If you are involved in analyst relations you will find this funny.

Technorati Tags: analyst relations, Forrester, Gartner, Redmonk

Sounds like cloud computing to me

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, Humor

Latest cloud news and links:

Puppet versus Chef: 10 reasons why Puppet wins

John contends that Puppet has a bigger head start and that Chef has a huge gap to close or remain a tool for the Ruby on Rails cloud crowd.

Puppet, Chef, Dependencies and Worldviews

Andrew explains that, “Puppet guarantees that order matters on the level that it is specified. Chef guarantees that if you start with the same input, you get the same output.”

Proposed legislation looks to build confidence in cloud computing

During a forum held at the Brookings Institution Microsoft senior vice president and general council, Brad Smith, proposed federal legislation meant to address ts cloud computing. Smith and other forum participants stressed the need to raise privacy and security issues associated with cloud computing to a federal level – and the need to do it quickly.

IBM grabs largest enterprise cloud deployment

IBM is expected to announce on Thursday the largest enterprise cloud computing deployment to date as Panasonic begins a migration off Microsoft Exchange to IBM’s LotusLive cloud service. More than 100,000 employees will participate in the initial migration effort expanding to a total of more than 300,000 employees and external partners globally.

Amazon S3 Plugin for Firefox

S3Fox Organizer helps you organize/manage/store your files on Amazon S3

Technorati Tags: amazon, Chef, cloud computing links, IBM, legislation, Puppet, S3

Last fall, Redmonk analyst Michael Coté published a paper (PDF) noted how a lot of companies were scaling back big conferences and shift to informal self-organizing unconferences like BarCamp or Mashup Camp. I actually prefer these conferences to the normal circus style tradeshows driven by marketing dollars and hype.

To that end I had the privilege to work with Dave Nielsen the founder of CloudCamp, Cloud and Systems Management pro, John M. Willis, and Damon Edwards of DTO Solutions to put on a new event for systems management professionals interested in cloud computing.  So on January 30th in Austin, TX there will be the first OpsCamp for systems management and cloud development professionals. The spirit of the conference is very much in the spirit of DevOps Days which happened late last year,  focused on taking the principles of Agile software development and applying them to IT operations.

So don’t take my word for it, read what some other people are saying about OpsCamp.

Dave Nielsen, co-Founder CloudCamp “With rapid change occurring in IT operations, we realized that a place is needed where operations personnel and sysadmins can meet to share their experiences, challenges and solutions. OpsCamp is organized as an unconference which encourages the open exchange of ideas around next generation technologies and strategies for IT Operations. End users, IT professionals and vendors are all encouraged to participate.”

John M. Willis, Author of Cloud Computing and Systems Management Blog, co-host IT Management Podcast and the Cloud Cafe
“While the cloud has lowered the barrier to entry for businesses to own a data center; it has not decreased the complexity of managing complex applications and data center operations.  OpsCamp is about exploring the opportunity to intersect ideas like agile development, continuous deployment, and data center operations to promote the rise of a new movement that breaks down the traditional walls between development and operations (i.e., DevOps).”

Michael Coté, Analyst at Redmonk, co-host IT Management Podcast
“After many years of steady pace in the IT world, the tools and technologies used to do the daily work of operations are rapidly changing. Thanks to virtualization and cloud computing moving mainstream, new, hopefully better ways to deliver IT are emerging. These things aren’t always fully baked yet, but the thought-leaders and early adopters are quickly crystallizing. OpsCamp is an exciting chance to get involved in these conversations whether you want to start directing this shift in operations, figure out if it works for you, or just check it out. And, not only is it free, it’s in a damn fine spot: Austin.”

Luke Kanies, Founder of Puppet and Reductive Labs
“OpsCamp is a great opportunity to share expertise and experience in managing operations in the cloud.  The unconference setting provides a perfect mix between learning and sharing, and the intimate setting guarantees everyone gets something out of it.”

Erica Brescia, CEO, BitRock and Bitnami Project Lead
“In rapidly evolving disciplines such as how to deploy and manage software in the cloud, the one-way dialogue found at typical conferences just doesn’t cut it. OpsCamp will give early adopters and innovators the opportunity to share best practices and guide the development of the next generation of cloud operations tools and services.”

Space is limited for the event so please RSVP if you plan to attend.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, OpsCamp, Systems Management

This tweet from former MySQL AB CEO Mårten Mickos caught my eye. It shows a trend of increased demand for MySQL and PostgresSQL expertise while job postings on job websites for  those with Oracle and Ingres expertise declined.

I was a little shocked by the graph until you realize it’s just a trend. I then looked at the absolute number of jobs requesting database expertise and the story quickly becomes clear….

So if you are looking for a DB admin job the overall number of jobs in that sector are overwhelmingly Oracle jobs but the growth is in MySQL and PostgresSQL expertise.

Technorati Tags: Add new tag, Database, Ingres, Mårten Mickos, MySQL, Oracle, Oracle Database, PostgreSQL

Open Source for America just posted a video on how open source can play a role in U.S. government on YouTube. Open Source for America(OSFA) is a non-profit organization with the following charter:

The mission of OSFA is to educate decision makers in the U.S. Federal government about the advantages of using free and open source software; to encourage the Federal agencies to give equal priority to procuring free and open source software in all of their procurement decisions; and generally provide an effective voice to the U.S. Federal government on behalf of the open source software community, private industry, academia, and other non-profits.

If you would like to get involved you can do so here: http://www.opensourceforamerica.org/get-involved

One of my biggest complaints about Google Docs Spreadsheets is that their is no formatting menu to add hyperlinks to text in a cell. You actually have to use the following notation to make it happen:

=hyperlink(”URL”,”Hyperlinked  Text”)

Beyond that to indicate a cell is hyperlinked you need to format it yourself or the cell will simply appear as having text in the box with no link. Mousing over gives you a little indicator that the cell is a link but you probably would want to format the text with a blue color and underline so you know that it’s a link. My other pet peeve is that the context sensitive help doesn’t indicate that you need the quotes around your pair so entering the example:

=hyperlink(www.socializedSoftware.com, Socialized Software)

This would yield an #ERROR!. See the example below for some of the things I am talking about.

Okay I am done griping it has just been a very big inconvenience for me today.  I hope this helps someone.

Today I saw a note that once high flier KANA was being sold for $49 million in cash to a private equity firm. Not because they have any real assets but because they have a $400 million operating loss. The company is essentially a publicly traded shell that might be used to roll a profitable or growing company who wants to go public into. This has many advantages I suppose for the shareholders of the new company but what about the customers?

Under the marquis with the big liquidation announcement is a link that states:  Half of Fortune 100 companies rely on Kana including Dell, Intel and AT&T yet after the Tuesday sale of the company it seems to me that they are out of luck.

The reason Kana struck a chord with me is because when I was the Director of Technical Support at MindSpring back in the 1990s —we acquired a company in Seattle called SpryNet. They were an early Kana customer. I remember hearing how great the software was and how much promise it had. As we consolidated we went with another vendor, Right Now Technologies, one reason was if I recall correctly, was because it ran on Linux (It’s been so long — in internet years— I can’t recall all the details).

According to the 451 Group’s Brenon Daly the software company has been dying a slow death for years:

“Exactly three years ago, we bluntly wrote that there was no reason for Kana Software (KANA.OB) to be a public company, at least in its current form. Kana’s performance in the intervening 1,000 days since we published that report did nothing to change our view. If anything, as the red ink continued to gush at Kana, we became even more convinced of the need for a sale of the customer support software vendor. The sale finally happened Tuesday, with Accel-KKR agreeing to pay $49m in cash for most of Kana.”

The reason I bring it up is because if the software was open source the companies that use open source would likely have some outs. In this case proprietary KANA according to some reports the CRM vendor went through billions in investment and other losses since being founded in 1996. As a open source business person my colleagues and I spend a lot of time talking about how open source is not risky and I am sure that this cautionary tale will make it into more than one of our counter-objection files. This is a great example of how proprietary software can be risky.

I have been waiting for our pundit-cum-software exec, Matt Asay, to publish his latest musing on the need for the open source savior we deserve. From the draft it looks like it will be yet another well written plea for our industry (software companies that build products and services on or around open source projects). However, it makes me think about one of my favorite movies, Martin Scorsese’s Casino. At one point in the movie Joe Pesci asks Sharon Stone’s character if she needs a sponsor, which she emphatically agrees to — if you saw the movie you can’t get much more affirmative than that. The movie ends with Sharon Stone’s character dead of a drug overdose and Joe Pesci’s character beaten and buried alive in a corn field. In Matt’s draft he suggests Google as the sponsor of OSS. Thanks but no thanks.

I don’t think we need a sponsor or savior for that matter— we need some wins. I mean putting our nose to grindstone and making viable businesses around OSS. I think there are quite a few contenders – Alfresco, SugarCRM, Pentaho and Zenoss to name a few. While I am sure most of us who work in the industry are dying for a liquidation event I think the days of tech stock mega-millionaires are over so while I am happy for the MySQL’s and Springsource’s of the world, I would hope numerous ISVs will find ways to make self-sustainable businesses around OSS. The idea of being a disruptive technology is to be disruptive and challenge the status quo. Maybe the time for the mega software vendor who buildit once, sells it a million times and sits on its laurels is over. Right now the right vendor who has succeeded with a business that’s symbiotic with open source software is Red Hat. They are not only profitable AND growing AND their customers seem to love them. No they aren’t Redmond rich but they are growing their business, sponsoring a number of thriving communities and redefining the model for delivering enterprise software. I think the industry has to execute on the mantras we love to expound: make better software, save money, drive innovation reduce vendor lock-in, etc. So let’s just take Red Hat for what they are —a role model for other open source companies, wish Google the best and leave the saviors for the tabernacle.

[Disclaimer: I don't use the term commercial open source software vendors simply because I personally feel that open source is a development method not a business model. This post is reflects only my own opinion and not necessarily that of my employer.]

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• World’s biggest open-source company? Google (news.cnet.com)
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• Open source to reset IT expectations (news.cnet.com)

I like this interview with SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin. I like his explanation of open source and user-led adoption and how that applies to his company.

Technorati Tags: Larry Augustin, Open Source, SugarCRM

As someone who manages a large community of users I have been watching for the results of the 2009 Tribalization of Business Study sponsored by Beeline Labs, Deloitte, and the Society for New Communications Research, that looks at how companies leverage communities as part of their business. At Zenoss (my employer) we sponsor and co-develop an open source network management solution in collaboration with our community. Our business revolves around providing support, services, training and commercial extensions to that core project.  While we develop features and projects the majority of our innovation comes from our users on how to extend, improve and find new applications for the software.

In the 2008 study it was interesting to note the reasons that companies foster communities. I was curious to see that the top reasons for online communities were amplifying word of mouth and insights marketing research, both excellent benefits provided by a community. I also noticed that benefits that we as a software company like ours gets like Product Testing, Customer Support and New Product Development ranked notably lower.

• We are seeing clear signs of maturity in the marketplace – they include companies realizing the importance of lurkers, their increased focus on providing a heartbeat to their community, and fewer of them being stuck in pilot mode
• At the same time we are still seeing plenty of signs of confusion – they include companies not knowing what objective they are least able to achieve, a continued focus on ad-driven metrics, and a lack of people commitment to communities
• Some big aha moments from this year’s study are that most communities still report in marketing, even though their goals are not all aligned with marketing, and that companies list social reasons rather than commercial reasons for success when asked what community features contribute the most to their communities effectiveness

I am keen to understand their findings around the importance of lurkers. As if you subscribe to the Jakob Nielsen theory of the Inequality of Participation or the 90-9-1 rule which states:

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

One thing I am constantly challenged to get people to participate in the community, from the 2008 study we see this was the biggest challenge by the companies surveyed followed by finding enough time to manage community.

I also was interested to see that generating word of mouth was the activity that people were most successful but there was no clear overall area were they saw overwhelming success.

Looking forward to 2009

Here’s a bit of the foreshadowing from Deloitte on the 2009 results.

Several data points indicate continued maturation of the enterprise’s use of communities and social media. While the number of active users and their level of participation have been considered the top measures of success for an online community, this year survey respondents are paying close attention to non-active users or “lurkers” – people who observe the community, but don’t participate in the discussion.

• 32 percent of respondents are capturing data on how lurkers derive value from the community
• 20 percent of respondents have set up formal “ambassador” programs, which give outsiders preferential treatment in return for being more active in the community
• 39 percent of the respondents indicated that more full-time people are being deployed to manage the communities

I am looking forward to seeing the final report and seeing this year’s trends.

Related Resources

• Press Release about the Study from Deloitte
• 2009 Tribalization of Business Study Highlights Flipbook
• Webinar discussing the survey results
• Slide deck by Francious Gossieaux on the 2008 Tribalization of Business Study
• Results from the 2009 Tribalization of Business Study (socialmediatoday.com)