Amazon annouces SimpleDb, so DB1 arrives..
Well Amazon have put the final piece of their cloud based jigsaw into place if you recall my take on Amazon Web services in May I indicated that the missing element was a cloud based DB store.With todays announcement (via twitter) SimpleDb enables one to build a complete cloud based web application including the back-end store and query. The query language is domain/attribute based rather than relational, but we always expected that to be the case for scalability reasons. It is now just a matter of time before frameworks (and plugins for existing frameworks) appear to make building cloud based apps as simple as say RAILS apps. In fact I would expect a RAILS based plugin to be one of the first candidates for AWS extensions. I will be looking at it from an Erlang angle and looking to build an Erlang interface (with mnesia caching) in the near future, if anyone is interested in helping on that front please let me know via Twitter/comment or email (al at this domain).
I would also like to point out that Amazon seem to be running away with cloud based computing at the moment, there doesn’t seem to be any real competition for them. I am continually surprised by this, I thought by now others would have shown their cards (yes I know IBM have talked but thats all they have done). So big Kudos to Amazon for getting this spot on and continuing their relentless delivery of features to the growing community around AWS, Congrats to Jeff and the team.
* Update SimpleDB is actually implemented in Erlang.
Would the real Enterprise 2.0 please stand up.
I have read so much about Enterprise 2.0 over the last year I figured It was about time that I should air a nagging feeling I have had about the ‘New Enterprise’ for sometime now. I should also point out that I am not knocking those tools and services out there that pertain to be encompassed by the Enterprise 2.0 buzzword (E2.0), many of these tools like Wiki’s etc.. are ones in which I routinely engage. No this post is more about what the real Enterprise 2.0 really is, and how it has been totally hijacked by the buzzword E2.0.
I have also noticed many of the current enterprise vendors getting on the back of the E2.0 buzzword in order to make a new sale to their existing customer base, whilst at the same time making themselves appear more enterprise 2.0 (in the same way web bizs try to be more web 2.0). The thing is however, it’s not about the vendors re-inventing themselves, it’s about the enterprise being re-invented itself, its about the whole new generation of enterprises coming down the pike, these bear little resemblance to existing enterprises.
This change is not going to be small and incremental, it will be bloody and revolutionary, this isn’t about existing enterprises changing their I.T. tools. No what I’m talking about here is a whole new kind of enterprise, these organisations will become the new enterprises of the 21st century and they will be built very differently. Their I.T. will be as unrecogniseable from todays enterprise I.T. as mainframes are to mobile telephones.
‘Ok Ok I see what you are saying, very fanciful, but where is the evidence? Where are these new Enterprises?’
This is the question I have been asking myself over and over, who are they and what do they look like? Well, an enterprise is basically a large business (or organisation), often it is an international or global organisation but that isn’t required. OK heres is my first example of the emerging enterprise (EE -> E2) breed : Google!
‘What’ I hear the cries ‘Thats not fair they are an I.T. company’. Well it might not look fair and the comment is valid, but actually they are an advertising company first. The technology is a requirement in the new advertising enterprise space. The technology Google operates is a default requirement to compete in that space, just take a look at Microsoft trying to crow bar its way into that competitive landscape. ‘Yes but Google also sell their technology to other businesses aren’t they just like Microsoft?’ Actually no they are not like Microsoft because their primary business isn’t selling software/technology it’s selling advertising/attention, also there isn’t anything about being an enterprise that suggests one enterprise can’t sell to another enterprise, in fact it happens as par for the course now.
‘But isn’t Google just an exception?’ well possibly but unlikely in my opinion, if they are the exception then they will end up owning the new enterprise world. More likely however, other new enterprises will enter the fray and compete in the different sectors (including Google’s advertising sector). Google is also unlikely to sit still, it will expand into other sectors, just as enterprises do today, I don’t see that happening without resistance from both incumbents and new emerging competitors.
Thus one would do well to look at how Google operates inside and out, with the market and with their technology. There will be opportunities in many sectors for new enterprises ; Media, leisure & entertainment, health, banking & finance, engineering, retailing etc..
Google isn’t alone here are a couple of other emergent enterprises (E2) :
- Amazon in what originally was the retailing/consumer sector, although they cross over into logistics and operations.
- ebay is in the retailing/consumer sector, it’s like the new bazaar, but they are also looking to expand their influence elsewhere (Skype?)
I’m sure you can think of more.
But the most interesting thing about this whole post to me is not new enterprises we can see (Google, Amazon, ebay et al.) but rather those just emerging and those that haven’t even been thought up yet. Right now there is major disruption occurring across many different industry sectors as Umair says ‘new value creation models are there for the taking’ (I’m paraphrasing, check Umair’s blog for a complete picture). I would love to know your ideas, or pointers to emerging enterprises. This is a great opportunity to comment or post a series of fascinating what-ifs for the new enterprises.
Here is another idea, via Umair, to get your juices running : could this supersede the automobile industry model.
So when we look at the Enterprise 2.0 through the lense of the E2.0 buzzword it really doesn’t stack up, if you look at Amazon or Google’s software to operate their enterprises it looks nothing like the E2.0 characterised offerings. If it did we would just be slapping lipstick on the enterprise 1.0 pig. No to me Enterprise 2.0 is something radically different, this is not upgrade, it’s a wholesale re-invention of what it is to be an enterprise, I think the software and services that these new enterprises will require will look more like mini Googles or mini Amazons. I envisage a whole new market for vendors and service providers cropping up to satisfy such demands. It is also with some personal humour and even irony I observe IBM’s blue cloud being touted as an Enterprise EC2…
Enterprise 2.0 != E2.0
Enterprise 2.0 = E2
The real Enterprise 2.0 has now stood up or do you disagree…
There's a whole in your bucket dear Liza, dear Liza,
Traditionally businesses (especially enterprises) are like containers or buckets of information. But they are not hermetically sealed, despite their CIO’s (Henry’s) belief to the contrary. The average Henry regards leaks in this corporate seal as flaws and immediately dispatches more technology (Straw) to fill them, just like the rhyme.
Well fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, Well fix it, dear Henry, well fix it.
And just like the rhyme Henry soon finds out that straw can be difficult to administer particularly in cases where the problem isn’t the right shape.
With what shall fix it, … With straw, … The straw is too long, … Well cut it, … With what shall I cut it, … With an axe, … The axe is too dull, … Then sharpen it, … With what shall I sharpen it, … With a stone, … . The stone is too dry, … Then wet it, … With what shall I wet it, … With water, … . In what shall I fetch it, … With a bucket, …
Pretty soon Henry is back where he started the problem is recurrent and never ending, because information wants to be free. It’s just like water and it will flow around, over or under any obstacles within it’s path.
Henry is not familiar with the concept of a Permeable membrane, he’s not paid to be, he’s paid to keep the lights on.
Unfortunately for Henry, having failed to plug the email gap last decade (port:25), he has been besieged by the onslaught of the Port:80 leak. Henry’s efforts have of course been futile, the leak grew to a hole, the hole to a chasm big enough to ride a space shuttle through. Not only that but there is a preverbal space highway traversing in both directions through the anomaly these days.
I feel sorry for Henry his task is a difficult one, no one ever told him he would turn from plumber into a policeman, no one told him it could be about people. But the reason I feel most sympathy for Henry is that people inside his organization (people he used to call friends) are planning his demise. Slowly but surely they are taking it onto themselves to introduce there own software as services and under tables with OpenSource code slipped in through port:80. Pretty soon there won’t be room for all of these amateurs and the pro Henry in the organization and what then…
There’s a hole in my bucket, …
Death by a thousand cuts, how does the spreadsheet resist
Yesterday I talked about the ‘death of the document’ my primary analysis was around word processing. Although this is probably the most common use of office products it is certainly not the only one. Another common office driver is the spreadsheet, particularly in financial parts of organisations, but also in sales departments along with budgeting across departments. Even though spreadsheets are documents, their manifestations are not always document centered like word processing documents (think of linked worksheets etc..). There are online spreadsheet applications (EditGrid as well as Zoho and Google apps), most online versions are functional replicas of their offline versions + sharing. They don’t appear to be real innovations, rather spreadsheet with collaboration grafted on. Just to jog your memory I am suggesting that word processing documents are experiencing death by a thousand cuts. The cuts are being administered by a plethora of paragraphs from blogs, wikis, email, and numerous other online services. The same cannot be said for humble spreadsheets, to date I haven’t yet seen the emergence of numerical online tools that kill off spreadsheet usage within organisations. Maybe I’m missing something here, help me out. Is it already happening or do you have idea that it will, if so what does it look like ? is it also death by a thousand cuts?
Are you using Semaphore or do you still speak in documents?
Many of you will I’m sure of heard about Office’s recent demise, initially coined I think by Steve Gillmor on the Gillmor Gang as ‘Office is dead’. I however have a different inkling about its demise. I (and others) have noticed a rapid decay in the use of Office like products, to this effect I haven’t even installed a copy of office software on my current system (6 months old).
I remember when I used create documents in word for all sorts of work related reasons, but that has completely tailed off over the last several years, to the point where I can’t actually remember what my last word processing document was. Now this isn’t a desktop vs online word processing post, what I think might be happening here is that I no longer produce documents. Rather I communicate in a series of paragraphs and one liners using the following : My blog, Twitter, Social sites like Facebook, Numerous online tools/wikis for projects/events and all manner of other things and occasionally even email (which is also decreasing).
Because these forms of communication are digital packets rather than documents I have no need for document based software. This to me is the crunch, this is where the revolution is happening it isn’t Office thats dying it’s documents that are becoming extinct. Are you converting to packet based communication? Are you also noticing the reduction in packet size with the increase of packet frequency that I am experiencing?