Microsoft, Apple & Google have been working at Consumer device of all sorts taking a slot in your Lap, Desk, Finger scrtaching Tablets/pads/Surface , SmartPhone/TV ecosystems with an idea to get replacing what Users – Consumers and Enterprise variety are used to. Forbes article started a lot of threads from many analysts jumping into this discussion  from last quarter of 2012 . And Consumers usage span may get to many Home appliances too like those Elgan points to – So it is amounting to G A M E ( Google, Apple, Microsoft , Emc) – where are all the APPS that consumers, Enterprise Users want and NEED?

The AppStore context of device and firmware/software fabric vendors ownership to include Partners and edge stores from cloud/telecom providers is on the rise – but where are those APPS that are relevant to the CONTEXT & Presence of a User ?  And more stats on Smartdevice increase in BRICS compared to Developed market economies – like this claim as China leading  - so the most populated regions of the World getting into the Mobile Map entering the Smarter gen devices may need absolutely more innovation in APPS meant to put the devices to use – just other than Entertainment and news watching/browsing especially for the Global Enterprises looking for the most productive Tools/Devices and the relevant APPS.

Start watching the trickling of APP Stores that go beyond the GAM (E – needs to work still on APPS other than STORAGE!) vendorscape. As HR, Finance, Purchasing & Supply Chain join the Marketing /Sales Line of Business across Enterprises to Appify and use the Consumer smartDevices to use for converged Application scape from Consumer/Customer to user/Employee – apart from the MACHINE 2 MACHINE appification in a connected Devices that are capable of SYNC and out-of-sync /offline usage for Users are getting Saavy and vendors of G A M (!E – not yet) are readying for next genm APPS – Device vendors like Samsung in a hurry to quickly go from Consumer device to Enterprise Devicescapes..

Is the 3 or any number of year(s)  Enterprise Lease for Device and appropriate Software business model going to change rapidly? Pay Per use Cloud and APPS can dictate the Client Scape of future?? what if the large Software as a Service successful vendors tag or propel Client devices virtualization and get to BYOD strategy to pervade Enterprises?

How many platforms, devices & APPS can an Enterprise have in a SUSTAINABLE model? Are Enterprises going to be bean counting their IT use or leverage the APPS market scape to be their Future Application Landscape taking advantage of Cloud + Analytics + Mobile – CAM in the hands of People ?

How about profiling each individual across the globe and markets on SMART Apps usage and target ADs and Relevant APPS – Banks, Insurance & Retail companies are already trying – how about Healthcare, Manufacturing and other Service segments of Global Sectors?

Even Legacy Software SaaSy vendors may take a back seat if a new gen /next gen APPS landscape evolves to get Consumers and Enterprise users be more Productive with the RIGHT Tools and AGILE processes enabled thru’ Technology? As Appliances, Cars, Planes and other transportation vehicles with CONNECTED HOMES/Business and CONNECTED People takes its center stage, why are we waiting to change the ENTERPRISE Client landscape? As eBAY , Amazon & Google had taken the Client devices of choices to users even toying with idea of TV or introduce a NEW Internet SaaVY eye with Google GLASS etc, the next generation of connected people [ with embedded devices!] & Vehicles and Facilities – Home – Hospitals and any Connected Retail Establishment of Choice are all coming together – Who is going to be the NEXTGEN creator for Business Applications in an APPSified world..

Statistics and Dashboards on APPIfication abound the Web like this one from VisionMobile Interactive Visualisations – http://www.visualisations.visionmobile.com/ via @VisionMobile

 

A series of blogs on various topics that i have been housing here starting with Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise App Store, Cloud & Big Data etc are all coming together in this interesting fact finding Survey report and the insights drawn by Capgemini.

The impact of Cloud Computing on Enterprises today are quite phenomenal considering the dimension of Agility by Business Technology leaders. Every industry and every Sector has felt the need and created their own Cloud Strategy in adoption of Cloud Services. The landscape of Cloud Services from Business Process as a Service, SaaS, PaaS and IaaS – spans the entire Data Center and Business Transformation – with Digitization czars across the globe.  Is everyone on Cloud9 or is this a real fact? The survey says it is no longer a fiction as the shift to extend Data center assets to CLOUD is on the rise!

Key takeaways :

1) Ownership of Budget for Cloud – Business / IT/ Business Technology

2)  Journey to the Cloud and Step-wise Migration – Mileage will vary (but WARP speed!)

3)  New Business areas – Cloud?  - Of course , there are many Pundits and Guru’s ringing in with New Business Model changes and Shifts etc .- but what are some of the facts would make IT (Cloud)  intriguing.

The Global Survey across many parts of the Globe, Industries and sectors, this compilation of Insights from Capgemini is a must read for CxO’s, Senior Business & IT leaders of any Enterprise.

Looks like a Santa’s gift from Capgemini thought leaders to Enterprise Business & IT leaders.

 Microsoft is also doing its round of bringing Consumer & Enterprise Technologies together along with Microsoft Azure Cloud Services, Windows 8 launch, Windows 2012/ SQL Server 2012/ System Center 2012  and a gamut of their products and solutions along with familiar APPS, AppStore & an addition of Enterprise AppStore aka now Enterprises can create their own AppStore thanks to Microsoft sharing the Architecture & technology for the same. This may mean a good use of Microsoft Surface – not just scratch on the Surface – but a good Enterprise deployment that is lacking in today’s iOS/ Android  devices & proprietary AppStore!

 Here is the URL – http://www.capgemini.com/ctoblog/2012/11/3-key-cloud-insights-2013/

 Share your thoughts and feedback as 2013 will start with “Why are we not using the Cloud for this Application, Activity or task – as all internet of things/devices are connected – and why are the Enterprise Application Landscape not getting to them..”  - Consumer revolution and Enterprise Adoption of the same technology with carefully orchestrated process, practices and Architecture will be heating up!

“ Life is the application of noble and profound ideas to life. ”

— Matthew Arnold

Recent Forbes magazine article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/davefeinleib/2012/07/24/big-data-trends/ gets to address the urgency and advent of Big Data into corporate leaders apart from IT and Business leaders working together or in isolation to get the genie of Big Data OUT!

Data that is the cornerstone of any Application – be it Unstructured Content / media based or Structured set of relational and other emerging columnar and other types of databases. We had the Relational SQL and Content Management Systems dominate this space of any Web applications from basic Web sites to complex applications. Is that era getting over with all the HADOOPla?

What is Big in Big Data? Is it the Volume, Variability, Velocity or Variety? It is combination of all these with high level of Complexity. The initial space for it comes from immense spatial data and the Social CRM and Analytics that Business would like to use for PREDICTIVE Analytics – not just old fashioned FACT based BI where it is post mortem of data collections. So the data comes in REAL time from various sources and Business leaders would like that to be trimmed to get to Social Sentiments to fine tune advertisements and product/ service marketing to consumers.

Management gurus from Mckinsey opine Big Data is the greatest Next frontier for Innovation, Competition and Productivity – http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/mgi/research/technology_and_innovation/big_data_the_next_frontier_for_innovation

BCG , Gartner, Forrester and a whole lot of Business Technology and IT Strategy and Architecture leaders are all taking Big Data to the height of the HYPE Cycle.  The Business and Technology TRANSFORMATION discussions without taking Big Data into account are rare these days! Have you looked at the Big Data strategy for your organization of late?

What Industries are now caught in the Big Data analysis? It is all the industries that thrive on market intelligence, the old fashioned way relying on marketing and consumer advocacy media and other research sources. The target data sets are running in PETA scale and hence the talk of High Performance Computing – HPC and Parallel processing dominate Big Data discussions.

Did we not address parallel processing of data even with relational and non-relational databases of yester years? The answer is YES but the Moore’s law of hardware CPU and multi-core systems were not invented in that era. So there is a change in hardware, software ecosystem in the Cloudy Servic e oriented world and the sleuth of PROGRAMMING Styles coupled together offer at the best “Nightmare’s on Information Highway of Internet”.

Can one product or the adoption of HADOOP to process PETA bytes of data collected by Enterprises solve Business problems? The answer is an ABSOLUTE NO from every vendor. The acquisition spree of Big Data is not yet over. Aster Data by Terradata, Vivismo by IBM, Vertica by HP , HANA from SAP and all the HADOOP offerings from all vendors taking advantage of the OPEN SOURCE vendor Apache – does this remind the swap of HTTP of all vendors with Apache HTTP and subsequently taking all those COMMONS and multitude of FRAMEWORKS to development fabrics to create today’s world of PaaS –  Platform as a Service offerings?

So Big Data PaaS, SaaS models emerge as IaaS is all combined with HADOOP , Open Source scavenged assets and proprietary IP related products is in the making.

Where can you find the terabytes of information on Big Data?

Try from wikipedia  – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data to all the major IT and yester year Statistical Kings like SAS – http://www.sas.com/big-data/ , IBM – http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/bigdata/  (Talks more of solutions these days as we all know their revenue stream for Services is on the rise as opposed to their product/platform offerings), Oracle – http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/big-data/index.html , EMC – http://www.emc.com/microsites/bigdata/index.htm (they are happy as STORAGE requirements exponentially rise regardless of where the DATA resides – Cloud or on-premise),  Google – https://cloud.google.com/products/big-query.html  (need to call it something else ), http://sites.teradata.com/MapReduce/Whitepaper/.ashx?src=AdWords&kw=big%20data ( has to have Data Scientists and other new roles as this space has new ROLES!) , SAP – http://blogs.sap.com/innovation/big-data (look at the URL composition with in-memory data etc that can take you for a spin!) and of course Pentaho, Tableau, Qlikview – the BI engines have Tools too!!

And of course to get a whole catalog of products offerings , one can browse http://www.infoworld.com/t/big-data

But what are the opportunities & Solutions potential to any Industry? It is tough to answer this even after expanded reading and research into Big Data products as none of them single handedly provide any Solution per se. So one needs to do the home work of understanding the Business Capabilities needed before jumping to analyze, select Big Data products. The era of Smart Device + Cloud + Big Data = Infinite solutions and that is reflected on the 1000’s of small niche, Nuevo Cloud Service Analytics and Big data vendor scape.

Big Data is now a corporate cauldron that has all the collections of Information along with multitude of NOISE generated from the outpouring of DATA silos remitting enormous amounts of DATA that someone has to figure out the relevance of Information based on Business priorities and capabilities that are subject to change at all times in REAL time. The secret of separating the real time SIGNAL from this immense noise/chatter of data mixture is a challenge to all and so a DATA Scientist role is all the more relevant!

 

 

 

The Web 2.0 and Ajax days of paint the screen and fetch the data as many different tasks to make nimble screen Apps on Web, Mobile and any device specific UI/presentation gave interesting situations for IT vendors to CRUD.  We saw offline version of apps – the GEARS from google went a bit wild before going nowhere and the requirement has not been fulfilled yet – as Business in the driver’s seat is demanding some offline capabilities for Apps as well. This is understandable with so many devices and a large ecosystems of Application Life cycle , there are Many Points Of Failure [MPOF].

HTML5 is the latest in the past year making several FLASHy things to be on the decline apart from BROWSER war of a different kind. CSS/JS and front end programming is to the fore again. Whether it is the mushrooming of HTML5 User groups like http://www.svhtml5.com/ or many ways of coding HTML5 – http://www.packtpub.com/article/html5-generic-containers , there is a huge gallery of products that are in the making.

So many ways to paint the glass as widget makers are getting ready like http://www.kendoui.com/?gclid=CP7QrdXLjq0CFc3DKgod71_NoA  and of course who can miss http://pages.sencha.com/guide-to-html5.html?ls=Google-AdWords&ss=HTML5-Web&gclid=CMrK5fPLjq0CFULAKgod9Hx0nw 

But handcoders and JavaScript – JS coders keep chugging along as well. Everyone of the nueve or yesteryear Legacy creating well established vendors are at this alchemy again creating zillions of HTML5 applications – http://wireless.sys-con.com/node/1968213 

Containerization of HTML5 is on the move – http://kaazing.com/ 

No one from the titans of IT industry has said NO-HTML(5) yet!!  Now it is for CHROME , IE and other browsers to be in the boxing ring – and innovative niche firms would create HTML5 viewpads and renderers or containers with the ambition of taking the every fattening browser out!! 

Meanwhile what should Enterprise really use HTML5 for?  A way to ponder is to look at creating flexible UI/presentation that are customizable by every user for every application and weaving Video based application integration much easier thru’ Cloud Storage (public/private or hybrid ) and Cloud Services for any device – Phone to TV/IPTV and Game Consoles.

Lots of Games and Video applications are on the horizon with Amazon Kindling the Fire and Apple secretly making iPAD -3 and a large ecosystem of ANDROID tablets in the horizon – and many Desktop virtualization vendors trying to make VDI to get to any device ecosystem – aka Smartphones – BYOD’s using VM’s to make apps slower on the Client as well – we were successful in slowing them down on Servers – as the slowness did not really affect Business SLA’s – the old jokes in the corridors of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore that i used to chime “As Hardware becomes faster, we have layer cakes of firmware and software and of course applications come in to make everything look slow – so put the Chip makers to work again” – Dunno what the break point of Murphy’s Law is

So the question of Cross-Platform Development platform [ eternal one right?] remains yet to be answered. Meanwhile check if the old forms/screens can all be converted quickly to HTML5 while putting the backend to REST or SOAP (opera..] – We will be eternally building with millions of Scripting languages that fly across us in the screens we stare..

 

As in the era of Client/ Server  (C/S) and Object Oriented Programming  (OOP) , the rise of End User Computing is showing up again in vendor charts and Business Technololgy and Business Analysts views.  Usability engineering became a large discipline towards the last stages of OOP – but C/S and OOP are still around in practice but camouflagued by Tools and frameworks. And came Component based Development- CBD, 4GL , WEB/Script-o-maniacs, SOA and Cloud Services – and they are somewhat there with most of the 4GL’s eclipsed with J2EE and .NET ecosystems.

A twitterati chart doing the rounds on SaaS vendor scape like http://www.bvp.com/cloud/bvp_cloudscape_full.jpg - has again used End User Computing as the topic but used all vendors in NIST definition of SaaS / PaaS/ IaaS used under IT taxonomy like CRM, Content Management System , Analytics blah blah with Vendor labels – many of the lables liek Successfactors – now SAP is acquiting, Radian6 – Salesforce.com acquired and so on – And keeping this chart static won’t do any good even for IT Savvy business leaders.

To take these jargons out and provide meaningful business vocabulary and taxonomy, we need to be pragmatic and get Business Functions and Business process notions right to get to the EXACT BUSINESS SERVICES that can be CONSUMED from a RAINBOW coalition of Cloud Providers.

Apart from as a Service tag to everything so that Every device anywhere can access and consume them for meaninful business USE, the mission to get Cloud Computing Industry to shape is already in swing. NIST – www.nist.gov has the US Government roadmap to Cloud Computing published for public review at http://www.nist.gov/itl/cloud/upload/SP_500_293_volumeII.pdf - on the last pages like page #82 , you can find names of the participants and contributors from Indusry, Government and Standards organizations.

How ADPS= Payroll, 401k – Fidelity , in many markets, Business process outsourcing – BPO and Business Functions outsourcing is on the rise – that implicitly includes the IT part without much help from IT deparments – sometimes termed as Shadow IT – but may be all wrapped in Business Technology term in future perhaps – In every Global Enteprise including Government sectors/agencies, the ecosystem of Cloud Services and associated derivative Business Services, Funcioons, Applicaitons and processes have started to surface – And even the BIG ERP vendors are starting to ACQUIRE [ if you can't beat'em BUY 'em - that always works!] – SAP / Successfactors, Oracle/Rightnow, Salesforce.com/ Radian6 and many such acqusitions that may follow in 2012.

the buck does not just stop there: The Virtualization that led to Cloud Servers and Services is getting to the DESKTOP/LAPTOP on Cloud using VDI – Virtual Desktop Infrastructure with several vendor offerings. With VMware 5 and other hypervisior vendors , this ecoystem willo get to the smartphones and ipads , chromebooks and such. the end is limitless – but as in the gamut of programming languages more to come as scriptomaniacs scramble to get recogintion with several offerings in open and proprietary Platforms – Openstack and more . So IT lingo , jargons permeate along with programming languages and scripts – HTML5 is just not the only ANSWER! if it was so simple and we want it simple, someone from Grave may shout – get back to the MAINFRAME – none of us liked watching these monstors behind  Air-conditioned glass doors – came WINDOWS to give some connectivity – came Unix/Linux to spread everything everywhwre and now we want all of it in the CLOUD – in unknown destinations – that’s fine – but be good to PROVIDE the BUSINESS or IT  END USER  what he / she needs

So the ERA of End User Computing has again BEGUN  till we get some twists with BRAIN SCANNING, HEDGEAR and WEARABLE and EMBEDDABLE CHIP technologies thru’ BIOLOGY and Computier Science mating! Good luck Nano-technologists – keep it coming – we all want to wear and inplant INTELLIGENCE that lasts or sustains!!

With Cloud Computing becoming an ever-hotter topic, it has become necessary to develop

and establish universal standards. Through the National Institute of Standards &

Technology (NIST), the US Department of Commerce aims to do just that.

 

Do we have enough Standards for the wide variety of Cloud Solutions? Nope, but there is a start towards before proliferation of products/services/solutions from the Cloud Vendorscape! Collaboration among the Standards organizations across the Globe is need of the hour as Clouds galore!

 

I  recently attended the NIST Workshop IV on Cloud Computing which took place in Gaithersburg, Maryland from November 2-4.

 

About NIST

NIST is an agency under the umbrella of the US Department of Commerce. Their Information Technology Laboratory is involved in several Standards, Reference Architecture and Roadmap-related activities helping US Government agencies to procure the right IT products and services from a wide range of vendors.

 

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) plays a central role in defining and advancing standards & collaborating with Agency CIOs, private sector experts, and international bodies to identify and reach consensus on Cloud Computing Technology & Standardization priorities.

 

Through its initiative to collaboratively develop the US Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, NIST is helping to translate mission requirements into technical portability, interoperability, reliability, maintainability & Security requirements.

 

Workshop IV

The focus of this latest workshop was on five working groups or forums that were facilitated and led

by NIST, with participants from various agencies, international Standards forums and country representatives from European Union – EU, Japan & Korea, IT product and solution vendors and industry

experts. The working groups presented the work completed in Phase I, in terms of artifacts like Cloud

Computing. This included 2 volumes of US Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap. These documents are available for  Public comments for the next 30 days and housed at http://www.nist.gov/itl/cloud/index.cfm

 

Volume 1 has High Priority Requirements to further US Government Agency Cloud Computing Adoption and Volume II has Useful information for Cloud Adopters. An additional DRAFT working document on Security Challenges is also published at this site for reference.

 

In addition, several panels were drawn from various experts from the worlds of academia, industry and US government agencies, other national government commerce representatives from Japan & Korea, and International Standards bodies. They contributed their thought leadership for accelerating the adoption of Cloud Computing to the US Government IT Applications landscape as well as International Standards to drive Global Collaboration for Cloud Computing adoption.

 

I had the opportunity to interact with many panelists and industry experts such as Rainer Zimmerman from EU, Jinzy Zhu of Huawei (http://www.huawei.com/en/  ), China, Margot Dor from ETSI ( www.etsi.org ), Winston Bumpus from DMTF (www.dmtf.org ), Richard Soley from OMG (www.omg.org ) and others from IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, VMWARE, Mitre and various US Government Agency IT leaders.

 

The NIST team met with all the collaborators on November 4^th for sharing key elements around Business Use cases, Security topics of concern & Reference Architecture. Cisco & Kloudtrack provided a quick mapping to NIST Reference Architecture. IBM, Microsoft and Oracle had some talk around mapping NIST Reference Architecture without any official positioning.  It was interesting to note Cisco , IBM & Microsoft took the role of Cloud Provider from the NIST Reference Architecture and Oracle Architect was too ambitious to assume Oracle has all the reference Architecture roles covered!

 

This is a open field now for several IT  vendors and Consulting / SI vendors like us to work on our Government Cloud Computing Services Architecture mapping to NIST Reference Architecture. The role based NIST Reference Architecture comprises of Cloud Provider ( Google, Amazon, IBM, VMware, Microsoft, Cisco etc) , Cloud Broker ( Solution and Service Integration Vendors), Cloud Carrier (telecom vendors) Cloud Auditor and Cloud Consumer (Client).

 

I also met with several small companies and entrepreneurs working in the .gov market

segment including Jan Levine, who founded Kloudtrack that has created a SaaS (Software as a

Service) Solution offering – http://www.kloudtrack.com/solutions/

Also watch out for interesting Security managed Services and product firms across the globe, some niche and some traditional large IT vendors.

Presentations from the event can be downloaded via the link http://collaborate.nist.gov/twiki-cloud-computing/bin/view/CloudComputing/Documents

Interesting to see many flavors of OS , Display ecosystems are emerging from Innovative IT vendor-scape aimed at Consumers. It makes one to think where are the Global Enterprise Systems and Users in all this Consumer driven Gizmos. You may get many answers from it is LAB to they all will fade away as more quarters flow by etc. But the revolution of Socially engineered Open Source revolution of software and hardware is here to stay thanks to Virtualization and Cloud Services based Application portfolios in works today. The idea of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS is getting inter-twined with many of the devices innovated and marketed [ or taken out quick like WebOS devices and Tablets - hm fail too quick is better than bleeding a large company with failed investments..] – Boeing’s music and infotainment Android announcement may be indicating the recent trend of LINUX entry into all systems embedded somewhere in a vehicle that is either airborne , on ground or sailing away. BTW Chromebooks made by Acer and samsung (Intel is happy but also aiming its Ultrabooks soon) already at retail in Amazon and Bestbuy are making inroads to pilots @ Global enterprises – hm ,many thousands of -  US $ 2000-5000 lap and desk tops to be replaced by some of them? can this really happen? Apple iPad had this vision too! So what is going on with the tablets and smartphones – we all know it all well as we have been buying iPads/ Android Pads   &     iPhones/ Android   phones  for our kids. Now it is a lot of development and deployment platforms headache at large corporations – can we leave everything for future generation to SOLVE?

Cloud Computing is more than a tech jargon or a buzzword that defies gravity. Many Enterprises have some experience already in the “outsourced” design/development/deploykment and Hosting of their Applications. It is like the old story of “Payroll” or “401k” in-house applicaitons transformed & outsourced to ADP & Fidelity. The earlier generation of Business process outsourcing came up with its own IT hosted solutions that resided in the “Provider’s” Datacenter that hosted multiple tenants providing great TCO to Enterprise Clients.

Now with the Virtulaization layer and Anything as a Service [XaaS] , the model defined by NIST [ http://www.nist.gov/itl/cloud/upload/cloud-def-v15.pdf ] has a lot of potential avenues for realization. The consolidation of Data centers, Application Transformation and Consoiidation in a large portfolio of IT applications are very good candidates for assesssment /pre-qualification to a Cloud Services rendition.

There are many usecases for using Cloud Services as an alternative to traditional BUY/BUILD/DEVELOP/DEPLOY lifecycle of IT Procurement to providing usefull applications. A sampling of the large vendor like Google will reveal the adoption of G-mail and Google Apps. Take a look at Business Customer views @ http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/customers/index.html
and Government users @ http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/government/index.html

Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS Cloudsolutions and large number of Cloud Provider vendors are working on the next generation of Cloud Enabled Application & Hosting Environments. The software licensing models from large IT vendors is subject to change as large organizations make efforts to move to any combo of Public, Private or Hybrid Cloud environments. The integration landscape for Enteprrises will be becoming more challenging to have a single application spanning multiple clouds and connecting to inhouse backend systems.

ERP vendors are not alone these days – SAP , Oracle and IBM with its Marketing (Unica) and BI platforms are all out looking above at the Clouds at large to provide relief to mounting Infrastructure costs that stall their progress. Elastic Compute and decreasing Network costs are attracting more software vendors to move to this delivery model. The Enteprise customers will gain reasonable reduction in TCO – total cost of ownership. Some may say this is RENT vs OWN era but careful contract negotaitions by IT teams with Cloud & Network providers can mean fast Time to Market , TTM that business customers always wanted.

So take a look at the Cloud and welcome the Spring & Summer of 2011 with a lot of Cloud Solutions and Services offering – picking the right ones that make sense for the Enterprise.

Follow @sundarar1

Summary of IT Evolution in an Enterprise – (Reflecting on some organizations, technology, systems/applications view )

Era of Mainframe(s), Mini, Super-mini -   User view via a TERMINAL

The Own, Lease/ Rent, Pay per use business model has been in use for Global consumers / businesses for buildings (Home, Office , Factory etc), heavy machinery/equipments , furniture, many consumer goods and several other retail products and services. But the data center offerings for Global Enterprises had been traditionally own/rent/lease or pay as a bulk with very less emphasis on Usage based billing. As IBM and several other companies had rented mainframe way back in the 1960’s touting high capital expense of procuring and operating these mainframes , christened as “Legacy “ from the 1980’s.  Enterprises expanded beyond PAY ROLL, Finance & Manufacturing applications to create complex Supply chain, Logistics, Purchasing and Sales/Marketing/CRM Application Systems across various environments. This allowed for creation of IT departments from earlier Finance controlled central MIS departments.

As the size and price of computing infrastructure has gone down a lot in these 50 years from 1960-2010, but keeping the legacy of applications and systems built and maintained over the years has become a monumental task for large Governments, Global Enterprises and several other public/private organizations operating business for 50 or more years.  In this period, distributed computing also took center stage along with some hype on replacing the MAINFRAMES (some organizations probably did achieve the replacement after few decades, but majority kept everything). The mini computer and Superminis came to scene and occupied space in datacenters. The companies making “terminals”, a display device/keyboard connected to the data centers were in use. There were several Mainframe vendors who also had mini & supermini in their baggage of servers [ Digital, Sperry, Univac, Burroughs, ICL, Nixdorf, Honeywell, Bull etc ]. Unix became known as “Open System” Operating System for many mini and superminis interspersed with several proprietary O/S as well as tainted/modified versions of Unix [ BSD, SYS V being basics for many apart from the hybrids]

All the varied mainframe software , hardware stack coupled with several midrange systems [ mini & supermini] gave numerous opportunity to Consulting and services industry for perennial MIGRATION projects moving things within the systems as well as across due to the same or different vendor products/tiers. Applications started moving from a central model to a distributed model in this era. The MIS departments gave way to IT across each departments or LOB in every organization having centralized and decentralized environments. The silos and islands of data and interfaces started to permeate enterprises in making Application development and maintenance a monumental task and army of people were engaged for doing this perpetual work across cross-functional and geographic boundaries of expanding Enterprises.

The history of mainframe from IBM perspective is summarized in a diagram resembling a tree – http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_FT1.html  – still reflects the roots/footprints in organizations who have embraced those technologies – there used to be many more vendors for mainframes now consolidated by  IBM (90%) , Groupe Bull, Unisys, HP and Oracle (Sun Microsystems).

 Era of Communication, PC, LAN/WAN &  Internet :

The advent of micro-computers from Apple, Tandy and several others originated from an Intel fiasco or modified from specs product or today we may call it innovation. From individual game and some personal productivity tools micro-computers  did not get initially to the Enterprises or a replacement to the Terminals. The entry of PC era with a push from Microsoft and IBM [ there was Digital Research who had Concurrent CP/M etc ] made a big entry to large enterprises for leveraging personal productivity tools to supplement enterprise computing and all terminals got emulated to change colors of GREEN & AMBER screens to several others from the color palette. And the MOUSE came on and later the Windows/GUI to add more flavors. There was a fight with IBM & Microsoft and OS/2 released by IBM had very few takers. The connectivity of micros came with LAN/WAN solution architecture and Novell Netware played a big role in this area apart from Banyan Wines, Apple and Digital having their own flavors.

The hardware based term of BUS [ remember S100 bus in process control systems and some object oriented languages and O/S like Simula etc used by Process Instrumentation folks in Utility, Cement, Chemical , Aero/Auto and other manufacturing industries..] interconnecting several machinery and devices for process control and instrumentation allowed for Automated monitoring and management and operations of Plants. Several micro computers and LAN/WAN connections were used to create REAL-TIME process control systems, that were a bit different in architectures compared to the Business Systems.

A quick reference to the early mainframe to distributed computing era can be found in the paper titled “Future Computing Environments:The Commodity Mainframe Era” by Gordon Bell.

The humble beginning of Internet with ARPA and Usenet known to several Universities around the globe using Ethernet & TCP/IP protocol to wire distributed computers in data centers , classrooms adding the revolutionary “Personal Computer” from any remote location including homes. Wiring computers with phone lines and satellite links connecting to large data centers and large private networks was a common theme prior to 1994.

Netscape and its browser [ this browser had several beginnings starting from CERN lab etc] gave several people connected to “static content”  enabled thru’ Web Servers in 1994. The Client/Server mode of operating with PC/LAN/WAN and Servers in data centers had its peak till 1997-98.  Then came several scripting tools [ for example PERL] that brought several gateway approaches for interconnecting application screens and reports rendered in the BROWSER. The advent of J2EE Application servers in 1999 and beyond attracted several Enterprises dive into Web Application development apart from those who used Microsoft’s own stack of .NET that emerged a bit later for integrating enterprise applications and rendering thru’ Internet servers and gateways to a Client browser.

ERP solutions or Commercial-Off-The-Shelf[COTS] products and solutions  from SAP, Oracle, Peoplesoft, Siebel, JD Edwards etc emerged in this era of Relational database & Client /Server computing in terms of Enterprise Application Solution sets. Speicific  ERP packages were also created for manufacturing and supply chain, Logistics , Retail and Aftermarket systems. Many Enteprises worked in customizing the COTS making upgrade of those solutions sets next to impossibility. Some of these vendors also provided some screens and reports as HTML/javascript rendering to browsers creating their own proprietary middleware [ initial entry of Java and Web Scripting] similar to mainframe/ unix screen scrapers on the browsers. The “Search” on browser resulting in billion hits and curiosity of users gave way to new breed of IT services by Yahoo & Google. Microsoft bought “hotmail.com” and created MSN etc..

This era also had titles within IT growing with CIO and also getting boardroom presence with Executive VP to get visibility of IT capability of Organizations.

Those looking for references on the advent of internet and its future can start with this link http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ where Tim Berners-Lee chronicles several TALKS & Lectures in a section with various reference materials.

SOA, Web 2.0 & E-Commerce

The component based application development approaches had a twist with the entry of Service Oriented Architecture concept, providing clarity around Application Integration and Interface sprawl in Enterprises.  The Application landscape and integration interfaces between applications that created complex systems for an Enterprise had this new concept of “Services” assisting to reduce numbers of interfaces but did not get to adding value to business as several technical/infrastructure services with large investment on a SOA stack of products, consulting/services & re-wiring and re-write of legacy interfaces and some brutal technical abstractions in the back end integration resulted in large sums of $ spent. As the backend was getting a facelift, in the screens and reports that users stared most of the day were getting a facelift with AJAX, Javascript ,Flash/Flex, Silverlight and several browser and backend web and application server technologies.

The early Web 1.0 era failed e-commerce products/ solutions have started appearing in a better Glue/ Fusion architectures paving way for better commercial off-the shelf [ COTS]  solution sets for various industries.  Also a new set of solutions based on the media /channel delivery via Web touted as “Software as a Service” – SaaS , that bill client based on number of users signed in several areas like CRM , HRM, Manufacturing , IT services etc..

A summary of Web 1 and 2.0 technology and solution stack is pro vided at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/articles/ora_web20_architectures.html

There are also Enterprise 2.0 architectures created consolidating several technologies as illustrated in this article – http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/the-story-of-web-20-and-soa-continues-part-1/107

Era of Cloud Services & Mobility

HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle & SAP have all embraced Cloud Services via the evolution of Virtualization technologies that are currently leveraged along with any existing applications in an Enterprise. The “PAY PER USE” model of the Cloud Services makes it very attractive for any consumer based marketing applications as well as enabling collaboration within an extended Enterprise.

Some references outlining Cloud Services and Platforms can be found at the following links:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/cloud.html

http://www.microsoft.com/cloud/

http://www.ibm.com/ibm/cloud/

http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/cloud/index.html

http://www.sap.com/about/company/research/areas/cloudcomputing/index.epx

The Virtualization vendors like VMware/EMC & Citrix also have several offerings in this area.

http://www.vmware.com/solutions/cloud-computing/

http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=1681633

For those researching on all possible vendors and solutions in the cloud computing space, this article has a list of 85 vendors with some analysis.

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3835941/85-Cloud-Computing-Vendors-Shaping-the-Emerging-Cloud.htm

The pay per use and auto-scale & elasticity of IT compute & Storage model introduced by Amazon, an online bookstore that has become an Online outlet for several other consumer items brought this term called “Cloud Computing” to the fore with entire Infrastructure provisioning, an ordeal task in Enterprises.  Every skeptic  of information technology is looking at the HYPE cycle of IT vendors on the promise of the Cloud & Mobile Smartphones, whereas every consumer is looking for more self satisfying retail experience!

Cloud computing is a buzz word doing rounds with IT product and services marketing firms that leverage INTERNET from browsing websites and applications to provision the basic building blocks/fabric of Hardware/Software and required applications services , components and services. The challenge is to find a common agreeable definition and standard for this Nuevo model of “Cloud Computing” and the all encompassing definition coined by NIST (92 slide deck) comes closer to describing the panacea.

The advent of Apple iPhone and its successes has made several IT vendors eye the phone and communication industry and create assortment of SMARTPHONE ecosystems like the Google Android and Nokia Smartphones.  The mobile application landscape is growing for consumers with several enterprises jumping into create Games and some basic catalog type information. The retail & finance industry is creating commercial applications for Consumers who have this new device in an ALWAYS connected mode. The PUSH versus PULL marketing is making headway thru’ this appliance and the new iPAD  and devices that Consumers use most of the time for communication has become a great TARGET marketing and campaigning tool for Enterprises.[ Microsoft Tablet had no impact earlier .., Apple iPad is making waves ..]

Some market statistics like http://gigaom.com/2010/02/23/the-smartphone-market/ these are providing an indication of the moves of NOKIA, APPLE, RIM/Blackberry and other Smartphone technology platforms like Google/Android, Windows Mobile as well as many open source solutions like Rhomobile – http://rhomobile.com/  etc..

All the IT major vendors like IBM, Oracle, Microsoft & SAP have several offerings to combine SMARTPHONE as another channel to the software and application solutions provided by them. The application landscape in the SMARTPHONE world is in the evolutionary phase but using the Cloud Services paradigm as a jumpstart, it can move much quickly to supplement traditional email/desktop/laptop applications in an enterprise as well as new “Channel” for connecting with the consumer/customer.

The smart coupling of Mobile Smartphone device, applications and Services along with Cloud Computing can provide a plethora of Application and Service enablement keeping Customer & their choice of device as the focus for future consumer based Applications.  The telecom industry, Mobile phone manufacturers, service & solution providers are catering to a large demand from Enterprises, to use new technology innovations for increased sales/service revenues.

Now it is time to reflect on what is the next big thing from IT product, solution innovators to Enterprises as many new technology integration in the Enterprises are consuming a bit more than the budgets, that results in a perpetual Cost Savings approaches in full swing.  Technology is shifting to have direct correlation to Business engagements with Client, supplier & retailer and Business Leadership is looking for some of “enablers” newer methods enabled by technologies like Social Media to basically Attract, Retain & Sustain new and Loyal customer base as buying patterns of consumers seem to be directly related to ONLINE/ Internet presence & engagement.

Opportunities for Integration of Application, Data and Services & EA

Enormous opportunity exists in Global Enterprises, Large Government agencies and medium level companies for “GLUE”-middleware , to interconnect all the various systems and sub-systems created over the years – as technology is changing constantly with rapid pace.

Companies like Oracle, IBM & Microsoft have created several stacks of GLUE-software integration technologies and frameworks at all layers of the applications from UI/Presentation / Channels to Application/ Data/ Legacy [ right now all technologies and platforms listed in this article have a flair of legacy including SMARTPHONES & Cloud Services]. Oracle FUSION architecture – http://www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/index.htm and  IBM Middleware services – http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/itservice/igs/a1025998 presents an array of integration architectures to wire all the systems built in different ERA of computing including those kept in life support , like aging mainframes & Unix platforms! Of course Microsoft and SAP are not lagging behind in this GLUE-war fare meant for integration of Enterprise Applications with a good delpoymnet base in Global Enterprises.

Some lessons learnt in the Computing ERA of each age can render meaningful insights for large Enterprises in their BUILD /BUY / REUSE/ RENT (pay as you go) models of Application solutions. Many organizations have started to embrace some form of Enterprise Architecture frameworks and processes from Opengroup – www.opengroup.org  TOGAF or any equivalent. Government agencies both in federal and state agencies in the US have developed several standards within EA frameworks reflecting the importance of the maturity of the Enterprise Architect – profession.

The IT vendors also have adopted EA styles to create new Solution Architectures for various business domains like Utility, Financial Services/Banking, Telecom, Retail & Manufacturing. It has allowed these companies to group their products & services for creating appropriate end user solutions for various business/ market segments.  This can be evidently seen in the recent product/services and solution offerings from Oracle & SAP.

IT Integration to Enterprise Business

Recently many IT leaders have moved into Executive positions working with the Business leaders in creating new strategies for evolving business. The purpose of IT / technology is to provide efficiency and effectiveness to Business Solutions. The earlier era of Business Process Re-engineering has given way to coin a new term “Business Technology” as IT’s relevancy to Business is being realized by companies that are agile and stunningly “Growth” oriented. New generation of companies like Apple, Amazon, Google , eBay and others have used technology platforms extending the reach of the Enterprise to Global consumers making full use of Technology to drive costs down and create immense value for their products/ services. Along with this new sense of Consumer/Customer loyalty , the old way of marketing/selling is doing the rounds in the corridors of power in Governments and Enterprises through SOCIAL MEDIA – yet another “Business technology” Collaboration platform, that is emerging – making people find their peers , friends as well as global think-alikes or wannabes – SHARING information, content about their likes, dis-likes in a FRENZY.  This opens up new areas of innovation for Discover/Identify Global Leads & Services for products & Services to Global Consumers using new channels other then TV, Radio, email & the Brand-Web sites. There will be many new players along with the LEGACY creating genius in the IT Product/Services industry in this new game of “Business Technology”.  IT purists may get puzzled, but that is reality..

The advent of several Smartphones and platform/ecosystems is making Consumer as well as Employee/Enterprise applications on the rise. It is no longer just gaming and IM tools on the phone. Many useful applications are available at Apple App Store, Blackberry App World, Nokia OVI , Windows Marketplace and Google Android Marketplace – a recent entry.  The Enterprise Applications on Mobile devices has been a cornerstone for Windows and RIM/Blackberry and there are new entries challenging these  two vendors and ecosystems as well as the Architecture Styles.

Just as Music industry went thru’ a laptop browser to Mobile phones and devices transition, the Digital Media and applications savvy Enterprises are working on Mobile Content, Applications apart from mobile Advertising that is taking on – Along with that all the desktop securtiy vulnerabiliies as well as tools clainming to fix virus , spam etc are getting small footprints to the new Device oriented Architecture [ DoA]. The Channel oriented visioing is also taking shape across all industries that have Mobile Smartphones as another avenue for interactive applications – enriching user experience being the primary objective.

The App Store from Apple had been built upon the rigidity of Apple pristine manufactruing line – so all software applications follow the Apple prescriptions and tests and trials prior to get to the STORE! Enterprise Applications be it for employees, consumers , suppliers or retailers have a hoast of layers starting with initial Security authenitication to the last mile of governance , montioring, managment & rapid deployments.

Some of the SOA to Mobile App store thought leaders have started creating an innovative approach for Enterprise Mobile Applications – as one of the blog entry reference here illustrates -http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/12019/the-enterprise-app-store-and-self-service-it-how-soa-saas-and-mashups-will-thrive/ 

It is tought to catch up with Web 2.0 that started with AJAX – javasript creating server and client side scripts along with JavaFX – a sun bonanza scripting engine and Adobe Flex/Flash/flashlite and of course the IBM, Microsoft & Oracle creating a multitude of platforms and integration options to deliver Mobile Applications – But still the DEPLOYMENT to consumers is tightly controlled on the APPSTORES – and Akamai may be thinking a bit different as billions of consumer downloads are taking shape- with Global Enteprises jumping into using the Mobile devices /smartphones for applications, these numbers may be growing further.

The basic approach of Deployment of Applications for Enterprises that have traditionally created a huge effort for DESKTOP / LAPTOP environments delivered by IT had been almost doing re-platforming , testing all apps, deploy from central servers etc etc is now starting to permeate to the Mobile Platforms as well – The integration of Mobile Application with backend Enterprise Services poses a tremendous challenge and we will see many new Architectures and layers emerge other than the gateway, framework, runtime engine pushed by several product vendors like Sybase, Oracle, IBM , Microsoft etc..  The traditional IT tool vendors are grappling with it for each and every tool – trying to Mobilize the tool and of course the IT landlords of Enterprises are busy thinking of strategies to mobilized Enterprise Applications and Services.

The AppStore Architecuture may hold some promise and it needs to open up with so many Device/Phone vendors , platform vendors [ j2ME/Sun, WIn7Mobile/Microsoft, Android platform/Google, Nokia-Symbian & several other platforms]. The Web has been the ice breaker that spelt the death of the yester year Client/Server development tooling from most of the IT majors and several small timers also keeping an Open and proprietary path open [Java, .Net,  whole lot of scripting & new open source tools].

How can a complex Application build , deploy and run environments of Enterprise get quick to marketplace for rendering, creating, providing Application access via smartphones? Can  there be a universal remote client – iTunes like smart deploy to all platforms – either native or Web applications?  – the answer seems simple to take the Web Applications route as many enteprises use the Internet infrastructure effectively and sometimes efficiently depending on the class of Apps.  The SaaS vendors like Salesforce.com have their own work cut out here.  There may be several applications for Consumers / Business-IT users to search for appropriate Mobile Apps from different AppStores and a Deploy tool and mechanism [ worked with platform/device vendors and enterprises or the Service Providers??]. It is now an interesting BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY problem to solve – so folks pick up your tools and enable interesting solutions!!