SaaS! Virtualization! Surveys?
Fred Mikkelsen's Blog |
February 20, 2008 11:18 AM
|
Comments (0)
From 1 to 10, how are you computing today?
I have always had an issue with surveys. News media loves surveys. "8 out of 10 surveyed say they 'strongly disagree' with their car being towed, yet 9 out of 10 'strongly agree' that the city council should do something about cars parked at expired meters. How can we reconcile this polarization in America? ... news at 10"
I find it interesting that Sociology Students could get Doctoral degrees by asking people how they felt about something, and publishing the results of what they said provided you did it in the presence of statistics. As I recall in Mathematics to get a Ph.D., you had to prove a theory, not just run some numbers.
With the rise of relational databases, the Internet, even adopting Voice over IP (VoIP), I have seen the same cycle being repeated. CFOs, CEOs, and CTOs are quoted in analyst surveys outlining the relative level of activity in planning in these areas. Depending on the study, 80% may be 'considering', while 40% are 'actively pursuing' and 20% have 'implemented' some form of the technology. Now, we see the same surveys being implemented with SaaS and Virtualization. To this I borrow the catch phrase for a caffeine-laced ginseng beverage ...
WAKE UP PEOPLE !!!
These surveys aren't random. The CEOs aren't asked questions like, "Does your company seek to incorporate an animal mascot in its advertising?" Or, "Are you planning to re-diversify into manufacturing buggy whips?"
The thing that I liked about the Sciences, (and I'll put Computer Science in as a science), is that there is a right answer, or at least a small number of right answers or options. If your sorting data and memory is tight, a heap sort is good, if the data overwhelms memory, then a hash-bucket key merge-sort is good. In highly parallel actions, believe it or not a multi-threaded bubble sort may work best. There is an answer. This is when I realized:
The surveys that are being made are not generally mere curiosities of the analyst firms. The people who put these together have an idea of how the industry should proceed.
They analyze. Analysts are thinking when they first wake up, and right before bedtime, and sometimes even during the middle of the workday how companies would work better. A full-time job figuring out what is working and what will be working for people.
A story ...
Ten years ago, I was selling BPM solutions. I was the Systems Engineer. It was a relatively new technology. The V.P. of Sales was on the call. The CIO, the big cheese for the company's technology direction made a comment. "Nothing like BPM has ever been necessary to run our business." The V.P. replied, "That's because you're not innovative."
Long, pregnant pause. Not quite nine months, but very long. You could hear a pin drop. The Sales Manager who worked for the V.P. of Sales nearly drooled because his jaw dropped so far. All that work, and his boss offended the customer, and would be a long, quiet flight home. You could hear each person's heartbeat around the table. All the employees were looking at each other pale and sweaty not knowing what to do or say.
But the CIO took it in stride. "You're right. We're not innovative. In five years, everyone in this industry will be using BPM."
I'm pretty sure if this CIO had been surveyed, he would have been one of the lowest on the adoption curve. But, when presented with the reality of what can be done, he recognized that he needed to move.
Virtualization
If you're not thinking about virtualization, why aren't you? Why do you want to run your businesses server farm with 25% to 75% more hardware than necessary? There may be good reasons, but understand them.
If you're a maker of software products, why are you not enabling your customers to get into a virtualized environment? Will the customer appreciate this decision? Your largest customers will Virtualize soon. Do you want them to move to a competitors product that for enhanced virtualization?
Supporting virtualization is in most cases a testing step. BEA provides additional virtualization capabilities and performance with WLS-VE (WebLogic Server - Virtual Edition) and other VE-enabled products. Even if you're not working with WLS-VE, you should test in a virtualized environment.
SaaS
The Software as a Service trend is picking up steam. There are a couple primary directions this is being initiated from ... the front-end, and the back-end. On the front-end, AJAX and smart client web applications are getting very good. The minority of computer users install their mail readers anymore. In the business world, especially if you consider BlackBerry devices and technologies like Microsoft Office Web Access, email is virtualized. Thin UIs are sufficiently good.
On the back-end, virtualization and consolidated hosting is making SaaS a reasonable paradigm to organize software. You can adjust the resources on an application basis. With a proper billing system, you can apply your best technical resources to maximize business value with configuration options. Add a billing system, ad revenue, usage models and fees, and you have a new venue.
If I ran a company, I would want all business services to be provided through SaaS. Why? Disaster recovery, ramping and scaling, field offices, moving expenses, and overall flexibility. In an office building in Newton, Mass several years ago, a small company was "wiped out" because the tenant on the floor above left the window open. The heating pipes froze and when the heating turned on, water gushed down to the company below. Operations crawled for a few weeks as they worked through insurance, bought new computers, on-and-on. Another CEO once told me that a move was one-third as expensive as a fire. His company had had three of each.
The odds of a disaster occurring for some or all of the operations of a company seem to be about 25% over the course of a decade. Factor in severe storms that do not actually cause a "disaster" to you but threaten a disaster, and it's closer to 100%.
Version 1.0 2008-02-20 2:02PM
Comments
Comments are listed in date ascending order (oldest first) | Post Comment
|
