Software, Interrupted

IBM and Canonical, the commercial entity behind Ubuntu Linux, on Tuesday are launching a combined cloud and Linux desktop package designed for Netbooks and low-end PCs.

For those of us still waiting for Linux to hit the desktop, this type of packaging may be exactly how the move from Windows starts to pick up steam.

The IBM Client for Smart Work was first launched in South Africa in September and was initially geared toward emerging markets. IBM found that there was strong interest in the U.S. and other markets that had aging PC infrastructure and little desire for continued Windows upgrades.

The U.S. version of the package contains a number of IBM products including word processing and spreadsheets via Lotus Symphony, e-mail via Lotus Notes or LotusLive iNotes, and collaboration tools from LotusLive.com. As with the previously launched initiative, the package runs on Ubuntu Linux.

Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of Linux and open source, told me that the target is not a drop-in replacement scenario, but rather something for IT shops that don't want to be stuck in an endless cycle of upgrading desktop operating systems and applications.

This is an interesting development for multiple reasons:

• IBM and Canonical are teaming up to bring Linux to the desktop, offering what could be considered a next-generation thin-client that relies on cloud services but remains based on an actual operating system rather than just running in a Web browser.
• IBM is targeting Windows installations in the co-opetition model the company excels in--effectively insulating itself regardless of who wins the desktop.
• Canonical is building a channel to deliver solutions rather than depend on individuals and organizations to roll their own.

IBM has been making some interesting moves of late, launching a cloud-based e-mail and collaboration suite to rival Google Apps and now a direct attack on Microsoft's operating system footprint.

If recent research is any indication, Amazon.com and Google are winning the cloud game.

Evans Data on Tuesday released a report (registration required) on how developers perceive cloud service providers related to cloud services offerings, including their completeness and the companies' ability to execute on the vision.

Janel Garvin, the founder of Evans Data and the author of the report, provides excellent insight into the current state of the market and how quickly things could change, if certain large vendors (notably AT&T and Microsoft) got their acts together more quickly.

Given their robust services, it isn't surprising that Amazon and Google top the list. And although IBM, VMware, and Microsoft trail, each offers important components of cloud infrastructure.

... Read more

IBM on Monday is expected to release a new enterprise collaboration service based on its LotusLive cloud-based platform. The service comes with 1GB of storage and will cost $3.75 per user per month.

The new IBM LotusLive iNotes service is IBM's first real foray into a mass-market cloud-based service, including e-mail, calendaring, and contact management all designed to work with existing on-premise e-mail or operate as a standalone solution. Per user pricing will start at just $3 per month.

Realistically, the new IBM service isn't much different than you see from the likes of Google Apps or Yahoo--the big change is that it's coming from IBM, an enterprise stalwart. Whether you like Lotus Notes or not, this is big news as an endorsement of cloud computing and hosted applications.

Sean Poulley, vice president of IBM Cloud Collaboration Services, said customers have been looking for strategic versions of hosted solutions for a long time. The cloud approach of multitenancy means that the real cost of IT--the cost of running the applications--is reduced, bringing economies of scale to the offerings. IBM has been working on making the service secure and "enterprise ready," he said.

IBM's decision to start offering more cloud-based services is predicated on the notion that fewer people in IT organizations are carrying more responsibility. They are also more dependent on people outside of their organizations that need access to shared documents and files. On-premise collaboration applications can likely be manipulated to work in a shared manner, but LotusLive has been designed to work that way from the ground up.

When I asked why IBM would brand the new service as part of the Lotus family, Poulley said that more than half of the Fortune 100 companies use IBM collaboration technology that includes Lotus Notes and are well aware of the brand.

IBM on Tuesday announced that Canada's Edmonton Police Service is using IBM business analytics technology to help reduce crime, improve force effectiveness, and increase public safety.

The goal of the software is to help law enforcement agencies "obtain the right information at the right time--even before a crime may have been committed--to inform police officers so they can stay on top of and prevent criminal activities, identify crime 'hot spots,' and ultimately reduce crime rates."

With business analytics technology, Edmonton police are able to see data in near-real time. They put crime information directly into the hands of front-line patrol officers so they can use it to quickly identify problems, associated trends, and locations of crimes to determine their response and problem-solving solutions.

The police service has also been able to look at the components of response times--such as dispatch delays and travel time--to identify the issues that play a role in overall response time. With this technology, police are able to monitor performance strategically over time and place, and tactically on a day-by-day and call-by-call basis.

Crime data analysis has been a challenge in the past, as law enforcement and government agencies are only recently making the transition from paper to computer-based records. The quick access to relevant information potentially helps officials work smarter and make more timely decisions about crime fighting.

The use of analytics to improve decision making is certainly nothing new in the enterprise. Other industries such as professional sports jumped on the analytics bandwagon several years ago in order to create specific game plans based on teams and players. It's good to see an industry modernize--especially one that's responsible for public safety.

In the year since the worst financial meltdown in modern history, many financial institutions are still seeking to identify the root causes of the crisis and develop new ways to re-invent their business processes to ensure that such an event can never occur again.

In addition to human error, over-reaching risk, and simple greed, there was a key technology component that has been overlooked by most reports. According to Bob Picciano, General Manager of IBM Lotus Software and IBM Collaboration, this technological fault was made up of two elements; the lack of corporate-wide computer program integration at most banks, and a complete lack of data transparency.

As a result of these shortcomings, not only were financial institutions unable to track or even to understand their overall risk position, but they lacked a single view of each trade or client in order to "triage" the crisis as it unfolded.

This is not an uncommon scenario and it's one that many pieces of software have tried to address via dashboard, portals, etc. But the systems need to have the right data in order to provide meaningful information.

Many banks are running applications that are older than the workers who use them--which is not necessarily wrong provided that these core systems can accommodate new ways to view and parse data.

Replacing a core banking system is akin to conducting a simultaneous heart and lung transplant on a patient that is still jogging. It's just not realistic. And, since banks can't afford to simply shut down their operations in order to transition to new applications, these vital upgrades were put on hold indefinitely.

Even as events were finally catching up to the banks across the globe, they still resisted replacing their aging core banking systems, despite the fact that the cost of maintaining these systems was becoming more and more prohibitive. For example, IBM research suggests that application and infrastructure maintenance can often account for as much as 85 percent of a bank's IT budget.

This is finally beginning to change. To help facilitate these global upgrades, as part of its Smarter Planet initiative, IBM is unveiling a new Banking Framework that will allow banks to effectively structure and integrate their applications and better manage their data.

The IBM Banking Industry Framework addresses four key areas that demand the majority of a banks attention and resources, providing a path to accelerate transformation, and system upgrade with an eye towards future needs and reduced project risk. The features of the framework include:

• An integrated risk management domain to support a holistic approach to managing financial risk, operational and IT risk, financial crimes detection and prevention, and compliance.
• The customer care and insight domain helps banks build a foundation for creating a single view of the customer and enabling more effective and efficient sales and service.
• The payments and securities domain helps banks progressively transform their payments operations to become more flexible and efficient.
• The core banking transformation domain allows banks to modernize and renovate existing systems that sustain core banking functions while aligning with the changing needs of the business.

Based on a mature model already used by more than 250 banks and 150 insurance companies, the framework provides a methodology for completing gradual core banking transitions on a step by step basis, rather than all at once.

It also has the fail-safe aspect of being based on a tried and tested method that not only reduces the risk inherent in any transition, but also allows easy standards-based integration with other systems the institution may decide to incorporate at a later date.

Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom.

The Linux Foundation recently released an updated study of Linux development statistics that reveals interesting statistics relating to who actually writes the kernel that allows others to build on top.

More than 70 percent of total kernel contributions come from developers working at large companies including obvious participants like Red Hat, IBM, Novell, and Intel as well as other less obvious small companies such as Parallels.

1. Red Hat: 12.3%
2. IBM: 7.6%
3. Novell: 7.6%
4. Intel: 5.3%
5. Independent consultant: 2.5%
6. Oracle: 2.4%
7. Linux Foundation: 1.6%
8. SGI 1.6%
9. Parallels 1.3%
10. Renesas Technology: 1.3%
11. Academia: 1.2%
12. Fujitsu: 1.1%
13. MontaVista: 1.1%
14. MIPS Technologies: 1.1%
15. Analog Devices: 1.0%
16. HP: 1.0%

Another interesting fact is the rate of development and constant refactoring of the kernel code. An average of 10,923 lines of code are added with an average of 5,547 lines removed every day, ensuring that the code is high quality and relevant for the most important implementations of the kernel.

... Read more

Despite all the hype associated with a never-ending Linux versus Windows battle, it's Unix, and specifically Sun Solaris that has felt the most pressure in the server operating system landscape.

While I doubt that Solaris will completely languish long-term under Oracle's watchful eye (in fact, it may well flourish), there is little question that Sun's ups and downs in the recent past have made customers look to alternatives.

At a recent IBM analyst meeting, Inna Kuznetsova, director, Linux strategy, told attendees that the Linux business is strong and growing.

• In the past three years, over 1,800 customers have migrated from competitive platforms to IBM, and nearly 50 percent of those IBM wins included Linux.
• IBM doubled their number of Sun customer wins between first quarter and second quarter 2009.

Much of the growth comes from IBM's close relationship with Red Hat, which allows IBM to play all sides of the fence in terms of OS suggestions to their customers.

This comes at a time when Novell has decided to invest further into OpenSUSE, adding full-time staff to the project team. As The Register noted, it's a bit shocking that it's taken this long for Novell to properly fund the effort, but it seems like an obvious time to take advantage of the market opportunity as Solaris and OpenSolaris are potentially on the ropes.

Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom.

As transactional data volumes increase, system architecture must stay flexible and be able to scale in accordance.

Back in September, the London Stock Exchange experienced a significant interruption when a proprietary system built on Microsoft technology went offline. Few details were shared, but I eventually cobbled together a rough explanation of what happened.

The stock exchange's system hung due to a "coincidence" (whatever that means) that stopped data from processing. What appears to have happened is several Windows processes, including message processing, crashed at the same time due to a configuration glitch. Because the applications were so directly tied in to Windows, the impact affected everything instead of just one component.

I spoke on the phone with Craig Hayman, vice president of IBM's WebSphere, discussing how open standards and design principles allow for more robust system architecture. Craig explained that the stock exchange incident was likely a result of being too dependent on a myopic structure rather than relying on a three-tier architecture that's been proven to scale.

It feels a bit old-school to talk about three-tier architectures in this day of Ruby apps built in 15 minutes, but the fact is you need separation and best-of-breed components when you are dealing with large transaction volumes and varietal peaks.

... Read more

I was somewhat shocked by the stellar results Oracle recently reported, considering the sorry state of the economy. I even called an analyst friend to find out if maybe there was some house of cards ala Computer Associated that explained the consistent rise in revenue and margin. But I was reminded of two simple facts explaining why Oracle remains dominant:

1. Applications drive database sales
2. Oracle owns pretty much everything

Oracle's acquisition streak has given the company an enormous breadth of offerings (say what you will about quality of the software) and the attempt at offering it's own Linux variant gives it an OS that's passable if not meaningful. But, I don't know that owning the operating system is important to the growth of sales in applications or databases. (Note: Matt Asay wrote a very good post about why Ubuntu should be Oracle's Linux of choice.)

Oracle applications and databases have to run on an operating system, but the operating system doesn't necessarily drive software sales, or sell databases. The OS may be a point of influence, but doesn't drive the dollar values that you get from software.

Meanwhile, Oracle has amassed such a wealth of software that it can not only drive it's own database sales through upgrades and replacements (JD Edwards or Siebel running on DB2 seems unlikely) but it can up-sell databases to customers of BEA or any of the other myriad applications it now owns.

Add MySQL into the equation and Oracle can sell you a database pretty much anytime for any purpose, to support any application (which you can probably buy from them too.)

This leads into some questions regarding Cisco's strategy, based on the idea that hardware should sell applications, as well as IBM's strategy, where services have often sold software and hardware. The future is of course a mix of all of these strategies, but it's not clear that another company is as well positioned as Oracle.

While certainly not unstoppable, Oracle's execution has been very impressive, especially in a down economy.

Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom.