted on the public clouds. It may include one or more cloud infrastructure providers underneath but the interface will completely abstract away all the complexities and it will be a big firehose of data with a super powerful analytics engine sitting on the top offering actionable insights. The net result will be much different from what we can get by just plugging analytics into today’s platforms.

    With this in mind, I propose the following model for the next iteration of PaaS. I encourage you to add to it or puncture holes so that I can tweak it for the better. The model itself is not very different from the current version of PaaS but the significance lies in the presence of the all powerful “data as a service” component and the way it is interfaced with the other platform components (which includes the current day PaaS layer).

    PaaS v2

    By then we will be consuming most of our compute needs from the public clouds (though it may not be from a handful of providers as the “scarcity based economics” thinkers anticipate but it is a different discussion for a different day and I don’t want to talk here) and the idea of private PaaS as we have today will be moot.

    Where is Amazon coming into the picture?

    Already there are many companies who have clearly understood the importance of owning the data and eventually provide data as a service offering. Salesforce and IBM are clearly on track towards this end. So far, Amazon was making half hearted attempts towards this goal. With no credible PaaS play in their toolkit, they have realized that they can stay credible in the future of cloud services only if they can lock in all the data of their customers inside their cloud. With DynamoDB, Amazon is getting serious about it and if they succeed in convincing more and more organizations to put their data on this service, they will be well positioned to compete hard in the next iteration of PaaS. I think they have a great opportunity to do it. In fact, Stephen O’ Grady of Redmonk highlights this fact in his blog post.

    The most obvious advantage of DynamoDB versus its current market competition is the fact that it’s already in the cloud, managed and offering consolidated billing for AWS customers. Requiring minimal setup and configuration versus native tooling, a subset of the addressable market is likely to be of a similar mindset to this commenter on the DataStax blog.

    In fact, I would also advise you to read the comment he is highlighting regarding how lack of hosted Cassandra might help in the DynamoDB adoption.

    I am completely clueless on where Amazon is going but if Amazon has a plan for PaaS (which I am sure they have because PaaS is the future of Cloud Services), DynamoDB is the first step for them to enter the game in the next iteration of PaaS. If their agility in the cloud market is any indication, they may even iterate PaaS to the next generation much before other players. Of course, Salesforce and IBM are trying to do the same coming from the application side of the things. We will have to wait and see who gets the next version of PaaS first.

    HaHa, I told ya. Only handful of cloud providers will be in the game

    Right now, only a handful of companies are leading the push towards taking the data to their clouds and offer the data as a service component needed for next-gen PaaS. But the percentage of data they hold is minuscule compared to the data we have in this world. There is more time for innovation which will help data as a service market emerge differently. Never underestimate the diverse needs of this world. Even though the advancement of capitalism into different parts of the world removes this diversity to a certain extent, the needs of the world are still diverse enough to have multiple players in the fold. I know we are going to see a more federated approach to emerge in the data as a service market. If you ask me today how it will look, I don’t have a concrete model but I can assure you that it is going to be one of my focus areas of research this year.

    PaaS is definitely going to evolve from today’s iteration to the next one which will help in the creation of self organizing intelligent applications. There is very little innovation going on today to take the game to the next level but we will soon be seeing the shift either by some of the current day players or a complete disruption by a new kid in the town. It is still too difficult to predict when this will happen or how it will happen but it is going to happen sooner than most of us are anticipating. If you are a vendor in this space, you have to be focussing on the next steps. As far as the organizations on the buyer side, it is important to keep an eye on where the market will be in the next few years while planning the strategy for today.

    The article was originally posted @ CloudAve

    No Comments "

    TweetChat On Cloud Computing

    January 19th, 2012

    On Jan 26 2011, I will be hosting a Tweet Chat on Cloud Computing in coordination with Dell and Trend Micro. In this tweet chat, we will be covering the following topics with a focus on Small and Medium Businesses (SMB).

    1. Journey into the cloud from the perspective of a small and/or midsize business owner
    2. Types of cloud computing and how the options affect small business owners
    3. Benefits of utilizing the cloud
    4. Common questions and concerns about transitioning to the cloud/utilizing the cloud as a small business owner
    5. Securing your business on the cloud – the ins and outs of having proper security measures in place
    6. Cloud computing continuing to be a trend in 2012 as more businesses look to utilize. What small and midsize business owners watch for in terms of cloud trends and/or advances?

    The chat will start exactly at 1:00 PM Central Time and will go on for one hour. Towards the end of the tweet chat, Dell is giving away Dell Vostro 3550 loaded with Trend Micro Security Solutions. We will give more information on the giveaway during the tweet chat.

    The tweet chat will be lead by me along with folks from Dell and Trend Micro. The following Twitter accounts will be leading the chat and I encourage you to follow all the three accounts.

    The hashtag for the tweet chat is #DellCloudChat. Please use the hashtag in your tweets so that everyone participating in the tweet can follow what you are saying.

    It’s going to be an interesting discussion and I strongly encourage you to participate and offer your thoughts. Myself and other experts from Dell and Trend Micro will be there to answer any questions you might have on the topics we are discussing. If you want any further info, please leave a comment below.

    No Comments "