deltalounge

Amazon’s best sold laptop runs Linux! And I must admit that I was surprised to discover this today. It has been the for almost three months today.

It’s Samsung’s ARM-powered, Linux-based Chromebook. This laptop has at least three great advantages:

• It is cheap. There is no laptop in Amazon’s top-20 that can compete based on price. It’s even hard for tablet to be cheaper.
• It is easy. Anyone that can use a web browser should be able to use the Chromebook. There is learning curve.
• Although it runs Linux, you have to try hard to find that. Unlike with Windows 8 you don’t have to relearn how to use your laptop. Same goes for those moving from Windows to OSX. Even there is more learning involved.

Think about how you are using your laptop most of the time: If you spend 90% of your time using the web the Chromebook might be something for you. Especially if you are using software-as-a-service or Web apps most of the time. On the other hand if you need special programs that require Windows or OSX this probably won’t work for you. Right now you might want to check ZDnet’s review of the Samsung Chromebook.

Recently I was going through an SOA Implementation Survey when I saw the question as shown in the screen-shot. Well I’ve always been under the impression that Microsoft does have an Application Platform (although I must admit even after Google-ing I’m not sure what it is exactly), even for SOA. Did I miss something or is it occasionally just hard to come up with a good survey? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

In October 2009 I posted about the announcement of the SOA Manifesto during the SOA Symposium 2009. For those of you interested, InfoQ has interviewed the original author’s and in some cases pulled in their comments on the manifesto from the web to get insight into the motivations and the process behind the initiative. The answers are gathered under the name SOA Manifesto – 4 months after. The article looks into the following subjects:

• The philosophy
• The process
• The goals

Find the complete article here.

There were some great sessions on the first morning of the 2009 edition of the SOA Symposium. One that is again dedicated to “substance only”. The keynotes of Thomas Erl and Anne Thomas Manes basically went on where the blogpost ended, and declared “SOA is dead, long live Services”. Most people forgot to read the last part of that statement. At the same time we’ll see that Architecture will play a main role in Next Generation SOA.

The New SOA is all about Architecture.

If we are not going to use the architectural principals and patterns, we won’t be able to “clean the house”. This will leave us with the same problems as we had before… only now they have a SOA sauce on top of them. Business is not interested in this somewhat technology flavored sauce. And that is what makes it hard to sell SOA to the business!

Exorcism of the bad SOA

Before we can go to the new and improved SOA, we have to lose the old one. So a real “exorcism” based on the movie was held, as a ritual to leave the past behind. This left us with the question what the New Good SOA will look like. Here are some clues:

• SOA is something you DO, not something you buy – which is not the easiest statement with al these vendors around
• SOA doesn’t have to be large scale – This will take away some of the burdens of the enterprise wide scope, that has difficulty with timely delivery and showing business value within a reasonable time.
• It is about business value – Leaving us with the question how to measure the value of a paradigm? One of the answers lies in the search for metrics for the values of (business) Services.

A lot of other possible buzz words – Cloud, BPM, SaaS, and Mashup – depend on the success of the Good SOA. This will leave SOA a prerequisite for the future.

Recently there was a small survey in the company that employs me. The questions boiled down to the Twitter question:

What are you doing?

or what have you been doing during the last year. Since this question was aimed at architects, it should give some insight in the diversity of tasks for the various types of architects. Reading the results there were two conclusions to be drawn:

Architects have an even more diverse job than I imagined

Here are some examples:

• “Translate” a technical complex strategic document to a message we can communicate;
• Write a strategic information plan;
• Give an impact analysis of the projected move to open source for our company;
• Write a functional design based on requirements;
• Define an action plan to get our 3th SOA project into production ASAP;
• Define a project start architecture;
• Implement an enterprise wide Single Sign On and provisioning solution;
• Create a mobile application based on MS technology;
• Reduce storage costs;
• Deliver a Proof of Concept/Technology;
• Give the arguments: Service Bus or not?

My advice:

next time someone tells you that she needs an architect on the project, you immediately ask what kind of questions this “role” has to answer.

The way questions are answered is even more diverse

The answers of my colleagues were very different on various dimensions. First of all the length of the answers, where some of them needed a few sentences, others elaborated using several pages. Some mentioned technology others didn’t – even when the question was tempting them.
Another difference was that some gave the customers question or assignment, and others answered describing their approach to get to the result. A few grabbed the opportunity to promote themselves stating awards they received, and presentations they held on important boards.

Once again this proves to me: Question and answer can never be separated from context, and who is answering the question.

Gartner states that the growth in revenue (2008 compared to 2007) in the application infrastructure and middleware (AIM) software market is lower than the growth in 2007 compared to 2006. Please notice that, while in a recession, there is still growth, only single digit in stead of double digit. Fabrizio Biscotti gives two reasons for the loss of growth:

1. The slowdown of the economy;
2. The effects of the acquisition of BEA Systems.

Asheesh Raina elaborates on the latter: Oracle’s acquisition of BEA had a profound effect, especially in markets (like Asia-Pacific) were BEA historically was controlling a huge portion of the regional market. The process of combining BEA and Oracle, and the relative uncertainty surrounding the outcome, has driven potential or undecided customers to delay their purchases. Obviously it is typical that an acquisition of such magnitude has led to the typical uncertainty that always follows major merger & acquisition activities.

If the merger of Oracle and BEA has this impact on the market, what will the effect of the announced acquisition of Sun bring… Especially, if we are taking into account that not all uncertainty of the previous merger has been cleared. Yes, there is a strategic direction, and we think it is great. However, it has to be implemented in releases that we thought should be released by now. Oracle has history of keeping it´s cards to it´s chest with release dates and content of the releases. In this case, this unclear operational path adds to the uncertainty. Resulting in more undecided customers in the market.

It can be stated that the acquisition of Sun is smaller, and therefore will result in less impact. However in the case of Sun, there is less clarity on what exactly the benefits will be in the application infrastructure and middleware software market. Overall there remain lot of questions on synergy, and the future of products & technology unanswered. The time frame that is needed to answer the major part of these, will have influence on the total revenue in this software market, and the way Oracle’s market share is going.