Cloudy day at the White House

On September 15th the White House announced  Apps.gov with this exciting sentence: “Now, Even the Government Has an App Store .

Actually, Apps.gov is a marketplace for acquisition of (definition taken by Apps.gov site FAQs):

“…convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction”.

Despite the information available on FAQs clarifies the big picture behind the initiative some important details remain obscure (to me at least).

Many of us would expect the adoption of this kind of services in the Gov sector, and this was actually happening in the US as well as worldwide, but, almost anyone, could expect an  embracement to happen in this form.

I would expect Government agencies to run private gov national *aaS infrastructures (possibly deriving from existing data centers being gradually networked) being consolidated in time and being empowered ideally and hopefully from Free software, at least from open source software (in line with transparency efforts). This is simply not happening.

original credits @ random letters - jessiemoore

What deals with Free software & transparency better than the gov sector? isn’t it a matter of freedom when we talk of an efficient public sector, independent from software services industry giants? Instead, what we see is the GSA stating who’s good and who’s bad in the *aaS industry.

Why do not use the stimulus that the Government can put on the industry at least to dictate a transparency standard as the  GNU AGPL License?

If you look here you’ll see a list of (free) services. For sure, some of them could represent a benefit to the productivity of the Gov sector but, for sure, all those services have a business model: what if this model changes ending up with a cost where something was free, how to control the impact on budgets?

Have anybody analyzed how data lock in could affect administration budget? Ok, critical data will be kept outside the cloud: not critical data kept in the cloud will be, for sure, subject to some sort of data lock in (data lock in is one of the main business drivers for social\*aaS apps, isn’t it?).

Did anybody made a long term assessment of the effects? Is there any strategy behind this, apart from lowering the amount of investments needed in the short term? Are we sure that the TCO will be lesser than with a strategically driven initiative, trying to keep things transparent, based on Free software and injecting innovation into the SW development community?

It’s true that we’re exiting the SOA bubble era but, it’s undubitable, that some sort of application orchestration that is recently being embodied by BPM and portals is useful to productivity and efficiency. How this is impacted by the *aaS paradigm? I’m afraid that, at a given point, the need of applications/service interwork, instead of favouring open standards will end up in an even harder provider lock in.

Do you remember that during the first post-election press conference made by President Obama, he was flanked by Eric Schmidt?  Politico.com gave this lucid statement:

“Google CEO Eric Schmidt didn’t say anything as he flanked President-elect Barack Obama during his first post-election press conference. He didn’t have to.

The image alone of Schmidt standing elbow-to-elbow with Obama’s top economic thinkers was enough to send shivers up the spine of Google’s competitors.”

I’ve not been surprised when Google expressed appreciation:

“The cloud is coming of age, and we applaud the Obama Administration’s efforts to ensure our government realizes its many advantages”

Google is also working the FISMA certification needed to be on Google Apps. The global Google gov initiative is optimally recapped by Chloe Albanesius on PCMag.

At the end, what surprise me much, is the, almost total, lack of discussion on this topic: take a look to apps.gov on google trends and compare it with other hot topics.

I continue reading so much enthusiastic comments: there’s a big chance this initiative will be followed by potentially any Government agency worldwide, does anybody share my concerns?

Why Google Chrome OS will succeed AKA The war is over

I recently read many skeptical posts about google’s announcement about Google Chrome OS. That was not a big news in itself since, for those that occasionally ended up on www.thinkgos.com page in the last few months, an official announcement of a google service proposition optimized OS for thin clients was obvious.

Most common complaints about the potential success of Chrome OS are related to Google OS strategy (claimed to be conflicting and confused) and potential (Android considered not such good) and Google OS business proposition (seeming a pure anti-MS move).

Let’s take a bunch of those complaints and try to give a view.

Android and chrome os will be conflicting AKA it means that android doesn’t work (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=21004)

Apart from the neverending list of names used to identify the new devices that, actually, are taking their place in the consumer electronic market (mids, netbooks, nettops, touchbooks, smartbooks…and counting) there is one thing to keep in mind about that: they’re different from a phone.

Those differences are mainly based on the concept of a phone itself: portable, small, lightweight, handy. You’ll newer see a smartphone with a 13 inches display since it doesn’t fit in your pocket, as well as you’ll newer use a mouse on your smartphone and while you can use touch input on both, your fingertips meet differenlty with so different (in size) screens. At the end smartphones are for mobile users while *books are for nomadic users. This end up in very different usage patterns, that surely may intersect sometimes, but are not overlapped (while you can think to wrote a document snippet on a smartphone – i’m doing this right now – you probably won’t write a presentation or write code on it)

Furtherly mobile services are context sensible,,,

Android is an hi-quality os for smartphones, the result of a long term google strategy (started in xxxx with google’s android company acquisition) that is expected to perform well in terms of numbers in 2h09 an 2010, is highly appreciated from telco industry insiders.

On the other hand, nobody prevents chrome os to be able to run dalvik jvm based applications. We’ve heard of ubuntu thinking to support android market so while chrome os won’t?

At the end i think that android and chrome os will not conflict

It’s an anti-microsoft move (http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-chrome-os-opening-vein-in.html) (no ms is follower)

I read much commenters sayng that this simply will not work since it’s a clear anti microsoft move with the only aim of cutting market shares from the redmond guys. Apart that MS market share is falling without any help from Google guys (http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/business_money/microsoft+sales+slump++the+fall+of+a+tech+giant/3282457) that’s simply not true.

Ms Windows has been a consumer desktop\laptop market leader mostly due a couple of things (other than the abuse of market position that has been punishedd by antitrusts VERIFICA): it’s competitors have been a conscious niche vendor (Apple) and not comparable, in terms of r&d investments, players such as linux distributors like mandriva or canonical. Furthermore, we’ve been used, on the desktop market, to see the os-linux community struggling to replicate the windows experience and applicatione suite (see openoffice or gimp story).

Now the landscape is definitively different: Google has a new vision and goes towards a real innovation brand new concept of os, targeted for an emerging market, cheaper, more in line with the exploding user base of the internet native. Someone can say: “hey it’s just the thin client we’re talking about from years”, yes but, now, there’s Google and a clear productization and market strategy: free software, preloaded thanks to OEM/ODM agreements, backed by many big Computer firms, targeted to customers (BigG2C).

Jason Hiner at ZDNEt says that It’s too late (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=21004) since Windows 7 will be out and will be rocking hard at the time of Google Chrome OS release. Windows 7 is a retreat, is a simplified version of an heavyweight OS, doesn’t introduce any new high level visions.

Chrome OS has been targeted to an emerging market share (*book) that needs a web centered and cheaper os (why call a windows xp equipped small notebook a netbook???). Is a result of a long term vision introduced by Google since years (Google has been pioneering the consumer cloud service market, remember gmail) and, seems to me, – thinking to gos – is the final result of long term studies and efforts.

To me this means only one thing: Microsoft is now a follower in the thin client *book optimized market. Google is a web native company (someone thinks Google IS the web)

To be true I think that Ms should start worry because, apart from the Google thing threat on the consumer oriented thin client market, on the heavyweight/expensiveHW OS market there is an angry competitor, with a fantastic brand, sales going well http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135747/Apple_laptop_sales_surged_25_in_June_says_NPD?taxonomyId=15 (surely better than MS), and , not to be underestimated, sharing a board member with BigG (Eric Schmidt).

On this topic it’s also worth to read this Matt Asay (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10293058-16.html) reflecting on a potential Cold War between BigG and MS hypotized by the WSJ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574302324157763970.html. The hypo is fascinating (anyone noticed the not so strange Bing->ChromeOS timeline?) but anyway, I don’t believe to it. At this stage I see a future proof company that is leading the ideas landscape (who’s not eager to see Google Wave? wich, to quote M. Asay,  ”…promises to put Google, not Microsoft, in control of the future “office productivity” market.”) and, on the other side, a follower company, that spent the last 2 years rebuilding an unefficient OS and in, literally, copiyng and reprending a search engine.

I recently read many skeptical posts re Google’s announcement about Google Chrome OS. That was not a big news in itself since, for those that occasionally ended up on www.thinkgos.com page in the last few months, an official announcement of a Google service proposition optimized OS for thin clients was quite obvious.

Most common complaints about the potential success of Chrome OS are related to Google OS strategy (claimed to be conflicting and confused) and potential (Android considered not such good) and to Google business proposition for the OS market (claimed to be a pure anti-Microsoft move).

I’ll try to give my views about this couple of topics:

• Android and Chrome OS will be conflicting or it means that Android doesn’t work

Apart from the never ending list of names used to identify the new devices that are finding their place in the consumer electronic market (MIDs, netbooks, nettops, touchbooks, smartbooks…and counting) there is one thing to keep in mind about that: they’re different from a phone (even the smarter phone on earth).

Those differences are mainly based on the concept of a phone itself: portable, small, lightweight, handy.

You’ll newer see a smartphone with a 13 inches display since it doesn’t fit in your pocket, as well as you’ll newer use a mouse on your smartphone and while you can use touch input on both, your fingertips meet differently with so different (in size) screens.

At the end smartphones are for mobile users while *books (let’s call it like that) are for nomadic users. This end up in very different usage patterns, that may intersect sometimes, but are not overlapped (while you can think to wrote a document snippet on a smartphone – I’m doing this right now – you probably won’t write a presentation or code on it)

Every industry insider can tell you that Android is an hi-quality OS for smartphones, the result of a long term Google strategy (started in2005 with Google’s Android company acquisition) that is expected to perform well in terms of numbers in 2H09 an 2010.

On the other hand, nobody prevents Chrome OS to be able to run dalvik jvm based applications. We’ve heard of Ubuntu running android applications so why Chrome OS won’t?

At the end I think that Android and Chrome OS will not conflict.

• It’s an anti-Microsoft move

There’s someone saying that Chrome OS will not work since it’s a clear anti microsoft move with the only aim of cutting market shares from the Redmond guys. Michael Mace from Mobile Opportunity says:

If you’re really serious about running a logical OS program in its own right, you’d try to rationalize those two things. But if your top priority is to commoditize Microsoft, then you don’t mind pushing out a couple of overlapping initiatives.

First, it should be noticed that Ms market share is falling without any help from Google guys.  Apart from the well known US vs Microsoft antitrust case, see here for details, that certainly shows how, in some ways, Microsoft managed to keep its market dominance; Windows is now the consumer desktop\laptop market leader mostly due a couple of reasons. Ms competitors have formerly been:

• a consciously niche vendor (Apple)
• few players not comparable in terms of r&d investments: Linux distributors like mandriva or canonical.

Furthermore, we’ve been used, over the desktop market, to see the Linux community struggling to replicate the windows experience and applications suites (see Openoffice or Gimp story).

Now the landscape is definitively different: Google has a new vision and goes towards a brand new concept of OS, targeted for an emerging market, cheaper, more in line with the exploding user base of the Internet natives.

Someone can say: “…hey it’s just the thin client we’re talking about since years!”; yes but now there’s Google and a clear productization and market strategy: free software, preloaded and backed by many big Computer firms, targeted directly to customers (BigG2C).

Jason Hiner at ZDNEt says that it’s too late since Windows 7 will be out and will be rocking hard at the time when Google Chrome OS will be released. It should be noted that Windows 7 is a retreat, is a simplified version of an ugly and heavyweight (fat?) OS wich many decided to downgrade from, that didn’t introduce any new high level views and concepts.

Chrome OS has been targeted to an emerging market (and user base) share, the *books, needing a web centered and cheaper OS (why call a windows xp equipped small notebook a netbook???). Is a result of a long term vision introduced by Google since years (Google has been pioneering the consumer cloud service market, remember gmail was born years ago) and, seems to me – thinking to gos - the final result of long term strategies and efforts.

To me this means only one thing: Microsoft is now a follower in the thin client *book optimized market. Furthermore Google is a web native company, someone thinks Google IS the web.

To be true I think that Microsoft should start worrying because, apart from the Google thing threat on the consumer oriented thin client market, also in the heavyweight/expensiveHW OS market there is an angry competitor, with a fantastic brand, sales going well (surely better than MS), and , not to be underestimated, sharing a board member with BigG (Eric Schmidt).

On this topic it’s also worth to read this from Matt Asay that recalls a WSJ article about a potential Cold War between BigG and Ms. Althought the hypothesis is fascinating (anyone noticed the not so strange Bing->ChromeOS timeline?) I don’t believe to it.

At this stage I see a future proof company that is leading the ideas landscape (who’s not eager to see Google Wave? which, to quote M. Asay,  ”…promises to put Google, not Microsoft, in control of the future “office productivity” market.”) and, on the other side, a follower company, that spent the last 2 years rebuilding an inefficient OS and literally copying and re-branding a search engine.

If there’s a war between Ms and BigG, maybe someone should realize that this war is over.

Modified from the original "dance until the war is over" - © Paulo Renato Souza Cunha

Nokia and Intel to party with the penguins

Penguins party - credits to mkrigsman

According to the quite recent joint announcement, Intel and Nokia are starting a long term partnership with the aim of integrating Moblin, Maemo and oFono projects to eventually build an Intel based, Linux empowered MID/Smartphone (the difference is not so much evident at today) device.

The evidence to me is that, in the mid-long term, the domination of ARM based architectures is not to be seen as acquired.

There’s an evident demand of more powerful CPU’s and chipsets in general but, on the other hand, the demand for low drain on batteries is as well a priority. Therefore a little more competition in the Mobile device CPU market is appreciable.

Other rumours confirm that the upcoming Dell MID device will be likely equipped with Android (I’ll be very surprised it this will not happen).

As I mentioned very early on this blog in the “Nokia secret love for linux” post, I’m not convinced of Nokia’s Symbian aquisition move from the very beginning. I’m not surprised that Nokia is considering Linux the best suitable platform for empowering the next generation connected devices and smartphones.

But, if you read this story from Eric Brown on LinuxForDevices you’ll see him quoting Gigaom’s Stacey Higginbotham

[...Lazard Capital Markets analyst Daniel Amir claims Nokia is preparing an ARM-based Android netbook for release by wireless carriers in 2010. ...]

Hey, that would be surprising!

In the meanwhile it seems to me that, behind the virtual headcount’s, Symbian is really becoming an “open” project.

I seriously want to ack the Symbian community and the job that people like Lee Williams and David Wood are doing to change Symbian OS from the 2008 condemned product (guilty of lacking innovation) to a new tool, a new framework in the hand of the developer community.

My idea is that SF is moving in the right direction althought I’m not sure they will finally suceed, my impression is that, anyway, the only way this could happen is via a strong support for community standards like BONDI.

Looking to the situation from a wider point of view last rumours only confirm the definitive penetration of OSS in Mobile Industry and the role that OSS is playing: a technological competitive innovation facilitator.

I’ld not be surprised by hearing of Google moving towards the acquisition of Canonical doing the same that they did with Android and Mobile industry in the Laptop and Server industry.

But this is another story, maybe worth a post .

addon: just thinking that following link was worth to add: also the Guardian claiming an Android Nokia handset in autumn

Would you buy the Dell SIP Phone?

I’ve recently red a very  interesting post about Kindle interpreted as a disrupting innovation in Mobile Industry then, today, accidentally I came up reading this topic on ZDNET citing the WSJ:

Dell working on mobile Internet device

Who prevent Dell to produce a sort of only SIP enabled device, with a:

• 3G + Wi fi
• with a 1st citizen integrated and Cloud enabled phonebook and dialer (Android?)
• bundled with a start-up service token with something like 20€ from a leading SIP provider (e.g.: Wengo)
• with a full access to a SaaS Office automation suite (why to not use Android, since that’s Google Docs is built in)
• Synchronized with SyncML and enabled for Offline work
• full qwerty, Full touch, + tablet/pen
• thin and sexy

and most important

• to be commercialized with a built-in lifetime data access for handset to SIP gateway traffic and browsing (even subject to a decent QoS/protocol restriction agreement)

Dell is a market leading personal computer firm, it has an excellent appeal at IT professionals and has an optimal customer support system. The device would have definitively an appeal to the market. Especially if well advertised.

It would not cost much, I’m quite sure.

Would it be disruptive? I’m sure Yes.

The question is: would it be easily commercialized by Dell? What the operators would do?

The new “Java world” order: MIDP3, Java App Store and Java One

It has been more than a while since we have been waiting for MIDP 3.0 specs to get closed.

Now that it seems the process is going to complete, we face a java runtime distribution across the mobile world with more shades than lights: terrible fragmentation problems (that have been one of midp 3 and MSA drivers) with hundreds of different jvms across thousands of handset models and java being discouraged or, sometimes seeming to be ostracized by and emerging tech firms and platforms (apple, windows mobile, android).

At today, JME is almost the unique dev runtime for a number of important platforms like SonyEricsson, LG and Samsung RTOS, Nokia s40, Rim (with extensions): unfortunately those platforms are niche ones or, at least, candidates to be superseded by more powerful, emerging ones (like Android, Symbian or Limo based) when the chipsets families those I’ve been built for will decrease in price and consequently being adopted on low tier models.

From a strictly technical point of view, current leading JME platforms only partially suffered of MIDP3 being so late: this mainly thanks to MSA recommendations (decreasing fragmentation partially) and jsr 211 (enabling midlet2midlet and, sometimes, midlet2native interaction).

It remains a question mark about the root reason: was MIDP 3 being late forcing java developers to be not too much visionary or ambitious or, on the contrary, there was actually no particular demand, across the developers, for such a powerful solution like MIDP3 is?

The slowness of MIDP3 development have been experienced as a problem at first but soon the mobile developers moved to alternatives where possible. Probably, the hard times that Moto experienced as a company that, at the end, impacted terribly MIDP3 schedule (being Motorola the lead) led to less interest for java as a platform and, eventually, to Apple and Google to create alternatives for their compelling platforms. Despite Apple choice could be explained with the need of a closed environment, Google choice is clearly dictated by JME technology limitations since they embraced totally the Java development community and the Java language itself despite creating a sort of new profile, a mix of JSE/CDC and novel concepts (eg. Activities).

Now the question is:

• is there still space for java to be a protagonist on Mobile Internet services?

The situation is really complex.

User demands are rapidly ramping up: now users want smartphones to give access to web contents and web services, tomorrow, the access in itself will not be enough: advanced features like phonebook presence integration, integrated conversation management, contacts syncing, user context access, content management, etc… will be considered as important features to be listed in the small labels describing specs at shops.

Is Java, with it’s bytecode-VM approach not suited to integrate with “native apps” by design? Google “all apps are equal” approach will ever be applicable to a PURE java MIDP runtime? It seems acquired that the “write once, run everywhere” promise of java has not ever been true in the mobile world until now, but anyway, as said before on this blog, thanks to the evident trend pointing out that the number of platforms is decreasing and restricting to few open OSes, java has now a new chance.

Sun and oracle must now cowork with the ecosystem, bet again on open source and, in parallel, invest to create first class JVMs for open OSes an publish it on Markets. How to monetize the effort? The application store is something making more sense to me from day to day, and JavaOne recently hold at Moscone center crearly demonstrated that Java is not dead. The Mobility general session from JavaOne has been full of news, vision, hopes and last but not least has been full of explicit endorsement (Vodafone, Verizon, SonyEriccson, Google, etc…). And Larry has been there live to state that Oracle bets on Java. At the end, something that very few days ago seemed a concept and led me to some speculations, it’s now reality: take a look at the Java Store! …and Warehouse! …there’s also a beta program, even if US only

Ah, forgot to mention that JavaFX is definitively out the “buzz-world”.

2009-2010 will be a very crucial period for JME: win or die. No niche option for java.

This post is the first that I’ve written on an android phone…Thanks G1 for existing!

The Java App Store as it could be

I often read Jonathan Schwartz  blog posts with big interest, at least since they’re as rarest than mine and, at the end, I always enjoy to see his smiling face

Jon

I’m sure that Jon has lot more to do than me now that the new boss, that strange Larry with the sailing hobby,  is on board.

On May the 18th Jon wrote this interesting post on his blog where he advocates java being the ideal candidate to become “the” application store of the next generation.

Now, I’m a bit confused.  After reading the blog post a couple of times, I eventually came up to few conclusions and lots of questions that I’ll try to summarize, also encouraging you to share your views.

The application store hype comes from the mobile devices market where it was created, by a visionary like Steve Jobs, mostly due to two reasons: design a new value chain while controlling totally the product. With time passing and new mindsets facing the app store phenom, we’ ve seen lots of different ideas and, recently, with Nokia debuting as well as Google and others, we’ve a clear idea of what a mobile app store could be.

On the other hand, Mobile app store have introduced new concepts in application delivery that simply makes sense. Things like crowdsourcing application quality review,  a crucial feature for  every app market, or quality certification programs (like Apple does) make sense also for a desktop and notebook market, but, more important, make sense for netbooks and MIDs. Canonical working to enable Dalvik VM and Android Market for ubuntu make me think that we should give a try to Sun and Oracle for this strange idea of the world-domination-dream-java-app-market.

Anyway, the step from successful co-marketing initiatives like the ones with the toolbars, to a promise of the killer application (store) and the perfect software delivery and distribution environment is a giant size step.

But, Jon, I’ve many question from the very beginning: will this Java-Store deliver only Java apps? Will be Windows centered? or at least Desktop Centered? will embrace or be embraced by mobile platform vendors in you plans?

Is this finally the “all screen of your life” java that we are expecting since the very beginning of the Java dream?

A successful java market should exploit java pervasivity, java ease of use and outstanding adoption rate to become the central and preferred point of sales and distribution of java resources, from client applications to server components and, in general, enterprise resources.

The Java app store should be the ideal channel:

• to access cloud provided services and monitor IaaS performances
• to buy support and acquisition licenses from the commercial software providers
• to provide update and patch management services
• for open source projects to provide access to software releases

The Java app store should be accompanied with:

• an app engine/libraries set to embed Sun/Oracle IaaS in Java environment
• new partnership programs to ease the adoption and porting across different platforms (for Desktops, MIDs, Mobiles and Server technology providers)
• revenue share programs for developers
• optional software quality certifications programs

Finally I tried to manage to wrote down the following schema to help myself to figure out what  the new Java market idea could be, at the end:

the java app store as it could be (click to enlarge)

Unfortunately, if you look to Runtime Bob’s latest post on Symbian Foundation blog, it seems that neither at Symbian, where Java was meant to be a first class citizen,  they’ve a clear idea of what “the future of java” will be. Today Symbian dev portal has gone beta and is available for you at https://developer.symbian.org/.

Looking at  the JME section it seems they are serious about Java.

Hopefully at Sun tomeone has a clearest idea of the future of java. At least at Oracle they’ve, I’m sure

Unfortunately mine is different from the one that the latest statement at Sun, i.e. that the new Java Garbace collector (G1) will be available only for support license subscribers, advocates.

Let’s see.  JavaOne will probably give us some new food for thoughts.

Monoliths and bit pipes

After going in deep on the “bit pipe” topic for a couple of weeks I eventually came to notice that the most important telco operators are now embracing the model called,  in brief, “telco 2.0″.

The “walled garden” approach worked for years in the scarcely developed and small mobile Internet market we were used before Apple and Google debuted into the mobile platforms arena.

Now that things are melting, now that Internet and the mobile world have come together, now that the smartphone slice of the mobile handset market is getting bigger and bigger despite of the crisis, it’s somehow normal that the value chain of such products is subject to be reconfigured.

The old value chain we were used to, where operators and Handset vendors were the only actors producing value and obtaining revenues, is definitively dead. We are now seeing a couple of different approaches into the telco market I expect that most of the worldwide player in the industry will align to:

One is the Monolithic vendor approach, where the vendor can be one of following players:

• a web content owner (such as Google for  ”Powered by Google” Android based devices)
• an handset vendor (such as Palm for Palm Pre, or Nokia for what regards, for example, the “Comes with music” and OVI propositions)
• a technology firm, coming from a different market  (such as well known Apple I-Phones or rumoured MS Zune Phones)

well, in this model the operator usually plays what we call a “bit pipe” role:

The "monolithic vendor" approach

The other possible model is a more distributed one, where an actual ecosystem is created around the operator that plays a central role.  Despite it has some threats as well (e.g. the content trap, thanks to Fabrizio for noticing)  that’s, IMHO, the only model suitable for an operator which wants to survive.

To align to this model, an operator is asked to change the formerly used approach: it needs to find a way to produce value from the infrastructure (read: network APIs) that is, at the end, the only thing making it unique in this chain, as well as it needs to build a developer/user ecosystem to unlock a loosely controlled content production channel for it’s handset portfolio.

Since, very often, images are better than words:

The operator owned, ecosystem based approach

Most of the smartest operators in the world are moving towards such an ecosystem, for example, if we focus on EU centered operators:

• Orange with Orange Partner Program featuring a strong Operator APIs (available internationally) platform, a Developer support site providing tech. docs, a certification program and a, even not so up to date, on device delivery channel
• Vodafone with Betavine initiative and upcoming JIL – Joint Innovation Lab (Vodafone, China Mobile Limited & SOFTBANK) now delivering Developer support and a delivery channel (betavine.mobi) and very soon expected to deliver SOA oriented Network APIs a dedicated and optimized Widget SDK and a more powerful delivery channel/App Store.
• O2(Telefonica) with Litmus community including access to network API, a delivery channel/App Store (with a 70% dev/30%  opr. revenue sharing model), Developers support and a user community paid for testing beta projects and contribute with reviews and bug reports.

North American operators are, from this point of view, a bit late: you can just find  Verizon VZAppZone program featuring an “on-device” delivery channel, and Sprint ADP Application Developer Portal that is, more or less, a developer support site offering device specifications and general information.

Given that putting “monolithic products” in portfolio could be risky (IMHO it’s more a sort of ancient Japanese tradition) what other strategy could an operator follow?

None IMHO, or, at least just one. Becoming a Monolith. Like Hutch3G did with INQ.

Symbian, Android, realpolitik and handshake champions

We were expecting a sparkling 2009 year for Smartphones and generally Mobile platforms industry and 2009 is effectively reserving to us some interesting trends and dynamics. My personal views have been clearly detailed in this blog in few occasions in the past (thoughts you can find here ).

2008 convinced me of few following statements:

• Proprietary RTOS are going to disappear (and  that’s more or less confirmed)
• General purpose OEM oriented proprietary OSes are in danger (e.g.: Microsoft Windows Mobile or Qualcomm’s BREW/BMP) – to be true I was expecting more exciting news from M$
• Full vertical brands like RIM and Apple were likely to keep a limited but strong market niche
• Linux based platforms market shares are likely to consolidate around one leader initiative. To me, this initiative would have been Android (consequently LIMO, OpenMoko, Maemo, etc… to loose interest)
• We’re going to face a even higher runtime fragmentation (Java, Dalvik, QT, browser/widget based runtimes, etc…)

finally, now that first 2009 quarter is ending, is time to come back on these ideas and, make some reflections.

Almost all of you should be familiar with the concept of Realpolitik:

“Realpolitik (German: real “realistic”, “practical” or “actual”; and Politik “politics”) refers to politics or diplomacy based primarily on practical considerations, rather than ideological notions. ”

In the last few days I’ve come back to my late 2008 and early 2009 considerations about the mobile platforms industry and suddenly I noticed that, maybe, there’s something I’ve underestimated. This something is the various players capability to be “really” on market and to manage market dynamics with a deep understanding of everyone’s needs and position in the value chain.

If you give a look to Gartner’s Worldwide Smartphone Sales you’ll notice that q408 sales actually gave us quite different and interesting trends. More in details there are two clear trends deserving a little analysis:

• Linux share decreased in 2008
• Proprietary OS sales increased strongly

It seems to me that the hype provoked by the Android debut on Market was so promising that most of the industry players (except from Nokia) actually slowed down or cancelled any other Linux related effort. Do you remember that, in second half of the year, we were ready to state the upcoming death of Limo as an initiavive?

In the meanwhile the demand for compelling UX and web intensive products coupled with the debut on the market of new products (e.g.: iPhone 2.0, BlackBerry Storm)  led to a strong market share from the vertical proprietary product makers.

When facing reality, most of the industry players encountered some “productization” problems when working on Android based project. Andreas from Vision Mobile pointed out that, the difficulties when moving from “concepts” to “products” was mainly derived by the success and the endorsement that the platform received in 2008. In Andreas views this ended up in a increasing support request to Android team at Google that was evidently not ready to support all of these initiatives:

“Android is a victim of its success

To the surprise of most industry observers, the industry (including operators and handset OEMs) have shifted from criticising Android in late 2007 to adopting Android in late 2008.

So what does this mean for Google?

It means that up to 2008, Google was working with one OEM (HTC) and one operator (T-Mobile). And since 2009 it has to work with nearly 10 OEMs (Motorola, Huawei, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, HTC, Acer, Lenovo, Archos, Garmin, Toshiba) and several operators (O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile China Mobile, ..).

You would think that Google’s mighty 20,000+ workforce can easily cope. But the 100-strong Android team that Google acquired isn’t showing signs of scaling to match the demand; at least the roadmap seems to lack the pace of development, let alone innovation that is expected from Google.”

Anyway, I’m not sure that this is the real problem. More in general, apart from “productization” effort needed to create fully working products that hopefully will not cost the hell in post-sales support, there is an even harder “productization” problem that is related to the product value chain and involves, mostly, operators.

In fact, in the short time Android is still a demanding platform in terms of hardware (e.g.: requires Qualcomm’s 7*** chipsets to work) and forced OEM’s to make significant investments over the last year (build teams for development, QA, customers support, contribute code, etc… on a brand new platform): therefore the BOM lessening that we were expecting thanks to the royalties free OS still isn’t tangible up to now.

Ooperators and third parties (e.g. : service providers/client providers) are still not 100% operative on the platform and this is ending up in service discontinuity when it comes to Android powered devices.

In the meanwhile Symbian Foundation obtained strong investments from Nokia, a new management and an endorsements avalanche (this probably means that the NEW Management is working well and hard and is madee by handshake champions) and will likely reach 100 endorsements soon. Even Qualcomm joined and they’re all happy to work together as it seems…something you could expect after Nokia and Qualcomm closed their patent dispute. At the end Symbian is not that dead OS walking some of us were thinking about it at the end of 2008.

With this lacking effectiveness from Android, and few practical problems showing up, seems that Limo foundation itself received a last slice of time to come back to work on its credibility. This article (again from vision mobile) is quite interesting and gives a quite clear idea of the LIMO situation.

Actually LIMO foundation is still largely founded, provides a “real” commodity (as it provides the middleware only) and in the meanwhile is slowly moving towards more openness and more democracy (release more code, lessen participation fees especially for third parties…) finally building, or trying to, an ecosystem. I can’t say if this is going to work… I still do not believe in LIMO as a successful initiative if we look in the long period.

Looking to things from an higher view all this competition is bringing quality and innovation and, in some cases, standardization: think about WebKit.

As said we still have a big question mark on runtimes fragmentation: it seems that the situation is worsening instead of going better, but this is another story (maybe deserving a reflection in future posts).

Does Steve Ballmer have the X-Factor?

 

(cc) JD Lasica/Socialmedia.biz

Latest news about Microsoft make me think that Steve Ballmer is not that crazy how he looks when you take a picture of him without the right notice.
A few big news are expected at next Mobile World Congress, with Redmondians yet to announce a brand new set of services called SkySomething. In fact Microsof is likely to announce at least:

 

• an application marketplace for its mobile platform called skymarket 
• a live infrastructure to deliver cloud based office automation services called SkyLive (no more pocketoffice)

With Windows mobile rapidly moving towards version 6.5 and 7  within a – not so quick but – decent timeline.

In case microsoft will succeed -finally- to provide customers with an acceptable UI  (and will no more force us to see compelling home screens – as for HTC Touch – right one click away from old fashioned windows 95 inspired screenshots) this could end up in granting a chance in mobile software market.

Microsoft has a decent ecosystem: despite being traditionally a closed company, thanks to the leadership position in the IT market (both home desktops and infrastructures) and to a not negligible quality and size of its SDK, convinced a relevant number of developers to approach, use and fall in love with .net (after all, who really cares if your customers use firefox?).

Given that, I expect that populating skymarket will be not such difficult: will not require 10 M$ , – not so much after all - and will not take so much time as a whole. 

Microsoft has a relevant installed base in business mail and collaboration infrastructures thanks to Exchange and owns an important cloud PaaS environment that is aims to interwork seamlessly with your on-premise services. I figure out they know how to serve a convincing live office automation service (did you try office live?).

Microsoft is to business market what Google is to end-user market but we should keep in mind that business market has more lock in an, at the end, pays some licensing fees (Big G please confirm that you don’t want my money). Is there somebody at RIM that is thinking about that? hope so.

Windows mobile is now a niche product that faces a crowded supplier market. Its market share, thanks to RTOS death at least, is going to improve. 
But, you can’t rely only on your quality since during downturns is often price that makes the point and lessening the BOM is always a good new to OEMs.  

Furthermore, the OS market is now widening with new device types like netbooks and, since this process comes during a low investments phase it strongly goes against Microsoft former business model (license based).

The next move that can be decisive should be lowering the client platform, and I mean both: Windows Mobile 7 and Windows 7 (is anybody wondering of the double 7 case like i do? same platform number…they should inter-work).

Will Microsoft be able to change?  I think that most of the decision will rely on the success that cloud services – both the thin client technologies and the EaaS with Azure – and the upcoming Skysomething will have in short-mid time.

Then the actual change could end up in an opensourced Windows or follow other strategies. For example a freemium business model (with premium releases offering something like automated backup, automated antivirus… , automated desktop management at the end).

Let’s see if Ballmer has the X factor. Let’s see.

Be open to winds of change

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul-w-locke/

It’s something like one month I haven’t posted on meedabyte.This doesn’t mean that nothing deserving to be on the blog was happening . Actually I’ve been quite absorbed from writing an interesting (fully open source powered) architecture for a Business Process Management and Business Activity Monitoring facility for a client. This activity and others eventually made some thoughts come up to my mind. 

I’m starting to think that we need new tools, both theoretical and practical, to manage the process of develop “solutions” at today. I use the word solution, and not something like architecture or software, infrastructure or service. This because, from an ISV, SI, or consulting point of view., is not more a software or a service that customers are demanding. Customers demands solutions for their problems:

• that can deliver value in short terms
• needing very low upfront costs
• able to scale and adapt to hopefully growing businesses

 

First of all we all need to change our mindset about requirements. With less to spend you need to focus on your real requirements. From one hand it means that customers are no more willing to pay for requirements that are shared globally since such requirements, almost surely, have generated in time one or more open source communities providing an open source solution. This trend is really clear if we think about software industry: former market leaders are loosing market shares because of open source newcomers. Look to mobile OS market with Android and Symbian, or to notebooks with linux. Most often, as the last effect, the original product gets commoditized.

From the other hand, the need for less up-front costs will unavoidably lead to more exploitation of cloud services.  I’ve recently found an article from Mike Brittain that was -really- like a sort of new bible to me: clearness, vision, value. The guys there actually built a service from scratch with no (or little, since at least the infrastructure management isn’t hosted by the cloud) up-front investments ending up with a “twenty minutes” service start up time Web hosting infrastructure. WOW amazing.

Think about managing more of one of this services in a complex service infrastructure. Think about managing two, three… ten. At this point we will need clouds to inter-operate. And i don’t think that the only solution is to rely on integration efforts made by cloud providers themselves. Just in case they are not going to comply we will create distributed middlewares, built with federations paradigms, and we’ll deploy them on cloud, possibly :).

At the end, I’m quite sure that a transactional based models will become more and more adopted and things like ACID, given that me made some efforts to adapt it in a distributed fashion, will be dusted out rapidly.

If we couple this with a new awareness of what are the core requirements. I we succeed to made our:

“…huge step to recognize that it’s time to get over the bias of applying so called “infrastructure 1.0″ requirements to the rules of engagement in the cloud by recognizing that many of these capabilities don’t exist in the enterprise, either…”

- thanks Chris hoff for this concept I’ve stole on RationalSecurity - we can achieve sensible results in terms of delivered value and Time To Market.