Cloud computing and Datawarehousing

Following my last blog entry , my brain continued elaborating on the thought of Cloud Computing Adoption in the Enterprise.

Having worked in the Enterprise Space for So long , I am hard pressed to come to terms with the notion that Enterprises will be willing to completely outsource their Information Management and IT infrastructure and more so in a constrained environment like that of Google AppEngine.

Amazon AWS with its ala carte is still a better option to Enterprises as compared to Google App Engine. As you can pick an choose what you want. I think the key is that any Cloud computing vendor needs to "FIT IN" into the Enterprise's Architecture . This basically imply's that more entry points you have to the cloud infrastructure the more use-cases you will have for Enterprise Adoption. So , it seems like Amazon has a better strategy for Enterprise Adoption. Another use-case for Enterprise Adoption is via an SaaS vendor case in point - Vertica . Vertica is a user of cloud infrastructure from Amazon. But the way the cloud is coming into the Enterprise Architecture is via an SaaS vendor.


Another use-case that came to my mind is the impact to the EDW world. With things like BigTable and simpleDB exposed , why would an Enterprise invest in highend Databases like TerrrData - why not use a proven scalable platform like BigTable to run your analytics. In any case you need to do your EDW work in house on separate machines from your core systems - So using an on-demand infrastructure for such needs makes sense.

Shame on you if you cannot start a .com now !

Life could not have been better for developers. I thought that what Amazon had done with AWS was the best developers could have had , But now we have one more entry into the space-- Google App Engine

It is interesting to see how the SaaS/HaaS space is shaping up. Googles App Engine seems like a layer above AWS. i.e a hosted development platform - the toolset for developing an application on App Engine will be focussed and consequently also limiting. App engine provides excellent integration to google's services(like single signon etc) but it is also limiting , i.e I cannot use Java (at least right now).

AWS on the other hand gives you more power (build your own machine the way you want it) but it has a higher learning curve and if you are running a shop on EC2 you will require a System Administrator to manage your website.

While at this nascent stage of Cloud Computing it seems obvious to compare AWS and Google's App Engine but I think that as the market evolves both the offerings will really address separate markets. Google will get its pie from transitioning the traditional Rapid Application development tool (RAD) customers and Amazon from the traditional IT Infrastructure shops. They certainly converge at some level but it will be years before that happens.

It is also interesting to see that traditional IT Majors like IBM , SUN and HP are missing in action from this revolution. One reason could be that at this point AWS and AppEngine seem like a mom-pop shop offerings(Small business and non mission critical) , how do these offerings translate to Enterprise customers and what are the SLA's that will mature these offerings to Enterprises is something I look forward to understanding in 2008.

Maybe Google and AWS needs someone like Capgemini or Accenture to do this.

If you have the time check out the video on google app engine

Struts , JSF , spring mvc , GWT - what is it going to be

I was reading the blog at java based web frameworks for 2008 and ended up doing a query on indeed.com.

So I compared the following
1. Struts
2. JSF (Java server faces)
3. GWT (Googles web application toolkit)
4. Spring MVC

Here is what I found

And Now comparing the Relative growth

As I had expected Struts is the clear leader and my guess just like Mainframe's still are a very important part of the Enterprise , Struts will always be there in the web 1.0 world.

JSF - to me is really a web1.0 technology -just an upgrade to struts.Sun has a knack of making things complicated and I dont think it has handled JSF any different than EJB's 1.0.

Spring MVC - has an interesting story, Spring Core(the middleware piece) has a very strong acceptance and spring core has a bigger audience than spring mvc. It's simplicity of programming model , well thought feature's make it a good candidate for use.

GWT in 2008 is IMO going to be the real winner. About an year ago I had posted that 2007 would be the year for GWT . Well looking at the numbers I think it was. It has not overtaken struts but the relative growth has been the highest - 30,000 % WOW!.

It has three things going for it
1. Java based (so the corporate java developers have an upgrade path)
2. It exposes a whole new capability of ground up AJAX applications not available in Struts , JSF or spring MVC
3. Simple (in every way - learning , developing , building , deploying)

I ran into a client recently who was using GWT very aggressively , Spring core and Spring MVC.When I asked him about why he was using Spring MVC and GWT- he commented the following

- Everything on website cannot be AJAX based application style. I will have some pages that really are suited for html (jsp) type content . I am using Spring MVC for that(example login page , help pages )
-Also Spring MVC is also a good place to put everything together. It works well with J2EE file structures etc and a great way to launch everything and coordinate the website.

The above view is what I think will shape 2008.

Google Energy and Vertical Integration

Google’s(NASDAQ:GOOG) announcement to enter the Energy space kinda surprised me but when you look under the hood there seems to be very good business justification for this.

Google is doing what Henry Ford did in the auto industry and Rockefeller did in the Oil industry – Vertical Integration.

Vertical Integration is defined as - The ownership by the same company of different functions in a supply chain relating to the provision of a particular good or service. Vertical Integration is generally done to lower the transaction costs in the supply chain and synchronize the supply and demand across the chain. Vertical Integration was pioneered by business leaders like Rockefeller and Henry Ford , where after reaching a certain size in their business they expanded into owning the supply chain so as to minimize the risk , control quality and lower transaction costs. Rockefeller after owning oil refinery branched out into oil distribution, oil retail and oil production.

Electricity costs for any SaaS vendor ( Google included) Electricity costs are significant and it is only going to get worse with Oil at $100 and the Global warming problems with coal. So it makes sense to manage the risk on the supply side and try to solve the problem. Google with its core competency of managing and monetizing innovation is also well placed to take up the challenge.Besides in my opinion Energy is going to be next frontier of innovation and to keep on sustaining at PE multiples of 50's long term GOOG needs to be looking at the next growth industries.

What got me thinking on reading about the Google Energy post is the approach Enteprise2.0 companies(like Amazon and Google) are taking towards Vertical integration. Thought leaders like Don Tapscott have argued that in the 2.0 world the transaction costs (the costs for collaboration) that justified vertical integration have evaporated to almost nothing now and vertical integration potentially does not make sense now as the integration costs internally in the Enterprise could be more than taking the route of ideagoras or Crowdsourcing

Google’s Energy entry and Amazon’s Webservices business in my opinion are Aspirational Core Competency based Vertical Integration transactions.

For Google:

Aspirational –Energy is the next thing
Core Competency - Managing and monetizing innovation
Vertical Integration – improve downstream supply chain.

For Amazon:

Aspirational - Become an HaaS Vendor
Core Competency - Software Engg and Systems Management
Vertical Integration - improve downstream supply chain.

Update : dec 29th: Here is another example for Googles vertical integration strategy. Also interesting to note that Google has been integrating downstream and not a lot upstream ( Android) , it did not not end up launching a GPhone as people had predicted.

Google and SaaS Stack Vendor

Following my earlier blog about Google as an SaaS stack vendor , I started thinking about what is next for google to complete its stack.

Prediction : Google will come out with a Hosting Service in an years time

This hosting service will probably be very different from Yahoo or Go Daddy . It will be something that will have a built in IDE option (like MashupEditor ) and will have native support for things like GWT . It will be an environment where you can pick and choose the Google out of box services , can create your Services and will be integrated with Google Apps. It could be based on Java Runtime Environment (because of GWT) but I would be surprised if Google would expose the J2EE directory structure to the consumer.

The big question I do not have an answer to is what would be the Database option. Giving a plain old mySql connection does not seem to be the style for Google. Mybe they will come up with their own DB ?

UPDATE: It is 4/7/08 - less than an year from the prediction. My prediction has come true . check out. http://appengine.google.com/

They have exposed BigTable , GFS and made python to be their development platform. I am waiting to see GWT and Java getting exposed as well.

Why Google Gears ?

Andy asks the question : Why google gears ?

Yes with 3G cards and Wifi do we need an offline option. Probably not. (I could potentially use it in planes - but my expectation is that by the time applications comply with an offline option airlines will figure out a better business model around selling internet on the plane. We did have a failed first step).

Here is why IMHO Google does gears
1. Google does stuff just because they are cool so ROI is not necessary when they start working on it. (Example Google Sets)

2. From a business perspective. Google needs to have an offline option to compete with Flash and Java webstart to complete its SaaS stack of GWT , Google Apps , MashupEditor etc.
Google is in the business of SaaS Development for the Enterprise (look at its recent acqusitions like postini). It is creating an alternative to Java , .NET , FLASH etc and make no mistake about it. Yes their revenue now comes from Advertising but I would be surprised to see if it is the same 5-6 years down the road.

So where is the money going to come from for Google after 5-6 years. --> From using there grid. From using there SaaS platform. You might end up paying on a subscription based model OR pay via getting targetted ads served to you.

Googify your Application

I am fan of Google Apps(NASDAQ:GOOG) and I think it has real potential of replacing the Corporate Intranet.

I already love gmail better than outlook (I get more spam in my corporate email than in my inbox in gmail account -And note that I give my gmail id to all commercial entities and *DO NOT* give out my corporate email id to anyone ) and Google Calendar is fast taking up my usage by having the Webservices API , Multiple Calendars etc. For my thoughts on Google Documents refer my earlier post

Besides I love the ability to configure my home page and choose between a portlet that shows freeway traffic to my home , a googifed salesforce.com that shows the sales projections from salesforce.com and a custom homegrown interface to my project management tool showing the resource utilization for my account. The ability to combine my personal and official priorities on my home page is just great.

Google Apps to me is building up to be a true Web Platform for application development. It is very ironic to me that we in IT consulting keeping on talking to Enterprises about the strategies to implement SOA and forget to mention about how to leverage existing open SOA platforms like Google Apps.

This leads me to think that the next big thing for software applications is going to be- "Googify" the Applications. As the Google platform becomes more established you will see vendors that comply to google apis and the enable there application for the google portlets.

You already see IBM Websphere support the google gadgets in their platform and several vendors like salesforce.com are already Googifying there applications.

Google Apps and Openoffice

I am a very avid user of Google Apps. (NASDAQ:GOOG) I like it a lot. The Style I have always used Google Spreadsheets and documents is that I create the first version of my document(in excel or word) on my laptop and then upload it to google apps. Google is pretty good at keeping the original Excel or Word as intended. The ongoing maintainence of the document and sharing with other users is what I use google for.

Now will my style of functioning change when lets say Google adds more features to its application. I think probably not. The inherent latency in network to switch between tabs , data entry etc will always remain. Frankly when I am creating the baseline document I have a lot keyboard activity and since the document is in design stage I keep on iterating over how the document shoud be made. With the high keyboard activity in the early stages of document creation I have found that Google spreadsheet and documents to be limiting me and annoying from a response time standpoint.

So , where does open office(NASDAQ:SUNW) fit in ?

Well to have a viable alternative to Microsoft (MSFT) , google needs to understand that it needs to have desktop option. If it does not MSFT will be fast to catch up on the webification of office and it will take over google's initial gains.

The viable option at this time is open office. While there is already an alliance between SUN and Google in place , I am not sure if it has led to anything tangible.

Unless there is intigration between Google Apps and openoffice at the levels of feature intrigration, distribution intigration and messaging the alliance will not be successful.

Job Trend Leader's

Here is an interesting analysis of job trends for three major Rules Engines for Last year. (this is a analyis of jobs posted on internet with the keywords mentioned in the charts - source is indeed.com)

Looking at the charts it seems like Pega is gaining marketshare overall in the job market and ILOG is losing. It is quite sad that ILOG does not publish its numbers in comparision to BPMS vendors , while it does keep on claiming that it is 800 pound gorilla in the BRMS space.

Note that the BRMS space itself might be 5 by 5 square foot space. After 20 years of effort and 250 ISV's its revenue is 100Million only.No wonder its market cap is only a tiny fraction of that of its customers.

I will publish a post in the coming weeks highligthing the problems with ILOG and its business model Look out for it.



A few other charts of interest.

The Java technology chart is not surprising to me. Spring is the clearly the choice for application development and I am not suprised at the trendlines. The steady decline of EJB's and the steady rise of hibernate are also not surprising.


The Chart of particular interest to me is the GWT chart. Note the sudden burst in job postings for GWT in Jan 2007. This is a technology to look out for.I will not be surprised if GWT takes over struts in an years times.

Also note a comparision of salary levels of various skills

java $76,000
.NET $67,000
GWT $78,000
Spring framework $79,000
hibernate $80,000
jboss $76,000

View Larger Salary Graph