Category Archives: cloud computing

amazon, cloud computing, professional, software development

Five years of Amazon Web Services

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Amazon introduced its Simple Storage Service in March 2006. S3 was not the first of the Amazon Web Services (AWS); they were originally developed for affiliates who needed programmatic access to the Amazon retail store in order to use its data on third-party web sites. That said, there is a profound difference between a web service for your own affiliates, and one for generic use. I consider S3 to mark the beginning of Amazon’s venture into cloud computing as a provider.

It is also something I have tracked closely since those early days. I quickly wrote a Delphi wrapper for S3; it did not set the open source world alight but did give me some hands-on experience of the API. I was also on the early beta for EC2.

Amazon now dominates the section of the cloud computing market which is its focus, thanks to keen pricing, steady improvements, and above all the fact that the services have mostly worked as advertised. I am not sure what its market share is, or even how to measure it, since cloud computing is a nebulous concept. This Wall Street Journal article from February 2011 gives Rackspace the number two slot but with only one third of Amazon’s cloud services turnover, and includes the memorable remark by William Fellows of the 451 Group, “In terms of market share Amazon is Coke and there isn’t yet a Pepsi.”

The open source Eucalyptus platform has paid Amazon a compliment by implementing its EC2 API:

Eucalyptus is a private cloud-computing platform that implements the Amazon specification for EC2, S3, and EBS. Eucalyptus conforms to both the syntax and the semantic definition of the Amazon API and tool suite, with few exceptions.

AWS is not just EC2 and S3. Other offerings include two varieties of cloud database, services for queuing, notification and email, and the impressive Elastic Beanstalk for automatically scaling your application on demand.

Should we worry about Amazon’s dominance in cloud computing? Possibly, especially as the barriers to entry are considerable. Another concern is that as more computing infrastructure becomes dependent on Amazon, the potential disruption if the service were to break increases. How many of Amazon’s AWS customers have a plan B for when EC2 fails? Amazon defuses anti-competitive concerns by continuing to offer commodity pricing.

Amazon has quietly changed the computing landscape though; and though this is a few weeks late the 5th birthday of its cloud services deserves a mention.

amazon, cloud computing, java, professional, salesforce.com, software development

Fit for business? Google updates App Engine with the Enterprise in mind

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Google has updated App Engine to 1.4.3. The new version adds:

Prospective Search API for Python – this lets you register a large set of queries which are executed against a flow of data so you can create notifications or other actions whenever a match is found.

Testbed Unit Test Framework for Python – this lets you create stubs for Google services for lightweight unit tests.

Concurrent requests for Java – a single application instance can now serve multiple requests provided it is marked threadsafe. An important feature.

Java Remote API – the remote API lets you access an App Engine datastore from your local machine.

I have had the sense that Google App Engine is more attractive to start-ups and small organisations than to enterprise customers. It is interesting to see Google working on bringing the Java and Python runtimes closer to parity, as Java is more widely used for enterprise development.

Another initiative aimed at enterprise customers is App Engine for Business, currently in preview. What you get is:

An Enterprise Administration Console console for managing all apps built by your company, with access control lists.

99.9% service level agreement

Hosted SQL:

While many applications can be built on the App Engine Datastore (which uses Google’s BigTable database system), we know SQL is the industry standard for the enterprise, so we’ve got you covered. SQL database support on App Engine gives enterprise developers access to the full capabilities of a dedicated relational database, without the headache of managing it.

SSL to an URL that uses your domain, such as https://myapp.apps.example.com.

Pricing – $8 per user up to a maximum of $1000 per month. In other words, if you have more than 125 users the cost per user starts coming down; if you have 1000 users it is a bargain.

Has Google done enough to make App Engine attractive to enterprise customers? This post from a frustrated developer back in November 2010 complained about stability issues and other annoyances that do not really exist on Amazon or Microsoft Azure; the Salesforce.com platform does have some throttling limitations. But it does seem that Google is determined to address the issues and App Engine for Business looks promising.

.net, apple, cloud computing, google, internet, iphone, microsoft, mobile, professional, silverlight, software development, visual studio, web authoring

Appcelerator CEO on Titanium, Aptana and the future of mobile development

I met with Aptana CEO and co-founder Jeff Haynie at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month.

Appcelerator’s main product is Titanium, an SDK which takes HTML and JavaScript source files and compiles them to native apps for several platforms, including Windows Mac and Linux on the desktop, and Google Android or Apple iOS for mobile. RIM Blackberry support is in preview. Appcelerator has recently acquired the Aptana IDE for HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Ruby on Rails, Python and Adobe AIR. The company has also partnered with Engine Yard for cloud-hosted Ruby on Rails applications to deliver web services to clients built with Titanium.

Haynie says that mobile is currently a three-horse race between Apple iOS, Google Android, and RIM Blackberry; but he expects further diversification. Microsoft Windows Phone is under consideration, and he says that cross-compiling to Silverlight would be possible for Titanium:

It’s a .NET SDK, we would have to build a translation into Silverlight. That’s how we do it for iOS, we translate code into Objective C. We don’t think it’s technically insurmountable.

I asked about the Appcelerator Freemium business model. Titanium is open source and you can download and use the SDK commercially for free. Haynie says it works well because companies can do a full evaluation and get to understand the value of the software fully before deciding whether to purchase. However he emphasised that larger companies, other than non-profits, are expected to take out a paid subscription.

This point could do with clarification. Indeed, the Appcelerator Plans and Pricing page shows Titanium Indie which is free but for companies of less then 25 employees, and other editions which are paid-for. But as far as I can tell there are no restrictions on the SDK. See the FAQ which says:

Can I use Titanium for a commercial application?

Yes. You can use Titanium in both a personal and commercial application regardless of what your license or price is.

What is your License?

The Titanium SDK is licensed under the Apache Public License (version 2).

I also took the opportunity to ask about Adobe AIR support in Aptana. It strikes me that this is under threat following the acquisition, since AIR competes with Titanium. Haynie was just a little evasive, but at the same time impressed me with his attitude:

Obviously we have a competitive platform from Adobe AIR. But we want developers to have the best choice, the best tools possible. So competitively we need to build the best product. If AIR is a better product and people want to use Aptana to build AIR apps, then fine. That means we need to continue to work to make a better runtime for the desktop.

Nevertheless, Haynie implied that AIR support will only continue if Adobe supports it; I am not sure what support means in this context but I think it includes a financial contribution:

We’re with Adobe on trying to figure out where we go from here … we have to spend a lot of money to support that, so we’re making sure that we’ve got Adobe’s support behind that.

I am not sure what Adobe gains from Aptana support, given that it has its own Eclipse-based IDE called Flash Builder, so I would not bet on there being significant updates to the current AIR 1.5 plug-in.

Finally, Haynie emphasised what to me are familiar themes in talking about the direction for Titanium and Aptana. Cross-platform visual design tools; designer and developer workflow; and integration in a single IDE of rich client and cloud back-end. This integration has long struck me as one of the best things about Microsoft’s Visual Studio, so it is interesting to see the theme reappear in a cross-platform context.

What I enjoyed about the interview is the way Haynie communicates the huge change and volatility that has arrived within the software development world, thanks to the impact of cloud and mobile. Times of change mean new opportunities and new products. Titanium has plenty of competition, but if Appcelerator is able to deliver a robust, cloud to device, cross-platform toolkit, then it will have a bright future.

I have posted a transcript of most of the interview.

.net, cloud computing, mobile, professional, visual studio, windows

Microsoft backs Telefonica’s BlueVia mobile SDK – but the market is fragmented

Announced at Mobile World Congress last month, BlueVia is Telefonica’s effort to attract developers to its app platform. Telefonica is the largest phone operator in Spain and also owns O2 in the UK, and has various other operations around the world.

In this case though, “Platform” is not just the devices connected to Telefonica networks, but also services exposed to apps via newly published APIs. BlueVia has APIs for sending and receiving SMS messages, delivering mobile ads, and obtaining information about the current user through a User Context API.

Things like sending a text from an app are nothing new, but a difference is that BlueVia will pay the developer a cut from the revenue generated. Along with ads, the idea is that an app can generate a revenue stream, rather than being just a one-off purchase.

The news today is that Microsoft is backing BlueVia with a toolset and marketing to Windows platform developers. There has been an SDK for Microsoft .NET for some time, but today Microsoft and BlueVia have delivered a new SDK for .NET which includes both server and client side support for the BlueVia APIs. On the server, there are templates for Windows Azure and for BlueVia ASP.NET MVC2 and WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) applications. On the client side, there are Silverlight controls such as a DialPad, an Advertising control, and a text to speech control. Microsoft also provides hooks to Windows Live Services in the hope that you will integrate these with your BlueVia applications.

The snag with developing your app with BlueVia APIs is that it will only work for Telefonica customers, thus restricting your market or forcing you to code to different APIs for other operators. “If you want to expose an API in the way that Telefonica is doing, you need to be a Telefonica customer in order to be able to use it,” says Jose Valles, Head of BlueVia at Telefonica.

If you further restrict your app’s market by targeting only Windows Phone, it gets small indeed.

Valles says there is hope for improvement. “We are working with the industry and with WAC in order to standardise this API,” says, assuring me that the reaction is “very positive”. WAC is the Wholesale Applications Community, a cross-industry forum for tackling fragmentation. Do not count on it though; it strikes me as unlikely that a cross-industry group would accept BlueVia’s APIs as-is.

There is also a glimpse of the challenges facing developers trying to exploit this market in the BlueVia forums. This user observes:

During the submission process we could only submit the app for a single device model while it is actually supported on hundreds of models. So please also explain how to specify all the supported models during the submission process

The answer: BlueVia has defined around 20 groups of compatible devices, and you can only upload your app for one at a time. 20 uploads is better than hundreds, but still demonstrates the effort involved in trying to attain any kind of broad reach through this channel.

BlueVia is in beta, but Valles says this will change “in the next few weeks”. That said, it is already up and running and has 600 developers signed up. “It is already commercial, whoever wants to come in just needs to email and we will send it to him,” he says.

The idea of the operator sharing its ongoing revenue with app developers is a good one, but be prepared to work hard to make it a reality.

cloud computing, microsoft

Small businesses and the cloud: 60% have no plans to adopt?

Microsoft has released a few details from a global survey of small businesses, defined as employing up to 250 employees, and cloud computing.

The research finds that 39 percent of SMBs expect to be paying for one or more cloud services within three years, an increase of 34 percent from the current 29 percent. It also finds that the number of cloud services SMBs pay for will nearly double in most countries over the next three years.

I think this means that today 71% of small businesses do not pay for any cloud services, but that this is expected to drop to 61% in the next three years.

It is worth noting that very small businesses can get quite a long way with free services such as Google Mail. So when we read that:

The larger the business, the more likely it is to pay for cloud services. For example, 56 percent of companies with 51–250 employees will pay for an average of 3.7 services within three years.

that may mean that very small businesses mainly use free services, rather than none at all.

In my experience, many small businesses do not have clearly articulated IT strategies, so I am sceptical about this kind of survey. One day the server breaks down and at that point the business decides whether to get a new server or buy into something like Microsoft BPOS or Office 365 instead.

A business actually has to be pretty determined to embrace cloud computing in a comprehensive way. There are often a number of business-critical applications that presume a Windows server on the premises, sometimes in old versions or custom-written in Visual Basic or Access. It is easier to maintain that environment, but perhaps to start using cloud-based email, CRM or even document storage alongside it.

I still find it interesting that Microsoft’s research points to larger businesses within this sector being more open to cloud computing than the smallest ones. The new Small Business Server 2011 range makes the opposite assumption, that smaller businesses (with Essentials) will be cloud-based but larger ones (with Standard) will remain on-premise. I still cannot make sense of this, and it seems to me that the company is simply unwilling to be radical with its main Small Business Server offering. It is a missed opportunity.

That said, clearly there is a lot of caution out there If, if I am right in my reading of the figures, that 61% have no plans to pay for anything cloud-based over the next 3 years.

cloud computing, google, internet

Google opens up discussions on docs

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I attended a briefing today on Google Apps. Google is celebrating over 1 million business customers in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) since the launch of Google Apps just over 4 years ago, and over 3 million worldwide. An unknown proportion of those customers are small businesses using the free edition; but there are some well-known names which have signed up, including Rentokil Initial, Virgin America, Motorola, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and Jaguar Landrover.

The big announcement today is called Discussions in Google Docs, and I have had a quick try with a short document that I opened for discussion. One thing I learned is that if you want to allow public discussion on a document, you have to make it world-editable (like a wiki). It should be possible to have the document locked but still enable comments, but I cannot see how to do that; it seems that leaving a comment requires the same rights as editing the document.

Another oddity is that there are two comment panels, a narrow column on the right

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and a big blue panel that appears if you select Show Discussions from the top menu.

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If you are logged in, you can request notifications by email and even add comments by replying to email notifications.

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There is also a per-comment feature mysteriously called Resolve. A resolved comment is semi-deleted; it is removed from the comment stream (narrow panel) but still appears in the full discussion (big blue panel).

My snap judgment is that these comments/discussions will be useful for document collaboration, which is already among the strongest features of Google Apps.

cloud computing, oracle, professional, software development, sql

Guardian.co.uk enthuses about MongoDB, plans to ditch Oracle

The Guardian’s Mat Wall has spoken here at Qcon London about why it is migrating its web site away from Oracle and towards MongoDB.

He also said there are moves towards cloud hosting, I think on Amazon’s hosted infrastructure, and that its own data centre can be used as a backup in case of cloud failure – an idea which makes some sense to me.

So what’s wrong with Oracle? The problem is the tight relationship between updates to the code that runs the site, and the Oracle database schema. Significant code updates tend to require schema updates too, which means pausing content updates while this takes place. Journalists on a major news site hate these pauses.

MongoDB by contrast is not a relational database. Rather, it stores documents in JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format. This means that documents with new attributes can be added to the database at runtime.

Although this was the main motivation for change, the Guardian discovered other benefits. Developer productivity is significantly better with MongoDB and they are enjoying its API.

Currently both MongoDB and Oracle are in use. The Guardian has written its own API layer to wrap database access and handle the complexity of having two radically different data stores.

I enjoyed this talk, partly thanks to Wall’s clear presentation, and partly because I was glad to hear solid pragmatic reasons for moving to a NoSQL data store.

adobe, cloud computing

Adobe Document Center shutting down, protected documents to become unreadable

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The what? Well, few people used it which is why it is shutting down; but the Adobe Document Center is a service for protecting documents, somewhat similar to Microsoft’s Rights Management Services except that it is provided as a hosted subscription service; though I am not sure that it ever made it out of beta and actually started charging. You can use it with a PDF or Microsoft Office document to restrict who can access it and set an expiry date.

At least, you could. I have received an email (because I must have tried the beta back in 2006) informing me that the service is shutting down on April 2nd 2011:

Important: This means that after the Service shuts down you, or anyone you have distributed documents protected via the Service, will no longer be able to open/access these documents. We strongly encourage you to use Adobe Acrobat to un-protect these documents before the Service is shut down.

Time to make a mental note: protected documents are high-maintenance and there is always a risk of losing your data.

cloud computing, google

Another cloud fail: disappearing Google accounts

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Every time a story like this runs it sets back cloud computing. Many users of Google Mail reported yesterday a problem with missing email:

I was on my eMail normally and when I refreshed all my account settings, eMail, labels, contacts etc has just disappeared.

Google’s App Status Dashboard has a series of updates:

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It does say that the issue affects “less than 0.08% of the Google Mail userbase”. While that does not sound much, if Google Mail has 150 million users that would be 120,000 people. Of those accounts, only a proportion will be critical as some of us use Gmail only casually; but some people are severely inconvenienced:

This really is wildly inconvenient and worrisome, though. I rely on my Gmail an enormous amount for my job, and not having access to it is really crippling me. I can’t even do my work at this point, because all the material I need is in attachments on Gmail, so all I can do is wait until I (hopefully) get it back! I suppose I should have saved my files to my computer, but hindsight is 20/20.

Google is indicating that it will restore the data soon though it is all rather vague.

Of course there are also failed Exchange Servers and the like out there; sometimes backups fail too and data is lost. Cloud providers like Google do tend to lack transparency though, making times like this anxious ones for those who are affected.

The real lesson: if you have data you really care about, keep it in more than one place.

cloud computing, google, sharepoint

Hands on with Google Cloud Connect: Microsoft docs in Google’s cloud

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Google has released Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office, and I gave it a quick try.

Cloud Connect is a plug-in for Microsoft Office which installs a toolbar into Word, Excel and PowerPoint. There is no way that I can see to hide the toolbar. Every time you work in Office you will see Google’s logo.

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From the toolbar, you sign into a Google Docs account, for which you must sign up if you have not done so already. The sign-in involves passing a rather bewildering dialog granting permission to Cloud Connect on your computer to access Google Docs and contacts on your behalf.

The Cloud Connect settings synchronise your document with Google Docs every time you save, or whenever the document is updated on Google’s servers.

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Once a document is synched, the Cloud Connect toolbar shows an URL to the document:

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You get simultaneous editing if more than one person is working on the document. Google Docs will also keep a revision history.

You can easily share a document by clicking the Share button in the toolbar:

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I found it interesting that Google stores your document in its original Microsoft format, not as a Google document. If you go to Google Docs in a web browser, they are marked by Microsoft Office icons.

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If you click on them in Google Docs online, they appear in a read-only viewer.

That said, in the case of Word and Excel documents the online viewer has an option to Edit Online.

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This is where it gets messy. If you choose Edit online, Google docs converts your Office document to a Google doc, which possible loss of formatting. Worse still, if you make changes these are not synched back to Microsoft Office because you are actually working on a second copy:

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Note that I now have two versions of the same Excel document, distinguished only by the icon and that the title has been forced to lower case. One is a Google spreadsheet, the other an Excel spreadsheet.

Google says this is like SharePoint, but better.

Google Cloud Connect vastly improves Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010, so companies can start using web-enabled teamwork tools without upgrading Microsoft Office or implementing SharePoint 2010.

Google makes the point that Office 2010 lacks web-based collaboration unless you have SharePoint, and says its $50 per user Google Apps for Business is more affordable. I am sure that is less than typical SharePoint rollouts – though SharePoint has other features.  The best current comparison would be with Business Productivity Online Standard Suite at $10 per user per month, which is more than Google but still relatively inexpensive. BPOS is out of date though and an even better comparison will be Office 365 including SharePoint 2010 online, though this is still in beta.

Like Google, Microsoft has a free offering, SkyDrive, which also lets you upload and share Office documents.

Microsoft’s Office Web Apps have an advantage over Cloud Connect, in that they allow in-browser editing without conversion to a different format, though the editing features on offer are very limited compared with what you can do in the desktop applications.

Despite a few reservations, I am impressed with Cloud Connect. Google has made setup and usage simple. Your document is always available offline, which is a significant benefit over SharePoint – and one day I intend to post on how poorly Microsoft’s SharePoint Workspace 2010 performs both in features and usability. Sharing a document with others is as easy as with other types of Google documents.

The main issue is the disconnect between Office documents and Google documents, and I can see this causing confusion.

Update: I uninstalled Cloud Connect after a couple of days. Two reasons. First, the chunky toolbar is annoying and takes valuable working space. Second, I had performance issues when working with documents opened from SharePoint. I guess the two do not get on well together.

Microsoft has its own unsurprisingly negative take on the product here. Apparently Cloud Connect uses the Track Changes feature under the covers, hence breaking this feature for any other purpose. If so, I would like to have been warned about this. On the other hand, I still like the usability of Cloud Connect. Microsoft is right to observe that auto-sync could result in inadvertent document sharing; but the simple and prominent sharing dialog is easier to use than SharePoint permissions.