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ATOM Feed
Responses to A Short Introduction to Cloud Platforms
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Friday, August 22, 2008
It’s been interesting to see the initial responses to my paper on cloud platforms, and I’m glad that people seem to find it useful. I have been a bit surprised, however, that some readers are viewing it as news about Microsoft’s direction in this area. Mary Jo Foley, for example, whose blog I read religiously, appeared to view the paper as offering insight into Microsoft’s plans for cloud computing platforms.
Sorry, but that was a non-goal. Instead, the paper presents my personal perspective, putting forth what I believe is a useful model for thinking about application platforms—on-premises and in the cloud—then illustrating that model with technologies from various vendors.
The paper was sponsored by Microsoft, so I suppose I was naïve not to think that people would read more into it. Yet the truth is that the Microsoft people who sponsored the work disagreed with me on more than one issue.
Still, the paper might stimulate discussion about the area, perhaps boosting people’s interest in advance of Microsoft’s cloud platform unveiling at the PDC later this year. In any case, I encourage you not to assume that the view I present in the paper is Microsoft’s—it’s not.
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A Short Introduction to Cloud Platforms
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Friday, August 15, 2008
Cloud platforms are an important topic. It’s a messy area, though, with lots of diverse services offered in various ways by several different vendors. To perhaps create a bit more clarity, I’ve written a short introduction to cloud platforms that tries to provide a general framework for thinking about the area.
The paper was sponsored by Microsoft, but it’s not Microsoft-specific. Instead, my goal is to look at the topic in a broad way, positioning offerings from Microsoft and other providers of cloud platform technologies in a non-partisan way. As always, comments are welcome.
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An Interview on Microsoft's Oslo
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Tuesday, July 29, 2008
A few weeks ago, I spoke with Ron Jacobs about Microsoft's forthcoming Oslo technologies. The video of our conversation has been posted here. Microsoft tells us that we'll hear more about Oslo at the PDC this fall, but if you're interested in what's currently public, you might find this useful.
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What is Software + Services?
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Sunday, June 29, 2008
Exactly what Microsoft means by the term Software + Services (S+S) can be hard to puzzle out. For a good example of the confusion this can cause, see Phil Wainewright's post earlier this year about Microsoft's S+S mantra, then read the response from Gianpaolo Carraro at Microsoft and Phil's rejoinder to that. While the exchange is interesting, I'd argue that their underlying premise is inaccurate--S+S doesn't mean what Phil thinks it means.
It's easy to assume, as Phil seems to, that S+S refers only to scenarios combining both on-premises software and cloud services. Yet when Microsoft hired me to write a (now slightly dated) paper on S+S, I learned that this isn't accurate. As part of that project, I talked with lots of people in Redmond who were working in this area. Like Phil, I began with the assumption that S+S meant using both together, something that's not all that common today (although it certainly happens, as with iTunes). The truth is that Microsoft really means something broader than this.
S+S is in fact a label for the world we live in today, where individuals and businesses use both on-premises software and cloud services. Sometimes we do use the two together, but more often we use one or the other on its own. Zealots believe that pretty much everything will migrate into the cloud, while Luddites argue that almost nothing will. Neither group is right--the future actually lies somewhere between these two extremes--and so both are important.
So if S+S is actually just a term for today's broad world, why does Microsoft promote this label so strongly? The answer is simple: It plays to the company's strengths. Every vendor wants to shape this discussion (and thus our perceptions) in ways that benefit it. Salesforce.com, for example, uses its No Software slogan to tilt our thinking toward services, while vendors without a strong cloud services focus, such as IBM, continue to emphasize their on-premises offerings.
S+S is an attractive label for Microsoft because they're strong in both areas. With Windows and .NET, they provide one of the dominant on-premises platforms. At the same time, their massive collection of cloud data centers gives them services scale on par with Google, Amazon, and Yahoo.
It's certainly true that Microsoft's revenues are tilted much more toward the on-premises world, and as Phil points out, it's a safe bet that they'll work hard to maintain their position here. As the attempted Yahoo acquisition shows, they're also trying to get bigger on the services front, a business in which they're not even close to dominant.
Still, expect the company to keep promoting its strengths in both areas. As the seismic shift to services continues, every vendor will position itself in the most flattering way it can find. S+S is Microsoft's expression of how it sees itself in a world where both on-premises software and cloud services are important.
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The State of SCA: An Update
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Friday, May 09, 2008
I moderated a panel on Service Component Architecture (SCA) at JavaOne last week. I was also the moderator for last year’s SCA panel, and several of the same people were on the panel with me this time. While the things we talked about were broadly similar, two things stand out about what's changed in a year.
The first is that SCA is real, or at least part of it is. One of the things the SCA specs define is an XML-based language called the Service Component Definition Language (SCDL). SCDL is meant to provide a vendor-neutral way to describe how components created in various technologies, such as Java, BPEL, and Spring, are configured and wired together to create applications. Vendors were showing SCDL in real products on the JavaOne floor—Oracle had an especially nice demo—and so it's clear that this part of SCA is seeing some success.
Whether SCDL will in fact provide much cross-vendor portability remains to be seen. As usual, this depends on how many proprietary extensions vendors add. Still, a standard language for describing the components and assembly of an application is a useful idea, and the signs so far are promising.
The second thing that stands out after a year is less promising: It’s the confusion around how to write SCA components. Along with SCDL, the SCA specs define how to create components using several different technologies. Yet the various SCA vendors and open source projects can’t agree on which of these to implement. SCA support for Spring components, for example, is hit or miss: some SCA offerings support it, some don’t. BPEL is much the same—Oracle is a big fan, while the open source Fabric3 currently has no BPEL support.
And just as it was a year ago, support for SCA’s new programming model for creating Java components is uneven. As I've written before, I believe that this aspect of the spec is really important--it unifies the diverse approaches of Java EE much as Microsoft's Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) unified the diverse programming models in the original .NET Framework. Yet this part of the SCA standard has always been contentious. At last year's SCA panel, for example, the SAP rep asked the audience who wants to see a new programming model for Java components and (unsurprisingly) got no hands raised. Accordingly, SAP has been a leader in defining an alternative way to create Java SCA components as EJB 3.0 session beans. This alternative is a superset of SCA's original component model, so it's not a wholly new thing. Still, the challenge for developers and decision makers is to choose among these various options, and so creating more of them is problematic.
Some existing SCA offerings, such as Fabric3, implement the original Java programming model for SCA components and apparently have no intention of supporting the EJB-based approach. SAP, by contrast, explicitly told me that they have no plans to support the original Java programming model; they're going with the EJB-based approach. IBM, ever the big tent, is supporting both.
The stated goal of SCA is to provide application portability. Widespread support for SCDL is an essential part of this, but so is agreeing on how to create SCA components. For SCA to really improve portability, the vendors and open source projects that support it need to agree on how their customers should create components. If they don’t, SCA risks becoming yet another standard that doesn’t provide much benefit to the people who use it.
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Understanding Windows CardSpace
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Do you think digital identity is important? If not, I respectfully suggest that you're wrong. Messy, yes, and in some ways hard to understand--it's a broad topic with lots of diverse aspects--but it's unquestionably important.
I believe that one of the most significant events of the last few years in identity is the advent of information card technologies. Spearheaded by Microsoft's Kim Cameron, this idea is embodied most visibly in Windows CardSpace (although there are other important implementations too, such as Higgins). If you're looking for a short introduction to CardSpace, you might read the overview paper I wrote a couple of years ago.
Even better, get a copy of Understanding Windows CardSpace: An Introduction to the Concepts and Challenges of Digital Identities. This terrific book by Vittorio Bertocci, Garrett Serak, and Caleb Baker is far and away the best introduction I've seen to CardSpace and to much of digital identity in general. The book has been out for a few months now, and while it's gotten great reviews, I don't think it's getting the attention it deserves (because nothing about identity gets the attention it deserves).
Full disclosure: The book is part of Addison-Wesley's Independent Technology Guides series, for which I am series editor. This means that I played a small (really small) part in making this book happen. I'm a huge fan of the technology, however, and of this book. You really ought to read it.
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