Virtualization, Bundling, and Browser Wars?

What do "Virtualization, Bundling, and Browser Wars" have in common. Well, an hour ago I would have probably said "What???!!!"

I feel a bit differently now.

The question on ebizQ's Cloud Computing forum today was about how private clouds is impacting the virtualization strategies of companies and referred to a blog posting by Mike Vizard.
Mike brings up a few very interesting points. However, what really grabbed my attention was the following statement:

"... Canonical this week partnered with Convirture to add an open source virtualization management platform to its Ubuntu distribution of Linux."

Now that is interesting. Imagine every operating system/platform with its own virtualization capability. Wait, it's already happening! Furthermore, the built in virtualization is optimized for the platform and vice versa.

Pretty cool, or is it?

Now think back to the time when Microsoft bundled its browser, IE, with its Windows Operating System.

If you can't recall, here's a refresher:

"United States v. Microsoft was a set of consolidated civil actions filed against Microsoft Corporation pursuant to the Sherman Antitrust Act on May 18, 1998 by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and 20 U.S. states who alleged that Microsoft abused monopoly power. The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web browser software with its Microsoft Windows operating system. Bundling them together is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft's victory in the browser wars as every Windows user had a copy of Internet Explorer. It was further alleged that this unfairly restricted the market for competing web browsers (such as Netscape Navigator or Opera)..."

Funny how history has a way of repeating itself. Let's just hope that in this case it stops repeating itself at the "bundling" part and not at the "billions of dollars spent in legal fees" part!

* Originally posted on the ebizQ Cloud Computing forum on November 4, 2010.

My Podcast - The Battle for the Clouds.

Listen to my latest podcast The battle for the clouds is on: Tarak Modi explains.

Feel free to send comments. I look forward to your feedback and suggestions for future podcasts.

AFCEA Cloud Conference - Here's what you missed!

I attended the AFCEA Cloud Conference yesterday held at the Johns Hopkins Kossiakoff Center in Laurel MD. The sessions in the conference were organized as interactive town hall style discussions in three topic areas:

1. Cloud Security Policy and Guidance
2. Cloud Security Architecture and Technology
3. Secure Cloud Operations

I targeted the policy and guidance sessions. Here are just a few of the golden nuggets that I have distilled:  

• Information used to support the mission; now it is the mission.
• We have the same problems as did before; the difference is we dont have the luxury of time anymore.
• Everything is assymetric.
• Global interconnectivity makes Private Clouds an oxymoron.
• Build sidewalks where people walk; create cloud policy that facilitates the way users use the cloud.
• Warfighters are inherently agile; cloud policy needs to be such as well.
• It’s about Mission Engineering not just Systems Engineering
• Do we need new policy or a new policy making process?

SOA - The Second Coming?

According to a recent post in InfoQ "Nearly two years after proclaiming that SOA was dead, the Burton group has changed their mind and now writes that SOA is set for a comeback."


So, it is no surprise, that ebizQ, picked up on this and posed the question on their SOA forum "What reason do you give for the initial failure of SOA?"


Well, the question as posed has a BIG assumption built into it - that SOA had failed!

ebizQ readers were quick to pounce upon the assumption. The general consensus was the SOA itself had never really failed.

I agree.

SOA, the architecture, had never failed; rather it was the implementation and execution that never measured up to expectations. Conversly, we might have a better chance of success with SOA in its so called "second coming" since

1. The hype has been tempered down considerably with a healthy dose of reality, 
2. The technology has matured significantly to support a service architecture (think Clouds, Virtualization, ESBs, etc.), and 
3. We, as an IT Community, have matured significantly.

* Originally posted on the ebizQ SOA Forum on November 17, 2010.

SOA - I Wish, I Wish With All My Might...

Today's question on the ebizQ forum was "What Improvements Would You Like to See With SOA?".

Once upon a time...
 
On a more serious note though, we read a lot about the convergence of SOA and Cloud Computing. There's an excellent book on the topic by David Linthicum and even I have written an article on the topic titled The Cloud SOA Ecosystem published on ebizQ in October 2009.
 
So, the one improvement I yearn for is the cementing and formalization of the relation between Cloud Computing and SOA. Today, cloud computing has three main delivery models: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
 
I propose including a fourth model called Information-as-a-Service.

Information-as-a-Service is the delivery model that formalizes the relation between SOA and Cloud Computing. It is a delivery model that is enabled by SOA at its core just as Virtualization is a key underpinning of IaaS. In other words, SOA is to Information-as-a-Service what Virtualization is to Infrastructure-as-a-Service. Put yet another way, Cloud Computing is the overall enterprise architecture pattern; SOA is the architectural pattern that enables one model of the overall Cloud: Information-as-a-Service.

* Originally posted on the ebizQ Cloud Computing forum on November 4, 2010.

Big Oil, Big Tobacco, and Big Cloud???

Have you ever wondered if the future of our "IT spending" is in danger of being controlled by a few super Cloud Computing giants?

Is the "OPEC" of Cloud Computing just around the corner?

If these are questions that make you pause and think then I highly recommend reading David Linthicum's article titled The danger of the coming 'big cloud' monopolies for an interesting perspective of just how possible the above scenario is and what the implications might be if such a thing did occur.