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

Despite 30 years spent automating financial transactions, financial institutions offer customers no more financial insight than when people used passbooks and accordion files.  The first institution to buck this trend will redefine the industry.  And there is no guarantee that it will be a bank…or credit card company.

Read the full American Banker article here.

Roundarch thrives on creating and implementing digital experiences. Part of building that experience is creating a robust web analytics infrastructure that supports future business decisions. This entails identifying and tracking KPI’s as well as choosing an appropriate web analytics tool(s). Selecting the right tool for a client requires consideration of many factors.  From annual costs to reporting needs to analysis requirements, each is an important factor. Site redesigns offer a unique opportunity to assess current tools and determine if the incumbent tool is meeting your needs.  A Brand new site, new technology, and new CMS equals great time to install robust data collection routines and refocus on the important metrics.

It is with this in mind that Roundarch is proud to become part of the Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network (YWACN).  By joining the network, we expand our breadth of expertise that in turn benefits our clients.  While Yahoo! Web Analytics (YWA) is not the appropriate solution for all of our clients, there are some that can benefit from YWA’s unique value proposition-  free and a little less sophisticated than Omniture SiteCatalyst, but more sophisticated than Google.

Routinely, our clients question the value they are extracting from their incumbent web analytics tool.  While often this is corrected through alterations in implementations or increased focus of resources, sometimes, we do find a client whose cost/benefit ratio is out of whack. In these types a scenario’s GA or YWA are valid alternatives and qualify to be part of an alternative solution. This enticing alternative allows clients to reallocate $’s from software to people. This is crucial because tools don’t create insights, people do.  Analysts are the ones that use the tools to assess information along with the surrounding influences and offer profitable recommendations.

Roundarch Analytics strives to provide the best value solutions for our clients. And Yahoo! offers an alternative that may make sense in some situations. The Roundarch Web Analytics team is looking forward to a long and fruitful partnership with YWA.

The Ultimate Comparison Between Google Analytics & Yahoo! Web Analytics

Read the full Story here.

Jeff Maling, President and Chief Experience Officer, and Geoffrey Cubitt, President and Chief Technology Officer, of Roundarch talk with Vidya Drego from Forrester for her Q&Agency blog series.

Welcome to Q&Agency! Each week, I get to talk to agencies small and large and get to hear (in their words) what differentiates them and the experiences they create. To help bring some of that information to you, I’m showcasing an ongoing series of interviews with small to mid-size interactive and design agencies. If you’d like to see your agency or an agency you work with here, let me know!

On May 5th, I talked with Jeff Maling the President and Chief Experience Officer and Geoffrey Cubitt the President and Chief Technology Officer of Roundarch. Edited excerpts from that conversation follow.

Forrester: Tell me a little bit about your agency?

Jeff: Roundarch was founded in 2000 by Deloitte and WPP. At that time, the idea was to bring together the technology and program management skills of Deloitte with the creative skills of WPP to tackle large web problems. Over the past year or more that has translated into large digital problems of many types including mobile, touch screen, etc. But for the most part, we’ve stayed true to the vision because we’re specialized in large-scale digital solutions for fortune 500 companies, the government, and large international organizations. We have about 220 full-time employees primarily in New York and Chicago, smaller offices in Denver and Boston, and a virtual office in DC (where we mostly work in secure locations). Like any good agency or consultancy, we also have a few nomads who refuse to move into one of our offices.

We create breakthrough experience design and build the technology associated with it. To do that, about 50% of our work is focused on strategy and design, and 50% is focused on technology. Our people divide out the same way. We check that math a few times a year, and it always breaks out like that and we strive to keep it at that balance. It’s our core belief that the interplay between design and technology is essential to digital.

Geoff: That’s something we’re religious about. On most engagements, we try to lead both sides of that, sometimes we work on one piece or the other, but we’re always involved in the interplay. It delivers better results. If it looks cool but doesn’t work, it doesn’t solve the business objective. If it’s a great technical solution but no one can use it, it’s not good for the business either. You need both of those things to work together.

Forrester: What is your elevator pitch?

Jeff: We design and develop digital solutions for the world’s largest organizations. That includes customer-facing web sites like we’ve created for our clients at Avis and HBO; complex B2B sites for global financial services firms focusing on wealth management, custodial, credit card services, trading apps, etc.; or an app that tracks assets for the Air Force. We also create mobile experiences for clients like, Avis, HBO and the band Wilco. We’ve made the transition to all things digital. We’re currently working on an executive dashboard surface experience for a client that will utilize a large touch screen.

Geoff: We’re also working with Tesla on their next-generation touch screen infotainment dashboard display that will be connected to the Internet. So we’re expanding beyond just the web to all digital tech interfaces but generally leveraging web or internet technologies.

Forrester: What are the three key things that differentiate you from your competitors?

Jeff: 1. We take a very strategic approach to problems. We have our own maturity model and strategy methodology that we use to create an entire multi-year strategy for clients. We don’t often work only on a campaign. 2. We have some of the deepest user experience capabilities in the field focused on complex applications. We deal with issues like taxonomies and metadata, using methods and principles like rigorous user testing and interaction design. 3. We work with strong enterprise-class technology. Most of our projects result in hardworking enterprise solutions where there’s a core interface that users and customers interact with that’s tied into complex back-end systems. In these instances things like security, scalability, and performance are all considerations when thinking about how to deliver best experience and value for the business. 4. If I can add a fourth…we’re built around complex relationship management – probably from the heritage from Deloitte and WPP. We work with really complex organizations like financial services companies and the Air Force. We are really good at managing in those environments. They can be frustrating, slow moving, and require a lot of consensus building, but we’re really able to get things done in large, complex, bureaucratic enterprises. We actually deliver on solutions where they’re normally challenged to deliver successful outcomes. They want someone not just to design cool stuff but to also have the knowledge to get it done in their environment.

Forrester: Why is your agency well suited to deliver a great customer experience for your clients (and their customers)?

Jeff: There are two reasons really. The first: We do mainly our own customer research – this is not dissimilar to the Forrester approach. We do our own interviews, inquiries, create personas, design scenarios, the whole bit. We follow all the typical market trends, but we do a lot of deep user research.

Geoff: It’s a very user-centered design process; one that really begins with a lot of user study.

Jeff: The second is that we’re passionate about concept design. We like to open the aperture really wide on a problem and think about a long-term solution that could solve the client’s problems for many years. Then we make it bulletproof by testing it, getting feedback, trying to break it, bringing in technology teams to make sure it’s buildable, scalable, etc. Finally we flesh it out in detail and scope it appropriately – usually in a multi-phased roadmap. Given budget and timing, we decide what the first release will look like and then how subsequent releases will allow us to achieve our vision while continually learning from what we release.

Geoff: We’re big on having an associate creative director, a customer experience lead, and a technical person at the table during concept design. The multidisciplinary approach leads to the best solution. It’s not just technically constrained design; it’s sometimes even technology-led because they know the capabilities of the technology best. Both technical and experience design teams push and constrain each other. That’s important. Our people are deep specialists but we collaborate often and create an appreciation for each others’ skills.

Forrester: What’s it like to work at Roundarch?

Jeff: We have a lot of people who’ve been here for a long time and a lot of boomerang employees that have returned to Roundarch. I think that speaks to the great culture we have here.

Geoff: That culture takes constant gardening. We’re always trying to empower people. We’ve got smart people that are passionate and work well together. They work for big name clients, do cool projects, and are fun to work with. We spend time nurturing all elements of that by getting feedback from employees, understanding what keeps them stimulated and trying to keep that as the core part of our culture.

Jeff: We give out Core Value Awards in four areas that represent our culture: respect, client satisfaction, focus, and results. Respect is a huge one for us. We don’t want to be an elitist firm that values only one type of skill set. We’re also very focused on clients. We don’t have office heads or hierarchy outside of client relationships to help keep the client at the center of our structure. Of course we want to remain focused on solving specific problems for clients. And finally, results – this is not just external results for clients but also results internally: are projects profitable, successful, etc. We’ve been giving the awards for a long time, and we find it helps set a tone for how people act in the organization because they know what we value.

See the entire post on Vidya Drego’s blog.

Read the full story here.

There are a large number of successful Facebook applications in terms of number of installs and monthly active users (MAU), a statistic that Facebook provides to track application engagement. Applications such as Mafia Wars or Farmville have high MAU numbers.

However, successful commercial Facebook applications (called business applications in Facebook parlance) are extremely rare, such as “Marketplace,” the application that enables Facebook users to buy, sell and trade with the Facebook community.

Read the full article at Adotas.com

I’m sure several things come quickly to mind when someone mentions cloud computing or cloud applications. As Mark noted in his post about different emerging cloud services there are several layers of complexity that might flavor an application built on or with cloud services. I’m going to specifically talk about building applications that consume or consist of cloud services, Software as a Service ( SaaS ). These can be services you build yourself or they can be 3rd party services. At any rate your end goal would be to have an application that can be delivered to your users, built upon cloud services and my goal is to describe the different layers of how you can build that application based on my experience of designing/building cloud based applications.

I tend to think of the cloud just as I would a traditional computing solution with a few caveats: cloud computing should be highly scalable, on demand and more cost-effective than something I could get at my local web hosting company. At least in theory. In five years time, what we think of  as cloud computing will probably be the “traditional” computing solution,  indeed you will notice that the layers I’ll describe already follow how web applications are generally built today. The reality of the situation means that while cloud computing solutions offer more for less, the trade off is that no one service can be 100% trusted, no one network can always be relied upon, and therefore fault tolerance must be built into the system.

So let’s break down the anatomy of a typical web based cloud application. Generally speaking applications fall into 3 layers, 1) Persistence Layer, 2) Processing Layer and 3) Presentation Layer. These layers can consist of several different services, from several different cloud computing vendors or api’s. You should feel free to have all of these layers talk to each other as well.

So, for the Persistence Layer you might write to a EC2 hosted MySQL database for app specific data, while also relying on the the Persistent capabilities of Facebook, Twitter, or even Google to store user specific data. When I think of the the Persistence Layer I think of only reading and writing data to disk. There should be no (or as little as possible) logic associated with this layer because any logic you write will tend to be platform specific making it more difficult to port in the future event you have to switch providers. In most cloud computing solutions this layer is the layer that implements Eventual Consistency. Interactions with this layer should be quick and to the point. You write, you read. Period. It doesn’t happen often, but if you were to move your persistence layer from one vendor to another, it should be a simple as transferring files.

The Processing layer ( just like a traditional application ) is the layer that interacts with both the Presentation and Persistence layers. This could be a layer you write in  your favorite server scripting language. It could be a proxy layer that you write that takes input from your application and then routes data to other third party services, with some of it  going/coming from Amazon SimpleDB, some of it going to a legacy database from with your network, and perhaps it ferries analytical information to Google Analytics or Omniture. The point is that, the processing layer can be used for any type of processing that your application needs.  But keep this in mind, in my experience the more you proxy to third party services, the less code you’ll have to write and maintain. Or to look at this from the other side if you’re using a third party API and your application doesn’t need to augment the data before sending it over there should be no reason to build a processing layer. Mashups can be thought of a cloud application without the Processing Layer. Can your Presentation Layer talk directly to Omniture or Amazon S3? Absolutely, as long as you don’t have application logic that needs to run before you read or commit.

The Presentation Layer is where everything gets tied together. Above all it needs to always be responsive. I’d go so far as to say that it’s development specific limitations should drive all other development, when possible. I realize that might be a bit controversial, but remember in most use cases, the Presentation layer is running on a user’s machine, which can be thought of just another machine in the cloud. The user is allowing us to run the application on his/her processor for free with the implicit expectation that the application will give something back. The very least we can do as developers is to make sure the user knows what is going on. The need to pull data from multiple locations and present in a data rich interfaces is what makes technologies like Adobe Flex and Microsoft Silverlight so appealing to developers.

So, as a quick summary about what to think about when building cloud based applications. Build the Presentation and the Persistence Layers first and only add the Processing Layer as needed. Never trust any one server or any one network. Practice failure to help build Fault Tolerance. And last but not least, the most important fault tolerance you can build is on the Presentation Layer.

In posts to follow I’ll take a deeper look at each of these layers, various options for these layers and talk about some the lessons learned and best practices for building applications upon cloud services.

GetItNext Apps, LLC formed last year as a partnership between Roundarch and GetItNext and recently launched their first application, GetItNext Shipping Manager (GINSM), onto the eBay Selling Manager Applications platform.  With eBay’s recent move to open Selling Manager Apps to all sellers, GINSM follows eBay to a larger market of between 1million and 3million eBay sellers.

Roundarch’s extensive experience building applications that are not only functional but also a joy to use was key in developing an experience that works seamlessly on the Selling Manager Applications platform.  Roundarch created a new tool that allows shippers to intuitively manage their shipments much more efficiently.

Now found in eBay’s Apps Center, Selling Manager Applications were launched last year to Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro subscribers.  This is the latest step in eBay’s multi-year plan to improve and leverage their developers program.  The results speak for themselves, there are now 40+ practical and powerful eBay verified third-party applications available to eBay users in the United States.  The applications found on the App Center are designed to improve the user experience and efficiency of eBay users’ businesses.  The applications are integrated directly into eBay through use of a broader more flexible API.

The Apps Center is in the early stages of growth with plans to roll out the Apps Center to the rest of the world in coming years.  Further expansion may follow eBay’s US platform to international markets where eBay recently announced US, UK, and German domestic listings will be optionally available internationally in country (Russia, Greece, Norway, Czech Republic, Denmark and Sweden) language through mirrored site listings.

GetItNext Apps, LLC has been with the eBay developers program from the beginning.  The GetItNext Shipping Manager has provided US domestic freight shipping at discounted rates to Selling Manager Applications platform users since the platform launch last year.  GINSM is excited to follow eBay’s expansion to open the platform to all sellers.  Additionally, GINSM is preparing for eBay’s move internationally and has developed an international shipping service where beta users are finding simplified customs information and great international envelope and package shipping rates.

GetItNext Shipping Manager for all your domestic freight shipping on eBay.  Ship, Save, Simplify!

A few weeks ago, a bunch of us at Roundarch went down to Austin Texas for the yearly new media conference, South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive. Although SXSW started out as purely a music festival to fill in the void in business during the spring break, it is now the highest revenue producing special event for Austin. It’s music festival has over 1,400 performers at over 80 venues over four days. The event now has an interactive conference and film festival all bunched up in the span of a bit over a week.

SXSWi seemed really big this year. It seems to be getting bigger and bigger every year and quickly becoming the “it” event for anyone in new media whether it’s digital marketers, social media folks, tech entrepreneurs, web technologists, bloggers, venture capitalists, publishers, agencies, etc. SXSWi is the one place where one can run into successful tech entrepreneurs and CEOs like Tony Hsieh of Zappos, famous authors like Guy Kawasaki and Tim Ferriss, and twitter whales like Pete Cashmore of Mashable and Evan Williams of Twitter. It’s a really great conference for those interested in hearing what the thought leaders of the online interactive industry and the herd are doing. I recall last year I didn’t meet that many people from Chicago but this year it seemed like everywhere I turned I met someone from Chicago. Many of them were SXSW first timers. My overall impression was that companies are starting to have a social media budget and sending these people down here.

Panels at the SXSWi conference typically fall under business, web design and development, nonprofit, or emerging technology. I stuck mostly to the web design and development track. Some of the notable panels I went to include scaling web applications, iPad, designing seductive interactions, and game mechanics. One of the things I really enjoy about SXSW is seeing and learning how others are doing things and their willingness to share.

Two big themes of this conference were mobile and social media. Just the sheer number of people whether they be social media enthusiasts or professionals doing some sort of social media work for companies was astounding. The demographic is definitely skewed towards the people with iPhones and it almost always guaranteed to bring the AT&T network down. Last year AT&T had to have a mobile antenna nearby. Location based apps like Foursquare and Gowalla also made a big splash this year. Last year people were using solely twitter to find out where their friends were at SXSW. This year, one of the most useful tools was the trending feature of Foursquare that showed you which venues had the most checkins.

Some people come down to SXSW as much for the conference as for the parties. Companies ranging from big software corporations like Microsoft as well as startups like Gowalla make an effort to throw big parties in order to please the vocal and active online crowd. On any given night, there’s probably around 3 different parties going on and lines are usually ridiculously long. Personally I’m a bit too old for that and it’s not how I roll. I prefer a more intimate and quite setting so that I can really get to know and connect with the people I hang out with. One evening, a small group of us ended up in a Thai restaurant with one of the Backupify guys (another great midwest startup) Ben Thomas. One another night, a small group of Chicago folks met up with some Youtube engineers to have a great private barbecue. In this type of setting I am able to learn more about what they do, converse and connect. In short SXSW is a great way to develop connections you otherwise wouldn’t make. Your mileage may vary depending on your age and tolerance for alcohol. I personally like going to the sessions. I think the early morning sessions separate the men from the boys and you typically see some hardcore technical ones in the morning.

This year’s keynote with Evan Williams, cofounder of Twitter was a bit of a let down. The one big Twitter announcement of the new @platform was covered only very briefly. First of all, the person doing the interviewing is probably a better writer than a speaker and should have probably stuck to his day job. Many people in the audience complained and even Guy Kawasaki made a jab. Personally I think Guy should do all the keynote interviews. He is entertaining and gets right to the point.

The SXSW experience is what you make out of it. You can go to tons of sessions and learn a lot. You can make friends and lifelong connections at various parties. You can spend time with vendors and learn what their product roadmaps are. Five days is definitely on the long side and by the third day, I feel pretty exhausted but I recommend it if you are in the industry.