Is your head in the Clouds?

Cloud computing is all the buzz these days.  Amazon, who'd a thunk it, is leading the charge with their Elastic Compute Cloud(EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3).

So, what is all the buzz about?  Cloud computing is the next generation of the ASP or hosted model.  It is not unlike a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) model either. 

Essentially, you can load up your application to someone else's server and pay them for storage and bandwidth and utilization.  Sounds kinda like a web host, eh?  That's a good analogy.

Today, EnterpriseDB announced that we will be offering EnterpriseDB Advanced Server Cloud Edition.  Though it is currently a BETA program, the potential is huge.  Load up Advanced Server in the cloud and scale out/up as necessary without having to worry about maintaining the infrastructure and, even better, pay for usage only in small increments of time.  Instead of having to purchase a large server that is mostly overkill, but sufficient for the peaks in your business, you can run it all on the cloud without a worry.

Sounds like the future is just around the corner!!! 

IT Innovation in a Recession

With all the talk of a recession going around these days, I can't help but think about the post Y2K days when the bottom fell out of the tech market.  At the time, I ran a fairly successful ERP consulting practice.  My clients included:  Colgate Palmolive, Avery Dennison, Johnson and Johnson, Guidant, Arrow International, etc.

Business was booming through the first part of 2000.  It was a windfall of cash for my company and luckily, I squirreled some of it away for a rainy day.  I just knew it wouldn't last.  Why?  Well, the Y2K scare was over.  All of the software updates were done.  And, to make matters worse, all of the hardware purchases were complete.  Many of the applications that had issues were written in COBOL and, yikes, FORTRAN.  These machines were old and outdated and entire application suites had to be rewritten and upgraded to new operating systems and hardware.  So, the software was fixed and new hardware was purchased (at considerable expense to major companies.)

At this point, IT budgets froze.  They had spent their money and wanted to wait for some of it to pay off.  Then, the bubble burst on the dot coms and IT budgets got cut.

I remember having multiple 6-figure deals just going on hold until further notice.  They finally started picking up again in late 2002, but the damage to the tech industry was pervasive.

Now, here we are in 2008 and a recession is looming.  (I am not buying it, for the record.)  IT budgets are in jeopardy again.  When IT budgets get cut, innovation ceases and preservation is the name of the game.

But, that doesn't have to be the case anymore.  Evaluate your current IT budget.  Look at the planned expenditures, especially the largest software components.  Are they open source or proprietary?  If they are proprietary they are most likely capital expenditures and more likely to get cut.  If there was ever a case for open source, a recession makes that case even more clear.

Open Source software components are "good enough" if not better than proprietary solutions in almost every case.  Yes, your CTO knows and trusts X company (in our case, Oracle).  But, your gonna cut that whole project anyway because (Oracle) is too expensive in a recession.  Teach him about Postgres and EnterpriseDB Advanced Server.  Let him know how SugarCRM, Alfresco, Jasper, JBoss, etc.  Make them understand that they have been running and depending on the LAMP stack for years and that Firefox is actually open source.

If they don't trust you, get OpenLogic in there or SpikeSource or Optaros.  The cost of the open source software, plus the piece of mind of a third party like I mentioned above, will still be dwarfed in comparison to the cost of the proprietary solution you are replacing.

You CAN innovate in a recession and it might just be the competitive advantage you need....

Bill Gates at CES 2008, WSYP, Microsoft Marketing

I know this is a little old now, but in case you haven't seen it, Bill Gates gave his final keynote at CES a couple weeks ago.  For those you who have attended before, you know that his keynotes have been hit or miss.   The highlights included the launch of the XBox while the low-lights included a few BSOD (Blue Screens of Death) and who could forget Microsoft BOB.

This year, though, he may have sealed his legacy, not as a technology pioneer, but as a comedian.  This video is hilarious.  (Not hysterical.  Ask Paul Corson from QAD.  He was an English major and that was one of his pet peeves.)

The video looks forward to his last day at Microsoft and what it will be like.  It includes cameos by a whole bunch of folks including:  Brian Williams, Matthew McConaughey, Hillary Clinton, Jay-Z, and others.  Enjoy!

 

And while you are at it, check out these two videos that need to be resurrected and passed around.  This first one shows you just how marketing can eff up a product!!!

 

And this one shows you that Microsoft really does have a sense of humor...  The Microsoft WSYP Program (We Share Your Pain)

For those of you wondering what is up, I learned how to embed video!!!   And I have been thinking a lot about viral marketing.  These are all great examples of viral marketing!!!  More on that in the future.

Postgres is not for sale

Rather than try to summarize Greg Sabino Mullane's excellent blog post from yesterday, I am going to give you a link to the original post and copy the post right here.  Greg really nails it on the head.  He provides his commentary on the MySQL deal itself further down in the post, which I did not copy.  Check it out.

In light of the recent MySQL sellout, I'd like to once again answer the question that pops up occasionally: "Who will purchase Postgres?" Sure, it brings a smile to those of us immersed in the open source world, but it bears a serious answer: Postgres cannot be bought. While from a distance, MySQL and PostgreSQL look the same ("open-source databases"), they are very different beasts, both in technical and non-technical ways. In a nutshell, the difference can be expressed as:

MySQL is an open-source PRODUCT.

Postgres is an open-source PROJECT.

Only two letters of difference between 'product' and 'project', but a very important distinction. MySQL is run by a for-profit corporation (MySQL AB), which owns the code, employs practically all the developers, dictates what direction the software goes in, and has the right to change (indeed, has changed) the licensing terms for use of the software (and documentation).

By contrast, Postgres is not owned by any one company, is controlled by the community, has no licensing issues, and has its main developers spread across a wide spectrum of companies, both public and private. Can a software product succeed using such a system? Well, the other letters in the original LAMP (Linux, Apache, and Perl) have similar models, and they seem to be doing just fine. Like Postgres, there is no way to "buy" any of those projects either.

Of course, EnterpriseDB is a company.  And, we have an excellent database built on the Postgres foundation.  And, I may get in trouble for this, but I am willing to entertain all offers for EnterpriseDB starting at $5 billion US.

As noted at the bottom of the blog:  The comments expressed by me in this blog are my own and may not represent the opinions of EnterpriseDB.