Category: Technology

Technology

FiveRuns an Interesting Company Using Ruby and Rails

I heard about FiveRuns on the Web 2.0 Show Podcast. From the FiveRuns website:

FiveRuns has developed a new breed of systems management software — a simple, straightforward, open-source answer for your monitoring, analyzing, reporting and predicting needs. Monitor and maintain your systems wherever you are and whenever you want with little more than a web browser and an Internet connection

Their platform is built on Ruby and Rails. They are also planning to provide a Rails application monitoring service. I think the idea that mundane services and applications need an excellent experience is a a very insightful approach for a systems management company to take. With complex system management tools there can be at times too much information, which can confuse the mission of a systems management tool. I think that it is funny that some of the large systems management tools require a team to manage the systems management tool.

FiveRuns gave a presentation on building scalable Rails applications at RailsConf . The presentation is an interesting read if you are into Rails. There seems to be a great deal of opportunity for FiveRuns to win the business of companies that traditionally can’t afford a systems management suite. They are currently in private beta but check them out looks interesting.

Links:

FiveRuns
Monitoring Rails Applications in Production Environments warning PDF

The Web 2. Show RSS Feed
FiveRuns on the Web 2.0 Show Podcast

Food for Thought, Technology

An estimated 168 million Americans lack broadband access at home!

A Reuters article (via News.com) points out:

An estimated 42 percent of Americans had high-speed Internet access at home in March 2006, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That was up from 30 percent of Americans with high-speed access one year earlier, it said.

Wow, 168 million people do not have Broadband at home. The funny thing is many (technologists, the technorati, and the like) refer to the network as being ubiquitous. Its not, and given the cost issues ($49.00 for Comcast) and the political BS around the last mile and now net neutrality, its likely that many may never get Broadband. 168 million, in that number lurks the digital divide, and we as a country don’t seem to be doing much about it. Anybody want to guess how many children are deprived the benefit of the information super highway. Dial-up doesn’t count in my book either. Sad very Sad.

Technology

Open Source Enterprise Applications

I was listening to an interview of John Roberts CEO and Co-Founder of SugarCRM. I have thought a lot about an open source approach to Enterprise applications. There are many highly competitive enterprise application markets, like CRM, ERP, Inventory Management just to name a few. Those enterprise markets are dominated by Oracle, Microsoft and SAP all using a proprietary model. John Roberts points out that these companies spend 50% of their budgets on sales and marketing which adds up to a large sum of money.

Now I have heard the various value propositions of the big players and Mr. Roberts makes a case for SugarCRM. Customers pay for that sales and marketing, imagine if these customers funded open source projects to build open versions of the software they need. This is a revolution, croudsource your enterprise applications. A trend that we will see more of, companies (traditional non-tech) supporting open source projects as a means to achieve competitive advantage. Technology companies have always supported open source projects for competitive advantage.

Why should technology companies be the only players in the open source space. There exists in the world today the engineering capacity to create these open source products. There are definitely markets for open source versions of enterprise applications. In my opinion the open sourcing of enterprise applications will drive innovation and agility. No longer will a company have to run their business based on their enterprise software vendor’s release schedule. Companies could use the open source option to leverage more from the big players or just to simply use the open source version.

I expect that we will see more open source enterprise applications, it’s inevitable. The opportunity is to large and the need is to great.

Link Summary:
SugarCRM
John Roberts CEO and Co-Founder of SugarCRM Via IT Conversations

Technology

Hints of the network

In Technology Review Wade Roush writes in The Internet Is Your Next Hard Drive:

Online storage systems that can automatically synchronize the data on all of your computing devices, including the PCs you use at home and at work and your smart phone, are finally a reality. One industry watcher, Thomas Vander Wal, calls them “personal infoclouds”: technologies that scatter your data across the Internet and reassemble them on your preferred devices.

This is a great article that describes the next revolution in consumer network services. Eventually corporations will be forced to use these network services. The demand for ever increasing cost effectiveness and the need for greater agility will drive companies to use network services. Corporations will then have vast infoclouds distributed across a network of low cost highly available server clouds (like 12 9’s availability).

Mr.Rousch also points out some limitations one being security (Its been solved in my mind, look at cleversafe) and the other is :

Some 68 percent of Internet users in the United States still don’t have broadband cable or DSL service at home, and there aren’t enough Wi-Fi hotspots to keep busy urbanites and their laptops connected all day; and, in any case, the handheld devices they connect from still have limited memory and display capabilities. “A synchronization service isn’t worth much if you can’t get to the service, either because you can’t get online, or because your device is sitting on your desk,” says Pang. “More abundant wireless and better mobile devices are [going to be] important supporting players.”

This is scary 68 percent of the Internet users (what about those folks not on the Internet) don’t have broadband. The lack of broadband access is not only a barrier to the next generation of network services, it’s the barrier that will sustain the digital divide in the United States. The telecommunications reform bill currently being fought over in Congress will determine how the network is fitted out for the next generation of services. Universal and symmetrical service is the key to developing a meaningful environment for rich network services.

Just my two cents. Its a good article check it out.

Link Summary:
Technology Review RSS Feed
The Internet Is Your Next Hard Drive:

Technology

Hints of Opportunity

Jon Udell writes in A new breed of highly-available serverless applications:

Amazon’s S3/SQS duo is a green field that invites entrepreneurs to think way outside the box.

I have already proposed prototypes that can take advantage of these services. Amazon will not be the only provider of distributed storage or messaging services (see cleversafe). These services plus the services from Google are just the beginning of a whole class of services that will drive innovation. Start-ups will be able to take advantage of the more efficient cost model and the increased flexibility. I also agree with Jon that SPDADE applications are going to become even more powerful as they integrate with services like S3 and SQS.

Check out Amazon’s S3 and SQS and let your mind run wild.

Link Summary:

Jon Udell’s RSS feed
A new breed of highly-available serverless applications

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)

Technology

RSS Enterprise

I was reading James Governor’s post commenting on Moonwatcher Charlie Wood’s post “RSS is Velcro for Enterprise Applications”. James points out that Atom might be a better choice because:

[Atom]is more loosely coupled because it contains greater semantic richness.

I think from a technical perspective James makes a great point. The use of a semantically rich syndication stream, creates a world of opportunity for a whole new breed of enterprise applications.

But….. The challenge I see is that just mentioning RSS, Semantic, Atom and Loosely coupled would cause many technology leaders heads to explode. The reality is that these technologies, ideas and techniques are not well (or for that matter widely) understood, and that lack of understanding severely limits their adoption in the enterprise. I also see that enterprise software vendors are slow to generally adopt RSS/Atom and rich semantic notation because they are too busy trying to meet the customers other demands.

This ship will leave space dock, I’m just not sure when.

Links:
Charlie Wood’s RSS Feed
RSS is Velcro for Enterprise Applications
Charlie Wood’s Introduction to RSS

James Governor’s RSS Feed
RSS Spans Apps with Velcro Hooks

Food for Thought, Technology

Open letter to those without RSS feeds

To whom it may concern,

I will not join your mailing list.

If your company, service or group requires me to get information via a mailing list, forget about it. If you enroll me I will unsubscribe, I will not enroll, and I will do everything in my power to avoid using your product. PLEASE CREATE AN RSS FEED. An organization that I belong to offered events calendar updates via email. I will most likely suggest using an RSS feed, I will offer my assistance and then unsubscribe.

I know a great many people don’t know what RSS is, so I hope my little protest and offer of help (for those things I believe in) will encourage companies to find out about RSS. I then hope this new found understanding of RSS will result in an RSS option. The information flow that I sustain via RSS aggregation, filtering and classifying is far more efficient than email.

So please give me a break, wake-up and read the writing in my RSS feed.

Links:
Wikipedia on RSS

Food for Thought, Technology

eBay bans Google Checkout, not a wise move

It seems to me, if eBay believed in its payment service they would want to compete head to head. I think it is telling that Google offers links to competitive services. For example, if you search for an address on Google you get links to Google maps, Yahoo maps and MapQuest. If you believe you have the best service you look to create opportunities for customers to compare which positively reinforces a positive view of the best service. eBay is making a mistake by banning Google Checkout, head to head competition is the way to prevent the Google Checkout beach head. My guess is that right now eBay and Paypal provide a more robust feature set and that difference may be enough to slow or stunt Google Checkout. That attack should occur now not later after Google has improved on their service.

I once read an article where Meg Whitman talks about the value of the eBay community. It seems to me if the community wants to use Google Checkout then eBay should respect the communities demands.

Technology

Google as Identity Silo

Dick Hardt and Eric Norlin have both commented on the new Account Authentication Proxy from Google. Dick and Eric both clearly see Google as creating a ever growing silo. Eric provides a comparison of Google’s Service to Microsoft’s Passport efforts. Eric points out that Microsoft has moved to make their service interoperable after learning from their earlier mistakes.

I agree completely with the deepening silo perspective. I really think though Google understands that it must have an reliable and ubiquitous identity service, if they are going to take advantage of the Cognitive economy.

So I ask myself, Does Google want to maintain its lead in delivering on the cognitive economy and should it wait for the community to deliver a proper identity solution? I think the answer is yes they want to maintain their lead and no they shouldn’t wait. As a business they are obligated to make progress but they must understand without the support of the community they will fail.

I think Google will continue to make progress in developing their identity and reputation platforms and services , while contributing to and inter-operating with the rest of the community. So, Google will deepen their silo then increase their openness and interoperability over time as their customer base and the cognitive economy demands. So as Google Customers we need to demand they increase their openness and interoperability. Just my two cents

Go and check out the posts by Dick Hardt and Eric Norlin, both are worth reading.

Links:
Dick Hardt’s Identity 2.0 RSS Feed
Google Account Authentication: two steps forward, one step back

Eric Norlin’s Digital ID World RSS Feed
Google’s authentication vs. Microsoft’s Live ID