Open Source Databases

All indications are the next significant growth segment for open source software will be in databases. This follows the trend of open source operating systems (Open Solaris and Linux). 

Two open source databases of note are Hadoop and MySQL. 

Hadoop is not for everyone. It is a very powerful open source software focused on highly scalable distributed computing. It implements the MapReduce distributing computing metaphor in use at some very large computer powerhouses. In general, I don’t believe it will be of immediate use to the average enterprise, it is for the big guys with high end problems.  My recommendation is that all CTOs at least download it at home and try it out just for familiarity (I’m running Hadoop on my home systems now so I can kick the tires and will be writing more about it in coming posts). But I don’t recommend every enterprise everywhere adopt it. 

MySQL, on the other hand, should be of interest to any enterprise, big or small.  I’m a MySQL user and really enjoy it. I’m not alone in that regard. MySQL has over 11 million installations and is the driver behind most major web technologies today. It is the database for a variety of development platforms including popular software bundles like LAMP, BAMP, MAMP, SAMP, and WAMP Popular websites using MySQL include Facebook, Zappos, Cox Communications, NASA, Flickr, Wikipedia, Google and YouTube. The Obama campaign was also run with technology based on MySQL. 

How much does MySQL cost? It is available for free under the GNU General Public License, which is a great way to get and use software. Enterprises like support, and support costs money. How much will support for MySQL cost? I don’t know, since I’ve never required enterprise support, but from what I understand the cost is about 20% the cost of support for proprietary systems. MySQL lacks some features of the higher end high cost enterprise systems, but at such a reduced cost it will increasingly be the alternative of choice for solutions that don’t require every feature of a massive ERP-type capability.
Additionally, MySQL can result in better reliability and more uptime, which should also be factored into your TCO calculations. 

In your engineering trades you will likely find that MySQL will run more calculations per second on lower cost hardware, and, adminstration/services costs are also significantly lower.
So, those are cost reasons to move to MySQL. Other, perhaps more important reasons include: 

• It is easy to learn and easy to administrate 
• It helps prevent vendor lock-in and companies that will try to place you over the barrel 
• Security is built in and in my opinion there will continue to be fewer vulnerabilities in MySQL because of its open source model 
• There are very large numbers of developers supporting MySQL, so it is easy to find highly qualified developers and administrators. 

The big providers like Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft and IBM continue to roll out improvements and advanced features and and they have powerful capabilities that will likely be with us for a long long time. But my recommendation is that every CTO check out MySQL and use it everywhere you can. It will help you deliver more functionality faster and for a much more economical cost. 

Comments?

The Future of the Grid: From Telecommunications to Cloud-Based Servers

There was once a time long long ago when telecommunications and
computing were two different concepts.  That was the age when phone
company operators manually switched calls and computers like ENIAC
were programmed by patches and cables.  Since then the two fields have
been on a convergence path.   The many advances in both fields since
the 1940′s make for exciting reading for computer and telecom fans, but
rather than recount those achievements here I’d rather talk about a
more modern achievement of note, the establishment of the Advanced
Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA or AdvancedTCA). 

ATCA is an open standard that has been around since about 2003.  It has
been continually enhanced and today it is perhaps the most broadly
accepted standard in the telecom industry, with over 100 companies
participating in development and implementation of the specification.  Perhaps more important is the adoption of the standard in the telecommunications industry.  A review of wikipedia entries and other open info (like the Intel Embedded and Communciations Alliance) indicates typical “hockey-stick” implementation seen in other highly reliable, highly virtuous standards.  IDC projects the ATCA market will be about $2.7 billion in size by 2013.   I think the global financial crisis and the ongoing wave of mergers  and purchases of smaller comms and equipment providers by larger ones will accelerate this trend even faster, as the need for modular low cost, highly relieable standards is needed even more.  

Network equipment providers face two challenges that they are addressing with ATCA: 1) the need to continue to deliver new platforms and applications and, 2) the need to reduce costs and improve productivity.  ATCA provides a great opportunity to address these needs.  ATCA standards provide a common platform which provides lower cost, reduced maintenance, the ability to use third party boards, and the ability to reduce vendor lock-in (more on ATCA capabilities is below). 

In my opinion, enterprise CTOs should work to accelerate moving the
ATCA standard and compliant products into data centers.  It results in
more computer power per square inch, higher reliability, power savings,
cost savings, long term maintainability, and a path for upgrade that
does not require forklifts.  ATCA is not something that currently scales down to small network devices, but it is something that I believe will prove to be perfect for data center server support.

Here is more on ATCA:

– Boards (blades) in an ATCA shelf are hot swapable.
- There is not a “bus” for communications in an ATCA shelf.  Instead,
boards communicate point to point, which is faster and ensures there is
not a single point of failure like in the bus model.
– Any switching fabric can be used.
– Boards can be processors, switches or specially designed advanced cards, if desired.
- The most advanced shelf management capability ever designed is in
the ATCA container.  If any sensor reports a problem the shelf manager
can take action or report the problem to a system manager. This action
could be things like turning up a fan or powering off a component or
telling a human that something needs to be replaced before failing.
– It is designed for very high reliability and very high availability. 
– It runs cooler, even with its higher powered processors.
– It supports a healthy multi-vendor, interoperable ecosystem.
– It is based on open standards vice proprietary (locked-in) solutions.

Now back to the opening idea of this post.  Telecom and data and compute power are not separate things anymore.  Each are closely interwoven and successes in one thrust can make a huge positive difference in capabilities in other areas.  As organizations and users grow more accustom to the power of cloud computing they will demand higher and higher levels of reliability and resiliency from their server providers.  And as service providers provider higher levels of reliability and throughput cloud compute providers will see more and more success which will place increased requirements on their capability.  In both cases, ATCA will provide the agility, resiliency and reliability required, which will drive its adoption further and further into the telecon and data worlds.

So, for
CTOs who are concerned with maximum performance with power and space
efficiency and a path to future upgrades, accelerate ATCA into your
enterprise.  How?  I just typed the words “atca for the datacenter”
into Google and got several links worth diving much deeper into,
including:

Will ATCA Bring Order Out of Chaos for Blade Servers?

Sun Netra CP3220 ATCA Blade Server

A look ahead: Some technology developments to expect in 2009

2008 was a year of rapid changes for Chief Technology Officers.  We should expect 2009 to move even faster.  Where will the biggest trends take us?  I offer some considerations below.  Please
look these over and give me your thoughts.   Push back if you have
disagreement.

First, my overall advice for CTOs in 2009… Just like the new thin interfaces you will be testing in your lab… be flexible.   Now here are some more thoughts on what's in store for CTO s in 2009:

• Here is a no-brainer: Increasingly CTOs will leverage social media to
  collaborate.  Things are moving so fast that we all like to network to
  seek help on big things and to get advanced warning on what is coming
  next.  More of us will be on Twitter, in Facebook, and writing blogs. 
  And this is a good thing.

• "Mashups" will still be very
  important as an enterprise objective in 2009 (and beyond).   And the
  company that will help accelerate them into the federal enterprise is
  JackBe.  They do things in a way that enterprise CTO s like.  They build
  in connections to governance, security, identity management.  And they
  play well with the entire ecosystem so you don't have to rework all
  legacy just to use them.  Of course web2.0 will remain a key trend, but mashups takes web2.0 to a new, more mission-oriented level and for enterprise players the mission is what is important.

• An approach we will all learn to love and follow is "context
  accumulation".   This very important term was coined by Jeff Jonas, and
  I think Jeff is going to have all of us moving out on that in the next
  12 months.   If you agree, visit his blog and by all means help others
  understand why this is really the only way we humans stand a chance of
  surviving/thriving in the onslaught of data.

• Federal acquisition of IT will still be criticized for all the
  reasons it always has been.  But there will also be an acceleration of
  a dramatic positive change brought about because of open source
  software and a new appreciation that IT acquisition processes
  (RFI/RFP/FAR/DFAR based purchases) do not apply to software that is
  free.  Free software is not being bought, it is being used, for free. 
  The whole reason the FAR exists is to ensure when the taxpayer's money
  gets spent it gets spent wisely.  When things are free the FAR has less
  applicability.  Services for open source are being bought and since
  that uses government money of course the taxpayers will continued to be
  served by the same FAR-type processes that are meant to ensure open
  competition, but that is not for free open source software, that is for
  services to configure and manage the software.

• Will this be the year of enterprise security?  We have been banking on that for a long long time.  We know the answers on how to make enterprises more secure.  There is a great recap of some of the most important components of security in the CSIS report.  But there are many more things that can be done as well. My goal, as captured here, is to improve security by two orders of magnitude within the next 24 months. 

• Netbooks, Thin Clients and Cloud Computing will accelerate
  throughout the technology landscape, especially inside the federal
  government.  These trends in both devices and the cloud components are directly related and are also benefiting from the global, unstoppable trend toward open computing
  (open software and open standards).  One to watch in this area:  Sun
  Microsystems.   But also track the dynamics of the netbooks providers. 
  Dell will get serious about netbooks, but Acer will continue to grow
  market share.

• A key accelerator of Cloud Computing has been the powerful technologies of virtualization, especially those of VMware.  Open source and other virtualization capabilities are coming fast too.  Trend to watch in 2009 is the arrival of higher order, more elagant capabilities to manage virtualizaiton accross large enterprises.  VMware and Opsware (HP) will continue to evolve to do this, but Appistry, Vizioncore, Xsigo and Sun (and others?) are coming fast.    
• Increasingly leaders will recognize that concepts of operation that
  require humans to tag and create metadata are sub-optimized.  When busy
  people are tasked with burdensome tagging operations they too
  frequently become tempted to cut corners and rush the process.  Over
  time, meta data generated this way just becomes meta crap.  This
  growing recognition in the federal space will sweep in new technologies
  and new approaches to discovery of content.  One to watch to solve this
  issue:  Endeca, because of their approach to visualizing information and enabling human to computer iterative examination of data. 

  

• Flexible computers will arrive in production this year for early
  adopters and many CTOs will use them in labs to assess applicability
  for massive deployment in the coming years.   These flexible computers
  are the ultimate thin clients.   Backends/servers/architectures
  developed for the cloud perfectly suit ultra thin, flexible computing
  devices. For more on this hot topic, start at the site of the Flexible Display Center at ASU.

• Collaboration will increasingly be seen as the means to link human
  brains together.   Collaboration tools that are stand alone stovepipes
  will be a thing of the past.  Users will collaborate using the entire
  technology environment:  voice, video, data, whiteboard, chat,
  application sharing, info discovery will increasingly be integrated
  into a single fabric.  Key players here:  Adobe, Microsoft and Cisco.

• In a big change for how money is moved in major enterprises, the CIO
  will be given responsibility for the energy budget.  This will encourage
  CIOs to modernize to conserve energy, since money saved from energy
  costs can be invested back in modern IT.  This will be a very virtuous
  cycle, that saves money for organizations, saves energy, and modernizes
  IT.   

• In a stunning turn, IPv6 will be rapidly adopted, not by enterprises,
  but in homes.  The major home communications provider that delivers
  full IPv6 to home environments (and to cell phones) will have an incredible advantage over
  competitors and will dominate.  The many rich features of IPv6
  delivered to consumers will finally push enterprises everywhere to move
  out on IPv6. 

• In 2009, as in every year prior and for most into the future, there
  will continue to be bad people using technology to do bad things. 
  Enterprises will move to protect info, but bad guys will keep moving to
  get the data.   And the use of social networking tools by terrorists
  will likely grow.  This is not a foregone conclusion, but I'm not
  personally sure what can be done to mitigate the use of advanced
  technology by bad people, other than to say that we good people need to
  work together more to stop them, and my hope is that we can keep 2009
  safe and secure.

Thoughts/comments/suggestions?  Please let me know what you think.

The Disruptive Power of Netbooks

The idea of light-weight, low-cost, but very powerful laptops designed for a smaller feature set than traditional laptops has been around for a decade or so.  But all indications are that something has changed in the market place.   Due to a convergence of many factors, netbooks are growing in sales.  These factors include the continual improvement in wireless speeds, the more widespread availability of wifi, the continued drop in cost of hardware, the continued increase in performance of open source operating systems and open source applications, the unstoppable move to more thin-client solutions, and the dramatically increased capabilities of cloud computing services (including the entire web2.0 megatrend and of course the continued innovations of Google in the cloud computing and online applications space). 

I just did a few searches on Amazon and Bestbuy for netbooks devices, and pulled up entries for small notebooks like the Acer Aspire One, an 8.9-inch mini laptop that runs Linux Lite and sells for under $300.00.  It has plenty of capability and is very lightweight.   It comes loaded with applications, including open source office automation packages (I think I would want to download the most recent version of open office if I purchased this).  It also comes with a built in camera and is ready for high end video chat. 

Will I buy one?  There are clearly some of these in my future, I just don't know when.  I have a MacBook and I really like it for everything I need in a laptop.  I use it around the house and on travel.  And, although it is over a year old now, it doesn't need replacement.  When it does, however, I'm going to be asking myself why I would want to pay $1000 more for a Mac instead of a couple hundered for a Netbook.  So much of what I do I do on the cloud anyway, and the many things I do locally can be done using the free Open Office.  

If we assume the same sort of trades are being considered by other buyers, a conclusion starts to emerge.  Netbooks are going to be a very disruptive force in the market.

And what is the market saying so far about this trend?  Acer is reporting huge success with their netbooks approach, their sales have been growing significantly.  They just reported a 78.8 percent growth rate over the same quarter in 2007.  And this is during a huge market downturn.  HP and Dell are reporting unit sales growth of 13.5 percent and 10.7 percent, respectively.   Apple is just about flat.

If you are an enterprise CTO, what should you do with this information?  For one, you should consider how to use laptops/netbooks like these in your organization.  If done right, you can enhance the security of your enterprise by moving more of your data and applications to secure clouds, and you can also add security features to your netbooks and field a significant enhancement to your security posture.  And, since the cost of these devices is far less than traditional laptops you can equip more of your workforce and save money at the same time, which is a very virtuous thing in this economic environment.

Note: I've previously written about several devices that qualify as netbooks, including:

Thin Client Laptops: Functionality, Security, Mobility A review of high end, enterprise quality wireless stateless thin clients using the Sun Microsystems approach;

and

The Future Is Changing Again A review of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative.

I also recommend a recent article at Economist.com called Small is Beautiful. 

And, thanks to a friend on Twitter, I just got pointed to a post at GigaOm titled: Why Netbooks are Greener Than Laptops

CTOs, Global Cyberwar and Our Collective Future

If you are a technologist, please take a moment to download the PDF of the report by the U.S. Commission on Cybersecurity.  This report, titled Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency, is the best proclamation of the challenges of cyber I have read.  It is also a roadmap that will help any trying to navigate these very tough issues.

I've been involved in things cyber for a long time.  My deepest
involvement began in December 1998, almost 10 years ago to the day.  
In all that time I've seen lots of studies and lots of papers and many
treatments of the issues.  But I've never seen one that captures the
complexities and the need for specific actions as well as this one. 

I'd really recommend you read every word, if you want to be considered literate in this field.   But if it will be a little while till you get to it, here are some key points:

The three major findings are:  1) Cybersecurity is now a major national security problem for the U.S., 2) Decisions and actins must respect privacy and civil liberties, and 3) only a comprehensive national security strategy that embraces both the domestic and international  aspects of cybersecurity will make us more secure.

The report makes a few points about the Bush Administration's Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI).  In general the give credit to that initiative, and call it good.  I agree, it is a great activity I've previously written about that is led by one of the most effective people in government today and has done great work.  But as the comission points out, the work of the CNCI is good but not sufficient. 

The biggest shock for me in this study:  The amount of funding on R&D for cyber security.  I have been looking into the many activities underway, and maybe that look made me deceive myself into thinking it was a well funded effort.  According to the comission, however, they estimate that the total R&D funding in the federal government for cybersecurity is about $300million.  Less than two-tenths of one percent of the total federal R&D.

The report has a great section on identity manangement. 

I am convinced the organizational approaches outlined in the study are the right ones as well.  There is only one place in our government where we can lead solutions to this challenge.  Where is that?  Hey read the report!

What else do I recommend CTOs do besides read the report?  I think one way we can all help the cybersecurity effort is to think through which standards bodies are the most important to engage with regarding security.   A few are here:
http://www.ctovision.com/2008/05/standards-organizations-ctos-should-track.html

Vivek Kundra: Democratizing Data and Putting it in the Public Domain

I'm hoping most enterprise CTOs have had a chance to learn more about Vivek Kundra's Apps for Democracy initiative.  I'm really impressed by this activity for many reasons, but primarily because it got results of use to the citizens and visitors of DC.  This initiative proved yet again that Vivek Kundra is a CTO who gets things done.  From his bio:

Vivek Kundra was appointed by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty on March 27, 2007
to the Cabinet post of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the District
of Columbia. As CTO, Kundra leads the Office of the Chief Technology
Officer (OCTO), an organization of over 600 staff that provides
technology services and leadership for 86 agencies, 38,000 employees,
residents, businesses, and millions of visitors.

Prior to this Vivek was getting things done in the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the private sector, and in Arlington Virginia. 

In his current position he became an instant hero to an entire enterprise when he took the bold step of moving his enterprise to a Google Apps foundation. The video below provides some background on this move. 

An equally wise, and similarly bold move was Vivek's initiative called Apps For Democracy.  This contest began with Vivek insuring that the DC government is being as open and transparent with data as possible, exposing data in a variety of common formats.  This was no simple task, requiring vision, perseverance, and a dedication to plow through city hall obstacles that only a motivated leader could tackle.  Vivek set the groundwork for success by working with a great thought leaders like Peter Corbett at iStrategyLabs and by coordinating with Internet enthusiasts like the crew at Mashable.  The Strategy Labs team created a proposal for this project and brought this project to life in six days!  created a page encouraging mashup entries, and the result was an incredible generation of capabilities that serve DC citizens and visitors to our Capital.   47 applications were created in a way that did not require long procurement processes or costly integration contracts.  What do the apps do?  Check them out yourself here: medal-winners

My favorite:  DC Historic Tours.   This is really really cool.   Thanks Vivek!

For more see the video below:

Apps for Democracy from Shaun Farrell on Vimeo.

What else can I say about Vivek?  He also has great models for internal program management.  His approach is nothing like the one I learned from Gartner the everyone trys to implement.  And it is better than the one I learned in the corporate world that worked very well for us at TRW and Northrop Grumman.  His approach is nothing like the one we used at DIA.  In fact, if I had it to do over again I would use his approach in my old enterprise.  For more on his way, see the write up for his 2008 InfoWorld Top 25 CTO award. 

So hey, what's next?  My hope is that the methods and models of Vivek (and iStrategylabs) are applied across the nation and up to state and federal levels.  Think of the good that could be done. 

The Technology Implications of the Obama Win

There are several megatrends sweeping the technology industry today.  Some of them are about to be accelerated.  

I like to use five key topic areas to track megatrends in IT: 

- Convergence and trend towards unified communications and user empowerment
- Globalization and increasing internationalization of IT and demographic shifts
- Increasing open development of software and hardware
- Power, Cooling and Space (PCS) impacting data centers and every place computing is done
- Increasing pace of technology development and probability of disruption

Over the past two months two major events have occurred which are impacting these trends.  

The
first was the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the resulting cascading
effects on the financial industry.  The impact on IT spending and the
movement of more enterprises to grid/cloud computing because of that
are still being assessed, but for some thoughts see: Wall Street Crisis

The second was the Presidential election of Barack Obama.   

The Future of Cyberspace Security: The Law of The Rodeo

This is an update of my now annual assessment of the future of technology associated with good and evil in cyberspace which was first posted here.

Predictions
of the future of technology are increasingly starting to sound like
science fiction, with powerful computing grids giving incredible computational power to users and with autonomous robots becoming closer and closer to being in our daily lives vice just in computer science departments. Infotech, nanotech and biotech are fueling each other and each of those three dominate fields are generating more and more benefits that impact the other, propelling us even faster into a new world.   Depending on your point of view the increasing pace of science and technology can be good or
bad.  As for me, I'm an optimist, and I know we humans will find a way
to ensure technology serves our best interests.   

Securing Enterprise Data and Computer Power

In March I posted an entry on a significant enhancement in the computing realm, the thin client.   That post focused on how thin client computing is changing the net assessment in computer security (see:  http://www.ctovision.com/2008/03/computer-securi.html  ).

I've been really pleased to watch thin client computing take off.  How widespread is adoption now?  In August Sun announced that they had nearly doubled their shipments of thin clients from the previous quarter.   That's pretty cool.  In fact, it is Kurzweilian.  

Android: Disruptive? Not enough info to say

Google and T-Mobile just announced the arrival of the G1 device today.  This is the first cell phone to use Google's new open "Android" operating system.   Android will almost certainly change the mobile computing fabric.  It is the first open and free mobile platform and since it is backed by Google it is not going to be a flash-in-the-pan.  But, now the question is, how disruptive will it be?  There are over 3.3 Billion active cell phone subscribers in the globe.  How many of those will eventually be on Android? 

I'd appreciate any of your thoughts on that.  For now, check out some of Android's features below.  Looks pretty cool.

We still don't know when these will be in the local phone stores. But then again, we don't know when the Blackberry Bold will be here either.   Anyway, I plan on evaluating an Android phone as soon as possible to see if it is for me. 

More later.