Mobility Shines On, with WWDC and More News

Every day we see more mobility -- and everyone's reliance on mobile phones means mobile apps are clearly a cornerstone of this. We see the mobile app as entertainment, as tool, as necessity. I've been witness to how using the web as a platform for application and business process development has increased the value to enterprises -- and to individuals. Consumer uptake drives the enterprise these days. Think of BYOD, bring your own device. The future of computing at work is based on staff buying and maintaining their own (multipurpose) devices.

Mobile technology means more open access to business applications for employees and partners. SOA, as many readers should know by now, opens the door to the API level of business application access. But consumer apps are following that trend. Recently, a note taking app I like released its own API, so anyone could utilize the service layer it provides.

Corporate intranets are being architected in DMZs allowing for mobile browser access -- again, supporting the BYOD model. This type of open access will only accelerate.

One metric drives much of this -- there's a huge increase in mobile web browsing.


At WWDC, we see many new advances in iOS and other Apple technologies. But it's still "Apple vs everyone", as even snarky anti-Google comments highlight. Just yesterday Apple CEO Tim Cook introduced iOS 7, Apple's newest mobile operating system, calling it "the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of the iPhone." In a video showing off the redesigned system, design guru Jonny Ive revealed it will have a quick settings area, new swipe-to-unlock screen and flatter icons in an interface envisioned differently from the recent past. Change is inevitable in the mobile world, and Apple seems to be leading the way.

SOA Maturity is Good for Cloud Computing

In a new research note, Ovum’s Saurabh Sharma makes the case for making sure there is service orientation behind the cloud.

As he explains it: “It is true that cloud computing can be pursued without SOA, but it is also true that these attempts often fail to deliver the real business value of cloud computing.” Service oriented architecture is a way of designing, sharable technology-based services, regardless of language, platform or underlying hardware, in a well-governed, orchestrated manner that is meaningful to the business.

Sharma spells out two good reasons for laying an SOA foundation underneath cloud services:

SOA addresses complex integration issues created by cloud computing: Let’s face it, right now, cloud is only creating more information and application silos, not less. SOA, on the other hand, is intended to reduce or better integrate silos, and is sorely needed “meet complex integration requirements, including on-premise-to-cloud integrations and B2B integrations that involve multi-enterprise process automations,” says Sharma. “SOA helps in integration of disparate applications and services, and provides the necessary security and governance paradigm for the efficient, repeatable, and secure usage of cloud services.”

SOA governance provides the foundation for cloud governance: Governance is the only way to ensure the business gets what it needs from IT. With so many people in the business signing on to their own cloud services, things are getting duplicated and a bit chaotic. SOA governance will help contain the mess, providing a “policy framework for the optimal usage of cloud services, and ensure proper security in interactions between on-premise and cloud-based IT resources, including disparate applications, platforms, and infrastructure.

Sharma highlights two elements missing in today’s view of the cloud: integration and governance. Organizations, consultants, and vendors have been working on these issues for almost a decade now, and SOA has matured to the point where it provides a “turnkey-ready” implementation blueprint for cloud computing projects.

Whether cloud services are being called from outside the firewall, or from systems within, they need to be well orchestrated and capable of being adapted and assembled against whatever business process flows are required. There’s no need to fight the same battles all over again. Many of the questions and uncertainties around integration and governance have already been hammered out within the SOA community.

Autonomous Vehicles - Many Non-Technology Aspects to be Worked Out

Without a doubt, driverless cars (and perhaps aircraft and their imminent arrival) will bring a new set of problems, questions, and -- of course -- legislation. Peter Wayner discusses some aspect in this video at SlashDot.

The idea of data gathering is integral to robot-driven cars. The U.S. Congress is moving forward with legislation on just such a concept.

Florida, Nevada, and California have passed laws to make self-driving cars street legal, thanks in large part with help from lobbying efforts by Google. In Europe, simpler versions (not 100% autonomous) is already going through the initial phases of exploration, and the EU is beginning to address the legal difficulties.

But some issues seem intractable. The Geneva Convention on Road Traffic (Did you know there was one? From 1949) requires that drivers "shall at all times be able to control their vehicles," and provisions against reckless driving usually require "the conscious and intentional operation of a motor vehicle." Some of that may be semantics, but other concerns are harder to dismiss. After a crash, drivers are legally obligated to stop and help the injured. What do you do if there's no one in the car?

See info about Peter Wayner's forthcoming book (the table of contents).

Will the Cloud be governed by Open Standards?

The OpenStack effort is aimed at setting the "rules of the road" for the majority of cloud computing interactions. In this Forbes article, the author describes how the best Open Source projects are generally a meritocracy; a philosophy that promotes the notion that power should be vested in individuals according to merit. Advancement in such a system is based upon perceived intellectual talent measured through examination and/or demonstrated achievement within the community. In the case of OpenStack, this is demonstrated by those who contribute code with a variety of companies currently vying for the title of top contributor.

The OpenStack approach ensures portability. Public providers (cloud service providers anyone can use) should adopt the standards that the "body politic" endorse. More customers will come to you if you can show how easy it is to migrate. Of course, all the 'big boys' don't want to make it easy to leave their service, the flip-side of such ease-of-use.

From an application development strategy adopting a service oriented architecture is a "from the ground up" approach to making portability work. As long as end points are web services, theoretically one can build solutions in *any* IAAS/PAAS. Linked via an enterprise service bus (ESB), for example, data and business logic could managed with the ultimate in reliability: having the components spread among many cloud providers. One could always move services around (assuming the provider supports the native service language (dot-net, J2EE, etc.) or data repository. With the right planning, data could be independent of the data store itself (remember XML databases, or that old standby standard, SQL92?).

Utilizing standards and open source software will aid cloud computing to achieve the kind of market success seen with the World Wide Web, e-mail and other widely used Internet offerings. And that's good for everyone.

Developers Like Agile. Users Hate It.

Read at SlashDot: "What developers see as iterative and flexible, users see as disorganized and never-ending. '... She's been frustrated by her Agile experiences — and so have her clients. "There is no process. Things fly all directions, and despite SVN [version control] developers overwrite each other and then have to have meetings to discuss why things were changed.

Too many people are involved, and, again, I repeat, there is no process.' The premise here is not that Agile sucks — quite to the contrary — but that developers have to understand how Agile processes can make users anxious, and learn to respond to those fears.

The more traditional approach is not fool-proof: 'Detailed designs and planning done prior to a project seems to provide a "safety net" to business sponsors, says Semeniuk. "By providing a Big Design Up Front you are pacifying this request by giving them a best guess based on what you know at that time — which is at best partial or incorrect in the first place."

The danger, he cautions, is when Big Design becomes Big Commitment — as sometimes business sponsors see this plan as something that needs to be tracked against. "The big concern with doing a Big Design up front is when it sets a rigid expectation that must be met, regardless of the changes and knowledge discovered along the way," says Semeniuk.

Most important take-away:

Most non-computer businesspeople are already intimidated by spending money on something they don't understand. They have to report to someone who wants an answer to, "When will this be ready, and what budget do we need to allocate? And incidentally, if it's late, it's your job on the line."

Read Esther Schindler's article at ITWorld.