The Cloud? It is truly amzing!

During a cloud event mid march 2010 organised by ICT~Office in Utrecht, Gartner analyst and VP Jeffery Mann unveiled his view on the battle field of the Cloud. Cloud computing in his opinion will be dominated by just a few big players. During this event only a few suspects where present: Google NL(Erik de Muinck Keizer) Microsoft NL(Peter de Haas) and Jeffery Mann from Gartner to give his opinion.

In the presentation of his analyses Mann predicts that a few big enterprise players are going to dominate the cloud vendor market: IBM, Cisco, Google and Microsoft. Google is the young cowboy, they are trying hard and doing OK, but have some trouble getting there.

Google
Back then it was Security. 'China gate' dominated the news and Google tried to downplay the issue. Now mid October 2010 a new issue arrose about collecting WIFI data during taking pictures for Google streetview, again a big failure.

Google has "no plans" to resume the collection of WiFi network data via its world-roving Street View cars, according to a report by Canada's privacy commissioner reprimanding the web giant for collecting WiFi payload data as well as network info.


"Google still intends to offer location-based services, but does not intend to resume collection of WiFi data through its Street View cars," the report said. "Collection is discontinued and Google has no plans to resume it."

IBM

In the last month I visited and studied the vision of IBM on their market and cloud in particular. IBM is a wonderfull technology company. They do understand what technology is comming, what technologyis needed... But cloud is NOT about technology! It is about technique withhout the technology, predictable services for predictable cost.

Mann thinks IBM will play a important roll as a technology leader in the future, but have no clear vision on cloud.

Microsoft
The best bet on Cloud leadership is Microsoft according Mann.

Seven Month Later...
Now October 2010, seven month later Microsoft launched their 4th evolution of SharePoint as part of their WAVE14 releases May this year. Just Five month later Microsoft launched the beta of Office365, the online suite, in 13 countries.

I never experienced such a rapid addoption of a new platform as with SharePoint 2010. Now just a few month later end users demand solutions based on this new version. Today just one week after the beta release of Office365 customers are asking for solutions based on the new generation of the online suite, even though it isn't released in The Netherlands yet as beta!

In their analysis presented in the "Cloud Computing: Changing the Vendor Landscape" presentation, two other Gartner analysts (David Cearley and David Mitchell Smith) predict that two vendors will be perceived as both leaders in cloud computing as in enterprise computing. That's a lot of market for two leaders!

Again Microsoft is part of this analysis and together with VMware, Microsoft is one of the two future leaders according to these analysts. In this analysis Gartner is looking for future leaders in this combined area of Cloud and Enterprise computing. Candidates are typically origine from one of these domains.

Overall, Crearly and Smith say only Microsoft and VMware have full lines, although their offerings are very different from each other.


Smith said Microsoft's choices were "insanely complex" as it offered all sorts of products in all sorts of ways. It is an enabler of cloud services within companies, a provider of its own services, and also sells services through third parties. It has products for both public and private clouds, and it offers lots of SaaS applications (some hosted, some really cloud-based, and some moving in the cloud direction), and its Azure products, which offer a hybrid of infrastructure and platform as a service.


Microsoft has "one of the most visionary and complete views of the cloud," Cearley said. In some respects, he said, in a few years, you may think of their enterprise offerings as private versions of their cloud offerings. On the other side, he said, many of the specific offerings aren't fully mature yet. But Smith noted that software moves faster on the cloud.

That last sentence is what seems to happen at this moment. Even before changes are there or mature they seem to be addopted. It is truly amazing.

Meet IBM 2010 - Effectiveness and Efficiency

Breakout session: Efficiency and Effectiveness

Jan van der Sypt BPM specialist IBM

Despite the proven benefit and value, BPM projects tend to be very costly and take much too long. The promised ROI evaporates before any result is obtained. Although typically there are many good intentions to collaborate, the failure to transpose business requirements to a technology implementation is driven by the difficult communication between line of business people and the technology people. A BPM project requires the business to be in the driving seat, and any requirements need to be shared without losing any detail with the implementation teams. What is needed is a platform that will simplify the BPM approach to facilitate business people to provide the needed input, that will enhance collaboration between all parties involved, and that will shorten the cycles between new or changing requirements. This is what WebSphere Lombardi edition has to offer: a complete BPM solution that is covering the whole lifecycle, from modelling to optimization and monitoring, with one single product. All the different oles inside an organization will find a way to make their work smarter using this platform.

Product or Business Proces? 

The session is very product focused. I realize that this conference is very customer focused, where a lot of conferences and sessions which I attend from Microsoft are much more partner focused. Well they are people focussed as I mentioned earlier, but that is translated into User eXperience. The presenter tries to adress the business needs, but very poor.

He misses the point in my opinion. The results of a effective & efficient BPM project is NOT depended of the supporting tool. He mentioned the business is crusial, but still presented a tool focused presentation.

The Themes
Themes mentioned are indeed very important to take in consideration and base of a well designed business supporting proces:

• simplicity
• engagement
• repeatability

Well I do not know if simplicity is the right word. Business and Technology should have a common language to discusse requirements, changes to these demands to ensure the result ìs the implementation of the solution both agreed on. That is NOT simple.

Engagement is indeed a crusial element to ensure success and effectiveness of the end results. In perception of the business it becomes their system.

Repeatability should help to become more efficient, but there is more than just an object in a tool. Best practices in how organisations can be helped to analyse the business problem and what sort of solution helped simular organisations before. It is not as suggested repeatability on the level of the tool itself.

Meet IBM 2010 - See IT differently

Remember
It's a strange feeling. It has been a few years since I attended a IBM business / technology conference. Nowadays I attend mostly to sessions about the same subjects seen in the perspective of Microsoft technology. When I came across this event and checked out the program I became interested.

Today there are not a lot of familiar faces, but interesting subjects. Time to look at the same subjects that interest me everyday, but from another perspective and also with another market aproach.

Host of the day Roelof Hemmen.

A vision - smarter planet
Core in the IBM vision is Smarter Systems in a Smarter World. The world is getting instrumented, interconnected and more intelligent. Kees Donker opens the event with his vision on the changing and more demanding world. He just scratched the surface of the trends where technology is used to support change, connect different fields in the communities to become more smart. IBM is using a more technology driven approach. (Microsoft is more People focused, but also uses the work smarter concept in essence).

Kees Donker is asked by Roelof Hemmen a few times when the developments described by IBM will be practically adopted and used by real people. The answer was not given, no timeline, no roadmap. Well I do support the idea that things has to change in this world. I do think lot's of technology can implement the technology to fullfill a lot of needs. Still I wished IBM had the nerve to make a good guess of what is happening when.

Also the examples are just mentioned. A trafic information system, a system at the Schiphol that processes the luguage more effective and efficient. These examples are more than just an experiment, they DO mean something to efficiency. The Smarter System is heavily supported by technology. Technology developed by IBM. The barcode, an idea of B. Silver first adopted by IBM is now evolved in RFID (IBM is one of the driving forces, making the technology affordable). This is typicaly a strong element of this company, pitty they do not magnify these investments and the measurable effect on our everyday experiences.

The vision Instrumented, interconnected and more intelligence are translated in the more practical themes:

• Insight & Action
• Efficiency and Effectiveness
• Managing risk
• Empower people
• Agile organization

These themes are the structure around the subjects of the breakout sessions during the event.

Today I try to capture the simularities and the differences in the perspectives of these to companies in the fields insight, collaboration, contentmanagement etc