Current status (to quote @cathcam): “I used to be good at my job. Now I’m just good at PowerPoint.”

— cote (@cote) May 23, 2012

Reading the comments and the content of Donnies’ post I was waiting for him to get there, and he never did. Reading the comments most of the people took his observations literally, and since I don’t know Donnie, and have not got the chance to talk to him, I guess we must. But that’s missing the point I think.

I’d like to think Donnie was saying the GPL should NOT be where the focus is anymore. The freedoms that come with it are well understood, as is the responsibility. And this is where I was expecting Berkholz to go, but he didn’t.

I wanted him to go on and talk about all the challenges of allowing access, maintaining, withdrawing, exporting and removing your personal data in the “cloud”. It’s no longer programs that are valuable, they have some value, but not without the data. If you have the data, you have the users. If you have users, you have instant value, it’s not about the users themselves, it’s not like you are able to charge them to access your own data, it’s about monitoring what you are doing, where you have been, where you are going, who you  are with and more. That’s value, whether it’s your facebook status updates, your tweets, to instagram pictures etc.

It used to be in the old days that software companies would find a business requirement,  develop software, go through a few releases of their software; build a user base and then get acquired for what they were, not what data and users they had aka the marriage of facebook/instragram. I for one have recently created a new blog to own the content that I would have formally posted directly on facebook. I’m increasingly concerned with what Facebook will do with the knowledge about what device, what OS, where, how I created the post, not to mention what I post.

And that is what I was half hoping Donnie was going to tackle, personal data freedom. That is what we need today, a meaningful personal data freedom that web 2.0 and cloud companies sign-up to implement, in a meaningful way. Before I give you my data, you sign-up you agree to treat my data according to the following freedoms, with deference to the GPL

Data is free data if originator has the four essential freedoms:

• The freedom to store, or delete forever and irrevocably the data, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to manipulate, offload, change and re-load the data
• The freedom to redistribute copies of the data so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). Meaning, data you create and store on any computer will be the property of the owner of that computer. Rather the data remains your property and you will have the ability to decide on the future use of said data.

I have a somewhat facetious disclaimer, privacy notice, data restriction on my facebook page. In the UK, I can remember back to 1980 when I was working for Canada Life Assurance, the UK Data Protection Act had just been enacted, and I can recall the seriousness with which the company applied the treatment and use of personal data. Today, where data is created everywhere we go, and we have technology that can access it from anywhere and anytime, yet we have almost no ability to control our data, where or how it is used, and even who actually owns some of your most personal and private data. And that is why we need a data freedom, and why this should now replace the focus on Linux and the GPL.

I made the same mistake as Donnie back in 2001 when I gave the keynote at the IBM Technical Conference that year. In my presentation I said that we should expect that in 5-years we are no longer talking about, or working on Linux as an Operating System. This wasn’t because I wanted Linux to go away, in fact the opposite was true, I wanted to move on from the discussion about Linux. We should assume it’s there, differentiation doesn’t come from the OS; we should all be complying with the rights that were inferred on us by users of Linux, but can’t we just move on?

• Wyse provides application virtualization capability which in essence will allow PC based applications to run as terminals in the cloud, accessing them via thin clients, increasingly mobile devices like tablets.
• Clerity delivers application modernization and re-hosting solutions and services. Clerity’s capabilities will enable Dell Services to help customers reduce the cost of transitioning business-critical applications and data from legacy computing systems and onto more modern architectures, including the cloud.
• Make Technologies brings application modernization software and services that reduce the cost, risk and time required to re-engineer applications, helping companies modernize their applications portfolios so they can reduce legacy infrastructure operating costs. These applications run most effectively on open, standardized platforms including the cloud.

A great set of solutions to let organizations looking to really get  their older apps into a modern execution and device environment. Exciting times for the Dell team supporting these customers.

This very much reminds me of 14-15 years ago and a whole slew of projects where we were trying to drive similar modernization into applications. IBM Network Station was about to be launched; we had a useful first release of the CICS Transcation Gateway and their was a great start at integrating Java with COBOL based applications and some fledgling work on extending the COBOL language to support object oriented principles. My poster session at the IBM Academy of Technology was on legacy modernization. In those days it was obvious that customers needed tools to help them get from where they’d been to where they would be going.

Enough never really got there, the financial case wasn’t often enough. However, given the performance, scalability and reliability of today’s x86/x64 systems, the lack of progress and demand for change have passed compelling, it’s essential.

via Dell and YouTube Partner to Live Stream Four of the Year’s Major Music Festivals | Business Wire.

10:15 AM Here is a link to the formal corporate announcement with more detail on SonicWall

Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

“And that’s a great example of the difference between eventually consistent and ACID based transaction-based systems. Many but not all IT Professionals understand this. Make sure yours does. In this case it could be the backend database consistency, ie there are multiple copies and they don’t match, or there could be multiple backend copies and the copy in the browser cache, does or doesn’t match. Either way “Houston, we have a problem”.”

iDRAC7

The first worth a mention comes from our team, out-of-band management for updating the BIOS and firmware and managing hardware settings—independent of the OS or hypervisor throughout a server’s life cycle, and initial deployment of an OS for a physical server or a hypervisor for a virtual machine. That function is delivered by the Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller 7 with Lifecycle Controller (iDRAC7).

It is an all-in-one, out-of-band systems management option to remotely manage Dell PowerEdge servers. In iDRAC7, we have combined hardware enablement capabilities into a single, embedded controller that includes its own processor, power, and network connection and without OS agents, even when the OS or hypervisor isn’t booted. The iDRAC7 architects have worked with marketing to pull together a useful summary of the capabilities, it can be found here.

OpenManage Essentials

The next software initiative announced was the 1.0.1 release of OpenManage Essentials (OME). We listened to customers when it came to management consoles and while a lot of companies liked what we’d been doing and our partnership with Symantec for Dell Management Console, many of our smaller customers, and a few bigger ones wanted a simpler console for monitoring and that was quicker and easier to deploy. OME is it. There is a full OME wiki page here and development lead Rob Cox has summarised the 1.0.1 update here.

OpenManage Power Center

Not formally announced, but covered in slides and some presentations, because it’s linked to some of the advanced power management of our servers. The Fresh Air Initiative, Energy Smart design and the introduction of OpenManage Power Center in our 12^th generation servers has the potential to change the way you power and manage the power distributions across servers, racks and more.

Dell Virtual Network Architecture

There is a new wikicovering the announcement of the Dell Virtual Network Architecture, which has at its’ foundation High-performance switching systems for campus and data centers; Virtualized Layer 4-7 services; Comprehensive automation & orchestration software; Open workload/hypervisor interfaces. Our VNA framework aims to extend our current networking and virtualization capabilities across branch, campus and data center environments with an open networking framework for efficient IT infrastructure and workload intelligence. Shane Schick over on IT World Canada has a good summary.

Oh yeah, there was hardware too… Tomothy Prickett Morgan has a useful summary over at vulture central and the Dell summary page is here.

“Complexity in computing systems is really a bad thing, it’s the result of too many bright people making misguided judgements about what customers want, and customers thinking that their need to control has to come from complexity. Complexity creates cost, bugs, inhibits design, makes testing overly expensive, hinders flexibility and more. Most IT companies design approach to complexity is to automate it, which in turn creates more complexity.”

Comments?

In the new world of cloud, massive scale datacenters, and the growing importance of mixed private/public cloud demand, it will be very interesting to see where John and the Exec team want to take the software group. Here is the formal press announcement from Corporate comms.

In an indirectly related announcement from earlier in the week, Dave Johnson, our Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy, announced that we were again going to expand our Silicon Valley software and R&D development and investments following our acquisitions of Force10, Scalent and many others. Marketwatch has a useful summary of Daves’ comments.

Dell for Web Development

• The formal Dell vStart 200 details are here.
• David Chernicoff has a summary over on zdnet here.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

My 3rd order was for some shoes, I ordered a 12, they shipped an 8. I returned them free, instead of a refund, I got a credit note. I’d have happily accepted the right size, but they didn’t have them. I did do at least one more order, but have backed off recently.

Then late last week I got an email telling me they’d been hacked, some of my data and my password had been compromised, they’d reset my password and I should logon and change it. So I tried. Their system responded “”We are so sorry, we are currently not accepting international traffic. If you have any questions please email us at help@zappos.com”.

Here is my summary email sent back to them today. What’s clear is that their customer service, average under normal circumstances, is less than what I’d expect, VIP or not.

“No wonder you got hacked. Let recap, please read carefully…

1. You got hacked
2. You write to me telling me to change my password
3. Your system won’t let me change my password because I’m overseas attending my father’s funeral.
4. I ask you to remove my account and ALL my data
5. You write back telling me to change my password
6. I write back telling you that wasn’t what I asked, and to delete my account and remove all my data
7. You write back telling me to deactivate my own account
8. I can’t. See #3
9. I write this email back pointing out how useless you are.”

It’s an interesting and appealing topic. It was in some respects what got in our way last year, it was also what was behind the 1999 IBM Autonomic computing initiative, lets just make things that work. It’s simple to blame the architects and engineers for complexity, and James is bang-on when he says “When I have spoken to IBM Distinguished Engineers and senior managers in the past they have tended to believe that complexity could be abstracted”.

There are two things at play here, both apply equally to many companies, especially in the systems management space, but also in the established software marketplace. I’m sure James knows this, or at least had it explained. If not, let me have a go.

On Complexity

Yes, in the past software had to be complex. It was widely used and installed on hundreds of thousands of computers, often as much as ten years older than the current range of hardware. It was used by customers who had grown up over decades with specific needs, specific tools and specific ways of doing things. Software had to be upgraded pretty much non-disruptively, even at release and version boundaries you pretty much had to continue to support most if not all of the old interfaces, applications, internal data formats and API’s.

If you didn’t you had a revolt on your hands in your own customer base. I can cite a few outstanding examples of where the software provider misunderstood this and learn an important lesson both times, I would also go as far as far as to suggest, the product release marked the beginning of the end. VM/SP R5 where IBM introduced a new, non-compatible, non-customer lead UI; VM/XA Migration Aid, where IBM introduced a new, non-compatible CMS lightweight VM OS; and of course, from the X86 world, Microsoft Vista.

For those products a descision was taken at some point in the design to be non-compatible, drop old interfaces or deliberately break them to support the new function or architecture. This is one example where change brings complexity, the other is where you chose to remain compatible, and carry the old interfaces and API’s. This means that everything from the progamming interface, to the tools, compilers, debuggers etc. now has to support either two versions of the same thing, or one version that performs differently.

Either way, when asked to solve a problem introduced by these changes over a number of years, the only real option is to abstract. As I’ve said here many times, automating complexity doesn’t make things simple, it simply makes them more complex,.

On Simplicity

Simplicity is easy when you have nothing. Get two sticks, rub them together and you have a fire. It’s not so easy when you’ve spent 25-years designing and building a nuclear power station. What do I need to start a fire?

Simplicity is a confidence trick. Know your customers, know your market, ask for what it will take to satisfy both, and stick to this. The less confident your are about either, the more scope creep you’ll get, the less specific you’ll be about pretty much every phase of the architecture, the design and ultimately the product. In the cloud software business this is less of an issue, you don’t have releases per se. You roll out function and even if you are not in “google perpetual beta mode” you don’t really have customers on back releases of your product, and you are mostly not waiting for them to upgrade.

If you have a public API you have to protect and migrate that, but otherwise you take care of the customers data, and as you push out new function, they come with you. Since they don’t have to do anything, and for many of the web 2.0 sites we’ve all become used to, don’t have any choice or advance notice, it’s mostly no big deal. However, there is still a requirement that someone that has to know the customer, and know what they want. In the web 2.0 world that’s still the purview of a small cadre of top talent, Zuckerberg, Jobs, Williams, Page, Schmidt, Brin et al.

The same isn’t true for those old world companies, mine included. There are powerful groups and executives who have a vested interest in what and how products are designed, architected and delivered.  They know their customers, their markets and what it will takes to make them. This is how old school software was envisasaged, a legacy, a profit line, even a control point.

The alternative to complexity is to stop and either start over, or at least over multiple product cycles go back and take out all the complexity. This brings with-it a multi-year technical debt, and often a negative op-ex that ,most businesses and product managers are not prepared to carry. It’s simpler, easier and often quicker to acquire and abandon. In with the new, out with the old.

Happy New Year! I Need…

I had a great end of year Christmas trip back to the UK, the main reason for the trip was to get a new US Work visa, since my change of status, Permanent Residence aka Green card hadn’t been approved. After a few days in the West End dealing with that, I decamped to Islington and spent a few days out there including a great trip out to Stratford and the site of the 2012 Olympics. While in East London I caught this track a few times, called, I need – performed by Maverick Sabre who is now from Hackney, East London.

Maverick was of course one of our software project code names, the words made me laugh, “I need sunshine, I need Angels, I need something good and I need”. The irony won’t be lost. Enjoy.

The first Maverick Sabre album, Lonely are the brave, will be out Feb 6th, 2012.

The group were recognized by meetup for having over 100 members of our group. Here is link to meetup registration: http://www.meetup.com/Openstack-Boston/

Dell are looking to sponsor an Dallas in near future, and San Jose area early next year.