This, my slightly captivated audience, should serve as enough of a warning to all of you; especially if you are information technologists who believe that the phenomenon of the Cloud and Cloud Computing are just evolutionary steps from message oriented middleware, integration brokers, application platform suites, enterprise service Buses, SOA Suites, Etc.. If you believe that simply putting an enterprise service bus on an external server hosted by your local Internet service provider, will give you the capability to offer the same functionalities (including elasticity, flexibility and agility) as true Cloud platforms, then you are mistaken.  And you have made a mortal error if you fail to see the evolutionary trail of enterprise infrastructure and middleware has dwindled.

I fully expect to see that the chasm, which may be more like a deep bottomless pit, between enterprise stuff and true infrastructure for Cloud services, filled with the bodies and careers of men, women and analyst (sometimes we can be above sexuality) who failed to detect and comprehend the radical shift in existence necessary to consume and provide the proper mechanisms and methodologies necessary for survival in this new era of Cloud services and Cloud Computing.

In turn this means the fight for leadership in Cloud platform and Cloud service infrastructure markets is far from over and there are no incumbent leaders or even visionaries.  So if you provide application integration technology today by all means adapt your technology for Cloud service infrastructure but be forewarned; your competitors will come from the world of integrated service environments, multi-enterprise collaborative gateways, manage file transfer technologies, Web 2.0 platforms, productivity suites, business process management suites and even entire operating systems. Take nothing for granted.  Unlike SOA and to a lesser extent BPM, the Consumerisation of the IT will not let enterprise infrastructure and middleware providers and vendors dilute and shift the Cloud’s core value proposition, strengths and legacy has a defining shift in information technology.

So the other day I was surfing the web and a colleague who shall remain nameless sent me a link to a humorous video that had been making its way around the web. It seems that the content was quite adult and one of the two stars let a little gas slip. Oh how immature! But still funny in a MAD magazine sorta way. When I clicked through I found myself on a site that was much like You Tube but was 100% adult content. The advertisements were off to the sides, the content was free and the community was vibrant and very much participating. While I won’t share the name of the site (I don’t need the Google crawlers logging it) I will tell you a little research and the owners of the site was a company that started out distributing VHS tapes, then DVDs and now giving the content away.  After a few emails with the owner it became evident that it’s the same ole game plan that the adult industry has followed from day one.   

When the adult industry realized that less and less people were buying content (in any form), they gave it away for free and monetized the communities built around the content. Viewers that preferred a certain type of film clip were bought together in an effort to share their favorite clips. Specific advertisements and value added services were added to the community and bingo, revenue streams opened up again. Utilizing current technologies and deployment models for storing and playing media (cloud storage) and hosted search, provisioning and account management capabilities (many adult sites will leverage existing email accounts) have kept these firms lean and clean; without traditional IT departments and razor focus of their business models.

Taking cues from the adult industry isn’t something new; it’s just something we don’t want to admit. But lets face it, the tipping point in the VHS vs. Beta discussions came down to the adult industry (it was cheaper). The tipping point for Blue Ray vs. HD DVD came down to a decision from the manufacturer to not grant a license to adult companies. Some of the trends are large like the above; some are small… think DIVX, downloadable flash and avatars. While we saw some adult content come into virtual worlds like Second Life, most of that was via end users and NOT larger adult companies. (In fact many had already tried virtual worlds and passed on the idea for various reasons.)

Just something to think about and I volunteer to lead that research agenda and chair that conference. Any helpers out there?

-f

And in my Google browser

I was ordering from eBay

Because I am to busy to go to a real mall (Hey I never said this would rhyme!)

After using PayPal to send money to 5 different sellers in a 24hr chain, the governance mechanisms of PayPal kicked off processes that sent emails to the seller that said…

Ahhh wherever eBay and the PayPal guys learned it they learned well! Looking at my virtually inactive PayPal account that was over foyur years old but seldom used, PayPal’s monitoring systems showed some strange transactions all within the same 24 hour period. I mean could it really be Frank Kenney that bought:

• A new bass guitar,
• Refills for Propellerhead’s Reason,
• A Gwen Stefani L.A.M.B. watch and bracelet,
• A limited addition DVD of Duran Duran’s Rio (Ohhh don’t start! YOU KNOW YOU WANT A COPY),
• And some perfume???

I mean no interactions for the better part of 2 years then a flurry of activity. So here I am getting emails from sellers telling me that they were not going to send my presents out until PayPal said it was ok. All in all the process worked very well. In fact it worked too well.

But I did authorize the purchases and they were paid from my checking accounts. Hmmm so much like air travel and the dreaded “SSSS” (The airlines way of flagging you to the TSA) I was on a list that I didn’t deserve to be on. Worse yet with eight days until Christmas there was a real chance that I would not have the gifts in time. Oh what to do?

Oh, I called the 800 number, authenticated my self and a very nice man, very quickly executed a process that removed me from the bad guys list and sent out emails to the sellers. Problem solved.

Moral of the story? Automated governance processes are way cool! In fact if it wasn’t me buying all that merchandise, then I would be ecstatic that PayPal stopped the entire process and more importantly protected my money. The best policies and processes are those that have very clearly defined exceptions.

I would like to thank all of Gartner’s clients and associates who helped us stay successful and I look forward to another 400K of travel. Seriously, lets do it again.

Oh by the way… Cloud Governance…. Hehehe you know you want to know more… Stay tuned!

-f

And no I don’t mean the US Armed forces mandate on homosexuality, I mean something more related to IT and specificially how many CIO’s and IT governance policies are enacted and enforced. 

Obi Wan Doing His Thing

I just attended a compelling presentation delivered by Tom “Obi Wan” Austin, entitled, “Exploiting Consumerisation, Technology Democratization and User Responsibility”. Oh snap. In 45 minutes, and this is one of those cases where we NEEDED to hear Tom talk more, he lays out the genesis for the thinking around the Consumerisation of IT, then he produced excellent survey data around what was really happening in the world. Here are a few nuggets that I’d like to share with you-

• The buzzword “The Cloud” is a manifestation of the evolution of Gartner’s thinking which included “On Demand”, “GRID” and “SaaS” – Yeah! Finally it’s been said VERY LOUDLY.
• Why doesn’t Microsoft Word or Google Chrome recognize the word “Consumerisation”?
• Demographics are sometimes destiny… 60 year olds want their secretaries back and 17 year olds are completely adapted to the next wave of technologies. – I sorta agree, but there are still deep social divides. For instance I know a white grandfather who enjoys using his Slingbox (Google it) over his Motorola Q and a black senior in high school that solely uses her $1600 Dell laptop for Solitaire and MySpace. We need to address the divide.
• Everyone send an email to Tom right now asking him to go through the BP case study on end user responsibility. Its worth the email and the call

I can’t help but noodle on Tom’s great point about end user responsibility. Today we received a friendly reminder that we needed to update our iPhone firmware to 2.1. While this is something that I have done for my own personal security, it makes sense to be a corporate citizen and do the right thing for the job. If we want to continue to enjoy the blossoming freedom of our own devices and processes we have to step up to the responsibilities.

Oh by the way Tom… let’s retire the bear!

-f