Future of cloud computing and SaaS

Cloud computing is the next BIG thing with all the major platform players aggressively going for the land grab. Each player has a different approach and are trying to provide their offering at different levels - from raw computing and storage to application fabrics and SaaS platforms. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, IBM are some key players betting big on this trend.

There is a lot of confusion and debate about which platform will prevail and what is the best approach on cloud computing. My take is that it is going to follow the path that the internet economy has taken. Broadly 3 layers are likely to emerge. These layers of clouds with current day analogies are mentioned below:

• Infrastructure clouds - Provide raw infrastructure. Current day Amazon EC2 similar to an older day Savvis. There could be any number of providers in this category primarily differentiating on cost.

• Development framework clouds - Provides application development framework. Current day Microsoft Azure similar to an older day Windows + .Net combination. Infrastructure cloud will be included and could be outsourced to a strategic partner. There will be a less than 5 cloud providers this category with limited portability amongst each other.

• Application clouds - Provides higher level abstraction to build applications. Current day Salesforce.com similar to an older day SAP. There could be any number of providers here. But the likely scenario would be a 2 tier system where large application companies like SAP and Oracle have their own cloud and other smaller application vendors sharing clouds or are part of other eco-systems. The platform with a better eco-system will emerge as an eventual leader - similar to Google in search-ads and eBay in auctions. The ability to reach a wide number of target users or customers will eventually be the key driver for application cloud adoption rather than ability to build applications. The ability to build applications will eventually be similar on most major platforms.

Another trend likely to emerge is the creation of special purpose clouds. This would be similar to special purpose social networking sites or radio channels. There will be aspects around data security, workflow, availability, SLAs and eco-system that will be better suited for market segments like legal, government, finance, insurance etc. These will be built as value-added-clouds using the infratructure and application clouds.

My new Macbook

I have been a DOS and Windows user for over 15 years. Not just an end user but have been a developer/user for that long. Including programming on Windows 3.1.

Over the past 2 years I have had to spend significant amounts of time "fixing" my home and work computer for seemingly trivial reasons. Fixing always involved going to see what are the unwanted softwares installed, looking at the process list to see what is consuming 100% CPU or memory, installing 3 or 4 software from various places to get 1 simple thing done.

That is when I started walking into the apple store at the local mall. Started looking at all their products and the hype around them. It took me a very very long time but I still couldn't spend the few extra $$ premium to buy a Mac.  Eventually, I bought an iPod touch. Just a few months after using the iPod touch, I realized that it is not about how much memory or CPU power the Mac had. It is not about the number of features that a computer has. I felt that in a small device like a music player the right design can significantly enhance the user experience. I officially became an Apple convert when my 3.5 year old daughter started using the iPod touch with no training.

So finally I made the leap and bought my first Macbook a month ago. So far it has lived up to my expectations and has been an amazing experience. I use the macbook as a home computer to browse the internet, photos, music, video, video chatting with family...

I have one advice for people on the fence - BUY A MAC.

I found a very useful blog by David Alison that gives tips on some of the quirks around keyboard shortcuts and other aspects of making the witch easier. I found it very useful.  

Microsoft's strategy for search and cloud

This piece was triggered by a couple of The Motley Fool articles regarding Microsoft's plans on Cloud Computing, SaaS and search. This is one of my favourite websites but I was disappointed with the lack of depth in these articles and the superficial content.
http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2008/12/30/an-open-letter-to-steve-ballmer.aspx
http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2008/12/29/microsoft-just-doesnt-get-it.aspx

I think the Motley Fool should sharpen their research on the longer term strategy with Microsoft Azure. Microsoft is going to win in the cloud computing race as being one of the leading cloud computing platforms. I don't think anyone will have the dominance that Windows has in the PC market. Microsoft is going to make it possible for the existing developer community to develop, deploy and maintain cloud applications with little or no retraining.

Standards would emerge forcing the cloud computing players to provide portability across platforms. Today all the providers have emerging platforms with Amazon being the leader in the services offered. But providing utility services is not the only goal that these platform players are looking at. There is the utility/infrastructure services and then there is the Service Delivery Platform services. These two capabilities combined is a tremendous value to application developers and customers of the platforms.

On search, I don't think search quality is the issue with Microsoft search anymore. The lead Google has in the search space is due to the eco-system and network effect its search has. Indexing more web pages better and providing minor improvements to the search results is not going to be a game changer. Microsoft will have to build the network effect and that is the toughest challenge to overcome in the viral web marketing environment

Leadership: Knowing your role in the process

People often envy and criticize leaders and question what they do. Here is a simple answer: they are people in the front making decisions. Leadership is for those who have the courage to make decisions and are not afraid of failing. In my view there are three types of people in the world - whether it is your personal life or professional life.

Decision makers
These are the leaders. The people who analyze information at their hands, filter the important from the unimportant, and take a decision. Decisions are often taken on partial information. If precise and complete information was always available you could train computers to take decisions. An important aspect of leadership is knowing that there is no way to lead without failures. Bad leaders are often who are afraid to fail. These leaders delay acknowledging failures and hence make the consequences of those failures bigger.

Influencers
Influencers who understand that they are not in charge of making the decisions but realize the importance of participating in the decision making process. Influencers are of 3 types:

1. Future leaders who are training themselves by putting themselves in the leader's shoes.
2. Perpetual influencers who are best suited as advisers to leaders and lack other aspects of leadership
3. The negative influencers who are typically putting their personal agendas ahead of the leader's primary responsibility. Leaders need to recognize this group and eliminate their influence.
   

Followers
This is a very important and perhaps the most important group. They implement the leader's decisions and vision. Followers need clarity. Clarity in:

1. Decisions: Clear articulation of the decisions, the rationale, objective and goals.
2. Communication: Clear communication and constant reminder of the goals
3. Operational mechanism: Clear way of setting goals, measuring success and tracking progress

Each group has its place and is a necessary function for progress. What is important is to know who you are and the role you are playing and do it well.

Microsoft PDC 2008

I attended Microsoft PDC 2008. It was my first time at this event. I must say that I was impressed as seeing Microsoft's focus on the right things. Below is a highlight of areas I found interesting.

Azure Service Platform
Yes, Microsoft is late to arrive to the cloud computing race. Amazon has shown world the way to monetize the cloud computing paradigm. But I think Microsoft is thinking right and doing right in this space. Cloud Computing is not a choice for Microsoft. It is a natural progression in the evolution to a distributed computing model. It has realized that conquering this new frontier is critical for its existence. I believe Microsoft is going to make it easy to extend every aspect of software development, deployment and service to cloud computing and become one of the top 3 players in this space.

Windows 7
With a focus on Performance and usability, I think Microsoft is finally thinking right. I have long believed that the PC has changed from being a computing device to a consumer electronic device. Apple has demonstrated this through the way it makes it easy to do the most common things easily on its Mac units. I believe Microsoft is going to make the PC a consumer device with its Windows 7 OS. One example is the demo of the ease of home networking shown at the PDC 2008

Silverlight
Microsoft boasted about Silverlight 2.0 and said it has 25% penetration of all internet connected PCs. That is pretty impressive and demonstrates the distribution channel that Microsoft has through its dominance in the PC market. I think Silverlight is an important technology in Microsoft's overall cloud computing strategy. Good to see that Microsoft is aggressively working on adoption, developer productivity and creative tools around Silverlight

Surface
Amazing new technology. I had seen it on TV when it was launched. I was more impressed when I played the scavanger hunt game on 5 sets of surface computers located at 5 different locations at the event. It demonstrated the capability of camera based vision system, multi-touch, intelligence and ruggedness very well

Books: The Game Changer

Just read this great book - The Game Changer (by A. G. Lafley and Ram Charan). It is based on the phenomenal story of innovation in P&G and other companies and how others can benefit from it. For the benefit of someone who has not read the book, here is a very high level summary:

P&G operates in a highly commoditized business space and depends on 2 “moments of truth” for its business to grow

• Product selection - when the consumer is shopping
• Product use – First time the consumer uses the product (and of course every user experience

Innovation - Customer is the focus and business growth is the outcome

• Customer has to be the focus of every innovation
• Every innovation has to lead to business growth
• Innovate with everyone – including competitors (Believe it or not P&G has a JV with one of its competitors)
• Make innovation “routine” (Counter-intuitive)
• Check out a few platforms that are used at P&G to collaborate for innovation:

http://www.ninesigma.com/
http://www.innocentive.com/
http://www.yourencore.com/

Micro-racism

Around the globe the western world is often criticized for racism. Some part of it is history. It is a tough legacy to overcome. It is a slow process and needs a lot of policy and social changes to eliminate and still there will continue to be pockets of traditional racism in the social fabric.

What is alarming is the failure to notice the micro-racism around the world. This is the attitude of exclusion and discrimination amongst narrower segments of the society. I have found the most appalling examples of this behaviour in India. You can call it protectionism or remnants of the caste system but it is just another flavor of racism and I call it micro-racism.

Attempts in Bangalore to ban non-Kannada movies; places of worship have been destroyed causing riots in the whole country; fanatical bias toward Tamil language in Tamil Nadu; Preferential treatment given to local people purely based on their last names, which in India reveals a whole lot about your origins. These are all examples of micro-racism. I say this not because I don't believe in keeping the local culture and traditional alive, but because of the chosen means to the end. Take for example the Tamil language. I personally find it one of the most poetic languages I have known, very much like the Urdu language. But it still doesn't justify forcing it on people.

The recent incidents in Maharashtra is an example of an age old political agenda of treating people from other states as outsiders. Believe it or not these are the same people who are reaping the benefits of their own children and grand-children bringing in the riches from immigrating to other countries.

Destroying the present and future to make up for the past is not right. I am a fervent supporter of local economies and keeping age old traditions and culture alive. But banning new change to keep old culture alive is not the right approach. Often the policy decisions made by government and religious organizations are based on emotions and not based on well thought through rational frameworks. I am surprised to see that having a good education alone doesn't equip us to leave emotions out of policy making.

I believe that the cause of micro-racism is that the local culture and people feel threatened and usually have an inferiority complex against the alternative. The philosophy of forcing ideas and culture on people is always easier than promoting it through free will. But it is not the best approach to nurture local culture.

Bringing out interest in local culture in innovative and interesting ways is the best way to keep them alive. The new generation has a crucial role to play in discovering the past and keeping it alive for generations to come through free will. You have to create a framework for people to discover and enjoy the treasures in the diversity of India.