Another mobile platform enters the fray

Microsoft unveiled today a preview of Windows 8, it’s new operating system that blurs the line between where the laptop ends and the tablet begins. Now Microsoft’s forays into mobile have largely been failures to date, but they are clearly attempting to change that. They are shooting directly for the tablet market, which Gartner estimates will reach $58M by 2014.

According to Bloomberg:

“For much of February, app developers could come to Building 20 at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington campus and turn their app over to a Windows engineer who tries it out and provides feedback. Now Microsoft has taken that program on the road, visiting 87 cities, including New York, Paris and Guangzhou, China.”

Since the new paradigm is such a departure from Microsoft’s traditional operating systems, applications built for older versions of Windows won’t be compatible with Windows 8, so they are essentially starting over, and asking their development partners to start over too. Their best lure is access to the 300 million people and organizations who still buy PCs. Apps built for the new operating system will be completely portable across PC and tablet. However, Microsoft has a long way to go to catch up with the 200 million apps in the stores of Apple and Google, particularly since the barrier for software companies to start elsewhere is seemingly as high as it is to port to v8.

I expect that most organizations will wait to hop on this new operating system, to see if it takes root. However, with the muscle Microsoft is putting behind it, I expect it will quickly become the number 3 platform, which will convince some folks to consider it for new apps.

So the net result is that another multiple of complexity was just added to the app race. Organizations now have another platform to consider, and from what I have seen HTML 5 hasn’t been fully embraced as a complete replacement for native apps. It is more important than ever to have a multi-platform development tool, further validating IBM’s acquisition of Worklight.

Things are getting interesting… All of the players are finally in the ring, and this time the operating system war is starting out on more even footing. Let the games begin!

Blogs Become Infographics

In case you haven’t noticed, Infographics are hot. I heard about Infogr.am, a new Web-based infographics creation tool, so I decided to give it a try. As you can see (click on the picture to see the full Infographic), my result is relatively simple – mostly because I didn’t have time or patience to play more. I’m not sure if these infographics tools will take off or not, but the trend toward graphical blogging will likely result in these types of tools being embedded in your favorite blog authoring tools.

Infogr.am seems pretty easy to use, but the beta is a bit buggy. I had to recreate the graph a few times. Plus the options are very limited right now, but I could definitely see these tools merging into WordPress and others over time.

The ancient art of API Management

I had a good discussion with a company today who has been talking to one of our competitors about API Management. A member of their team asked me what advantages IBM’s offering has over competitors, particularly since the API Management offering was only just announced a few weeks ago.

I think it is a great question, so I want to address it here for everyone’s benefit. I think it really comes down to four key points:

1. In actuality, IBM has been helping organizations publish services and APIs securely using DataPower for years. In fact, organizations like Pitney Bowes and Royal Caribbean just spoke at the Impact conference in Las Vegas about the success they are having in this area. What is new within the portfolio is the developer portal, API assembly, and business API Insight. The harder parts of API management (security, policy management, traffic management, etc.) have been available in DataPower for a long time.
2. That said, there are some strong technological advantages in the IBM offering. First of all, the DataPower appliance at the core of the offering is by far the market leading security gateway. DataPower has roughly ten times the customer base of the nearest competitor, and is growing faster. The most security conscious organizations in the world use DataPower to protect the services and APIs that they publish externally. Within the API Management solution, IBM also has a unique ability to easily assemble and publish new APIs through a simple configuration interface. This allows organizations to take internal resources and publish them as secure APIs in a few clicks. Also, the solution employs big data analytics to provide a higher level of insight into API consumption. And perhaps most importantly, IBM brings a level of scale to API Management that none of the other vendors can match. By tapping into IBM developerWorks, IBM can offer access to millions of developers around the world.
3. Beyond this, IBM’s vision in this space is much broader. Publishing business APIs requires the same level of infrastructure and rigor as other applications, and shares a lot of technology basis with initiatives like mobile computing.  IBM’s portfolio is particularly well-suited to the requirements that this creates. Experience with technologies where IBM already has a market leadership position, like service registry for lifecycle management, in-memory caching, mobile application support, and even network traffic shaping, all fit into this vision in the long term, and can quickly provide capabilities well beyond what smaller vendors are able to offer with limited development teams and budgets.
4. IBM’s development team is several times larger than other API Management competitors, and the network of field experts within IBM and its partners is also many times larger. IBM’s reach around the globe is far beyond what a small startup can offer. And layered on top of that IBM has extensive expertise across industries and technology platforms that exceeds the capacity of smaller companies. If your organization views API Management as a critical strategy, as IBM does, then risk mitigation and scale should be top concerns.

Now none of this is to say that the other API Management vendors lack good technology. I actually really like several of the players in this space, and in fact I have some good friends that work in a couple of them. I just think that API Management is really at an early phase of its lifecycle, so choosing a vendor that understands the challenges and will also be there for the long haul is extremely important.

New API Management Offering from IBM – Give it a try!

To steal the words of Alex Williams, we “quietly launched” a new API Management service today. I’m very excited about this new offering. It is visually elegant, and provides some fantastic capabilities covering all aspects of API management. It offers the ability to easily socialize APIs through a developer portal and manage API consumption, including some really nice use of advanced big data analytics. Unlike other API Management offerings in the market, it also allows customers to easily create new APIs, using Cast Iron’s intuitive integration capabilities under the covers.

This offering allows our customers to combine on-premise DataPower appliances for security and policy enforcement, including two and three-legged OAuth and traffic management, with cloud-hosted developer outreach and support, API analytics, operational monitoring and control, and life cycle management.

I’m convinced it is the most complete API Management offering in the market: the combination of the market leading security gateway functionality of DataPower with these new cloud-based visual analytics, developer outreach, and life cycle management capabilities, with embedded API creation and integration capabilities of Cast Iron. It is a truly everything an organization needs to get started in publishing enterprise-class APIs.

And best of all, you can start using it for free! See for yourself:
http://webapi.castiron.com/

70% of IT Budgets Spent Keeping the Boat Afloat: #IBMPureSystems

Today, companies spend 70% or more of IT budgets on simple operations and maintenance. How can we change that? #IBMPureSystems is taking a step in the right direction

Marie Wieck: “We’re entering a new era of computing”

Steve Hamm’s Smarter Planet Blog Post

API Management: On Premise or Off Premise?

I have been having more and more customer conversations recently about API Management. Interestingly there are a range of discussions, from customers wanting to publish their own API & Mobile “Stores,” to customers simply wanting to open up key service interfaces over the Internet.

One thing that I continuously get asked is whether API Management functions should be housed on premise or off premise. In some ways, the decision of where to manage APIs is no different than any other on premise vs. off premise discussion. However, when security and system protection are paramount concerns, there is no question that those functions are best hosted on site, typically in a service gateway appliance within your DMZ. At the same time, there are distinct advantages to placing things like Developer Awareness and Support in the Cloud.

Ideally, you should look at each of the main functions of API Management you are deploying and determine where each one is optimal to run. Good API Management products will give you the flexibility to run things where they make the most sense.

The Hybrid Enterprise

Interesting article on how SaaS + on-premise enterprise applications is emerging as the dominant model for application infrastructures, and is likely to remain so for some time (the author calls this Hybrid Enterprise). I agree with this assessment. I also think that a large amount of the SaaS integration requirement is not fully understood by many organizations. Integrating SaaS applications well is fundamental to obtaining the full value of the investment. Too often, organizations make integration an afterthought.

But the demo looked so good…

Java boutique consulting firm Transentia provides an interesting, in-depth critique of Oracle OSB. Here’s a snippet:

“It is very rare that I react so strongly against a technology….can’t really think of another example. I’m usually pretty gung-ho and even suffer from odd breakouts of evangelical fervour. I can even find a place for UML in the nerd-ish pantheon For this product all bets are off. I’m struggling to find a silver lining in the cloud.”

This reinforces an opinion I’ve held for some time (of course I’m biased): Outside of their database, I have found that Oracle’s core competencies are really just pretty packaging, compelling charts, and flashy contracts.

Why are tablets growing so fast??

Copyright Morgan Stanley 2011

I have received a lot of comments and questions asking why the growth in tablets (especially for business) has been so extraordinary. The trend is now becoming extremely well documented. In fact, according to Morgan Stanley, the tablet is “the fastest ramping device ever.“

So I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, and to me the answer is rather simple – I’ll dub it “the 3 B’s”: Booting, Batteries, and Bloat.” I don’t know about you but after I got my iPad, I could barely stand to use my laptop anymore. My laptop is just over a year old, but it already suffers from the 3 B’s. So let’s take them one by one.

Booting: my laptop takes an average of 10 minutes to cold boot, and that doesn’t include startup time on whatever program I am actually wanting to use. Meanwhile, my iPad takes about 20 seconds to cold boot, which is rare for me since I usually just let it go to sleep, which has instant recovery. If I were to take Microsoft’s advice (which I don’t) and cold boot each day, that would be over an hour of time lost each week, waiting for my PC to boot…

Batteries: as I said, my laptop is about a year old, and already the battery life is down to around an hour… and this is one of the more expensive “long life” batteries. Meanwhile, my iPad will go 5-6 hours easily, and it charges in half the time.

Bloat: I have so much garbage on my laptop that I don’t even know what most of it is. In fact, I have over 100 processes running on my computer right now (according to Task Manager, which I doubt even shows me everything), but I only have 5 applications open. I know some of that is my fault since I likely either consciously or unconsciously chose to have them running at some point, but the net impact to me is that my laptop is excruciatingly slow. I get the hourglass almost every time I do anything.

Now I know I could clean up my registry, deinstall some things, adjust my services to not all start automatically, yadda yadda… and it would likely improve all of this, but really? Why is all that left for me to figure out and do manually. I can’t even tell which services are related to which program half the time. Meanwhile, just loading the Add or Remove Programs tool can take 2-3 minutes, and half the stuff I know is on my computer doesn’t even show up on the list and doesn’t have a deinstaller. Meanwhile, my iPad is clean. I don’t have random processes running. I switch applications almost instantly. I can remove things entirely with a simple touch. And it cleans a lot of things up for me without me having to do anything.

I know there are other reasons also, like the security model that inhibits the virus threat, the fact that it weighs less and is much smaller, the fact that the interface is so nice and intuitive, etc. etc. But for people like me who know their way around computers, I think the 3 B’s are the killers.

Now clearly tablets can’t do everything my laptop can, particularly if you are into things like graphics design or hardcore gaming. But the truth is that most of what I do can be easily done on my iPad (that is, with my keyboard case since typing on the touch screen is not my idea of fun). Plus, I have the ability to download all those apps, most of which are free or nearly free.

So that’s the way I see it. And to be honest with you, the train has left the station. The more that organizations build useful business apps that run on tablets, the less reasons people will have to buy a laptop. Laptops may keep certain niches where all that processing power is necessary, but mainstream business users will increasingly switch to tablets. Casual home users have already cast their votes.

Meteoric Growth of Mobile in Growth Markets

I spent this week in Australia meeting with customers and partners. Like what I have seen in other geographies, mobile is an extremely hot topic here.

And as if to cap it all off, this morning’s The Australian had a page 3 article titled, “It’s a desktop revolution as Aussies take to their tablets.” The article claims that “half of Australia’s population will be using a tablet computer by 2016.” That would get it to that percentage in half the time it took smart phones to get there.

Everybody seems to have a vision for where they need to go with mobile apps, but few seem to have an idea of how to get there, other than “just have someone go and build an app”. This is one of those rare occasions when there is an enormous growth opportunity, but there isn’t a clear reference architecture to adopt, and there isn’t a clear technology leader who can provide all the pieces to help companies get there.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the coming year. From my conversations, I would estimate that more than half of organizations worldwide will be investing in some level of mobile applications this year. Intriguingly, the percentages seem to be even higher when you drop down to the mid-market (typically mid-market adopts later). Meanwhile, the big vendors are scrambling to piece together offerings to help organizations be more systematic in how they deploy and manage these new applications.

I expect a run on the independent mobile development platforms (Worklight is already off the board). I’m eager to see what other moves will be made…