Web 2.0 Watch

So you're moving to the cloud

Handing over your company's important business applications to a Software-as-a-Service vendor  may sound like a huge relief for your IT team's workload, but you still need to make sure that your SaaS vendor is getting the job done right.

To do that you need to insist on Internet performance monitoring as well as a clear, protective and verifiable Service Level Agreement with your SaaS vendor – you are requiring an SLA, right? Without an SLA it will be difficult to meet the expectations of your internal users and ensure that you’re  getting the online performance you are paying for.

So where to start?

Brad DeSent, president of Buffalo Grove, Ill.-based Apex Consulting Group, which advises clients on using SaaS services, said it's critical for both parties to confirm Internet and application performance to protect each of their interests.

For SaaS vendors, that means doing something proactive so they can show they are able to handle the loads that their clients are putting on the network, DeSent said. Internet performance monitoring fits that bill so that at every step of the way real-time metrics and application uptime can be accurately measured, recorded and proven for every SaaS customer and workload.

To be sure your interests are protected, DeSent recommends requiring a three-pronged monitoring strategy in your SLA:

First, make sure that the SaaS provider defines what they are using to monitor the performance and the uptime of the applications. Ask them to show you exactly how and what they monitor.

Next, have the vendor walk you through their internal alerting, escalation and communication process. "Specifically ask the provider, 'tell me about an outage that you had and how you reacted to it and how you were communicating with your clients during that period,'" DeSent said.

Last but not least, be certain that they have a recovery plan for their systems when an outage occurs, because inevitably, they will occur.

"Know what they are going to do for you," DeSent said. "This can be as simple as a one-page description of how the SaaS provider deals with the problem."

More Collaboration Tools - Part 2

Last week, I looked at the space of collaboration, and how enterprise tools were going into that area. Last week's roll call featured Jive, Microsoft's Sharepoint, and Saleforce.com's Chatter. Here are a few other tools that are establishing themselves in the enterprise collaboration space:

WebEx - Perhaps you may used WebEx in the past for online meetings as I have. It is great tool for online conference meetings. If everyone has a laptop with a camera, online meetings are a snap as long as you have the bandwidth (which is usually not a concern for most people). New features include the ability to use your smartphone to start as well as participate in a WebEx-driven conference.

A Sun program manager has said, "more than one half of our employees no longer have permanent offices", in part due to WebEx implementation. But this is one part of WebEx. There are actually three different parts to WebEx, which isn't always very apparent from their site (hint to Cisco). Besides the Meeting applications which allows for teleconferencing or classroom training and the sharing of information and documents, there is also Connect which allows for virtual team building, both inside and outside of your organization. The third part is their cloud corporate secure email, which can be integrated into the other two products.

Socialcast - Socialcast Ease (that stands for Enterprise Activity Stream Engine) is an interesting tool that reminds a bit of LinkedIn or Facebook first blush. When updating your colleagues of a change in status (referred to by Socialcast as "enterprise microblogging"), it is almost identical. The sign up demands a company domain (good luck trying to install with a Hotmail or Gmail account, you be politely prompted to enter your "work" domain). There are multiple levels of the SaaS platform that are available, starting with the free version allows the user to set up a community without muss fuss and in the cloud. The Premium Hosted level allows Socialcast to host a secure network for the user, and the Enterprise version puts Ease behind your firewall on a virtual appliance. Among its other features are a mobile application (to communicate via iPhone and Blackberry), an interesting analytics tool for monitoring and analyzing traffic, and integration with Sharepoint. This week features a new integration - integration with Outlook, allowing Ease users to add status updates via Outlook.

Sametime (Lotus) - IBM's collaboration offer is Lotus Sametime. This is a solution that bundles an integrated set of services, among them chat, file sharing, online meetings, and mobility tools, which IBM calls it's Unified Communication and Collaboration (UC) solutions. You can mash up various applications as needed on their platform. They also tout Rich Presence Awareness (RPA), which is their way of  displaying the phone/messaging capability availability of a Sametime user to others. By using the Samtime API and SDKs, this awareness can be embedded in any application. For example, a Sametime status can appear in a web application or Outlook or Word (web or desktop version). Sametime users can with go video or mobile with their collaboration. The most interesting piece of Sametime for me is Community Collaboration, which features a tool called Skill Tap, which is a request for information to a "defined set of experts", as IBM describes it. I like the idea of focused collaboration and a pool of experts that can be part of my community.

These are three different collaboration products in an increasingly crowded field. I'm sure you will find a fit with at least one of these services. I'll report on more as I come across them.

Cloud Collaboration Tools - Part 1

In the beginning,applications were stand-alone in nature, and they were good (well, some of them). But they stood alone, no real collaboration was possible. When you finished working on a spreadsheet for instance, sharing your handiwork was a two part process. First, you saved the work. Then you saved the file to a shared drive if you were lucky. If not, you sent the file to your teammate via email or floppy disk, and allowed them to edit away. We all had cute methods for noting the "before" and "after" edits. But make no mistake, it was a pain.

Then came the onset of collaboration software in the mid-1990s. Lotus led the way with Notes, which in itself was a derivative of VAX Notes, which was an internal online social community years ahead its time.

Besides Notes, Lotus added collaboration features where any annotations in a Lotus Smart Suite document could be annotated and enhanced by others, while keeping the basic integrity of the document.
Microsoft picked up on this soon afterward for Microsoft Office, and office collaboration grew.

Fast-forward to the 21st century, and the cloud's very nature makes collaboration a natural fit. In one sense, we have collaboration with the various social media tools: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs, etc. However, most of those tools were not designed with the enterprise in mind, and of there are those pesky security issues. But there are collaboration tools that are trying to merge those two worlds with increasingly sophisticated tools.

Jive - Jive SBS is a suite of enterprise-focused tools that allow for collaboration within an organization as well as the public. The idea is to take potential customers on Facebook (for example) and use SBS to direct those people to your branded community using their tags, blogs, collaboration tools and more.

Sharepoint - Microsoft's Sharepoint (SP) is a major player in this space over the last couple of years. I recently downloaded the 2010 Beta, which promises increased functionality using a feature called "Composites" , which is a way for a SP user to publish Access database info via Access Services, or connecting a SQL database through SP, to name two examples. Users can work with data offline if they so choose as well. And to think I just used it to manage IT service requests.

Chatter - Call this Saleforce's answer to Twitter (or Facebook posts). Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff was quoted as saying "I know more about these strangers on Facebook than I do about my own employees and what they're working on." Enter Chatter, which is essentially a Facebook-like application that allows Salesforce people to keep up with sales and customer service issues recorded in vendor business applications such as Oracle and SAP. With Chatter, it becomes easier to keep up with sales people and their clients.

Each of the above products are collaboration tools. While they certainly have areas of divergence, each also work in the cloud allowing for the sharing of information, and allow for diverse groups of people to work together to create solutions.

The next post will feature a brief look at a few other tools.

The Wikipedia Movement

A couple of us at Keynote recently visited with Wikimedia, the foundation that runs Wikipedia. By any measure Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites and has one of the largest and more active communities on earth.  The sheer growth in pages is staggering. Especially so in non-English content. 

I can't think of anything that comes close to its depth and breadth. BBC World Service is a distant second. And unlike other sites, Wikipedia is not blocked by the usual countries as has been the case in the past.  In fact Wikipedians are a very vocal bunch and are instrumental to keeping it accessible worldwide.  Wikipedia is probably as close as it comes to the world's meeting place (sorry Olympics, sorry UN).

Our Wikimedia hosts (Jay, Fred and Kul) were very gracious and generous with their time.  The passion and vision they espouse makes up for the small (very) budgets and staff that keeps things running.  And as they themselves stated, it is the community out there, not the employees in here that are the real force behind Wikipedia.

In this day where Gmail hacking, cyber crime and DoS attacks dominate news about the Internet, my visit served as a reminder of what lies behind the power of the Internet - openness, transparency and free access, just like Wikipedia.

Personal Reality Web

If you were already worried about what is digitally known about you, you won't want to read any further. But for the rest who care less about privacy and more about how to connect and share with friends and strangers, read on. 

Several new Web business give you the ability to tell your story, in numbers.  Blippy let's you share spending habits with everyone.  A constant stream of purchases cascades down your screen letting you see what the  Blippy community is buying that moment at specific stores.  The community can also share comments which I suppose is more useful than reading fake comments posted by those masquerading as consumers. It's the ultimate in put-your-mouth-where-your-money is.

The other site is Daytum, started by the alpha self-chronicler, Nicholas Felton.  Mr. Felton's Web-based service allows you to measure and track everything from how many coffees you've had to what streets you've walked on or how much sleep you are getting.  If you have obsessive-compulsive disorder this probably isn't a good idea for you.  But if you aspire to leave a full account of your life to posterity, the site is free and you can get started today.

For marketers this is fantastic. I can't say I get what's really in it for consumers other then the thrill of becoming less anonymous in the sea that is the Web.  We're well beyond the realm of Web 2.0 here, or even avatars & 'second life' -  this is 'Truman Show' territory, a personal reality channel broadcast in real-time. 

Web 3.0 Trends in 2010 - Did I say "3.0"?

I know, I know - there are plenty of people who haven't wrapped their heads around Web 2.0 yet so what's the rush right? Personally, I like to use the term, it is a useful handle.

Think of it as a further evolution of where we are presently. As Web 2.0 is the evolution of a PC-based world to a browser-based world, then Web 3.0 advocates assert that the next generation of the Internet will feature the semantic web (even more intelligent searches), more recommendations, more tailored data and delivered in real time.

I also believe that it means the evolution from the PC to more thin clients and mobile applications as a point of entry instead of personal computers and laptops.  Now that's a shift a long time in the making.

In that vein, Gege Gatt of ICON (a software application company based in Europe), asserts that several broad Web 3.0 trends are emerging this year.  Here's my take on it:

• Mobile Applications - Fusing mobile applications with locator software creates a lot of potential. One example would be loopt.com, which allows you to see where your mobile friends are on your iPhone. Another would be www.inMarkit.com, a digital bookmarking software that allows users to tag products and share them with friends on their iPhone, and ideally show the nearest retail outlets that carry the product.
• Interactive maps are a way to share information - we are all aware of Google Maps, but OpenStreetMap.org is taking things to the next level. Think of Google Maps meets Wikipedia. Open source mapping opens up a new useful way to look at data.
• Personal Organization - I consider this the continuation of a current trend. And an obvious one: as long as people are using smarter and smarter smartphones, the need to aggregate data from multiple streams (think Facebook, Outlook, and Twitter - all at once - I'd pay for that one) is paramount.
• Collaboration - Google Wave came and then went. (I'm not sure the strategy of dolling out invitations worked this time around.)  Companies like 280slides.net make collaboration on your favorite application, Powerpoint, about as easy as it gets.  Import your PowerPoint slides or create them in 280slides and you can get to your presentation anywhere in the world.

One other trend has been evolving for a while has been dubbed "Social Media Intermediaries" by ICON. These are add-on tools to social media products that make for a richer experience. TweetDeck would be an example as is Tweetag.org with the ability to detect trends in Tweets. Imagine a semantic real time search in the Twittersphere.

Gartner has weighed in on this trend by predicting that by 2012 over 50% of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but that internal Twitter use so to speak, will not gain much traction. This is a continuation of how Twitter is used today for outbound purposes not for internal communciations - its original reason for being. Salesforce sees potential in their version of Twitter for companies but I have to admit I'm baffled that people will use a new tool when there is a perfectly good one already establishedand available.Yet, I can see Twitter add-ons and mashups gaining traction over proprietary applications.

In the year to come, I'm looking forward to more richness of the current Web experience to be the guiding principal for many applications.

Ellison and the Cloud Rant - or was it?

When I was a college senior, I was at a career fair and at the Xerox booth, a recruiter was encouraging me to enter my information on their workstation. I said with all naivety, "Oh yeah, it's just like the Apple's we have at school".

Whoops. Mistake. Big mistake.

Xerox Guy was, to be kind, HIGHLY displeased. "No kid! It's NOT like the Apple! Apple is like OURS!" The rest of the rant...well, it was barely printable. Suffice to say that I got a rapid education in how Xerox pioneered a technology that Apple effectively marketed and expanded. Talking with others later (seems that I wasn't the first person to stumble into that bear trap), we were tempted to chalk it up to one part bitterness, and one part frustration that the pioneer gets the arrows, while the second wave of settlers makes the cash.

This fond memory came to mind when remembering one of the more interesting moments in the cloud world last year: Larry Ellison's rant again cloud computing. You can watch it here - I give this to Larry, he's entertaining whether you agree with him or not.

However, what Larry doesn't mention (why would he, he was on a roll) is that he did try a concept known as the "network computer" around a decade ago.

Here's how the NC2 was described back in 1999: "Ellison underlined the network computer's practicality, saying that upgrading the new machines will be as easy as swapping an Ella Fitzgerald CD with one by Miles Davis.

Unlike Wall Street, computing industry analysts voiced skepticism similar to concerns raised when the network computing idea was originally put forth. Kevin Restivo, an analyst at IDC Canada, predicted that Ellison will still have a tough time convincing many corporate customers that their users don't need a full-blown PC.

"He's trying to dispel the PC as a computing method, but the challenge is that there's still a level of functionality that people demand," he said.

Ironically, Ellison himself conceded that the network computer concept is somewhat overblown, as it will be used like such appliances as a television set, telephone or handheld to use the Web.

"Everybody gets so fascinated by this device," he said of the network computer. 'The interesting part is the Internet.' (Emphasis is mine.)

Sadly, the concept didn't work. Ellison lost $175 million over four years, and Oracle ended the grand experiment in 1999. But as Wired magazine said: "Just as [Ellison and Farzad Dibachi] predicted, a wave of cheap, underpowered computers with small hard drives and omnipresent Internet connections did challenge the traditional PC. Ellison’s vision of widget-based online software has become conventional wisdom. The network computer failed as a product and as a business, but it seeded an idea — and a group of technologists — that would go on to remake the computing world."

Of course this doesn't stop Oracle from working within the cloud in its own way be it with Amazon, or "grid computing", which is not considered "true" cloud computing, but for the life of me, I'm not sure why. Distributed computers acting in concert that could be geographically dispersed - hmm...

InfoWorld's David Linthicum felt that while Ellison's history lesson was factually correct, he misses the point on new cloud innovations such as IaaS and SaaS, which are great fits for the precursor thin client that Ellison attempted to sell 10 years ago.

Yes, "Cloud" is an inclusive term, but not just of technologies that existed, but of newer ones that have been developed. For example, Salesforce.com might have existed for a while before the cloud, but has laughed all the way to the bank as a SaaS, passing the $1 billion mark in revenue in 2009. Microsoft's Azure did not exist even six months ago as a IaaS (or even PaaS depending on how you view it), but it won't being going anywhere any time soon.

Larry, relax. You lost the battle, but your vision will win the war. Take a bow.

2010 is shaping up to be A Cloudy New Year...

According to the Gartner Group, 2010 is going to be the year of the Cloud. In 2010, 56.3 billion dollars were spent on cloud computing and virtualization.

The technology forecasting firm projects that by 2013, that revenue will nearly triple with $150 billion being spent on the general category "cloud services". As you can see in the chart below, the top strategic area in 2010 is projected to be cloud computing. It is instructive to note the differences in 2009 and 2010. 

The color codes are as follows: The light blue are technologies modified in 2010. The green areas are techs that are new to the Top 10. Note that Green IT, Web-Oriented Architecture and Mashups are all folded into Cloud Computing for 2010. And Virtualization, which Gartner slotted at Numero Uno last year is viewed now as Client Computing plus Data Center PLUS Availability.

If you see virtualization as one of the many services of cloud computing, then four of the top 10 slots are Cloud-related, and then you can add Social Computing (former buzzword: Social Software and Social Networking). Web 2.0 technologies are clearly dominating the 2010 forecast.

Ben Pring of Gartner has this to say:"Cloud computing is a broad and diverse phenomenon. Much of the growth represents a transfer of traditional IT services to the new cloud model, but there is also scope for creation of substantial new businesses and revenue streams” At this time, 83% of the overall market is focused on business processes delivered through the cloud.

When you consider the numbers that are being put up already, and taking into account the surveys that show that many companies (and governments) are still slow in adopting the cloud, there are fantastic growth opportunities. Example: A survey in the UK show that 81% of those surveyed recognized the value of cloud computing, but 75% of them wouldn't pull the trigger at this time due to the current economic climate.

On the other side of the globe, the analysis firm IDC stated "Future uptake of cloud computing looks strong. Over the next three years, as the use of cloud services expand from the domain of early adopters to that of the early majority, it becomes critical for IT vendors to develop strong cloud offerings, and play a leadership role in aligning their new cloud products and services with their organization, their traditional offerings, partner ecosystem, and customer and market requirements." (It should be noted that IDC had lower projected numbers for cloud growth, but foresaw large increases in cloud spending over the next few years.)

An exciting time in the Cloud world, no matter how you look at it. Services and tools, private and public are projected to explode. We'll be looking at it all year.

2009 Milestones in Cloud Computing

The last year of the Ought Decade (2000-09) was an eventful one for the cloud. Let's take a look at a few of the milestones:

• You had Amazon making headway, but also causing concerns with Amazon Web Services suffering EC2 with periodic outages, which was enough to make a CTO pause for consideration. After all, when any EC2 email address is automatically deemed spam, that isn't a very good sign that your house is in order.

• Major investment banks are looking to develop private clouds and incorporate SaaS, while the City of Los Angeles decided to take the plunge and go to the cloud with Google Apps, despite the misgivings of some. 

• At the government IT-Palooza that is FOSE, multiple governmental agencies are viewing the cloud with a mixture of hope and caution. The US government is the largest buyer technology in the world, to hear FOSE tell the story, yet Cloud Computing at the beginning of 2009 was considered a priority by less than half of those surveyed. However, the Federal Government has never been known as an early adopter - and I'm being kind. The new Federal CIO has vowed to change this mindset, and while attending FOSE, I saw many smaller federal agencies and individuals who were looking to the cloud provide inexpensive solutions to their issues.

• Cloud security emerged as the largest single concern to the proliferation of cloud solutions. A potential solution might have been found. If you are not familiar with the term "highly homomorphic encryption", you want to do so. Research by Stanford University's Craig Gentry is providing promise that data encrypted in the cloud will be secure. This solution would require enormous amounts of computing power, which is the specialty of the cloud.

• IBM entered the Cloud Wars (is that a fair term?) with LotusLive Engage, Connections, and iNotes. Meanwhile Microsoft unveiled Azure as a PaaS entry. This battle will only escalate in the years to come.

• I think it is safe to say that MySpace is so...2008. Facebook passed the 300 million mark in users; in other words the population of Planet Facebook is equal to the population of the United States of America - and growing, allowing Facebook to declare that they are now working in the black.When you see the integration of Facebook into various applications, both retail and business, it doesn't seem premature to declare a winner in this battle.

• Finally, did I mention that data security is a major concern? It bears repeating as 2009 featured the high-profile data wipeout at TMobile/Danger and their popular Sidekick cellphone. While Amazon had issues as well, the average consumer may not have been directly impacted, and world be hard-pressed to point to a inconvenience that they knew was cloud-related. But resetting your cell phone, only to find your Address Book and pictures gone - possibly forever? THAT strikes a chord. The lessons learned from this debacle will impact the perception of remote data storage for quite a while.

Who locks down your Cloud?

In a previous post, I wrote about the impact of cloud technologies in the financial services industry. The Royal Bank of Scotland is said to be moving to thin clients to better support SaaS applications, and UBS investment bank is making strides towards developing a secure hybrid cloud for part of their business. I've discussed earlier the potential advantages to such an approach. However, there is one area that is still a major concern to cloud clients.

Cloud security is the issue that concerns clients more than any one area. In fact, according to one recent survey, security concerns is the primary reason cited for hesitancy to move into the cloud. According to a LaunchPad Europe survey, nearly half of the companies surveyed cited security concerns as the reason why they would not adopt any cloud technologies in the next year. 

Additionally, Websense fired up their crystal ball, and predict that in 2010, Web 2.0 social networking sites will be special targets for attackers. Collaboration tools and Google Wave, Facebook, and Twitter especially would be special targets. This is rather natural on the face of it - any popular software that draws traffic will draw less than desirable attention. So what to do about it?

In a world where rule of law is inconsistent and hacking of financial sites and occasional attempted employee theft of information is a real threat – both UBS and Goldman-Sachs have had notable incidents recently - tight in-house control is required to keep business-critical data in-house. 

For example, in one case, a disgruntled employee attempted to sell part of the code base of business-critical software to competitors, only to be foiled by internal cyber-security (note: when downloading several gigabytes from a server, it will be noticed). One result of this is to allow only secure flash drives to be used by employees. On multiple occasions, there have been more conventional attacks from the outside. What complicates this issue is the understanding that what may be considered a felony in the US or the European Union may get a slap on the risk in other countries, which means that reward far outweighs risk. Remember the outcry over the reported widescale bootlegging of Windows and Office applications in China last decade?

There is hope on the security front though. The framework for this cloud security comes from the Sarbanes-Oxley regulations where disaster recovery and backups procedures are a matter of law. Any cloud performance and DR frameworks are guided by these principles. At this time, we don't have a firm definition of what a PCI level 1 compliance would be in the cloud - yet.

Some interesting points regarding this were raised by George Reese, founder of enStratus, a cloud management firm. In an interview on SearchCloudComputing.com, two comments really stood out to me regarding secure cloud development and the financial service case studies I mentioned. The first was this:

"I think people who are focused on 'security equals hardware assets I own or lease' are the walking dead. Owning your own assets doesn't make you secure..."

Note that the UBS idea of a private cloud goes beyond the owning of their own assets. Actually, their private cloud will allow a separate entity to own the physical assets, while the data stays in their control, and UBS owns data security.

Speaking of security ownership, let Mr. Reese elaborate:

"We've touched on the where the real security concern is, and it hasn't changed -- badly written applications and bad management policies. Those were the concerns before the cloud, and those are still the concerns in the cloud...[others] can't make you write a well-written Web application -- the only person who can do that is the developer. All hype aside...that's still what you have to be worried about."

Cloud security will require the same due diligence that a traditional setup would. I could not have stated it more simply.