CIOs have a tough problem to solve.  It is typically their responsibility to maintain all of the applications within their network, safely and securely.  This means CIOs have to say ‘no’ a lot.  Lately, however, CIOs have been using a secret weapon that can help them reduce risks, bounce back from downtime and manage several times more computer resources at once.  In essence, they are able to say ‘yes’ much more frequently.  This is a dream state for both businesses and consumers and it is enabled by a technology known as virtualization.

Virtualization decouples the operating system from the underlying machine, allowing you to spin-up any operating system on demand.  This makes competing operating systems more accessible than ever.  This capability fueled the growth of infrastructure as a service which revolutionized IT resource management.  This really is the foundation of cloud computing, which marked the beginning of the end for some software compatibility issues since many productivity applications that used to be [enter favorite OS here]-based are now appearing free, online and delivered through the browser.  Further, the ability to spin-up Windows from Mac made it easier for a consumer to decide to purchase a Mac without giving up desktop software that needed to run on Windows.  Consumers were liberated from vendor lock-in and had more choices.  Virtualization was therefore a big win for consumers but has made it much more competitive for desktop operating systems that can no longer monopolize your overall experience.

With the relevance of the desktop OS eroding, many platform strategies started looking to the cloud and mobile to capture the shift in demand.  The two forces combine to create a full spectrum of offerings beyond the benefits of a single device, which include specialized marketplaces, cloud storage, music synch, home entertainment device interop, lifestyle accessories etc…  This is where virtualization becomes an intriguing wildcard.

Enter BlueStacks.  BlueStacks uses an embedded virtualization approach that lets you run native Android applications within Windows.  This capability merges two very large user groups and merges the benefits on both platforms.  You can use BlueStacks on your Windows 7 computer to spare your mobile phone’s battery, save on mobile network data charges, or generally free yourself from device dependency.  Maybe you want to configure your Android applications with a proper keyboard, like adding routes to a transit tracker or typing a shopping list into Springpad to synch to your mobile device.   Maybe you need the Google Authenticator app to login to Google Docs on your laptop and you don’t have your mobile device handy.  Or maybe your phone’s battery is dead.  As the platform arms race heats up, this dual approach is compelling.  Why lock into one platform when you can consolidate two?

Windows 7 desktop view. My selected Android applications loaded into BlueStacks

Windows 7 desktop view. BlueStacks running the Android Chicago Transit Tracker

Going forward, the next logical step would be enabling the mobile device itself to swap between platforms. The iDroid project has demonstrated it can run Android on a jailbroken iPhone – in dual boot mode.   Microsoft’s approach in their ambitious Windows 8 vision is more usable by switching between desktop and tablet mode, albeit both running proprietary instances of windows.  Imagine that you would no longer need a specific device to get access to a specific application.  You could port your own user experience with any device you have adapted to any interface you encounter.  You just switch between virtual machine instances (VMs) on your device as needed.  Imagine never having to configure an application again – the VM will have restricted OS access so you can pre-load all the settings required.  Even still, you may ask why someone would really need to dynamically switch platforms (switching two instances of Android or switching Android with iOS).  It’s not so much that you, the consumer, really needs it as much as you, the corporate citizen does.

Consider this – you work for a small company that is paranoid about security and won’t allow iPads because malware was once introduced to the internal network from being used by carefree kids at home.  With virtualization on mobile devices, you can now purchase almost any device you want, but while at work, you get a pre-loaded virtualized, secured instance that allows IT to manage the safety of the devices on their network.  Further, the VM can be preloaded with all of the productivity tools you are standardized on (e.g. Exchange email/contacts, Dropbox, Yammer, Salesforce etc…).  Your iPad can now be used safely at home by the kids as designed, but your work assets are encrypted and physically inaccessible.  This is exactly the type of abstraction that can help thwart network intrusions, whether introduced from downloads or usb-connected devices.

iDroid project’s dual boot screen on a jail broken iPhone 3G

Legal issues will likely prevent virtualization from becoming ubiquitous across mobile devices in these early days.  After all, Mac OS X is not legally permitted to run inside of a virtualized instance on non-Mac computers (although you can run Windows from a Mac if you have a Windows license).  As our mobile lifestyles evolve, the context of our problems will change.  Within a single household, consumers will want platform independence and a consolidated way to manage all of their devices much like the CIOs of an enterprise today.  So while some applications of virtualization may not be endorsed, virtualization is proven and is mostly limited by licensing with proprietary platforms.

What if your mobile device could listen to the world around you and activate actions based on your preferences?  The actions could initiate a number of capabilities on your mobile device from displaying a map to executing a purchase transaction.  If you own a smart phone, you are one of 45.5 million mobile consumers that have devices with the capability of processing sound signals.  The device simply listens through the microphone, captures a sound signal then translates the signal into a digital signature which is used to lookup a corresponding command for that signature.   This capability is perhaps one of the most seamless ways to interact with the digital world- no wires, no configurations, no typing… just listening.   The opportunities are very exciting.  As you work through the rushing ideas, you will begin to realize that many possibilities have been addressed by other means… but not all.  Let’s explore some of the benefits and practical applications for this particular concept.

At this stage in our human-computer evolution, due to the mobility of computers, most of us may excuse ourselves from a social setting to interact with our devices in the middle of an otherwise social event.  Some are even less well-mannered than that.  I recall going to an Interactive SXSW conference the year after Twitter made its social media debut.  What struck me most about that conference was how ironically anti-social some of the etiquette was.  Online, real-time socializing seemed to be where the excitement was.  Sure, most people were very friendly, but they were also frequently buried in their mobile devices attempting to stay connected.  There has to be a better way to use your device more seamlessly in a social setting.  For starters, imagine if you are at a conference like that and you didn’t have to type anything into your mobile device to register for a Twitter feed of a favorite presenter.  Or, imagine sharing your contact information during a meeting with a new team, without Bluetooth configuration, using sound commands between devices- passively, as a matter of habit.  You just saved a bunch of time without disrupting the social interaction.

While there are many potential applications for mobile devices, including tablet pcs, the sound command paradigm may be best leveraged by a sort of broadcast scenario.  A situation where you have a captive and targeted audience that may want to know more about what you are broadcasting.   When you use this formula, the possibilities become a little more focused without straying into the paradigms already addressed by QR codes, SMS text messaging and Bluetooth capabilities.  Here are some thoughts:

• Radio – Synch the listener to related information of the broadcast, supplementing the experience with visuals.

• Auctions – Synch the audience to additional details of a product on display.

• Public Service Language Translation – Metro trains could broadcast sound signals that will render transit and location information on your device in your chosen language.

There are some really exciting opportunities to explore.   While sound will not address all of our computer interaction deficiencies, it is a big step in that direction.  Over time, I’m sure these capabilities will become much more robust and wide-spread.  We’ve got a lot to look forward to.

Read the full white paper here.

I was on a flight recently for a conference, striking up conversation, when asked, “… so what conference are you attending?” I reply, “… a cloud computing conference, have you heard of that type of thing?” The answer was the best guess so far. “You mean for meteorological studies?”

That’s exactly what it should mean.

The cloud buzzword is hopelessly abstract. In a previous post, I summarized the three top level categories of cloud computing (Iaas, Paas and Saas) and the opportunity from 50,000 feet. In this post, I hope to add some tangible examples to the broadly defined Essential Characteristics of cloud computing by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Let’s begin by identifying a few types of conceptual patterns being applied in the cloud and how they relate to business strategies.

Part I: Types of Cloud Computing Patterns

• Grid Computing – [Commonly considered to be] distributed parallel processing across a network of loosely coupled computers (all serving the same purpose). The purpose is almost drone-like in concentration. Imagine one computer attempting to decode DNA. So much data, so many configurations, 97% of which may be irrelevant. That’s going to take a while. Now imagine how much less time it would take with several thousand computers processing chunks of this puzzle in concert.
• Synchronization / Backups – The process of bringing the state of two or more computers in synch. Microsoft’s Live Mesh is a beta service that synchronizes your cross-platform desktops from a virtual desktop in the cloud.
• Marketplace / Platform – The result of an ecosystem that supports a catalog of applications on a specific platform. The iPhone application store is a good example of a marketplace specific to a device (iPhone). VMForce.com and Google Apps Marketplace are examples of marketplaces that were built on top of a specific Saas platform. (The recent VMWare and Force.com union is compelling in that it now allows developers to use the more familiar Java language to write applications rather than the Force.com proprietary language- Apex Code).
• Online Collaboration – The process of merging ideas, contributions, approvals (aka workflow) sequentially or in parallel to meet a common goal. Wikis, document management systems or shared desktop presentation software (e.g. Goto Meeting) fall into this category.
• Periodic or Unpredictable Demand – The periodic or unpredictable usage of infrastructure. Sometimes you just don’t need all of that horse power, sometimes you do.
• Greenfield Platform – The visage of a virtual image of any development platform template you choose. Anytime, anywhere, no constraints, no limitations, nothing but green fields.

Part II: Identifying Opportunities

Consider a hypothetical business scenario. Assume you own a software firm providing financial statement-type products to stock market investors. Your best selling product is a stock analyzer that aggregates all of the SEC filings in an easy to read format. The latest release of your software includes a rich interface for data visualization. Your customers are thrilled; they are able to scan the visual summary of an SEC filing in just minutes. However, you know the market is fickle and is constantly changing. What are your options for the next few years? Remembering this is a hypothetical exercise, let’s apply some of the cloud patterns above.

• Opportunity 1: Grid Computing – Near time crowd sourcing
  Your company can enhance your stock analyzer software by offering a market sentiment feature. Imagine being able to put a rating on market sentiment. You may do this by processing statistically adjusted data from insider transactions, intra-day volume, newswires and social media networks as a factor in an artificial intelligence algorithm that measures risk. Grid computing can handle the heavy lifting of the neural network caching and comparative analysis in near real time.
• Opportunity 2: Synchronization – Extended experience on mobile devices
  You can synch parent website activity to your mobile device automatically, over the air. During idle time your customers can browse auto-queued summaries of their website activity, on their mobile device. They can discover new companies based on related searches and change their rankings on companies which would be reverse synched back to the website. Further, your customers can earn complimentary SEC reports by participating in forecasting surveys on their mobile device, further extending your brand awareness.
• Opportunity 3: Platform / Marketplace Add-on
  Marketplaces and platforms keep captive audiences. Consider creating an add-on component for an existing platform or create an application in a marketplace. You could create an application on the Google Apps Engine to be integrated with a suite of related App Engine programs. If you are feeling playful, you could create a Facebook game that extends your brand by allowing you to pick friends as executives in major firms, then rendering a forecast graph, in your brands style, based on user-driven feedback. In these early stages, in some marketplaces, you could be the dominant presence in your industry. One very nice feature of a platform is that add-ons/installations just work- there is no consideration of local system requirements.
• Opportunity 4: Platform / API
  Perhaps you would prefer that other platforms integrate with your service. In this case, you would simply expose an API, for a fee, for any other platform to take advantage of your offerings.
• Opportunity 5: Periodic Demand
  Over the years, you’ve noticed a trend. The traffic of the website peaks during the month ahead of earnings announcements. Therefore, you’ve got a datacenter of expensive servers that is only being used near capacity 4 months out of the year. Depending on usage, you can save big by not maintaining the under-utilized servers at all. Instead, you would simply manage a virtualization provider that fires up new virtualized servers on demand. Similarly, you could maintain a smaller set of servers and burst overflowing demand into the virtualization provider.

Part III: Summary

While the spectrum of definitions for the cloud may remain nebulous, the point of this post is to put some of the possibilities in context. Most of these architectural concepts have been around for a long time. However, the latest advent of cloud computing is enabling a different way of approaching them. The interdependency paradigm is more accessible now. Imagine not having to spend millions to integrate traditional software installations; in the cloud, in theory, you would plug into pre-existing adapters that do it for you (for much less). We are getting closer to a seamless way of architecting applications in environments whose differences are becoming less relevant, therefore reducing implementation and maintenance costs. In the same way an interpreter bridges the divide between foreign languages, cloud architectures can be built to bridge the incompatibilities of computer languages, platforms and protocols. As demand for distributed applications grows, cloud architectures are going to grow with it. We’re looking forward to it.

Related posts:

Nine Steps to Cloud Nine by Mark Ferry

Persistence, Processing and Presentation in the Cloud Based Applications by Brian Holmes

Part I:  A Little Background

Saas – Software as a Service
Paas – Platform as a Service
Iaas – Infrastructure as a Service

If you are already familiar with these three acronyms, skip to Part II…

Software as a Service is the most common form of interaction with the cloud.  As previously mentioned, Salesforce.com, a pioneer in this category, has an API that enables you to write programs that extend the features of its service.  In other words, you could write a program that automatically pulls your account leads from Salesforce.com, scans the status of each account and conducts a relevant news search (using other APIs) for idle accounts.  Reports can be generated based on the aggregated data.  The news search service API could be google,  reuters, blogs, rss feeds etc… This type of API-enabled service is widely available across many websites.

Once you have a program that accesses services using an API, then you may have a problem because you want the program to run all of the time.  You can’t run it on your machine, because you don’t want your machine to be running the program all day.  You can’t run it on a web server because it will impact the performance of your website (same with the app server etc…).  You could however write the program and run it in the cloud on a virtualized platform.  This type of the cloud is known as Platform as a Service.  You have essentially chosen a provider that runs the platform you develop on and are comfortable with.  You therefore lease some computing space to execute your program.

Now that you have a report being generated by a program being run in the cloud, what about the distribution of that report?  If you want to make the report available to the very edge of the network across the world as quickly as technically possible, then you could leverage a provider that distributes and caches the report file on servers throughout the world.  This is an example of leveraging Infrastructure as a Service.  Services like Amazon Cloud Front maintain distributed servers for just that purpose.

Part II:  Opportunity

Another way to view the different cloud concepts is to recognize that they are mainly about how systems interact with other systems.  Why is this important to me?

Opportunity

• You should know your options
• Demand for real-time data is growing
• Tech-savvy departments can have more freedom to roam in the cloud, without IT constraints
• Diversification- resell your own data processing services in the cloud.
• Make your services more widely available
• Integration- once an ecosystem of services exists, complete with service adapters between standardized formats, integration efforts can be reduced.

Potential Cost Savings

• Pro-rated licensing charges on a per use basis
• Scale on demand- provision new servers as needed
• Consolidation of resources to manage
• Start-ups may use the cloud to keep costs down and to focus on core competencies, rather than buying equipment upfront
• Larger IT departments with a data center can get more breadth of range using the cloud without hiring a system admin for a new/different platform

Source: Gary Larson’s The Far Side

There are many factors to consider when looking at the cloud.  Greg Shipley, CTO of Neohapsis, a risk management firm, reminds me that choosing a provider is not simple from a risk management perspective. “The potential for cascading failures increases as cloud providers construct technologies and services on top of other cloud providers.”  In other words, if you use a service that culls demographic information for consumers in China, but you don’t realize that the service relies on Facebook APIs, then you could be inconvenienced if China decides to block Facebook.

Not every problem has a solution in the cloud.  Even if there is a viable solution for your business, there may be a fundamental hesitation.  “As the importance of a service to a business grows, there is the perception that the business is at the mercy of their provider”, Griffin Caprio – Founder & President, 1530 Technologies, Inc. What if the service goes down?  Perhaps the provider is sold to another company and the new owner starts increasing your costs.  Maybe your service provider stops supporting the service you are using for lack of customers.  Whatever the situation, you should be prepared.

So how do you avoid these pitfalls?  Planning and asking the right questions.  These are all manageable issues that are can be properly addressed when you consider each step in our Nine Steps to Cloud Nine.

Part III:  Nine Steps to Cloud Nine

The following steps should help you avoid costly mistakes as you inspect opportunities to leverage or build services in the cloud:

1.  Goals defined
2.  Roadmap
3.  IT involvement / governance / SLA
4.  Choose platform/provider

• Security (user admin access, network, storage, encryption)
• Integration (seamlessly integrated to your systems)
• Portability (migrate a virtual instance between private VPN)
• Vendor lock-in / flexibility
• Marketplace longevity/stability

5.  Lightweight prototype of a core feature
6.  Test thoroughly
7.  Measure/extrapolate against goals (Until success – repeat step 4-7)
8.  Architecture defined
9.  Build the application

The next step is the fun part- determining which strategic goals may have a solution in the cloud.  Look for future posts that discuss some example strategies in more detail.