If you think I am here to spill the beans, you’re wrong. On a purely speculative level, if there is some news to come, and if there is an embargo related to it, then here @ CloudAve we respect that.  And it’s all a big IF.

So no, I am simply  dusting off an old post I wrote more than two years ago, and while it shows my lazyness, I am doing it in the belief that the ideas I raised back then will soon get an answer … in the right direction, albeit not exactly the way I imagined.  And interestingly enough, just about every company I mentioned will have a role in it.  Or not.  After all, it’s just speculation.  So here’s the old post:

Google’s next killer app will be an accounting system, speculates Read/WriteWeb. While I am doubtful, I enthusiastically agree, it could be the next killer app; in fact don’t stop there, why not add CRM, Procurement, Inventory, HR?

The though of Google moving into business process / transactional system is not entirely new: early this year Nick Carr speculated that Google should buy Intuit, soon to be followed by Phil Wainewright and others: Perhaps Google will buy Salesforce.com after all. My take was that it made sense for Google to enter this space, but it did not need to buy an overpriced heavyweight, rather acquire a small company with a good all-in-one product:

Yet unlikely as it sounds the deal would make perfect sense. Google clearly aspires to be a significant player in the enterprise space, and the SMB market is a good stepping stone, in fact more than that, a lucrative market in itself. Bits and pieces in Google’s growing arsenal: Apps for Your Domain, JotSpot, Docs and Sheets …recently there was some speculation that Google might jump into another acquisition (ThinkFree? Zoho?) to be able to offer a more tightly integrated Office. Well, why stop at “Office”, why not go for a complete business solution, offering both the business/transactional system as well as an online office, complemented by a wiki? Such an offering combined with Google’s robust infrastructure could very well be the killer package for the SMB space catapulting Google to the position of dominant small business system provider.

This is probably a good time to disclose that I am an Advisor to a Google competitor, Zoho, yet I am cheering for Google to enter this market. More than a year ago I wrote a highly speculative piece: From Office Suite to Business Suite:

How about transactional business systems? Zoho has a CRM solution – big deal, one might say, the market is saturated with CRM solutions. However, what Zoho has here goes way beyond the scope of traditional CRM: they support Sales Order Management, Procurement, Inventory Management, Invoicing – to this ex-ERP guy it appears Zoho has the makings of a CRM+ERP solution, under the disguise of the CRM label.

Think about it. All they need is the addition Accounting, and Zoho can come up with an unparalleled Small Business Suite, which includes the productivity suite (what we now consider the Office Suite) and all process-driven, transactional systems: something like NetSuite + Microsoft, targeted at SMB’s.

The difficulty for Zoho and other smaller players will be on the Marketing / Sales side. Many of us, SaaS-pundits believe the major shift SaaS brings about isn’t just in delivery/support, but in the way we can reach the “long tail of the market” cost-efficiently, via the Internet. The web-customer is informed, comes to you site, tries the products then buys – or leaves. There’s no room (or budget) for extended sales cycle, site visits, customer lunches, the typical dog-and-pony show. This pull-model seems to be working for smaller services, like Charlie Wood’s Spanning Sync:

So far the model looks to be working. We have yet to spend our first advertising dollar and yet we’re on track to have 10,000 paying subscribers by Thanksgiving.

It may also work for lightweight Enterprise Software:

It’s about customers wanting easy to use, practical, easy to install (or hosted) software that is far less expensive and that does not entail an arduous, painful purchasing process. It’s should be simple, straightforward and easy to buy.

The company, whose President I’ve just quoted, Atlassian, is the market leader in their space, listing the top Fortune 500 as their customers, yet they still have no sales force whatsoever.

However, when it comes to business process software, we’re just too damn conditioned to expect cajoling, hand-holding… the pull-model does not quite seem to work. Salesforce.com, the “granddaddy” of SaaS has a very traditional enterprise sales army, and even NetSuite, targeting the SMB market came to similar conclusions. Says CEO Zach Nelson:

NetSuite, which also offers free trials, takes, on average, 60 days to close a deal and might run three to five demonstrations of the program before customers are convinced.

European All-in-One SaaS provider 24SevenOffice, which caters for the VSB (Very Small Business) market also sees a hybrid model: automated web-sales for 1-5 employee businesses, but above that they often get involved in some pre-sales consulting, hand-holding. Of course I can quote the opposite: WinWeb’s service is bought, not sold, and so is Zoho CRM. But this model is far from universal.

What happens if Google enters this market? If anyone, they have the clout to create/expand market, change customer behavior. Critics of Google’s Enterprise plans cite their poor support level, and call on them to essentially change their DNA, or fail in the Enterprise market. Well, I say, Google, don’t try to change, take advantage of who you are, and cater for the right market. As consumers we all (?) use Google services – they are great, when they work, **** when they don’t. Service is non-existent – but we’re used to it. Google is a faceless algorithm, not people, and we know that – adjusted our expectations.

Whether it’s Search, Gmail, Docs, Spreadsheets, Wiki, Accounting, CRM, when it comes from Google, we’re conditioned to try-and-buy, without any babysitting. Small businesses don’t subscribe to Gartner, don’t hire Accenture for a feasibility study: their buying decision is very much a consumer-style process. Read a few reviews (ZDNet, not Gartner), test, decide and buy.

The way we’ll all consume software as a service some day.

 

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

Sir Tim Berners-Lee has been spearheading efforts to make web more intelligent and useful to people. As a part of this effort, he has been calling people to open up the data and put it on the web in an open format. Recently, at TED University, he spoke about some examples of how open data on the web has been used for many useful purposes, including a major role in rebuilding Haiti. We thought we will share the video of his talk here.
http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/TimBerners-Lee_2010U-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/TimBerners-Lee-2010U.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=788&introDuration=16500&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=2000&adKeys=talk=tim_berners_lee_the_year_open_data_went_worldwide;year=2010;theme=the_rise_of_collaboration;theme=a_taste_of_ted2010;theme=new_on_ted_com;theme=what_s_next_in_tech;event=TED2010;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;">http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/TimBerners-Lee_2010U-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/TimBerners-Lee-2010U.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=788&introDuration=16500&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=2000&adKeys=talk=tim_berners_lee_the_year_open_data_went_worldwide;year=2010;theme=the_rise_of_collaboration;theme=a_taste_of_ted2010;theme=new_on_ted_com;theme=what_s_next_in_tech;event=TED2010;" allowscriptaccess="never">
(Hat Tip: Huffington Post )CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

Here’s a 3 minute video which Windows Azure team shot when they caught me in the hallway after one of the days at the Microsoft PDC conference last November.

It is short but hopefully provides look into why we are using Azure and building our Quest OnDemand Systems-Management-as-a-Service offering.

It struck me in a lengthy discussion with an old CIO friend of mine this weekend at Big Bear Ski Resort.  As the great Mark Twain once said, “All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.”

Brandon Matthias wasn’t aware of FourSquare or Gowalla or even Google Buzz. 

Not surprising given how recent these tools have become popular with the early adopters.  But after I explained the social geo-location networks and Mayor concepts he brilliantly suggested that companies do the same. 

He believes companies should create a “Mayor” concept for the company where enterprising employees earn the right to become departmental or functional Mayors.  

In other words, create content or knowledge experts that are socially elected by their peers based on the frequency and quality of the knowledge shared.   

So in addition to expert search, you create an environment where experts self-proclaim - motivated by social recognition. 

Lesson Learned: Wisdom can be found in the oddest places.  Even places too.

(Cross-posted @ Seek Omega )

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

I guess let’s file this under sales & marketing advice.

I recently wrote a piece for Mashable on how to create a company blog.  Since it’s already written (and since I promised not to republish on my blog other than a summary) if you’re interested please have a read over there.  I have a very detailed article that covers stuff I won’t cover in detail in this post.

Summary notes and then I’ll extend:

Should you blog? Yes.  As Brian Solis is fond of saying, “PR stands for public relations, not press release.”  That’s right.  In the era of two-way communications people expect an authentic voice and not the Wizard of Oz pulling levels behind the curtains.  Blogging is an important way to build an audience and also drive SEO traffic.  It’s also a great way to build relationships with people interested in your topic area.

What should you blog about? Define your customers, partners and other relevant people to your organization (e.g. analysts, journalists, potential employees) and blog about what you want to communication with them.  Don’t blog about what you think would be “cool.”  I don’t think that most startup blogs should be about how to build a startup.  That’s blogging to the echo chamber unless they’re your target customers.  And if they are I suggest your revenue stream is likely to look a bit skinny.  If you’re a financial services firm blog about personal finance.

How to find your “voice”? Be authentic.  Don’t try to sound too smart or too funny.  Just be yourself.  People will see who you are in your words.  If you try to make everything too perfect you’ll never hit publish.  If you try to sound too intelligent you’ll likely be boring as shite.  Most blogs are.  Be open and transparent.  Get inside your reader’s minds.  Try to think about what they would want to know from you.  In fact, ask them!  Don’t be offensive – it’s never worth it to offend great masses of people.  But that doesn’t mean sitting on the fence.  I have a point of view and I’m sure sometimes it rankles.  But I try to be respectful about it.  Sitting on the fence on all issues is also pretty boring.  But unless you’re a political or religious blog stay out of all the stuff that you were taught not to talk about at cocktail parties.  And don’t blog drunk.  Mostly, have fun.  If you can’t do that you won’t last very long.

OK, that’s my summary and I don’t want to violate my terms with the people at Mashable who were very generous with me so I’m now into new territory.  But if you like this topic please consider reading the Mashable article.  I put much time into it.

The new stuff:

How do I get started? First, you’ll need a platform.  I use Wordpress and am very happy.  In this genre there is also Typepad although I find less people using it these days.  Blogger kinda sucks IMHO.  There are the new tools like Tumblr and Posterous.  I’ve played with both and they’re pretty cool.  They’re more light weight, easier to use and more social.  But for my “professional” blog I’m quite happy with Wordpress for now.  Then you need to decide whether to use the “hosted” version or the “installed” version.  At least that’s true in Wordpress.  The advantage of the hosted version is that it’s easier to get started.  The disadvantage is that you can’t install a lot of additional tools that use Javascript.  Actually, that’s kind of lame.  I started with the hosted version and then migrated to an installed version so I could use Google Analytics and some other products.

You then need a URL.  It’s true you can be msuster.typepad.com or similar ut that’s kind of lame so I wouldn’t recommend it.  Just get a real URL.  I think it’s important to think about what image you want to portray when you pick your URL name.  It doesn’t need to be short.  You’re not trying to build a consumer website like Mint.com.  My website is a pretty long URL but people manage to find it.  Much of my traffic is through referring websites and/or social media. Some search.  But I chose the URL of the brand that I want to portray.  Both Sides of the Table.  I was an entrepreneur.  Now I’m a VC.  Not rocket science.  What are you trying to convey?  What will be your unique positioning?  Don’t just write a carbon copy of what somebody else is doing.  That’s boring.

So I wrote a post, now what? OK, well, actually the first thing I did is come up with a list of 50 posts that I wanted to write.  I planned it out a bit.  I didn’t want to run out of things to write about in the first 6 months.  So I created a “series” that I could talk about in a theme.  My first series was the slides that go into a PowerPoint presentation.  Since there are 10-12 slides this gave me my first few weeks.  Don’t blow your load on your first post.  Slice it up enough to do many posts.  I think most blogs are between 600-1000 words / post.  I’m long winded – usually 2,000 words.  I know.  I know.  Once you’re written a few posts don’t try to make the flood gates open at once.  Slowly build your audience.  Make it organic.  If you write good content and consistently you’ll build an audience over time.  I’m now at about 70k monthly uniques put the growth has been gradual over the past 9 months – not one great spurt.

How do I build an audience? So you have a few posts live and want some readers.  The obvious starting point is to email a few friends and let them know you have a new blog.  Don’t be overbearing – just an email saying, wanted to let you know about my new blog.  I also recommend you put it under your email signature in a color other than black.  You also should have it be what your Twitter page links to.

Every time I write a post I send it out on Twitter.  I try to send out the Twitter link when more people are online.  I currently do this using CoTweet, which allows me to schedule when the Tweet goes out.  I’ll frequently send two Tweets – one in the morning and one in the evening.  Not everybody sees the first one.  I try to vary the copy sometimes so that it isn’t boring if somebody sees it twice.  Make sure your blog has Tweetmeme or similar.  This means if somebody likes your post and wants to Retweet it they can by simply clicking a button.  To add a post to Facebook button I use a tool called fbShare.me.  You can also sign up for Tweetpost to have your Twitter account automatically update Twitter.  Also, make sure to sign up with Feedburner.  That way people who want to get your blog by RSS and/or email can do so. Make sure your blog also has a Follow Me on Twitter button so people who find you can easily follow you.

The great thing is that the more compelling content you write the more people Retweet you, which drive more traffic to your blog.  Twitter is, after all, about link sharing.  The more they go to your blog and like it, the more will follow you on Twitter.  As you build up that following you have more people to drive to your blog going forward.  Virtuous circle.  That’s the basics.  I’ll write about some more advanced “hacks” at the end of the post.

How much time will it take? If you plan out what you want to write about in advance then it’s really about writing.  I tend to write an outline before I write the actual post so that my writing will have some structure.  I write for about 45 minutes to an hour in the first pass.  I usually then re-read, edit, spell check and add links.  This usually takes another 20-30 minutes.  I then always add an image.  I think this is a nice touch.  Just staring at text is a bit boring and I find that the image can add humor and/or drive people in.  I used to add 2-3 images but that proved too time consuming.

I get most of my images from iStockPhoto.  There are placed to get free images but I don’t like to deal with the creative commons wording and linking and potential that I got it wrong.  I’m fine paying $1-2 / picture.  I know the free option would work well so if you’re on a budget go down that road.  I’ve often thought about trying to crowd-source a copy editor.  I think I would improve my posts if somebody could edit them and make them shorter.  For now, I hope it’s good enough.

Then there’s comments.  You HAVE TO respond to comments.  First, it’s the most fun part of blogging.  It’s addicting like Twitter.  It’s where you exchange ideas with other people.  It’s where your community gets to know you.  It’s where you build loyalty and relationships.  I have met many people in person who were first commenters on my blog.  I find it frustrating if I leave comments on somebody’s blog and they never respond.  I don’t expect responses to each and every comment but there should be some interaction.  Unless, of course, I’m posting comments on a blog like TechCrunch or the Washington Post.  But I remember in the early days Michael Arrington used to respond to comments on his blog a lot.

I’m very particular to Disqus as my commenting platform.  I like the interactivity and ability to have nested responses.  I like being able to have authenticated responders and images.  It helps to get to know people better.  Native commenting systems mostly suck.  Use Disqus.

How frequently should I write? Tough question.  I’m going to assume that like me you have a day job.  If you’re a full time blogger and reading this then you need to go get a real book on how to blog.  This is directed at part time people who are building a blog to support their real business.  I think you should commit to one post per week.  I recommend writing 8-10 before you get started so that you have a backlog in case you get busy.  Sometimes I write 4 or 5 on a weekend when I get time so that I have them for weeks where I’m busy.  One time I set my alarm for 5am and blasted through 12 posts in two mornings and I had fodder for weeks.  That was my “Entrepreneurial DNA” series.  I wrote it on two mornings during Thanksgiving holiday.  Then later I just added images and edited.  Right now I’m writing about 3-4 times / week.  I can’t commit to every day like some bloggers.  And I reserve the right to drop back to 1-2 posts some weeks if I feel busy or burned out.  But my personal SLA right now is once / week minimum.

FWIW, It’s 11:41PM right now.  I wrote this post at about 6:30PM.  I’m editing in bed.  Probably shouldn’t be.  I’m sure if I bought my WakeMate already they’d be telling me not to!

How can I track my performance? First, most blogging tools have analytics built in.  Wordpress does.  Then you can install Google Analytics to your website.  This will give you more realistic stats.  When you Tweet you should use a URL shortener tied to an analytics platform.  The most common is Bit.ly.  I use awe.sm.  Awe.sm allows me to track more granular details about my campaigns than I can currently on Bit.ly and it’s where I got my custom URL’s grp.vc and bothsid.es.  You can also track how many people sign up on Feedburner.  I try not to obsess too much about the ins-and-outs of daily or weekly performance.  I just want to know that I’m building up a slow and steady audience. It’s a marathon and not a sprint.

Appendix: Traffic Hacks:

• Commenting on other blogs – you need to comment on other people’s blogs.  First, it is a place where your comment will often link back to your blog (such as on TechCrunch) where it can drive traffic.  Occasionally, and not overtly, and only if relevant you can provide a comment with a link back to an article in your blog.  Don’t do this often, don’t be blatant and make sure it’s relevant.
• Linking to other blogs – For example, many people know that I love VentureHacks because it’s a great resource for entrepreneurs and I finally met Babak Nivi (aka Nivi).  Notice I’ve linked to his website.  If he tracks his blog (which I’m sure he does) he’ll see this link.  If he has a Google Alert on his name (everyone does) then he’ll also get that.  Don’t stalk people and link all the time.  If you do link make it relevant.  Don’t be over the top gushing and creepy.  Be subtle.  Link to different blogs.  Don’t overtly tell everyone you link to, “I linked to you, check out my article!”  Assume that over time if you write compelling content they’ll eventually check you out.  I do notice when people link to me or write about stuff I’ve written about.  I try to check out most of them.  Sometimes I get busy.  Every few I try to stop by and leave a comment so that they’ll know I’ve been there and I appreciate the coverage.  Sometimes I just read the blog and file it away in memory to check out another time.
• Covering relevant people in your blog in an authentic way – If your blog covers topics in your industry it’s likely that you’ll be able to write about some people and companies that you want to be aware of your blog.  Yesterday I wrote about Plancast.  I love their product.  I don’t have any reason to drive Mark Hendrickson to my blog but using him as an example, writing a story about Plancast would make it more likely that the founder would find his way to my blog.  I chose not to write about companies for a long time on my blog.  My strategy was to keep it advice based for the first 6 months so I never really employed this as a strategy to drive traffic.  But I know it works.
• Tweet support - What I DID do in the early days is enlist Tweet support.  I would occasionally ask people that I was close with to retweet my posts.  I tried to mix it up in order to not ask the same people often.  I would send out emails with the Tweet text already written so that they just had to cut-and-paste.  As my blog started getting authentic traffic I stopped asking for this help.
• Guest authoring – Once you have a bit of credibility as a writer a great strategy to drive traffic is to write guest posts for relevant bloggers in your sphere of influence.   If you run BakeSpace and blog about food why not contact some of the local food blogs and see whether you could submit guest articles.  Most people are delighted to have the free content.  In return all you ask for are links back to your blog and to your Twitter account.  Slowly and surely these will add users, of which some will come back on a regular basis.

(Cross-posted @ Both Sides of the Table )

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

Let’s face it – despite significant hand-waving to the contrary, Microsoft Outlook is the default email client for the vast majority of the enterprise world. No matter how much people love to hate the fact, Outlook is both widely understood and the accepted norm. I’ve talked to a number of people involved in deploying Google apps into enterprise sites and often the case is that this is in fact an infrastructure play – the organization uses Google as an exchange replacement but maintains its existing desktop clients.

This situation is a huge barrier to Google apps proper gaining traction – users are unlikely to edit a Google apps document, only to have to jump through hoops in order to collaborate on that document with others - as vendor MainSoft asks, what happens when you use Microsoft Outlook for e-mail, and you’re interested in using Google Docs?  Is SharePoint + Google Docs:  An Oxymoron? Not anymore, and this is an announcement that even I, jaded as I am from product pitches, am getting excited about.

Effective today, Mainsoft is offering full-featured access to Google Docs documents directly from within Microsoft Outlook.  Their belief is that e-mail and document collaboration sites need to work together seamlessly – so end users can be more productive. They’re also planning to give away software that offers full-featured access to SharePoint document libraries, within Microsoft Outlook. So to reiterate – full use of Google docs within Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft SharePoint – tools enterprise users are used to, with the significant benefits that the cloud brings.

The Mainsoft product is called Harmony and will be a free product and has been built using SharePoint Web Services interfaces and Google Docs open APIs, giving full-featured access to Google Docs or SharePoint documents from an Outlook sidebar.  Users can

share, locate, and manage centralized documents directly from their e-mail client.

  A brief overview of the features that are available for Outlook and SharePoint users:

From within Outlook, people can:

• Publish and share document links:
• Drag documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDF files to the Harmony sidebar to upload them to Google Docs.

• Share documents automatically.  Drag Google document links to a new e-mail message, and Harmony will automatically share it with recipients listed in the user’s Outlook or Gmail address books. The email sender decides whether each email recipient gets read or editing rights to the online documents.  Recipients can view and edit the documents on Google Docs, using a free Google account.

• Replace attachments with links and send e-mail, in one step. When composing or forwarding an e-mail with attachments, Harmony prompts the user to publish the documents online and send a link instead.
• Find documents from the convenience of e-mail:
• Search the contents of users’ entire collection of Google Docs documents from the Harmony search bar.
• Locate documents users have permission to access using views, folders, sorting, and starred documents.
• Work on Google Docs documents:
• Organize documents in folders; star, share, rename, or hide them.
• Open and edit Google Docs documents in Outlook, including Microsoft Office, PDF, and Open Office formats.

Of course the question this raises is why on earth this is a free product. This would seem to solve such a pain point (at least for Google resellers and, I’d imagine, for Google also although they’re unlikely to admit it) that Mainsoft should have people more than willing to pay for the product. Mainsoft CEO Yaacov Cohen told me that their strategy is a freemium one – the current product is free but future products that will include functionality that IT departments want (granular control, permissioning, central admin etc) will potentially be paid. I’m not sure if I’m convinced about this approach – Harmony provides significant value today (heck, the saving in traffic by not emailing attachments alone is significant for a large organization) that I believe they’d be able to monetize from day one.

Either way I’m really impressed by what Mainsoft have created with Harmony and I’m marking them as a company to watch.

 

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

Fellow Enterprise Irregular Michael Krigsman did a two-part mini-series on the IT Failures Blame Game . As someone who had spent over a decade on large-scale IT projects, I agree with a lot of what Michael says.  But all that time did not teach me there was such an easy solution for project failures: 

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

I love this service, have been using it ever since the early Grand Central days, and I really hope my Google Voice number is the one and only final phone number.  Among many other benefits, I no longer have to check voicemail, take note of actions required and return the call – it all comes transcribed as an email, and I have a folder (label) just for voicemail. 

Unlike some other services, Google does not combine computer power with humans, it’s a purely automated function.  Let’s be honest, transcription quality is quite crappy – but so far it’s been just good enough for me to at least grasp what the key message was about, ignoring the fine details… but today’s message is beyond hope:

Hi old Good Morning Zoli, This is on and I'm calling from. I'll choose to India. Dot Com. Holly caught dog. G. E. The inquiry from y'all. So I don't really want and what some P D of the fax of the do get them as P D F of majestic of the trip to the I don't know if you would about the 05 I send you an email at all. Do you write down and if you can reply to that to dot with all the questions. Doctors needed. Lester guy who for the Isaac. You can also call me back. My number is masked number again is, masked alright expecting a call. Thank you. You have a great day. Bye bye.

Wow. No, Holly caught dog.  Perhaps Mark is right, time to re-check PhoneTag.

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

I’ve been enjoying using Plancast over the past month or so.  I’m not an investor and though I wouldn’t rule it out in the future I’m not currently looking at the company.

Just wanted to get that out of the way up front so I won’t look like a vested-interest fanboy.  In fact, for the research of this post I just noticed that they announced funding today – congrats.

I’m loving the product.  It’s not perfect yet – no V1 product ever is.  But for the stage of the company I think they’ve done an awesome job.  Plancast is a product where you list what upcoming events you’re planning to attend.  This is then searchable by anybody who is subscribing to your feed.  It is modeled on the now popular Twitter asymmetric following model where people can follow you and you don’t necessarily need to follow them back.  I had dinner with the CEO, Mark Hendrickson, last week and he told me the positioning, “FourSquare is to publish what you’re doing now, Plancast is to share what you’re planning to do in the future.”  Clever positioning.

Plancast for me fills an important need.  I don’t live in Silicon Valley so I’m not always around the proverbial water cooler hearing about what the upcoming tech events are.  I like to scan Plancast occasionally to find out what others are planning to do.  I’m actually not one of those guys who’s on the circuit at every event but I still find it useful to have a good mental map of what’s going on and be able to plan out for my future.  I think the product will comport to my view of most of these user-generated content sites where 1% of people are uber-users, 9% are occasional users and 90% are lurkers.  But the lurkers get tremendous value out of knowing what others are up to.  So I basically just log in and find out where Dave McClure is going to be.  He’s usually more in the know than I am.  And has more frequent flier miles.

I hope more tools like this spring up.  I’m a big fan of social discovery.  Tools like this that allow you to track what’s going on in your social networks and one-step beyond them are really powerful.  It’s not only great for planning out my event calendar but also when you pop into a city on last minute travel and want to know if anything professional is going on it’s useful to check in with Plancast.  I’m not knocking FourSquare which seems to be doing great.  But frankly I’m a lot more interested in where you’re going to be then where you are now.  And I don’t really have any interest in knowing where you’ve become the mayor.  Not even remotely.

I believe social discover tools will continue to be a big driver of traffic to events and I wouldn’t be surprised if they also morphed into rating systems after events.  Who knows, maybe one of these guys will finally kill off evite.  What I like about the asymmetric nature is that sometimes I want to know where my friends are going and sometimes I want to know where key people from industry are going.  Both are useful.  And sometimes I just want to know where Dave McClure will be turning up next.

(Cross-posted @ Both Sides of the Table )

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

   Last week the US Navy awarded initial CANES contracts to Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. Navy officials place the contract values at $775M for Northrop and $937M for Lockheed. As the key development program for afloat information technology infrastructures, this program represents the Navy's next-generation command and control, integrating servers, workstations, and networking systems to the Global Information Grid.


   As I wrote in "CANES and the CLOUD", CANES can be seen as the Navy’s transition to virtualization, SOA and cloud computing.The Navy's CIO, Robert Carey, Carey has suggested that cloud computing seems to be a logical step forward to make computing more effective and efficient, and that both NGEN and CANES programs would leverage cloud computing. He also has described a future of “grey clouds” on each ship. Carey has, in fact, consistently presented a view that the Navy must take advantage of this transformational opportunity to leverage its computing assets as part of NNE 2016. While recognizing that the Navy’s ships at sea and Marine war fighting units present challenges unique to the naval service, he views most garrison environments as prime candidates to test cloud computing. Citing CANES as a representational step towards his goals, he has outlined parallel paths of defining where the cloud computing model is applicable, and defining a business case to develop new applications within this new cloud model.

    Since the Navy's Space and Naval System's Command (SPAWAR) is actively evaluating where and how cloud computing can be best applied and  the Navy's CIO seems to be a strong proponent of moving in this direction, Northrop and Lockheed seem poised to be major players in the Defense Department's transition to the cloud.






( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - KLJ )







Follow me at http://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

Other than pimping Amazon, she also owns a Mexican Wholesale company and a football team in Texas – at least that’s what new Social CRM plugin Rapportive tells me:

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

This is part three in a series of four posts on how Vistaprint has been implementing Enterprise 2.0 at their organization.  Today we continue the discussion with more information on change management followed by a focus on the ideation work.

There were two key organizational changes that happened as a result of their E2.0 implementation efforts.  The first was the creation of a full-time innovation management position.  The purpose of this position was to ensure that the right ideas got in front of the right people.  This position was also used to make employees aware of the successes that occurred as a result of collaborative idea sharing and to generate excitement around the ideation program.

The second change that occurred was the creation of a knowledge management group.  Ninety-five percent of the effort came from people, process, training, adoption, and roll out and only 5% from technology.  The knowledge management group was required to address all of these inputs and to help keep Vistaprint’s Enterprise 2.0 endeavors moving in the right direction.

Intuit’s Brainstorm platform has been in use at Vistaprint since March 2009, so it’s relatively new.  Ideation was a significant area of focus at Vistaprint.  Because Brainstorm was very easy to use,  Vistaprint’s broad community were happy to use it.  However, where shift needed to take place was around the habits of managers at functional level.  Managers needed to take ideas seriously and had to review them on a regular basis, otherwise the ideation program would become useless.   There had to be action taken on the ideas, or employees would stop participating.

Brainstorm connects through an active directory of employees which means that there was no additional sign up required.  Vistaprint’s goal of the ideation platform was quite simple: connect the right ideas to the right people and then take action on those ideas.  There were many ideas submitted through brainstorm so the response time to an idea was within 6 weeks.  Sometimes responses happened much sooner, some even on the same day.  Others longer depending on the complexity of the ideas.  Those would require testing before being executed.  Typically, it took Vistaprint approximately 6 months to go from idea conception to idea delivery (note this does not mean response time but actual implementation.

For the wiki, the engineer project began in mid-2006.  In March 2007, the capabilities team opened up the wiki to small test group.  In late 2007/early 2008, Vistaprint made the wiki accessible company-wide (their knowledge management project).  Finally, in September 2008, the wiki opened company-wide.

We covered the wiki usage stats in the previous post; here are the stats for the ideation platform:

• Vistaprint employs approximately 1950 people
• In the last 30 days, there have been 373 active users
• Employees submitted 415 unique ideas
• A total of 1462 ideas have been submitted

Adoption of new technologies is paramount to Vistaprint’s success.   To enable adoption,  tactics to encourage employee usage included:

• Internal newsletter that talks about the ideation platform
• Employee recognition for those who contribute and collaborate on ideas
• Training on the new tools/technologies (every new hire is also given training)
• Creating awareness via a company-wide email when new features are added
• Happy hour to celebrate submitted ideas.  Vistaprint tries to make each idea an opportunity to celebrate (which we think is interesting and clever)

A key strategy to the wiki adoption has been training.  Employees are encouraged to get the information live and not to worry about any formatting.  If they could get the information into one location, the knowledge management team would take care of the rest.  Again, the knowledge management team was the key driving force behind adoption, and maintaining and organizing the information (and standards).

Key takeaways

• New roles/departments were created.  The innovation management position was responsible for the ideation platform and the knowledge management team for the wiki.
• Functional habits of managers need to change so that ideas are taken more seriously and given focus.
• The ideation platform has been in use since March of 2009 and over 20% of the company has submitted a unique idea.
• The wiki project began in 2006 and only launched company wide 26 months later.
• Vistaprint undertook several initiatives to help encourage and increase adoption.  They took a proactive stance rather than launch the project and allow it to grow organically.

Read previous posts from this series:

Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Vistaprint Part One: Business Drivers

Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Vistaprint Part Two: Change Management

(Cross-posted @ Social Media Globetrotter )

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

One the recurring themes I keep seeing is that the adoption of cloud computing is being driven by our current sucky economic circumstances. I don’t disagree that the macro-economy is a *contributing* factor in cloud adoption, but I really don’t think it’s the primary driving factor. Rather, I think cloud adoption is part of a much larger, much longer IT cycle.

Anyone remember Application Service Providers from the late 90’s? ASPs were a big deal. They were gonna change the way business did business. And then the dotcom bubble burst. And ASPs quickly hit the dustbin of history. Well, kind of. Salesforce.com emerged from those ashes, and somewhere between 2002 and 2004, we saw the first real ASP success story happen.

Could it be argued that this was all dependent on the macro-economy? Yea, I suppose so. I mean - dotcom bust, recession, emerge from recession in the 99 to 2002 timeframe is the exact timeframe for the founding and early growth of Salesforce.com. But it seems to me that there were bigger forces at work (no pun intended).

People, as in non-IT folks, began realizing that they could just purchase “seats” on Salesforce.com. Gartner has called it the “consumerization” of IT - a huge sweeping change, wherein mainstream technology adoption had “normal people” (non-IT pros) thinking they could just “download” something (or browse to something) to accomplish what they wanted. By 2005, IT departments everywhere had started to wake up to the beginning of this nightmare, where software as a service was being purchased “haphazardly” by lines of business level personnel. In other words, the purchasing and maintenance of enterprise software had been decentralized.

Of course, that wave of decentralization is still sweeping across IT. But it was in that context that “cloud computing” rose to prominence within IT departments. Which is to say that it wasn’t simply a “we can save money” or “screw CAPEX” decision. It was a reflection of a decentralization of the IT department that has been in the offing for over 10 years (in force).

The “cloud” is the natural evolution of the decentralization of the complex system of enterprise IT. That evolution drives a commoditization of every point on the “value chain” — i.e., it drives value further and further up the chain. The value in IT used to be in the hardware, the mainframe. Then it was the OS. Then the platform and database. Commoditization — which is really just the cost of computing cycles dropping over time (while increasing in efficiency), Moore’s law — drives value further and further up the stack. As that drives us toward the application level, moving IT departments into “the cloud” was a completely rational occurrence.

How far will it go? Farther than any of us think it will, I’m sure. I remember a hallway conversation I had with Jamie Lewis (then CEO of Burton Group; now Gartner) back in 2004. I raised the idea of “identity as a service.” He said he didn’t think enterprises would ever put their identity data on someone else’s server; too risky. Of course, I countered with Salesforce.com getting people to put *customer* data on someone else’s server. Now, I don’t know that we’re fully to “identity as a service” yet; but the movement seems inevitable at this point (and it’s not that Jamie was “wrong,” so much as that neither of us could imagine the cloud world that was coming).

Cloud Computing is not simply being driven by economic factors. Cloud Computing’s rise is part of a much larger cycle — one that’s been happening for decades. In that context, it’s probably instructive that we keep our eye focused on where the value will land — not in servers, or storage, or processing cycles, or even in applications themselves. Just as with email, the internet, and cell phones — the VALUE is in the connection. The value lives in the space between the servers, storage, apps, people, data and networks.

The value is in the glue.

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

One of the questions I’m most often asked is, “what’s it like being a VC?”  I’ve been a VC for nearly 3 years now.  Since I answer this all the time anyway I thought it might make an interesting blog post.  I always start my answer to this question with, “you’d have to be a pretty big baby to complain about being a VC.” That’s true.  Here’s why:

1. I get paid (well) for interesting people to come in and tell me how they want to change the world – Being an entrepreneur is like having blinders on.  At least for the best entrepreneurs.  Some people do the conference circuit too much, get involved in lots of side projects and attend every entrepreneur dinner.  For me that’s always a bad sign.  When I was running startups I felt like a horse with blinders on because I was super focused on the content management market and ignored many other markets.

One of the things that I’m loving about this side of the people is that it really satisfies my intellectual curiosity.  People come into my office several times per week and tell my about their plans for changing the world.  They outline the problems that exist in markets, their approach to the solutions, they update me on competitors and they show me their economic models.  We have debates about how the industries will change / evolve.  It is the equivalent of going to a coffee shop every day and having intellectual debates.  In fact, I often take meetings in coffee shops.  I LOVE this part of my job.

2. If I’m interested I get to spend more time with them, if I’m not I don’t have to – A few companies per month come in that have fascinating business ideas that warrant my spending more time trying to understand their people, company, technology and market.  I get to do a deep dive on their business model, product roadmap and competitive positioning.  For those companies that I don’t find that interesting I don’t have to spending any more time on.  I’m not saying I don’t spend time trying to help entrepreneurs that I am not planning to invest it – anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I do.  But let’s face it, as a VC you spend time with whichever companies you want.  You’d have to be a big baby to complain about being a VC.

3. I have no quarterly sales targets for the first time in a decade – For anybody who’s ever been in a company with sales targets you can attest to what a fire drill the ends of March, June, September and December can be.  Not any more for me.  It’s liberating.  I will obviously be judged on my performance.  But it’s measured in years and not quarters.  Don’t get me wrong – I still feel the pressure to ensure that the companies I’ve invested in perform well. So I spend much time with them and trying to help.  But there’s a big difference.

4. I get paid to network – I love meeting people.  When I go to conference I never sit in the meeting section – I always cruise the halls meeting people.  My job doesn’t involve the daily grind of customer complaints, product outages, business partner / channel problems, hiring / firing, etc.  I work hard, don’t get me wrong.  And the VC job has plenty of admin and minutiae.  But I’m a people person and I get paid to spend lots of time with people.  I get to network with angels, VCs, entrepreneurs, lawyers, etc.  I love it.

5. I go where I want, when I want – This is pretty liberating.  I worked nearly a decade as a consultant – first building large scale IT systems and then doing strategy consulting.  Then I spent many years as a startup CEO.  I was always in a “service” industry.  That means you’re always operating on the client’s schedule.  You get on a plane at a moment’s notice because a senior customer agreed to meet you.  You call in from your vacation because you’ve had a service outage.  I went to Ibiza in Spain with my wife and in-laws before we were married.  They couldn’t believe how much I was on the phone.  We were in the final phases of acquiring a business and I couldn’t just say, “I’ll call you in 7 days when I’m back on the grid.”  There are still time pressures on VCs, so that hasn’t changed completely.  But I do go where I want and when I want a lot more than I used to.

6. I have a T&E account - Enough said.

7. I love spending time with entrepreneurs in the “romantic phase” – I love the startup phase of a business where we’re still romantic about our dreams to change the world.  The problems are much more manageable.  Once my company got to more than 100 employees I felt like I became “chief psychologist.”  That was fine but I prefer the earlier days.  As a VC I spend tons of time with companies at an early stage in their business.  And in stead of one set of issues to deal with I get the variety of discussing issues with many teams.  That’s fun.

8. We have very small teams – When you’re in your twenties you aspire to manage teams.  I think it’s seen as a sign of making progress in your career.  The idea that people “report to you” must validate some primal need.  In your thirties you realize that managing people means you have less time to work on the things that you want to do.  You have hours sucked up in one-on-one feedback sessions, annual or semi-annual performance reviews and you end up spending a lot of time resolving conflicts across your team members.  I still like spending time with our teams – at GRP Partners we have a great team – but I don’t have large numbers of people to be responsible for.  If I decide to take a last-minute trip to spend 2 days on a company due diligence session nobody is wondering where I am.  You’d have to be a pretty big baby to complain about being a VC.

Still, the truth is that I miss being an entrepreneur all the time.  Here’s what VCs don’t get fulfilled now:

1. We sit on the sidelines – The down side of VC is that exact same as I remember in consulting.  Too many VCs see their entrepreneurs almost like pawns.  They speak of “my CEO’s.”  They talk about how this company failed because the management team didn’t listen to my advice and that one succeeded because we helped point them in the right direction.  I think realistic VCs know that we only have an impact at the margin.  Maybe 10-15%.  That’s why picking great teams is so important.  And I think that too many VC’s don’t realize that the entrepreneurs are our customers – but that’s a separate topic. I hate not getting to own results.  We have a great board chat and talk about our strategic direction but then you go out and execute.  You get the good and the bad.  Those high highs and low lows are your own.  You live them, breathe them.  We live vicariously through you.  It’s like the manager of a basketball team.  We secretly wish it were us that got to take that 3-pointer with the clock running out.  And we’d love the rush of the teammates holding us in the air if we sank it.

2. There is less team camaraderie – I really get along with my partners well.  I knew them for 8 years before I joined GRP.  We end up out a lot at events: dinners, cocktail parties, conferences.  We travel together.  We spend the entire day together on Mondays in our partners’ meetings and seeing companies present.  Still, it’s different in a startup.  When you’re preparing to launch your company at TechCrunch50 and everyone pulls all nighters for the days leading into it you’re building much deeper camaraderie than exists inside of VCs.  When your site crashes and you get slammed by customers and in the press – you’re all in the sh*tter together.  There is something about the relationships you build in those times.  About 1 year in I asked many VCs about this and the feeling was nearly universal.  They said, “yeah, but we get that through our board interactions.  We build camaraderie there through the shared experience.  That’s true.  But it’s not the same.

3. We are in a “get rich slowly” business - OK, I’m not complaining.  But I think many entrepreneurs have a misconception about this.  True, we’re paid better than many startup executives on an annual basis.  But I know many young partners in this business who have never gotten a “carry” check.  The upside for entrepreneurs is the equity in their business.  The upside for VCs is this carry.  If you have a $100 million fund you don’t get paid your carry until you return the initial money to your investors and then you typically get 20% of the profits above this threshold.  Well, since the industry hasn’t performed well in the past 10 years you have many younger partners who are still waiting for those checks.  That is in stark contrast to the late 90’s goldrush where VC partners made millions overnight as their companies IPO’d for crazy valuations.  On the positive side, we have a portfolio and therefore more diverse chances of success.  But there is no “sell early” option for VCs where a $20 million exit could change our lives.  But we obviously choose this side of the table. You’d have to be a pretty big baby to complain about being a VC.

Overall, I’m very happy on this side of the table.  I try to get my entrepreneurial fix in other ways:

1. Running a local community / mentorship program – I run a group called LaunchPad LA.  We’re gearing up to make big announcements about our second year program.  I’ll write about that in a couple of weeks.  I get to help control direction, make decisions and own results.

2. Writing this blog – This blog is a huge creative outlet for me.  I get to choose what I write about.  I might be controversial some times and get flack.  Other times I might get great results and approbation.  I can publish daily for weeks or not publish at all for a month.  I own the results.  I’m enjoying the chaotic creativity that comes with blogging.

(Cross-posted @ Both Sides of the Table )

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

I kind of thought we were a little for “10 things to watch for in 2010” type posts but it seems ChannelWeb doesn’t think so and have compiled a list of somewhat conflicting Cloud prophesies for 2010 from some of the clouderati. So without any further ado – let’s hear what them-that-know predict will happen this year and my measure of how accurate their predictions are:

First up James Demoulakis, CTO of GlassHouse Technologies opines that Cloud Storage Adoption will Broaden. Coming from a perspective of technology developments solving security and latency issues – he predicts 2010 will all be about cloud storage. I kind of agree that cloud storage will broaden this year but don’t see that’ll be caused by anything so high level. Quite simply it’s a reflection of a degree of momentum and some critical mass. Any issues that did exist still will. I give this an 80% chance of eventuating.

Hybrid will Happen, says Jimmy Tan, general manager for PEER Software. He calls it hybrid but I’d call it more offline available web apps. Either way he suggests that cloud services will continue to develop "off-line" working modes to complement their "always on" approach. Given HTML5, Google ascending and Microsoft’s play with Office 2010 – I give this a 90% chance.

Platform-as-a-Service Takes Hold says Sam Charrington (a really nice guy by the way) from Appistry. he believes that 2010 is the year that PaaS will really take hold as organizations look at how they take advantage of cloud platforms and push it beyond just requests for virtual machines. I’m not entirely convinced – while I love PaaS as a concept, I just don’t see widespread use as a given. I’ll give this a 50% chance.

Public Vs. Private Becomes Less Relevant says Vanessa Alvarez an industry analyst from Frost & Sullivan (and someone I’m looking forward to meeting at Cloud Connect in a few weeks). Vanessa says that in 2010, we'll START to move away from these terms as the importance of how apps/services/resources are delivered and/or from where, becomes less relevant to end users and the market overall. I’ve got to agree with Vanessa here – I’m not a hand wringing dogmatic who gets caught up passionately defending “purity” chapter and verse. At the end of the day it’s about results and I for one don’t care if those results are obtained through some sort of “pseudo cloud”. 75% of happening but less if the handwringers have their way.

2010 will be the year of planning for the cloud says John Ross, CTO of GreenPages. Apparently everyone will need to stop thinking about how we have done things in the past and begin to think about how we can do things differently with the resources that are being made available to us. I’m not so sure – I don’t see the world in black and white pre cloud/post cloud terms and I see the planning that John talks about as being more of the same due diligence type stuff that has always occurred. I’m not sold and I give this a 20%.

Cloud Platforms Gain Acceptance opines Barry Lynn, CEO of 3Tera. Apparently 2010 will be the year that the best cloud platforms will be accepted as enablers of mission critical enterprise applications in need of high availability, dependable SLAs and world class disaster recovery. What? I don’t think so. I think Barry’s been drinking the KoolAide a little too much 10% on this one.

Disaster Recovery In The Cloud will be big says Chris Pyle, CEO of Champion Solutions Group. Clients will start considering using the "cloud" as another choice when developing a disaster recovery plan he says. I don’t think so. Clients who already use the cloud will think about using it for DR, those who don’t won’t give it a second thought. DR will stay inline with general cloud adoption – 20% from me.

Private Clouds Die, Intercloud Rises, Openness Abounds says the normally reticent Sam Johnson. Sam’s a strong character and, gets a little passionate about things and attached to the dogma of cloud. I love what he tries to do but disagree with much of his vehemence. When it comes to this prediction, I’m erring on the side of the (somewhat confusingly) opposite view given by Vanessa – public? private? who cares just make it work. 10%

WAN Optimization-as-a-Service Surfaces preaches Adam Davison, corporate vice president for Expand Networks. Where do they get these guys from? Get a load of this: “As cloud-based services become more prevalent, whether private or public, the provision of an end-to-end software solution for virtualized WAN optimization from the data center, to the branch office and mobile users will be paramount.” Yeah whatever dude – just buy some bigger pipes – 15% although I’d qualify that by saying he’s probably got a 40% chance within enterprise who love the big words he uses.

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

My first and only experience with Web Store by Amazon was a disaster from my viewpoint. Where I expected tightly coupled information between my Amazon catalog and the Amazon Web Store there was none. Realistically to use the site correctly we were looking at going back and touching every single item in our 12,000 plus Amazon merchants account inventory. The time it would take to do that would be phenomenal as it took us two years just to get where we were at when we looked at Amazon web store.

For me, this was the deal killer, but Techflash is reporting that Amazon is rolling out a new store, and honestly I will go take a look at it, but I really do want tightly coupled, not the loose item set that the Amazon Web Store was as an experience a year ago. I rely on Amazon, but they know what is a book, a DVD, and a comic book, going back through a mid sized inventory would take a very long time to make that happen with the old model.

The news and information is sketchy at best about what Amazon is changing, but Techflash is reporting that there is a new inventory tool set to make this easier. I am hoping that they are looking at the process of keeping inventory tightly coupled between the pro merchant account and the Amazon Web Store. Really that is the killer option here, that Amazon Web Store automatically knows what is a book, a DVD, and a comic book when the Web Store comes up.

Without that simple chunk of functionality, any attempt at a web store for mid sized Amazon sellers is going to be problematic. No one has the time to go through a large inventory and touch every single item in it to accurately dump it into its larger type box (comic, book, DVD).

If Amazon is listening, I would love to use web store by Amazon, but I need a tightly coupled inventory management system, one inventory entry system, that when the item is entered drops the entry in the Web Store by Amazon into the right bucket without having to go back and touch each item that is entered twice.

(Cross-posted @ TechWag )

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image via Wikipedia

Being an unabashed proponent of Open Source, I can avoid the news about a new industry group trying to start an initiative to open source data center design. The Open Source Data Center Initiative, announced last week, will act as a repository of technologies associated with the design of datacenters. This initiative aims to rope in smaller industry players and researchers from academia.

The complete freedom afforded by open source licenses allows for large scale innovation. We have seen the disruptive potential of open source in the traditional software world as well as in the cloud based world. In a way, open source encapsulates the freedom available in the academia and, therefore, has the potential to disrupt wide ranging fields. It is no surprise that the folks behind this new initiative thought of Open Source approach as the right model to foster innovation in the data center design.

Compared to other fields of IT, the innovation on the data center front is relatively slow because the industry as a whole is slow to change. With cloud computing capturing the imagination of enterprises and public, It is important to innovate rapidly on the data center side. There are many industry groups that are pushing for change in the data center industry suggesting many different best practices for innovation. The Open Source Data Center Initiative tries to take a different approach from the other efforts by tapping into open source philosophy to promote innovative ideas from the participants. It is a partnership between Greentech Research Foundation, Inc and University of Missouri to establish an engineering framework for datacenter design and technologies. The complete text of the agreement can be found here.

This effort is joined by one of the veterans in the data center industry, Mike Manos who is now building a cloud infrastructure for Nokia. In his blog post, he clearly highlights the role of this initiative

To be clear, this Open Source Data Center Initiative is focused around execution.   Its focused around putting together an open and free engineering framework upon which data center designs, technologies, and the like can be quickly put together and more-over standardize the approaches that both end-users and engineering firms approach the data center industry. 

Imagine if you will a base framework upon which engineering firms, or even individual engineers can propose technologies and designs, specific solution vendors could pitch technologies for inclusion and highlight their effectiveness, more over than all of that it will remove much mystery behind the work that happens in designing facilities and normalize conversations.

In my opinion, it is a pretty solid move to foster innovation. With the impending need for smart and green data centers, such an open source approach is the right way to go.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Open Sourcing Data Center Design (datacenterknowledge.com)
• Group seeks to open source data-center design (infoworld.com)

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

Someone needs to sit down and talk to folks about social networking, and things that people should just not do. The New York Times leads off with a note that an Israeli Defense Force raid was called off because of an entry on Facebook. There is going to be pain involved with the debrief.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz explained that the soldier posted a status update letting friends know that his unit was preparing to go to a West Bank village near Ramallah: “On Wednesday we clean up Qatanah, and on Thursday, god willing, we come home,” the soldier wrote. Haaretz added that the soldier, who has been relieved of combat duty, “also disclosed the name of the combat unit, the place of the operation and the time it will take place.” After noticing his indiscretion, Haaretz reports, “Facebook friends then reported him to military authorities.” Source: NY Times
There are some seriously wrong issues with people posting information on Facebook and not realizing that many others are going to get to see it. This is more of a social issue, and one that we seem to be missing when we discuss social networking overall. While there have been many people fired for their various social networking posts, this is the first I have heard that an actual military exercise was called off because someone posted something to Facebook that they should not have posted.


We really should start looking at what we are doing with social networking and how we approach sharing of information. While the IDF soldier was probably not thinking and just wanted to update his status, the reality is that he also tipped off a lot of people that a raid was coming up. We have seen that social networking is of deep interest to governments. The Iran Green Revolution was tweeted, with the US State Department asking that the site not go down during the duration of the unrest that was happening in Iran. There have even been arrests of activists because of twitter. What makes this unique though is that an entire military exercise was called off.

It is well past time that we sit down with folks and talk about information that is good for public consumption and information that should be protected. No one intentionally wants to end up on Failbooking which is a wonderfully funny site that is all about the things someone should never say on Facebook, I am sure the IDF members Facebook status update is going to show up there soon. In the longer run though, we do need to start having this discussion at work, and in our families about things that people could reasonably want to know, against those things that are career killing episodes that people really should not post online.


(Cross-posted @ IT Toolbox )

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

Here, at CloudAve, we highlight research leading to future technologies from time to time. Intel has announced an experimental single chip cloud computer. Imagine it to be something like a datacenter in a single chip. We are sharing it here for our readers.

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

I do recognize the thrust behind the NoSQL movement. While some are announcing an end of era for MySQL and memcached others are questioning the arguments behind Cassandra’s OLTP claims and scalability and universal applicability of NoSQL. It is great to see innovative data persistence and access solutions that challenges the long lasting legacy of RDBMS. Competition between HBase and Cassandra is heating up. Amazon now supports a variety of consistency models on EC2.

However none of the NoSQL solutions solve a fundamental underlying problem – a developer upfront has to pick persistence, consistency, and access options for an application.

I would argue that RDBMS has been popular for the last 30 years because of ubiquitous SQL. Whenever the developers wanted to design an application they put an RDBMS underneath and used SQL from all possible layers. Over a period of time the RDBMS grew in functions and features such as binary storage, faster access, clusters etc. and the applications reaped these benefits.

I still remember the days where you had to use a rule-based optimizer to teach the database how best to execute the query. These days the cost-based optimizers can find the best plan for a SQL statement to take guess work out of the equation. This evolution teaches us an important lesson. The application developers and to some extent even the database developers should not have to learn the underlying data access and optimization techniques. They should expect an abstraction that allows them to consume data where consistency and persistence are optimized based on the application needs and the content being persisted.

SQL did a great job as a non-procedural language (what to do) against many past and current procedural languages (how to do). SQL did not solve the problem of staying independent of the schema. The developers did have to learn how to model the data. When I first saw schema-less data stores I thought we would finally solve the age-old problem of making an upfront decision of how data is organized. We did solve this problem but we introduced a new problem - lack of ubiquitous access and consistency options for schema-less data stores. Each of these data stores came with its own set of access API that are not necessarily complicated but uniquely tailored to address parts of the mighty CAP theorem. Some solutions even went further and optimized on specific consistencies such as eventually consistency, weak consistency etc.

I am always in favor of giving more options to the developers. It’s usually a good thing. However what worries me about NoSQL is that it is not SQL. There isn’t simply enough push for ubiquitous and universal design time abstractions. The runtime is certainly getting better, cheaper, faster but it is directly being pushed to the developers skipping a whole lot of layers in between. Google designed BigTable and MapReduce. Facebook took the best of BigTable and Dynamo to design Cassandra, and Twitter wanted scripting against programming on Hadoop and hence designed Pig. These vendors spent significant time and resources for one reason – to make their applications run faster and better. What about the rest of the world? Not all applications share the same characteristics as Facebook and Twitter and certainly enterprise software is quite different.

I would like to throw out a challenge. Design a data store that has ubiquitous interface for the application developers and is independent of consistency models, upfront data modeling (schema), and access algorithms. As a developer you start storing, accessing, and manipulating the information treating everything underneath as a service. As a data store provider you would gather upstream application and content metadata to configure, optimize, and localize your data store to provide ubiquitous experience to the developers. As an ecosystem partner you would plug-in your hot-swappable modules into the data stores that are designed to meet the specific data access and optimization needs of the applications.

Are you up for the challenge?

(Cross-posted @ Cloud Computing )

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by