The Emergence of Cloud-based Computing

Discovery at the great Sutter’s Mill in the sky: the age of cloud-based computing has arrived, and new entrants are appearing in the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) space each week.

The founders of Bungee Labs and creators of Bungee Connect (whose developer network I now direct) had this insight a few years ago, and set about creating a platform especially well suited to this coming age. Salesforce also had their ear to the ground ahead of the curve, introducing Force.com last fall. Heroku also offers a very slick cloud-based platform based on Ruby-on-Rails.

Last week when Google announced App Engine. Although lacking several features of a true PaaS offering (its really more a Python hosting offering with some some supporting infrastructure components), the announcement did a lot to validate the seriousness of PaaS. Across the web, it seems that bloggers now herald the new model as an emerging reality rather than an inevitable future whose time has to be determined.

Now Intuit enters with a Flex-based offering, too.

This is shaping up to have all the characteristics of a technology gold rush. Surely, there will be more entrants. If the gold rush analogy applies, all claims get staked early, some claims will prove richer than others, an economy will rapidly grow upon the initial base, and even after it normalizes again, permanent institutions will remain long after.

It most certainly will be interesting to watch unfold.

Interviewed at Socal Linux Expo

SCaLE6 conference organizer, Orv Beach, interviewed me at this weekend’s big event in Los Angeles.

I speak in the interview about the switch from a large Linux distributor to working for a small startup, and some of what I have been doing at Bungee Labs over the past year.

Fun with GroupWise in Bungee Connect

In my quest to learn how to develop software in Bungee Connect, I decided to use the SOAP service for Novell GroupWise. I chose to use GroupWise as a reference platform for two reasons. First, the SOAP API for GroupWise has all the sophistication you could want: multiple levels of object inheritance, and its scope is comprehensive to say the least. (I wish I had understood that when I was in charge of marketing for GroupWise!) Second, nine years of working at Novell left me knowing how GroupWise works, so I would know when I actually got something to work.

Here’s a video of the project I am working on, available in patent-encumbered mpeg4, and freedom-loving Xiph (Ogg).If you would like access to my source code, drop me a line. I’m happy to provide you with the code and guidance on developing in Bungee Connect.

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–T

SCaLE6: Returning to Socal Linux Expo

Once again I will be presenting at Socal Linux Expo. Each SCaLE so far has been a great show, and this 6th year promises to be excellent. Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon is keynote speaker this year (co-presenting with his beard), and his presentations are quite entertaining (even for denizens of Los Angeles, who are accustomed to seeing the occasional massive traffic accident). So if you’re in the Los Angeles area, come on down and check it out.

This year my presentation is about startups and open source, using case-in-point company, Bungee Labs. They booked me last in line on Sunday afternoon, so if you’re going, please hang out to the very end.

Drop me a line if you’d like to chew the fat, and whatnot.

Oauth: Standardizing Authentication for API

The most recent edition of The Bungee Line features an interview on the coolness of Oauth, an open protocol to allow secure API authentication in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications.

We have seen a rather impressive number of downloads on this episode so far. If you develop to web APIs (or even if you are just casually interested in why, say, LinkedIn or Facebook apps ask for your Gmail username and password in order to access your contacts in Gmail) then you’ll want to check this one out.

Design and Rich Internet Apps: A Bungee App Demo

My colleagues Brad Hintze and Travis Ryan recently completed a nifty little Flickr/Google Maps demo app. Brad blogged it on The Bungee Blog, and speaks a bit about it design for rich internet apps.

[The IE screenshot was by done by Brad.]

Interview on LinuxWorld Podcast

Don Marti of LinuxWorld recently interviewed me about the role of a community evangelist.

In the interview I explain a bit about what I am doing over at Bungee Labs, and Don asks me a few direct questions about the Novell-Microsoft deal.

(I’ll also mention that before the interview I busted Don’s chops a bit about the Windows Server adverts on the LinuxWorld home page. All in good fun, though.)

9.6 Years: On Beyond Novell

A Brief Retrospective
I started working directly for Novell on September 26 of 1997. Prior to working for Novell, I was a Certified Novell Instructor, teaching all angles of NetWare, as well as other advanced network administration classes. I was recruited into Novell to do technical field sales. After two years, I took on a role as product evangelist for the new ZENworks product line, then briefly served as product manager for the management console iManager before becoming director of product management for the eDirectory product line. After that, I moved into marketing and served as director of marketing for GroupWise and Novell Linux Desktop, and finally shifted into my current role as user community guy/podcaster/blogger. In my current role I got to work with the members of Novell Users International, the open source community, and the brilliant engineers of SUSE and Ximian, as well as those of traditional Novell backgrounds. It has been a fantastic run.

April March 24th, 2007 was my final day working at Novell. Leaving will be anything but easy. The people who make up Novell’s technical community, both outside and inside of the company, have been wonderful to me. Still, I want to try something new. Spending almost a decade at a single company is a long time.

So where to?
This week, I started at Bungee Labs, an exciting start-up company based in Orem, Utah. Bungee Labs is making what open source business advocate Matt Asay called a “Sourceforge for the 21st Century.” Bungee’s debut at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco last week garnered this very thorough review. To me, Bungee Labs appears to be the first company that might be able to deliver on the promise (and hype) of Web 2.0, and on a grand scale rather than just one small niche area.

At the core of Bungee Labs’ strategy is the need to build a strong community of developers for the platform that Bungee offers. My job will be to help build that community. More specifically, I get to help guide the external awareness and advocacy effort for that company, and help to steer the company’s culture to be web savvy, engaged, and interactive with its community. Going to a company that has community at the very core of its strategy was a proposition too intriguing to pass up.

I’ll be working for one Alex Barnett, an extremely well-regarded technologist who, along with a few others such as Robert Scoble, helped to influence what became known as the “new” Microsoft. Of course the proposition of working with an ex-Microsoftie raised my suspicions, so before taking the job I researched Alex’s name thoroughly and could not find a single negative statement about him. The guy really seems to grasp how Internet social culture affects how businesses must relate to their various constituents and stakeholders. In other words, Alex groks community.

Loose Ends
As I understand it, Novell Open Audio will continue, with Erin Quill taking over where I leave off.

I plan to keep blogging, and I very much hope that many of my readers from both the open source and Novell communities will stick with me. Bungee Labs’ technology will be something to watch, and I will certainly continue to discuss issues involving free and open source software as they relate to Bungee’s platform.

To learn more about my new company, I encourage you to check out Bungee’s videos:

• Introduction to Bungee Concepts I
• Introduction to Bungee Builder
• Introduction to Bungee Concepts II

Lastly, please share your thoughts, either by public comment or private email. The new email address is “ted” at “bungeelabs” dot com.

Loose Ends Addenda:

• Yes, I will still be presenting on Novell’s behalf at LinuxFest Northwest.
• Yes, I will still be coming to LugRadio Live.
• Yes, Bungee’s site will soon be removing the iframes. (Sheesh!)

LinuxFest Northwest 2007

Time to put in a plug for the upcoming LinuxFest Northwest, an annual community event in lovely Bellingham, Washington.

Regional events like this are very cool because they are casual and informal. Unlike IDG’s stuffed-shirt swag-fest called LinuxWorld Expo, this event is casual, informal and fun. Vendors are definitely there, but they generally send their techies–people who can set aside their talking points long enough to engage in actual  bi-directional dialog. Last year there were several peeps from Red Hat (some fairly prominent people, too!), but they were there mostly there to support breakout sessions, some of which they were not presenting.

From Novell, we have a couple people coming to the event. The inimitable Crispin Cowan will be there to present on how to use Novell AppArmor and generally discuss all things security with whoever. I’ll be presenting on Xen virtualization and data center management, as well as catch some sessions and hang out to chat about whatever.

I am also working at sponsoring an openSUSE booth at the show. If the LFNW event planners approve it, then you will probably find me there more than anywhere else.

Finally, I dropped a line to the conference organizers to see if they wanted to do a short interview for Novell Open Audio.

Drop a comment below if you will be at the event. (Or even if you are considering being there.)

I am Steve Ballmer

Apparently, I’m a Monkeyboy.

BrainShare 2007 Friday General Session

If you would like to see the General Session that I hosted at BrainShare 2007, it is now online.

• Nat Friedman brought out several guests (including David Reveman!) and showed some killer Linux stuff
• Baber Amin showed an open source InfoCard implementation
• Ken Muir showed the upcoming GroupWise release, codenamed Bonsai
• Alan Murray showed some cool Data Center technologies

Next Mac-PC-Linux is now online…

…see the original post for the links.

Minor Blog Readership Spike

Seems that a few people recently visited this page.

Here’s the 30-day chart:

And, below are the hit counts for yesterday and today:

Mac vs. PC: How Would Linux Fit?

[Please Digg this]

Apple’s “Get a Mac” Campaign
Always a branding powerhouse, Apple is a company whose television advertisements are usually excellent. Their recent Get a Mac campaign (”Hi, I’m a Mac / And I’m a PC”) certainly does not disappoint. At this point, the television commercial are very well known.

The campaign exemplifies the artfully clever use of “framing,” the selective control of information used to shape a viewer’s perception. A simple example is the term “tax relief.” If you have an anti-taxation agenda, “tax relief” is a much more powerful term than “tax cut” because it frames taxes as a burden from which people need relief. The term assumes its own premise and thereby frames our perception.

In the “Get a Mac” campaign, Apple frames an artificial dualism, and then re-enforces the dualism with powerful metaphors. The dualism frames two options: either you use a PC (understood to mean Windows) or a Mac. Those are your options.

“Will it Blend” for Novell?: Now Online

[Please Digg this]

A couple weeks ago, I posted about the filming of the “Will it Blend?” video that we made for BrainShare. This morning, Ron Hovsepian unveiled the finished product during his BrainShare 2007 keynote address. You can check it out here:

• The Video is now in the Novell Videos queue.
  • (I just found out that theweb team forgot to post the Ogg versions. rest assured, they’re on the way.)
• For a short time, Novell.com home page has some fun Flash with Tom Dickson.
• And, you can get it on YouTube, too:

The finished product is what I find most appealing about the whole thing. Here is a high-def still shot I took during the filming.

(Yes, those are legs.)

Special bonus: Find the place in the video where Kel, Blendtec’s videographer, goofed. (Hint: Look for a minor discontinutity.)