Archive for the ‘Web 2.0’ Category

The 4th Wave of computing…. is a (cirrus) cloud

The recent Xconomy Forum – The Realities of Cloud Computing, brought together thought leaders from all aspects of IT advancement: Big companies and startups; investors and educators; scientists and authors; and we discussed and debated the realities of commodity reliable infrastructure to serve the needs of all businesses and consumers.

The cloud, driven by four big things, none of which are hype, and all of which are changing the way we compute.

  1. Power and cooling are expensive. Today, it costs far more to run computers than it does to buy them in the first place. To save on power, we’re building data centers near dams; for cooling, we’re considering using decommissioned ships. This is about economics and engineering.
  2. Demand is global. Storage itself may be cheap, but data processing at scale is hard to do. With millions of consumers using a service, putting data next to computing is the only way to satisfy them.
  3. Computing is ubiquitous. We’ve lost our desktop affinity. Most of the devices in the world that can access the Internet aren’t desktops; they’re cell phones. Keeping applications and content on a desktop isn’t just old-fashioned — it’s inconvenient.
  4. Applications are built from massive, smart parts. Clouds give developers building blocks they couldn’t build themselves, from storage to authentication to friend feeds to CRM interfaces, letting coders stand on the shoulders of giants.

Many parallels have been drawn between the dawning age of cloud computing, and Bill Gates retirement from Microsoft last week. One era passes to the next: the 3rd wave of computing, which was dominated by heavy client server applications and a legacy IT mindset, is now shifting to the 4th wave, which is embracing on-demand infrastructure and applications that deliver just-in-time functionality at a reasonable cost. This is the beauty and the promise of cloud computing to solve more and more IT pain points. All the while preserving security and reliability to the satisfaction of more and more enterprises looking to leap ahead of the status quo.

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Posted by Greg Arnette on June 26th, 2008

Sonian is your cloud-compute data fortress

Cloud computing is here. The hype is turning into reality. The key to harnessing the power of the cloud is to create a moat around your data silo and know only you have access to the information. Enterprises should use services that surround your data with a security blanket. In the Sonian case, the “security blanket” is a combination of SSL and AES technologies. Think of Sonian as a virtual extension of your own data center in the cloud. This is the best of both worlds: Get the benefit of cloud computing reliability and scalability without the concerns of losing control of your data.

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Posted by Greg Arnette on June 11th, 2008

Is Twitter's popularity rising due to email's failings?

Newsweek says “Suddenly, it seems as though all the world’s a-twitter.” That seems true these days, at least in the “web 2.0″ tech sector. And as the micro-blogging service that asks a simple question “what are you doing” gets more popular, the quality of service is waning to the point the fervent users are demanding action and accountability for a free service they have become dependent on using for their micro-casting life-stream-updates.

One reason for sure that folks are gravitating to Twitter is the service is easy to use and universally accessible on the web and mobile devices. This reminds me of another “service” that is on the web and mobile devices: email. But email has become compromised with spam and junk that makes the mailbox a scary place.

Twitter’s success reminds of Blackberry’s early days in financial services and how the device forever changed the way people could have access to their email and remain in contact with their colleagues via email.

Is our collective email experience becoming so much less desirable that other services like Twitter will take hold and displace the traditional inbox? To be continued…..

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Posted by Greg Arnette on May 23rd, 2008

Microsoft to reveal its "cloudy" future

Several announcements are expected soon about Microsoft’s plan for SaaS, hosted, cloud-compute, etc. product offerings. To date Microsoft has talked about a “software-plus-services” strategy that blends installed Windows desktop applications with a hosted component. This is a safe way to begin the process to embrace cloud compute without destroying the existing revenue pipeline of Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange.

We already know Microsoft has a service called Microsoft Online which offers managed PC desktops and will soon add hosted Exchange and Sharepoint to the menu. For quite a while now, Microsoft has been managing the desktops as a service provider for Energizer Holdings and XL Capital. Now smaller companies will be able to subscribe to these offerings.

It is still unclear where the channel partner fits in this new “direct to customer” world. Microsoft Online doesn’t mean there is no role for its channel partners, but clearly something will have to change in this new SaaS-y world.

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Posted by Greg Arnette on March 3rd, 2008

Mozilla Messaging Takes Flight

David Ascher announced on his blog the name of the new Mozilla spin-out that will focus on developing and marketing the Thunderbird email client. Mozilla Messaging, the new company, will take Thunderbird to new heights.

Despite all this initial enthusiasm, there are some larger questions that need to be answered: such as is there really a need for another desktop email/calendar/PIM software client? Does the rise in popularity of Gmail and hosted collaboration apps negate the need for thick clients? and can Mozilla Messaging succeed where the Chandler Project could not? Maybe.

Chandler is an ambitious open source project to create an alternative to Outlook. Thunderbird has the same mission statement, but a better code base and an actual shipping product, with a world-wide audience. Chandler has yet to ship v1.0 after many years in development. So they are behind in terms of a real audience. The Thunderbird audience of enthusiastic users is definitely a plus for Mozilla Messaging.

With Web 2.0 getting a lot of attention these days, desktop client software should be thought of, in a larger sense, as connected to a web service component for easier data portability and accessibility. This is the real power Mozilla could bring to messaging: totally up-end the e-communications market with a slick cross-platform client connected to a hosted infrastructure that offers server-based processing and centralized content storage, all from a user-centric view point, not tied to one specific service provider. Marrying Thunderbird to a “personal” cloud-compute account seems very interesting.

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Posted by Greg Arnette on February 20th, 2008

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