Breaking the Code

Middleware-as-a-Service comes of age

After the silliness of my last post The Right Fluff which was a great April Fool spoof - well I found it funny anyway - it is time to get serious and reflect on the fact that Middleware-as-a-Service has come of age.

What has unfolded over the past week represents a significant change up for Cloud Computing in which shifts the emphasis from Infrastructure-as-a-Service to Platform-as-a-Service irrevocably.

First there was the Simple Notification Service announcement from AWS on April 6 and then in the last hour or so the press release from Springsource team that VMware has acquired RabbitMQ. (The latter prompting me to set my alarm for 4.30AM PDT so I could write this as the news broke.)

In case you don't know RabbitMQ is the open source enterprise messaging system based on the emerging AMQP standard that has been championed by John O'Hara (lately of JPM now at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch) and serial entrepreneur Alexis Richardson.

Anyway my point is that Cloud Computing is growing up as we look to middleware to solve key problems such as Cloud interoperability rather than trying to solve this at the infrastructure layer - something which I've railed against If the only tool that you have is a hammer ...

A different but related point was made by Sam Gross in a recent post Middleware-as-a-Service: Driving Standardization, Agility who calls out "the goal of middleware which is to help integrate and provide interoperability for distributed applications".

So Middleware-as-a-Service has come of age and this should act as a spur for the incumbent middleware vendors and the new kids on the block such as my own company Cloudsoft.

All I can say is fasten your seat belts as it is going to be a helluva ride. Up next? Application mobility. That's our bet anyway.

The Right Fluff

Apologies to Tom Wolfe but I couldn't resist the title as I am a huge fan of The Right Stuff having grown up with the Cold War, Armageddon and above all the Space Race for company.  Music by Bowie - Hunky Dory, Space Oddity and, of course, Five Years.

Your Country Needs You

I've blogged about my fascination with Space Exploration before in Thank God we chose to go to the Moon so you can imagine my excitement when I got a call last week from Professor H. Wolff at the newly formed UK Space Agency saying words to the effect that "Your country needs you".

In a nutshell what Prof Wolff wanted to know was whether Cloudsoft was prepared to go where no other Cloud company had gone before and sponsor a mission to explore our Local Interstellar Cloud or as it is rather quaintly called our Local Fluff.

Roughly 30 light years across, this is the interstellar cloud through which the Solar System is currently moving. The Solar System entered the Local Fluff at some time between 44,000 and 150,000 years ago and is expected to remain within it for another 10,000 to 20,000 years.

I was sceptical at first but Prof Wolff quickly convinced me he was serious. It's the usual small world stuff - Heinz is on the same advisory board as one of our long term collaborators Prof Al Dearle. (As an avid fan of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, I should have expected something like this, I guess.) 

Cloudsoft Goes Galactic

Fast forward to yesterday and we put pen to paper (or in my case electronically signed a PDF using Adobe Acrobat Professional 8) and Cloudsoft Galactic was born.

As a result I can officially reveal that Cloudsoft's Monterey Platform is set to become an integral part of Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) 2.0, a new NASA satellite scheduled for launch on November 11, 2011. IBEX 2.0 is the successor to the original IBEX, a NASA satellite which has been in orbit for about 18 months and is the first to map of the boundary between the Solar System and interstellar space. The IBEX mission is part of NASA's Small Explorer program and should complete its observation of the entire solar system boundary in about 6 months.

Cloudsoft Galactic is working very working closely with teams from the Southwest Research Institute, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center.

A Very British Twist - Not 'Arf

In a peculiarly British twist to this story, IBEX 2.0 will carry a small phial containing the ashes of Alan Leslie "Fluff" Freeman, MBE.

Once in earth orbit, a ceremony reminiscent of the Gene Roddenberry / Timothy Leary Space Burial will be broadcast on Steve Wright's eponymous BBC Radio 2 show in December 2011.

It's not clear whether this is a one-off or part of a longer term plan to position the UK Space Agency as the market leader in space burial services.

How cool is that? I will leave the last word to the Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud.

The Total Perspective Vortex

There is a famous scene in the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy where Zaphod Beeblebrox emerges unscathed from the Total Perspective Vortex. If you are not familiar with this concept take a look at this clip from the original BBC radio series.

Douglas Adams' genius was the reductio ad absurdum of every day life. He lampoons our propensity to trot out phrases like getting things in perspective without giving them a first let alone a second thought.

Another curio is our ability to take the same data set and interpret this radically differently depending on whether we see a glass as half empty or half full.

Case in point - Jim Ottewill's take on a recent study released by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), which questioned companies from Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), about their plans for using cloud computing in the future.

When asked to comment on his article in bobsguide.com by our PR agency Articulate Communications he got my full attention with his provocative title Cloud Computing Risks Outweigh Benefits, New Report Finds.

However when I read the article I was struck by the fact that based on the data points cited I could have concluded the opposite:

Cloud Computing Benefits Outweigh Risks, New Report Finds 

Three quarters of businesses which use cloud computing believe that the positives associated with the technology are greater than the risks, a new report has revealed.

Findings from a study by Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), which questioned companies from Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), showed that nearly two thirds (64.4 per cent) are planning on using cloud computing in the future.

Of those planning to use cloud computing, 14.6 per cent will be adopting the solution for use with “mission critical” services which is a very healthy percentage given this is still a developing technology.

Clearly what you are looking for has a major influence on how you interpret what you are seeing. In this case I guess you could say I am a glass half-full kind of guy.

The Future is ... Content Processing Clouds

I have to confess to being a little ring rusty as this is my first post in over four months. It turns out that running a company can be something of a preoccupation at times. That said, here goes ...

Location, Location, Location

I’m impressed by the staying power of property shows like Location, Location, Location (UK Channel 4) which have managed to re-invent themselves as an essential property guide in these stressful times. Their point is simple: Now more than ever identifying the right location is key if you intend to move house or invest sensibly in property. The same could be said for Utility Computing which after something of a false dawn has been re-invented as Cloud Computing.

Utility Computing, to paraphrase another popular reality TV concept, has had a make over and is now 10 years younger! However, although related, there are significant differences between the two concepts.

Utility Computing #fail

Utility Computing drew heavily on the analogy with traditional utilities such as water, gas and electricity companies, the implicit assumption being that it was the commoditized raw resources – compute, storage and networking - that enterprises were interested in consuming on-demand and which they expected to be available on-tap, as it were. This turned out to be unworkable in practice and it wasn’t until virtualization went mainstream around five years ago that managed services providers were finally able to package these raw resources and, more importantly, manage them effectively in a multi-tenant environment. Cloud Computing on the other hand took it as read that tools like virtualization and automation were readily available and instead focused on what was needed to enable enterprises to develop, deploy and run their applications given the increasing availability of utility computing infrastructure. It quickly became apparent that being able to provide this infrastructure and – if you’ll excuse the pun – knowing how to utilize it were totally different things.

Opportunity Knocks

Over the past few years the managed services providers have been slow to address this issue instead focusing on providing ever more exotic flavors of infrastructure-as-a-service – everything from community cloud offerings through to bare metal cloud and more recently virtual private clouds. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream may be the greatest but it will never beat an ice cream sundae which is the reason that Amazon Web Services has become such a dominant cloud computing player. Amazon understood from the outset that to get the most out of a utility computing infrastructure you need to augment this with application building blocks.

More recently large companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce and Google as well emerging players like Gigaspaces and my own company Cloudsoft have taken this a step further by focusing on providing application developers with application delivery platforms. These provide them with the support they need to develop, deploy and ultimately manage their applications so that they can take full advantage of the cloud computing model. This neatly brings us full circle – it turns out that understanding location, location, location is fundamental to achieving this goal.

Application Mobility is Key

There are many factors that contribute to the efficient delivery of an application or service but of paramount importance is its location. This is not something that should ever be exposed to the consumer of an application or service but the hooks for managing location and the ability to dynamically migrate an application or one of its components from one location to another at runtime are essential tools for the developer. Without application mobility it is impossible to optimize the delivery of an application or service and meet its regulatory or compliance requirements regardless of whether the goal is to deliver optimal performance for end users (follow-the-sun); minimize the cost of delivery (follow-the-moon); or avoid cross-border issues (follow-the-data).

The Future is ... Content Processing Clouds

Since the optimal location for an application or service can vary dramatically over the course of a 24 hour cycle, application mobility needs to be baked into the application delivery platform as a key component of its runtime architecture. What application mobility essentially lets you create is a Content Processing Cloud (CPC).

Companies like Akamai have pioneered the concept of the Content Delivery Network (CDN). In a CDN you optimize for the location/distribution of caching in a network whereas in a CPC you optimize location/distribution of processing in the cloud. Not only are these complementary concepts but I can envisage a future where content processing clouds will be hooked up to both content delivery networks and able to exploit advances in Complex Event Processing (CEP) technologies. Personally I can’t wait.

If the only tool that you have is a hammer ...

In her Chronicle of a Feature Foretold, posted over the weekend, Lori MacVittie gracefully alerted us to fact that both her company F5 and Cisco were planning big announcements at this year's VMworld so naturally I've been keeping tabs on this while putting the finishing touches to the marketing campaign for our own  announcement scheduled for September 14 at High Performance on Wall Street (Twitter #hponws.)

What is fascinating is that both announcements address the same fundamental challenge - application mobility - in broadly the same way.  Both reference cloud as one of the key drivers which is absolutely fine, but then present what to my mind are complex solutions.

First there was F5 with their Live Application Mobility press release yesterday, which Lori covered in her official capacity in Migrate a live application across clouds with no downtime? Sure, no problem. When I say complex what I mean is the sheer number of components needed to make this magic possible.  The press release reads like an Oscar acceptance speech -

An agile Application Delivery Network is the fundamental component required to extend virtualization beyond a single data center or VMware vSphere 4 instance. This integration uses F5's BIG-IP^® solutions with VMware vSphere 4, VMware VMotion^™, VMware Storage VMotion, and the VMware vCenter^™ APIs to overcome many of the networking hurdles that previously prevented organizations from migrating live applications to and from the cloud. The integration between VMware vCenter Server, BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager^™, and BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager^™ simplifies global traffic management to enable easier live migrations. The solution also takes advantage of BIG-IP WAN application delivery services to accelerate VMware VMotion and VMware Storage VMotion events over links that are limited by bandwidth, latency, or packet-loss.

There is nothing wrong with acknowledging the role played by all these components but I think you'll agree that there are a lot of them and the solution is heavily caveated in Lori's blog post.

This announcement was closely followed by one from Cisco on Long Distance VMotion published late last night PST.  Not to be outdone this post comes complete with a link to a white paper.  I rather like Omar Sultan's comment -

Looking at the jointly validated architecture below, one of the cooler things to point out is that, for Cisco customers, at least, the solution builds upon the gear they probably already have in place.

The white paper does a thorough job providing the details of the networking chicanery that is now possible which unfortunately, combined with the earlier press release from F5, brought on an epic migraine.

Just kidding.  Nevertheless reading these posts I was struck by the thought that both F5 and Cisco illustrate perfectly Maslow's Maxim -

If the only tool that you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail.

In other words ever since VMotion was first announced way back in 2005 the holy grail has been to extend this to solve the general problem of application mobility.

If ever there was an example of the wrong level of abstraction being applied to a problem this is it which is why four years on only limited solutions are being announced.  It is also why the Cloud Interop discussion tends to get bogged down in discussions concerning VM formats etc.

The solution to this problem?  I would have thought this was clear but essentially it is about focusing on the middleware and delivering this in cloud-speak bundled as platform-as-a-service offering. Essential dealing with the cloud interop issue by making the problem go away (what Wittgenstein once called untying the knot).  That's where we're headed as a company as that's what our announcement will be all about in a couple of weeks time when we get together with our partners in New York.

Thank God We Chose to Go to the Moon

Over the past few weeks I've tried to explain the significance of the Apollo 11 Moon landing to my three children in the run up to the 40th anniversary. Unfortunately, surrounded as they are by technology and bombarded as they are by CGI animation it is as hard for them to appreciate the impact of this event.

40 years on my daughter, who is exactly the same age I was back in 1969, has a mobile, DSLite, Apple Macbook & iTouch plus sundry other gadgets and takes all this for granted so grainy pictures of guys "floating in a tin can" to paraphrase David Bowie's Space Oddity are about as interesting and relevant to her as our wedding video or Top of the Pops.

Even now it is hard not to be moved and inspired by JFK's speech We Choose to go to the Moon, delivered at Rice University in Houston, Texas fully seven years earlier in June 1962.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It doesn't matter that the space program was in place and well underway before this speech or that the backdrop was the Cold War because what JFK did was crucial - he inspired a generation of engineers to work on what is still ranked as the most complex project ever undertaken and, at the same time, crafted a coherent vision that lasted just long enough to enable them to succeed.

Whatever the political motivation at the time, thank God we chose to go to the moon not only because it was and is an audacious engineering achievement but because of its undoubted impact on our view of ourselves and our planet.  (For more on this check out Exploring the Moon, Discovering Earth from NASA.)

The text of JFK's speech is worth re-reading in the next few hours ahead of the anniversary of the moon landing at 20:17:41 GMT this evening and the Neil Armstrong's small step at 02:56:15 GMT tomorrow morning.  (If you are wondering why I am using GMT these timings were taken from the official NASA Apollo 11 Timeline.)

Fortunately for us, JFK worked with great speech writers not management consultants or masters of spin otherwise his speech would have sounded very different. To illustrate this I plugged his most famous lines into that MBA "must have" the Dilbert Jargonator and dialled in "Make it Sizzle" and "Punch it up". Here are the edited highlights of the resulting mission statement.

I and others opt for to go to the natural satellite of Earth in this decade in addition to do the optional things, not for the reason that they are easy, but in light of the fact that they are hard, whereas that objective will serve to organize and in addition to measure the optimum of our energies ... in light of the fact that this challenge is one that I and others are disposed to accept or agree to acquiesce ... in addition to one which I and others prospectively mean to to win ... This is of central importance to strategic management because it can either buttress or inhibit our commitment to excellence.

And the coup de grâce -

We should use these objectives to transform our strategic thrusts and investment programs into short-run targets and action programs.

On that - ahem - note, I'll leave the last word to REM & The Boss -

With that I'm off to see Moon at the Cameo Picturehouse. See you on the other side. Over and out.

Over the Moon

This is definitely a Saturday morning blog entry.  Purely personal as I am in a reflective mood.

I am a long time fan of Space exploration as, along with the Cold War and a stream of WWII movies, TV coverage of the Apollo Space program made a huge impression on me as a child growing up in the '60s. 

Given this background I just had to share a story from the BBC that popped up on Twitter a couple of days ago.  I follow BBC Breaking News and on Wednesday I was delighted to read about Armstrong's 'poetic' slip on Moon (where else!).

Basically the gist of this story was that after 40 years Dr Christopher Riley (author of Apollo 11 - Owner's Workshop Manual) and forensic linguist John  Olsson have conclusively proved that Neil Armstrong really did say "One small step for man, one giant step for mankind" as he stepped onto the surface of the moon on July 21st, 1969.

For someone who didn't have a TV until I was six years old (hard to believe there was a time before YouTube) and then only a B&W one those grainy images fired my imagination.  I'd have been gutted if after all this time it turned out that Neil Armstrong had merely said "One small step for a man..."

It is fair to say that I was over the moon!

Note: For those of you in the neighborhood Chris Riley and John Olsson will be presenting their findings at the Cheltenham Science Festival tonight where they will be giving a talk Apollo Mysteries.  Unfortunately I will be 400 miles away at a Charity Highland Games and I don't have a matter transmitter beam.

Cloudsoft - Bringing Business to the Cloud

I know I twittered on the topic of funding a couple of weeks ago but I'm delighted to formally announce that we've closed our seed round and that Cloudsoft is now up and running with a small development team based in Edinburgh led by our co-founder and CTO Alex Heneveld a.k.a. Red Threads.

We've secured seed funding from an innovative new fund Andromeda Capital along with Scottish Enterprise and we've taken up space at ETTC @ Informatics which is host to a number of other start ups including CereProc, Hubdub, Speckled Computing and VidioWiki.

Given the support we've received from Scottish Enterprise and Informatics Ventures (@infventures on twitter) we chose to post this today as we will be part of the Investor Showcase at Engage | Invest | Exploit 2009 (#eie09) this afternoon.

Rather than put out a press release (don't worry there will be plenty of time for those in the months and years to come!) we thought we'd mark the occasion a little differently by unveiling a limited edition poster featuring our mantra Bringing Business to the Cloud.

All too often we use language rather glibly so it is worth reminding ourselves what we mean by a mantra. Widipedia's entry for Mantra sums this up rather elegantly as a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that are considered capable of "creating transformation".

So that's what we are about - transforming the way business thinks about technology by bringing business to the cloud.

It's like computers on the Internet, innit!

Let me start by stating categorically that I didn't invent the Internet, cloud computing or even dream up the title of this blog which I have borrowed under CC3.0 from Simon Wardley.

I've also lifted this eponymous slide from his Cloudcamp tour de force.

Simon tells ne this is a picture of a London cabbie but I am pretty sure it is actually Ross Brawn moonlighting - by day he is team principal of new kids Brawn GP and all round F1 god.

Either way I plan to use this to explain cloud computing to the audience at High Performance Linux on Wall Street later today.

If you are on twitter then you can follow this event on #hplonws throughout the day.

If you like this then you should check out Simon's blog Bits or Pieces.  Also our very own Alex Heneveld whose musings can be found at Red Threads.

The Red Pill or the Blue Pill?

As a sponsor of Cloudcamp Why Aye and Cloudcamp Och Aye I was asked whether we wanted to include something in their respective ungoodie bags when I met up with MrsBoogie and  CloudIQ yesterday.

Because these are unconferences (which makes us an unsponsor?!) MrsB said it would be cool if I could come up with something a bit more original than the usual corporate giveaways.  So that would be ungiveaways then?  I said.  (This was just as well, I thought, since we don't have any corporate goodies and have no plans to inflict Cloudsoft® pens, stress balls etc on punters anytime soon.)

So after a great deal of unresearch I've come up with an idea that appeals to me at least: let's make it interesting and put a little red pill in half the ungoodie bags and a little blue pill in the other half and have some fun.

Then attendees have a 50:50 chance of remaining blissfully happy (blue) or having a painful dose of reality (red).  I think I've got that the right way round at least according to Wikipedia.  For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about check out -

According to Morpheus the choice is yours - You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed, and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

I've spoken to Red at M&M who in keeping with the philosophy of Cloudcamp unreliably informs me that their sweets have no such effect.

Therefore I'm now on Lexington and 125th waiting for my man with 26 dollars in my hand -

So what is it going to be - the red pill or the blue pill?

You'll have to come to Cloudcamp in Newcastle on March 24 or Edinburgh on March 25 to find out what I've managed to source as ungoodies and to learn about Cloud Computing (or not!).