• Blog
  • About
  • Archives

elemental links

brenda michelson's technology advisory practice

Archives for April 2009

Cloud Watching Pick: Vint Cerf on Cloud Computing and the Internet

April 30, 2009 By brenda michelson

If you haven’t seen it yet, Vint Cerf published a thoughtful piece on Cloud Computing and the Internet on the Google Research blog.  In the post, Cerf compares the current stage of cloud computing "Each cloud is a system unto itself” to the state of networking in the 1960’s that led to his and Robert Kahn’s work to interconnect proprietary networks and form the internet.

While the entire post is excellent, and well worth the read, I wanted to call out the questions Cerf raises in respect to connecting the clouds, or as some refer to it, the inter-cloud.  Because as every architect knows, the right answers only arise from asking the right questions.

First, the problem as Cerf describes it:

“Cloud computing is at the same stage. Each cloud is a system unto itself. There is no way to express the idea of exchanging information between distinct computing clouds because there is no way to express the idea of “another cloud.” Nor is there any way to describe the information that is to be exchanged. Moreover, if the information contained in one computing cloud is protected from access by any but authorized users, there is no way to express how that protection is provided and how information about it should be propagated to another cloud when the data is transferred.”

Now, Cerf’s questions:

“There are many unanswered questions that can be posed about this new problem. How should one reference another cloud system? What functions can one ask another cloud system to perform? How can one move data from one cloud to another? Can one request that two or more cloud systems carry out a series of transactions? If a laptop is interacting with multiple clouds, does the laptop become a sort of “cloudlet”? Could the laptop become an unintended channel of information exchange between two clouds? If we implement an inter-cloud system of computing, what abuses may arise? How will information be protected within a cloud and when transferred between clouds. How will we refer to the identity of authorized users of cloud systems? What strong authentication methods will be adequate to implement data access controls?”

Instead of answers, Cerf closes by encouraging exploration and creation:

“Because the Internet is primarily a software artifact, there seems to be no end to its possibilities. It is an endless frontier, open to exploration by virtually anyone. I cannot guess what will be discovered in these explorations but I am sure that we will continue to be surprised by the richness of the Internet’s undiscovered territory in the decades ahead.”

Check out his full post.

Filed Under: cloud computing, innovation

Sandy Carter on Smart SOA in Tough Economic Climate (+ “mollusc-driven architecture”)

April 28, 2009 By brenda michelson

The SOA Consortium just published the second podcast from our March meeting.  This one features IBM’s Sandy Carter talking about Smart SOA(tm) in a Tough Economic Climate.  Per usual, Sandy’s talk was full of customer anecdotes, my favorite was from StatOilHydro.  Concerned with the environmental and revenue impacts of leaks during oil drilling, StatOil sought an innovative and automated way to detect leaks.  They wanted to replace a manual process that included deep sea drivers.  StatOil’s innovation, they attached RFID tags to the shells of blue mussels.  When the blue mussels sense an oil leak, they close which prompts the RFID tags to emit closure events.  In response to the events, the drilling line is automatically stopped.  And, in case you are wondering, this is of no harm to the blue mussels.  I tweeted this example during the session, and Richard Veryard quickly and cleverly coined “mollusc-driven architecture”.

To listen to an audio recording of Sandy’s presentation and view the slides go here.  The full write-up of the session, pulled from my SOA Consortium Insights post, follows:

“Sandy Carter, IBM VP, SOA, BPM and WebSphere, spoke on the importance of taking a Smart SOA(tm) approach in a Tough Economic Climate, at the March 2009 meeting of the SOA Consortium in Washington DC.

Carter began by sharing that customers are asking about, and employing, service-orientation and business process management not only to survive the economic crisis, but also to thrive and become more successful when the economic crisis ends.  To this point, CEOs are equally concerned with cost optimization and agility.  Carter was careful to distinguish cost optimization – re-using services, optimizing processes – from non-sustainable cost cutting.

In addition to the economic climate, Carter spoke of marketplace changes based on technology location and proliferation. There are one billion transistors for each person on earth. One trillion things connected to the Internet. And, by 2010, there will be 30 billion RFID tags embedded into our world. This pervasive connectivity and instrumentation provides innumerable opportunities to smarten our companies, countries and environment.

Interestingly, in each of the Smarter Planet examples Carter cited, such as StatOil’s RFID tagging of blue mussels to quickly identify and stop leaks during oil drilling, the solutions all had SOA at the core. When an attendee called out this theme, Carter shared that SOA has become control point of competitive advantage for companies. If you haven’t deployed yet, now is the time.  If you have, now is the time to take your SOA to the next level.

To listen to an audio recording of Carter’s presentation and view the slides go here.

Following her presentation, Carter signed copies of her latest book,  The New Language of Marketing 2.0, How to use ANGELS to Energize your Market.”

Filed Under: event driven architecture, event processing, services architecture, soa

New Podcast: Dave Linthicum on Intersections of SOA & Cloud Computing

April 16, 2009 By brenda michelson

Quickly discovering I wasn’t the only enterprise architect, services architecture type interested in cloud computing, I invited David Linthicum, SOA expert, enterprise architecture advocate, blogger, founder of Blue Mountain Labs, and all around nice guy, to speak at the March SOA Consortium meeting on the Intersections of SOA and Cloud Computing. 

The podcast of Dave’s talk is now available from the SOA Consortium.  What follows is the “blurb” on the podcast that I posted at SOA Consortium Insights.  If like me, you are getting intentional in your cloud watching, I highly recommend this podcast.

“Linthicum opened by sharing the distinctions and connections between SOA and cloud computing. SOA is something you do, an architectural pattern. Cloud computing is an architectural option.

The value of SOA comes from having an architecture that readily accommodates change. The more your business changes, the more SOA pays for itself.  However, the initial build-out of SOA, prior to business change or service sharing, is cost-ineffective.  By incorporating cloud computing in SOA, the time to value is shortened because you leverage ‘other people’s work’.  The trick, Linthicum shares, is to determine which services, information, and processes are good candidates to reside in, come from, the clouds.

To determine the right mix of internal and external services for your SOA, Linthicum emphasizes starting with your architecture. Understand your business drivers, information under management, existing services under management and core business processes. A common failure pattern is jumping to the technology prior to understanding own issues.

Beyond understanding your issues, understand the state of cloud computing.  While there are safe, reliable offerings, cloud computing is at an early stage. Linthicum warned attendees to factor in integration costs and to beware of cloud interoperability and portability limitations.

For organizations contemplating extending SOA to the cloud, Linthicum suggests three preparatory actions.  First, accept the notion that it’s okay to leverage external services as part of your SOA.  Second, create a strategy for the consumption and management of cloud services.  Third, create a proof of concept now.

To listen to an audio recording of Linthicums’s presentation and view the slides go here.

Keep an eye out for Dave’s new book on the convergence of SOA & Cloud Computing, to be released by Pearson this summer.”

Filed Under: cloud computing, enterprise architecture, services architecture, soa

Brenda M. Michelson

Brenda Michelson

Technology Architect.

Trusted Advisor.

(BIO)

  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent Posts

  • Experts Sketch
  • PEW Research: Tech Saturation, Well-Being and (my) Remedies
  • technology knowledge premise
  • The Curse of Knowledge
  • better problems and technology knowledge transfer

Recent Tweets

  • “…where the process of drawing itself can take us. We can follow a suggestion, a squiggle, shadow, or smudge, and s… https://t.co/oRg0x2LoXG November 30, 2022 5:05 pm
  • On the waiting list for Post, join me (on the waitlist) via https://t.co/U8wYK707f6 November 24, 2022 4:17 pm
  • Meet the longtime librarian being honored at the National Book Awards : NPR https://t.co/S44VQeJg83 November 13, 2022 2:51 pm
© 2004-2022 Elemental Links, Inc.