Uday Subbarayan's Blog

Node.js

2012-02-04T18:07:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year - 2012!

There are lots of optimism and hope for 2012 in the tech world compared to last few years. This optimism brings new energy and new energy brings new innovations. One of the new innovation that may become mainstream in 2012 is Node.js!

What is Node.js?
A new server-side web framework using JavaScript. It's a wrapper on top of v8.

What is Node.js? (engineering definition from the web site)
Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

What is the website for Node.js?
http://www.nodejs.org/

What is v8?
It's a JavaScript Engine from Google.

Where is v8 used?
Google Chrome browser.

Who is the lead engineer for v8?
Lars Bak

Who is Lars Bak?
He was a former Sun engineer and was the lead for Hotspot JVM. If you have to count the top 10 VM engineers in the world, it's safe to say that Lars will be one of them. His engineering track record speaks for it.

Why do I think Node.js will succeed?
1) Google's V8 JavaScript engine (Lars Bak + other engineers)
2) Strong community
3) JavaScript

What is the use-case of Node.js?
Real-time communications in the web properties.

How strong is the Node.js community?
Very strong and is growing.

Is Node.js is just a framework or an ecosystem?
Node.js is a framework and it has got a strong ecosystem around it. I mean the libraries.

How big is the ecosystem?
http://search.npmjs.org/#/_browse/all
is the answer. You can see how many libraries are already available for Node.js.

How to install programs in Node.js?
NPM (Node Package Manager)
http://www.npmjs.org/

Finally, Is Node.js competes or compliments Java?
Currently, its a complimentary framework. If this momentum continues (JavaScript for both front end and back end), Node.js may become the Tier-1 in the server-side web computing. I don't think it will replace Java but clearly lot of other frameworks like PHP, Ruby, Python, etc will take a hit with the growth of Node.

Summary
There are 2 factors that are highly influencing and favoring Node.js now.

a) Server-side JavaScript framework
The importance of JavaScript in the web computing is increasing on a daily basis and server-side JavaScript was discussed/debated for many years. Lack of good server framework made it challenge for JavaScript to succeed in the server side for long time and Node.js is the answer for it.

b) Real-time communications
In both side (consumer web & SaaS), there is a high demand for real time use cases and Node.js is becoming answer for it.

Do Yourself A Favor in 2012: Learn JavaScript!

Adobe Flash vs Apple Talk

2011-11-25T16:47:00.001-08:00

Greetings. I hope my readers in USA had a great Thanksgiving and enjoyed the break.

2011 is coming to an end. This is yet another interesting year for the computer industry. Industry will remember Dennis Ritchie and Steve Jobs for ever. 2011 will also be remembered for Flash vs HTML 5, thanks to mostly for Mr.Jobs.

IMO, proprietary technologies can't win against open standards. I was with Sun for a decade and we often was told about TCP/IP vs other proprietary network stacks. I see that history is repeating itself this time for Adobe- Flash vs HTML 5.

I read the famous blog by Steve Jobs- "Thoughts on Flash" several times. He is right. In fact when I was reading his blog, it reminded me of AppleTalk rather than Adobe Flash! It was Apple on the receiving end during the network stack evolution and AppleTalk is the proprietary network stack from Apple. AppleTalk & other proprietary network stack failed. TCP/IP won the battle, otherwise there is no Internet today.

Basically Steve Jobs was telling the "inconvenient truth" of proprietary technologies can't win against open standards to Adobe and the world. He is absolutely right. He is just telling his own experience with AppleTalk :-)

The websites like Occupy Flash (http://www.occupyflash.org/) is the just the beginning. Next few years we will see more & more HTML 5 applications across the devices. It's funny that HTML 5 is not just bad for Adobe and even for Apple itself. Click here to see how Financial Times bypassed Apple Store with a HTML 5 app.

I have got great respect for both Adobe and Apple. They have got some great engineers and consistently delivered some innovative products for the last 2 decades. We all remember Apple for the best computing experience. But please don't forget that it was the Flash which gave the best web experience. (Do you use YouTube?)

The end of Flash doesn't mean end of Adobe. If Adobe embraces HTML 5 and Adobe can become the Apple of "Front-end Web". Adobe knows what it means to deliver high performance RIA over the web. It's just the game got changed- instead of Flash it should be HTML 5.

AppleTalk
For reference: Apple Talk is the TCP/IP equivalent of Apple's proprietary network stack. Mac OS X v10.5 was the last Apple OS to support AppleTalk and is now history. I don't have any experience with Apple Talk and can't talk about the technology. The following is the table from Wikipedia describing the implementation of Apple Talk. I am sure Apple might have leveraged some of the investments here to their TCP/IP stack for MacOS but still it's waste of resource & time on a proprietary network stack that failed against TCP/IP.

OSI Model	Corresponding AppleTalk layers
Application	Apple Filing Protocol (AFP)
Presentation	Apple Filing Protocol (AFP)
Session	Zone Information Protocol (ZIP) AppleTalk Session Protocol (ASP) AppleTalk Data Stream Protocol (ADSP)
Transport	AppleTalk Transaction Protocol (ATP) AppleTalk Echo Protocol (AEP) Name Binding Protocol (NBP) Routing Table Maintenance Protocol (RTMP)
Network	Datagram Delivery Protocol (DDP)
Data link	EtherTalk Link Access Protocol (ELAP) LocalTalk Link Access Protocol (LLAP) TokenTalk Link Access Protocol (TLAP) Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI)
Physical	LocalTalk driver Ethernet driver Token Ring driver FDDI driver

Summary
Adobe Flash is the new Apple Talk. HTML 5 is the new TCP/IP. If Adobe wants to be the leader in the front-end web, it should fully embrace HTML 5 and should build a open standards based web browser with full duplex asynchronous communication for Rich Internet Applications!

Happy Holidays. Stay Safe. Stay Warm.

Senior Software Engineer - Web GUI Framework

2011-10-30T09:38:00.000-07:00

Greetings.

We are a stealth mode Silicon Valley cloud startup in the engineering domain, doing 3D graphics over the web. We are looking for a lead Web GUI engineer and pl find the job description below.

Referral Fee: Company is offering $2K, if the candidate is hired. If interested, pl email me: uday.s@comcast.net

Responsibilities

Thisis a ground floor opportunity to make a great impact to the product and companyto build the modern Web 2.0 style GUI framework that will be used by highprofile customers worldwide on everyday basis over the cloud. This is a hands-onposition to design and build the modern Web GUI using the latest Web 2.0 styletechnologies on top of JVM.

· Designand build a web scale GUI framework on top of our back end platform with strongfocus on ease of use for product features

· Workclosely with graphics engineers to deliver high performance 3D graphics usingthis web framework.

· Workclosely with our back end Java server team to use the REST API for datamanagement.

· Requiredto quickly translate product UI requirements into prototypes and followed byproduction quality web GUI.

Requirements

· Strong desire to workfor a dynamic silicon valley startup

· At least one publiclydemonstrable product experience in building Web GUI. (URL preferred to studythe design)

· Passionate about deliveringthe best possible user experience to millions of users worldwide over the cloud

· Very strong Java web softwaredevelopment experience on top of web containers like Apache Tomcat with deepexperience in REST API, HTTP internals and web scale needs for the GUI.

· Distributed sessionmanagement in the cloud environment and exposure to load balancers like HAProxy.

· Previous experiencein building web GUI using frameworks like Google Web Toolkit (GWT), ApacheWicket, Play Framework, Spring MVC, Struts, etc. is needed

· Expert-levelknowledge of HTML 5, XML, JavaScript, JSON, CSS, XSL, XSLT, JQuery, node.js andother Web 2.0 technologies.

· Exposure to Flash(specifically Stage 3D), WebGL and other 3D graphics frameworks are strongpluses.

· Experience with toolslike Google UI Designer or Google Plugin for Eclipse and participation inusability studies are pluses.

· Strong objectoriented design, development and programing.

· Experience in workingwith cross-functional teams and ability to establish strong workingrelationships with remote colleagues

· Strong verbal andwritten communication skills

BS/MS in ComputerScience or related degrees

Back to School : Let's Make it Important

2011-08-14T08:55:00.000-07:00

Greetings to my readers. I hope you all are having great summer.

I generally focus on my blog about some specific technology and this time is an exception. So, I will make it very short.

It's about "shortage of engineers" in Silicon Valley.

We are living in an interesting time- so many things are going at the macro level. But an interesting fact is that one side there is a high unemployment rate in America and on the other side here in Silicon Valley, there is not enough engineers to work on the cutting edge product developments!

Why?
It's the lack of focus on education. It's the lack of focus on math & science. It's the willingness to even outsource innovation! This is not good. We need to go back to the basics and get the kids to focus on education. Yes, I mean math & science. It's hard. But the benefits are also high.

Take a look at this job opening posted yesterday by a startup in San Mateo. $150K base salary for a senior mobile engineer! Doesn't this number is attractive?
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/eng/2544896729.html

You can see on everyday basis how many engineering jobs are posted here!
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eng/

If you have an iPhone, you will see the following statement on the back side-
"Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China".

Imagine if the current trend of lack of focus on education in US continues for a long time, what will happen to the above statement?

If you a see kid going to school next week, ask him/her:
-focus on school/education
-focus on math & science
-encourage him to work hard.

There is absolutely nothing wrong in working hard to excel in math & science. Our kids should know about it.

Have a great rest of the summer.

Why PHP is succeeding in web 2.0?

2011-02-06T20:10:00.000-08:00

IMO, there are 3 key reasons:

Apache web server
Developer community
Performance

It may be ironic to write this blog as a strong advocate of Java for more than a decade but the truth is that PHP is succeeding in the web, especially in the 2nd generation web computing. I accept it. I am coding PHP and have 2 PHP books. Do I like the language semantics? Well, it can be improved little bit more and doesn't match Java quality :-) But PHP got all the goodies to build a rich web app.

In a very broader context, we have 3 technology stacks:

Java
LAMP
.NET

I am leaving out #3 as this is not very relevant in the modern web computing architecture. It's mostly for internal IT applications. I am seeing some traction for Scala(as it runs on JVM) and also the some flavors of Ruby & Python. But not going to discuss them as the focus here is about PHP.

Web 1.0

The birth of Java & commercial Web 1.0 was nearly happened at the same time and brilliant engineers of Sun Microsystems was able to make Java as the defacto standard for web with some key inventions like Servlets, JSP, JDBC, JMS and the container model for building & deploying apps. Also, not to forget the external contributions like struts framework, various Apache products, etc.

So, Java model was a super fit for the 3 tier web 1.0 architecture-

Webserver - for static content
Appserver - for business logic
RDBMS - for data storage

Time moves on. Technology evolves. Architecture model changes. Business requirements changes. Scale became an important factor in the web 2.0 for obvious reasons like broadband, #of users, more devices, etc.

Java also evolves. I admit that it doesn't evolve as quickly in the front end web app domain compared to PHP. Java is heavily used in building the back end infrastructure and even data frameworks like Hadoop are written in Java. Java is still a major force in the web architecture and will continue to be...

Web 2.0
The question here is why PHP succeeding in Web 2.0?
In the web2.0 type architecture, there is no clear separation of web server & app server. The static content is mostly served by CDN. Then data is brought closer to the app tier using memcache for performance. So, the architecture is 2 tier: webserver + data storage.

So in this 2 tier architecture model, PHP makes perfect sense as it runs inside the Apache itself as a module. This completely eliminates the need to have a separate tier for business logic for the web app.

Apache web server is a high performance engine. Also it's a modular architecture- we can add modules based on demand. So this is a natural choice for most.
Then having PHP running inside Apache itself as a module helps to deploy the complete app inside the Apache and avoids yet another layer + network hop. This gives good performance.
Like Java, PHP also has a great developer community. Once you have the mass, you will get lot's of support + rich libraries.

In a nutshell, supper rich PHP web app can be built & deployed on high performance Apache web server itself. Then for any back end processing, Java is a great match with REST API.

Summary
If you are starting to build a scalable web application, think PHP! If you have any scalable concerns, think whether your app is bigger than Facebook or Zynga! I love to hear it.

Impact of Mobile Computing on the Web.

2011-01-09T08:32:00.000-08:00

The short answer is "client/server" model again.

There is no question that both smart phones & tablets will become (if not already) important devices across the age groups in both personal & business use for web computing. There was a joke last week that during CES there was more tablets than taxis in Las Vegas! The limited real estate in these devices has happily brought back the "client apps" on the web. The "app stores" are basically AOL and only difference is the input: touch computing.

Is client/server model is good?
-Probably not.

Why?
-closed model

How is client/server model is not good?
-Dependency on the OS
-Developing open/open source tools for development will be challenging
-Potential to hijack even HTTP
-Information sharing may become challenging
-Basically this mobile apps concept will eventually be pushed back to the main-computer-web(already!) to enable vendor lock-in

Remember client/server 1.0? Remember the challenges?

It may be an accident but the 2 virtual machines with a open protocol made the commercial web 1.0 possible & viable.
-Browser on the client; Make the OS irrelevant for the end users
-JVM on the server; Make the OS irrelevant for the developers
-HTTP; Open & simple protocol

I agree that it is a challenge to use web browsers on the smart phones. We need apps.

So, the question is how do we develop apps across different OS? We need a virtual layer like JVM for the client OS. One option is take the VM concept from Java and port it to browsers. So the browser becomes the platform to run apps. This model of developing apps on top of browser already exists in Firefox for developing plugins/extensions- check out XPCOM. (Cross Platform Component Object Model) XPCOM has it's own complexity problem. I am just referring it as a model. A model something like this one has to be enriched/enhanced to make it as a true platform to run cross platform mobile apps.

This type of model will allow open competition and innovation. The innovation will happen not only in the mobile apps on client devices but also in the server land for the "attach rate".

We need open mobile platform to avoid lock-ins.

Happy New Year-2011.

Mobile App Revolution

2010-09-20T21:32:00.000-07:00

I recently read an article about the mobile application ecosystem revolution. I forgot the source and here is it-

100 million smart phones sold last year.
Much more than 250 million smart phones will be sold next year.
More than a billion smart phones will be sold annually within ten years.
That’ll mean an installed customer base of two billion people using smart phones and the apps that run on them by the year 2020.
Those two billion customers will be using dozens if not hundreds of apps each every year.
That means we’re talking about several hundred billion different apps being consumed every year within a decade from now.

WOW!

There is no need to talk about the web infrastructure opportunities in the app server & database space.

What is Map-Reduce(Hadoop) Programming?

2010-07-31T08:42:00.001-07:00

I hope you all having a great summer. It's a cool-summer here in Silicon Valley.

I am sure by this time you came across "map-reduce programming" or at-least "Hadoop" framework. If not, do yourself a favor- search on Google for Hadoop. I also have an introduction about Hadoop here.

The "map-reduce" is the fundamental algorithm in the Hadoop framework for processing big-data. I came across a very simple explanation in one of the presentation and this is mostly self-explanatory.

Pl take a look at this picture below:

There are 2 machines which has big-data. It's mapped into key-value pair. Then do a map at the local machines.

Next step is the merging of these separate sets of key-value pair. This step involves global shuffle and followed by local sort. Then it make sense to remove the duplicate keys at the local machines. The result is ready for processing by HDFS. This is the 1st part of Hadoop processing of big data. The next & last step is the actual processing of data in HDFS. HDFS is an interesting user-level distributed file system. I will explain about the internals of HDFS in my next blog. The complete Hadoop framework is written in Java.

Architecture & Use-case

2010-04-30T16:07:00.000-07:00

"Technology looking for a Problem" or "Boiling the Ocean" !!!

How many times we heard these 2 statements in the computer industry? It's more common in the startup world.

What is the fix? The short answer is "a use-case".

Let's take a look at 2 examples:
[1] Java --> "Fix C++ complexity"
Nearly 20 years back, the great engineers of Sun(Patrick Naughton, James Gosling, Bill Joy and many others) did not like the complexity of C++ programing language. They went & solved their own problem. The result is Java. (Click on Naughton's link to read about why even Java born!)

Like them, there were million other engineers hated C++ complexity. So they joined the party with Java. This resulted in massive success of Java. Rest is history.

[2]Hadoop -->"Write once-read many times"

Google had a problem with big data. There was no solution available. They built map/reduce, GFS to solve their problem and published a paper about it. Yahoo had the same problem. Doug Cutting designed & built Hadoop. Then there are 1000 other companies are having the same problem. The result is success of Hadoop.

If we look at these 2 examples,

Use case is obvious (C++ complexity OR write once-read many times)
No solution available to solve this problem
Many people has the same problem

The end result is obvious- "success". That simple- plain simple English!

It's very critical to have a clear understanding of at-least "one use-case" before designing new products. If not, it will end up either looking for a problem or let's boil the ocean type solution in 1.0 time.

2-Tier Web Architecture

2010-04-23T10:06:00.001-07:00

The web architecture is changing for many reasons- read/write, high volume of data, more devices, mobile, etc. The good news is that it's changing in a simple direction.

We all know about this 3-tier web architecture:

Web Server
|
App Server
|
Database

Web Server: To serve static contents
App Server: To run business logic
Database : To store data. (SAN/NFS for storage)

What is the problem with this architecture?

Web Server: CDN now does this work. The static requests doesn't (mostly) come to the origin datacenter.

App Server: It itself complex piece of sw. I remember counting 50+ modules in an app server. It ran fine on vertically scalable machines like Sun E10K. How many companies are buying these machines to run app servers? It's challenging to horizontally scale on small machines based on-demand.

Databases: Good for consistency with always-read applications and is still good. Scaling is challenge. Disk IO is expensive. Always-write is challenging with RDBMS. Pl read Amazon's Dynamo paper for details.

So, what is the new web architecture?
It's a 2 tier. You punt one layer to CDN at the top and run your database in memory at the bottom.

Here is the new architecture-

Web(App) Server
|
Memcached

Tier-1: It handles HTTP connection + runs the business logic. Example- Apache +PHP or Jetty.
Tier-2: It's memcached supported by a datastore at the back end. The datastore can be MySQL-type or Cassandra-type NoSQL. (You may also want to read Stanford's RAM Cloud paper)

This is the change:
CDN is the new web server.
App Server is the new web server.
MemcacheD is the new database.
RDBMS is the new disk.

Let's expand the above picture with a network diagram:

Round-robin DNS
|
----------------------------
|
HAProxy#1 ...... HA Proxy #n
|
-------------------------------------
|
Web(App)Server Farm
|
MemcachedD Farm
|
Stroage(DB/FileSystem/Disk)

Is this architecture works for all web applications?
Not-necessarily.

You may still need to execute range query against RDBMS. You may still need the consistency. You may still need App Server- RDBMS transactions. Your engineers may not be comfortable writing code close to the metal. But high performance web is clearly moving to some sort of this 2-tier architecture.

Summary
Last week here in Sunnyvale, Amazon CTO made a comment in AWS event and that summarizes the new architecture well: "For 90% use cases we use key-value store and for remaining 10% we use RDBMS".

If your application is complex than Amazon.com and gets more traffic than Amazon.com, then you may want to continue with 3-tier architecture!!! If not, think about the future with 2-tier architecture.

HTML5 vs Flash!

2010-04-19T08:44:00.001-07:00

This morning I saw the Adobe CEO Shantanu's interview in GiGaOM here and thought of writing a short blog about my opinion about Flash vs HTML-5.

Note: I like both A's. (Apple & Adobe). I use everyday PDF on my Mac. So, I have no bias towards either company.

Flash vs HTML-5.

Let's take a look at some facts. We should leave both A's out and just look at the history & consumers.

[a] Consumers don't care about whether it's Flash or HTML5 in their devices. Simply because they don't know about it. (ask your grandma if you are not sure!) They just need a good viewing experience.

[b]From history book: Open Standard vs Proprietary Technology- Open Standard always wins.
Let's take an interesting example. Now Apple fights a proprietary technology(Flash) with a open standard.(HTML5). But in the past, it was other way around- AppleTalk vs TCP/IP.

"AppleTalk is a proprietary suite of protocols developed by Apple Inc. for networking computers. It was included in the original Macintosh released in 1984, and is now unsupported with the release of Mac OS X v10.6 in 2009[1] in favor of TCP/IP networking." - Wikipedia

It's not just AppleTalk & there were other proprietary standards like IPX/SPX, etc are also out. Today the internet runs on top of TCP/IP. Imagine, if we still have all those proprietary networking protocols...my Mac can't talk to your Windows!

Summary
Proprietary standards are mostly like driving car by looking at the rear-view mirror and open standards are driving car by looking at the road ahead. As I said before here, HTML 5 is one of the most important next generation web technology and it will eventually become mainstream.

Software Product & Customer Values

2010-03-18T12:02:00.000-07:00

I learned a simple graph in the past about product features & value to the customers. I would like to share it with you. This blog entry may look "obvious" but over & over how many complex software products are introduced into the marketplace? (& failed miserably)

Why?

Let's take a look at this simple graph:(click/right click to view it)

We design a new software product based on some facts, some assumptions, some technical innovation and big assumption is that it will make ton of $. ( This blog is not applicable to eyeballs, VC$ is the source of revenue, grow big, don't worry about making $ and eventually bought by Google type websites!)

In the beginning, the value to customers increases linearly with the product features.(It should, otherwise it's a false start!) Then it stops at some point. After that it's flat - we keep adding new features to the product but it doesn't increase value to the customers. The interesting thing is that after some time, the worse thing starting to happen...the value starts to goes down with new features! The complexity starts the moment when there is no value increase with new features.

The result of complexity for customers are-

Months to install & configure the product
Needs professional support, professional service, professional x, y & z to keep it running

The product may still be selling but it may end up shelf-ware sale! Finally products gets its result- EOL!

The product team may think that there are still new features that they think is useful to the customers. One of the option is to build a new product instead of keep adding features to an existing product. OR at-least create a next generation of old product.

The best example is Apple: Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad. The underlying platform is same but they are not bundling into 1 big product. Separate products for separate customers for separate markets.

It's easy to say that these 2 are the most important criteria but to know these 2 requires deep domain/technical expertise + deep insight into customer environment/problems.
[a] Tipping point in the graph
[b] Number of customers who need this product @1

Summary
The rate of success of the software product is directly proportional to the size of the circle in the graph.

It's the reason that I strongly believe that business team(product management, marketing, sales) input to the product is very valuable & should be continuous.

In the end, it's the customers who will tell us whether the product is good or not.

6 Most Important Technologies for Next-Generation Web Computing

2010-03-12T19:23:00.000-08:00

HTML 5
JavaScript
PHP
Memcached
Objective-C
Android

Pl don't get me wrong- there are lot's of technologies that are important for Web Computing. No question. This list is about "most" important technologies that will shape the next generation web. Pl feel free to agree/disagree.

[1] Why HTML 5?
"multimedia"

The commercial web was a surprise.(ping me for who even got it wrong!) There was a technical rush to make it work, not necessarily better. I used to say that Java is the English language of the web. But actually Java also was not invented for Web(Oak, firstperson, etc). It's just coincidence and luck- call it perfect timing. Remember Applet, HotJava browsers? If Applet was a fantastic failure and Servlet was fantastic success for Java. Servlet showed the power of server side Java along with rest of the J2EE stack. No need to say anything about the spectacular success of J2EE.(It changed the business-web computing for ever!)

Ok, enough. Why HTML 5?

Basically text is the primary native content in web browsers. We need plug-ins for audio, video, etc. The time has come to think beyond text in browsers. We need native multimedia inside the browsers. Now we have enough horse power(cpu,memory,io) in the end nodes(pc,laptop,smart phones,other devices) + broadband to push bits and more importantly enough content in the cloud. No reason for NOT-TO-THINK of native multimedia in browsers.

Apple & Google engineers are the HTML 5 spec authors in W3C. I am sure they will get it correct(along with the community). It may take some time. HTML 5 is already available in browsers(Safari).

By end of this decade, HTML 5 will/should be ubiquitous.

[2] Why JavaScript?
"dynamic web"

Netscape realized from the beginning about the importance of programing language for browsers. It came out with Javascript. There are many criticisms about this language. But the fact is that JavaScript succeeded while Java failed(miserably) in the browser environment. JavaScript is not going to go away. It's the bridge between Web 1.0 & Web 2.0. We need more of AJAX. Its already a core component in web and replacing is not an easy task.

If you have any doubt, ask yourself why Google built a new JavaScript engine called "V8". The tools are not good enough and language needs to be simplified. It's safe to say that this is the only language today that touches not millions but billions of people on the web!

It's a double edge sword and be careful. Do yourself a favor- study the language before coding it.

[3]Why PHP?
"speed"

My heart says, why don't you say Java/JSP? But my brain says, you can't! The reason is that the 3-tier web architecture(web-app-db layer) is changing/collapsing. The high performance web sites are moving towards a single web layer backed by memcached for storage. It's for speed, scale and performance.

Apache Web Server + PHP = Good Match. Jetty can come close. But Apache+PHP model is proven and has a very big community.

If you are like me from Java land, excuse yourself to buy a PHP book. No harm. PHP is a key web component.

[4] Why memcached?
"performance"

Memcached is either deployed on top of databases OR parallel to the databases. It doesn't matter whether it's NOSQL or SQL, web applications need performance. It can't go to disk for every request. The cost of memory is going down and it makes (perfect) sense to deploy more memcached servers attached directly to Apache-PHP engine at the front. Just check how many memcached servers are running in Facebook!

[5] Why Objective-C?
"Apple"

It's simple. Just take a look at the earnings or cash balance, if you (still)have question about the success of Apple products. Objective-C is the native programing language for Mac-OS. You need to know this language for any serious work on top of Apple products.

Objective-C has a bit of history and its for another blog.

[6] Why Android?
"Apple"

Google can't do 'china' with mobile computing. (in/out game) Apple success in the devices will put huge pressure on them to start owning end nodes- desktop os, browser and mobile. Android should be a key component for Google and for rest of the industry. I do expect to see many Android devices(not just smart phones) for consumers. The good news here is that it's based on open standards- Java, SQL and Linux.

Summary:
As I said, there are many languages/frameworks that are important for web computing. IMO, these 6 are the primary technologies that will shape/influence the next generation web. (if not already)

Long Live Web!

Cloud Storage API(s)

2010-02-28T18:42:00.000-08:00

I am not sure whether we should call this as innovation or insanity!

There are 13 different cloud storage API's in the market today. Here is the list and you can click on each one of them for the details.

Amazon S3
Nirvanix
SNIA-CDMI
AT&T
Simple Cloud
Cloud Loop
Iron Mountain
Rack Space
Box.Net
JClouds
Google DataStore
Microsoft Azure
EMC Atmos
Para Scale & Zetta: Not sure whether they also have proprietary API

I don't know if I missed any thing!

I am also not including any key-value pair storage products here. There is an effort behind each one of them and simply can't be ignored. The cloud storage(exposing storage over HTTP) is real. We need a standard.

App Cloud Triangle

2010-02-19T20:25:00.000-08:00

We all know that how important is the developer community in the computer industry. An example: Click here to see the famous video of Steve Ballmer, shouting developers,developers,...

In the last 2 decades, companies like IBM, Borland, Apple, Microsoft, Sun and later open source foundations like Apache was driving the dev community.(mainframes, client/server & web)

Now the landscape is changing again! This time it's cloud. If you have any question about the success of cloud,just take a look at RightScale website. It says as of today, launched more than 900,000 cloud servers within short period of time! Today complete web platforms are built exclusively on cloud w/o internal data-centers!

So, the question is who is going to drive the web developer community in the cloud? The answer is whoever going to be the force behind the application ecosystem in the cloud. It may change in the future but now, I see that the following are the 3 main players going to be driving the developer community in the cloud.

What is Scala?

2010-02-05T06:55:00.000-08:00

This is yet another blog to demystify a technology. Scala is yet another experiment may/may not survive in the long run. I do see that there is some level of interest in this language. I was trying to find out what is it & what is not. More specifically, why it got the attention it deserves.

Ruby is Out. In comes Scala:
Twitter is using Scala now because it fell flat on the face with Ruby. (do a Google search if you want more explanation).

Ok, fine.

What is Scala?
It's Java!

What?
Yes, it gives you a different syntax but it compiles into Java byte-code (.class file) and runs on top of Java Virtual Machine.

Then, why can't I use Java itself?
I don't know. My head hurts if i start reading the list about Scala over Java. How can it be? Scala just produces Java class file. Sure, there may be some convenience factor in the syntax. There is no technical or business merit.

So, what is Scala? (technical-definition)
Scala = Object Oriented Programming + Functional Programming.
I don''t like it. This is like combining Ice Cream with Hot Coffee. If a technology/product combines 2 different discrete things then it has no merit. It's merely trying to justify it's existence.

Add to the confusion, i read about it's compatibility with C#. Good luck!

What is Scala one more time?
It's like driving to San Francisco from Sunnyvale. You can take Highway 101 or Highway 280. You have a choice but end result is same. It's SF!

Pl don't get me wrong- i may end up using Scala, sorry Java!

What is Hadoop?

2010-02-02T16:25:00.000-08:00

What is Hadoop? (plain-English)
Hadoop is a Java framework which brings compute to the storage.

What is Hadoop? (technical-definition)
Hadoop = HDFS + MapReduce.

What is HDFS?
HDFS=Hadoop Distributed File System.

You can think of this way-
it takes a single file, cuts into multiple chunks and distributes it across many computers. Its an layer on top of disk file system.

What is MapReduce?
Distributed processing framework, works on top of HDFS.

You can this of this way-
after HDFS distributes data to different computers, MapReduce sends programs to those computers to work on those data.

==================================
Here is the reason for this blog:

I recently attended "an introduction to Hadoop" talk and this event attracted closer to 200 people or so. Including the organizer of the event, everyone was surprised to see these many people coming to this event. I thought either Hadoop user-base is expanding OR still people are trying to understand what is Hadoop & how can i use it? It looks to me that still Hadoop is in early stage & the community is trying to learn it.

The presenter did a great job explaining the basics of Hadoop. Thank you. I cut the verbose out from the presentation and posting the core of the presentation below. I hope now you should be able to understand the basics of Hadoop.

===================================

Cloud vs SOA

2010-01-30T07:57:00.000-08:00

What is Cloud Computing?
Customers to Vendors: You integrate Your products and give me a bundle to create a service.

What is SOA?
Vendors to Customers: Here is all my point products exposed as services(API) and You integrate my products to create Your service.

Summary:
It's the question of who is doing integration! The basis for web-services technologies are all about integration and is the reason it exists in both buzzword.

Any one wants to disagree?

"Big Vacuum"

2010-01-27T13:54:00.000-08:00

Today Oracle closes the Sun deal and "sunw/java" is history today. As a former Sun employee, i describe Sun as "brain power doing good things for last 3 decades".

Sure, many tech companies has brain power. Then many non-profit like Apache is doing good things. The unique thing about Sun is "both".

Here is some examples-
[1] Open workstations
[2] Solaris
[3] NFS
[4] Java
[5] ZFS

Sun changed the computing for-ever. Good bye independent Sun.

Summary:
A big vacuum is created in the computing industry today.

Top 10 Lessons- Apple Experience

2009-12-31T15:29:00.000-08:00

I came across an interesting presentation by Bill Fernandez, employee #4 of Apple. He highlights the following top 10 lessons that he learned at Apple.

1 Make great products
2 Make products you love
3 Serve your users
4 Most people don’t get it
5 Hire the best
6 You must design, not merely build
7 Achieving simplicity is hard
8 Know your craft
9 The real goal is empowerment
10 Get it right before you ship

This is a great presentation. If you click on the link above, you will find the PDF at the end of the page. You need to download first on to your computer before opening it.

I hope my last blog in this decade is useful to you! Happy New Year 2010.

Message Queue & Real-Time Web

2009-11-27T20:18:00.000-08:00

This tittle may look old/odd for some people and may look very techie for some people but if you want to know about the secret-sauce behind Twitter or better yet, if you want to know about the next gen web technology(aka real-time web), then you may want to read this post.

Message Queue is not new. When did Tibco go public? In the enterprise world, specifically in java-land, IBM MQ & Tibco MQ are very well known products. JMS provided a thin wrapper to connect MQ products to J2EE App Servers in late 90's. The combination of JMS API + MQ product worked fine for last 10 years or so. Remember, MQ products were working fine even before JMS!

Then came SOA & followed by bunch of alphabet soups. ESP, SOA BUS, Internet BUS and etc which basically had NO meaning at all...The underlying architecture is the same. Some more connectors...that's it.

This should give you a good overview of MQ. Also, you may think that MQ is a solved problem. The question is that why the hell Twitter went & built it's own MQ? First it built a version using Ruby and failed. The 2nd version runs on JVM w/ Scala.

Are you puzzled now?
[1] Is Twitter folks are naive?
or
[2] Is there a problem with current MQ products?

Simple answer is "no" to both! Then why the heck Twitter built a new MQ? Is too much VC $ sitting in the bank? There is a technical reason!

Let me tell you, Twitter folks are pretty smart. The exiting MQ products are bulky, expensive and complex to cluster them for scale & reliability. Simply it's an overkill for web applications. On top of it, there is no guarantee that these products which are primarily designed to run inside the firewall can work on internet. These MQ products are good for enterprise scale! I am sure that these guys looked around and found NOTHING for web apps. So, they built using a technology invented 30mins back(Ruby) and Garbage Collection didn't work well. Then they switched to JVM but not Java. I very much hope that 2.0 of Twitter MQ works fine for them. (I wish they should have taken 100% Java approach for building MQ)

Ok, good. The story looks good so far. Why I am ranting about all these?

The reason is that recently I was looking for a light weight MQ with HTTP/REST interface built using stable Java platform and found NOTHING! Yes, NOTHING. The closest i found was Apache ActiveMQ but it has it's own bucket full of problems.(if you are interested, look at my questions in the users archive) For infrastructure products, I don't trust if it's build using some newer technologies with no mileage. I am aware of Rabbit MQ and all...I don't want to commit the same mistake Twitter folks have done!

Well, now you may ask why MQ is important for next gen web technology? The answer is "real time". Twitter started as a CMS architecture but they changed it to message-oriented async architecture for real time update & scale. Writing app directly talking to DB will fall flat in the face, if you want to move to real-time update with millions of transactions or users!

Twitter is just the start. Now you can see that next gen web technology misses a key infrastructure product! If you are a Java shop, you have some options. But for others, it's a question! OR build one like Twitter if you still have VC $ left in the bank!

I couldn't able to find a stable REST based MQ written in Java. If you know one, pl tell me. [Hint: If any one can make AWS SQS in a box, you have a business!]

NAS with E = NASE

2009-10-14T09:42:00.000-07:00

What is NASE?
It's a storage system for Smart Grid- "Network Attached Storage for Energy"

Note:I confess that I didn't invent this acronym. I read some where in the web and got interested.

I am working in the cloud storage for last 3 years and understood the market potential of mapping web layer on top of storage. The cloud storage enables the cut-through communication for any web tiers, all the way from browsers to talk to storage systems.

Similarly, NASE may do the same for Smart Grid. Why do I think so? If you look at the diagram below(click on it to see it clearly) illustrating the information sharing across various players & components, you will see the complexity of the Smart Grid and the need for a new storage system.

What is the information sharing challenge in Smart Grid?
The current electricity is one-way communication. The very basic of Smart Grid is to enable 2-way communication. So we can't simply map this Smart Grid information sharing on top of the current producer-consumer storage systems because the current storage is designed for 1-way communication. Simply, Smart Grid will demand producer/consumer - consumer/producer storage systems.

So, What is NASE?
All I can say now is that it's no longer about simply moving the bits in one direction but in 2 directions with "intelligence" embedded in it.

VC Investment Around USA

2009-09-16T10:24:00.000-07:00

The picture (click on it) is from a report by 'National Venture Capital Association' about the distribution of VC $ across the nation.

We all know that Silicon Valley is #1 now but the question is about the future.

The high cost of doing business in bayarea, increasing competition from other regions and remote work using broadband are some of the factors that will challenge silicon valley in the next decade.

Pl click on the image to get the full view.

Browser as Desktop

2009-08-14T13:07:00.001-07:00

I was thinking about this (old) topic for a while and finally got a chance to write about it.

This is not a new topic. It was discussed in late 90's. We even discussed about Yahoo as desktop. We all moved fwd and not much discussion in recent times about it. IMO, the time has come to think (seriously) about this topic again.

Why now?
[1] Web is ubiquitous
[2] cloud computing

Ok. Why desktop as the browser?
The common man usage of computer today is changed upside down-
[a] Primary use: Web( Browser, Email client)
[b] Secondary use: Local applications like office, photo/video editing software.

But today's deskop OS(Windows, Mac) is designed for [b] and [a] is constrained with today's browsers.(IE, FireFox, Safari)

What is the constraint?
Today's browser enables only 1/4th of full potential of web. The reason is that it can only do HTTP Get and HTTP Post.(other HTTP methods are not implemented) Then we need plug-ins like Adobe Flash, JavaScript to get richness. (audio, video, 3D)

This is a broken model at the client side to get the full experience of web! We don't have the full HTTP browser, No web push, No richness, No offline access, No storage, Less secure, etc...

It's a conflict usage model from HIE(Human Interface Engineering) perspective. In fact, I would argue that today's desktop is fundamentally broken for web usage.

The current desktop OS(Mac & Windows) is designed in 80's with focus on running local applications. Now we are in 2009 and need to think about making browser as the new X-Window system.

What is "browser as desktop"? How do we design it?
Here are some of my thoughts and I don't say that this list is accurate / complete but as a start.

Step-0: Login
The user should be able to choose a list of cloud providers like Google, MSN, including local login and login with credentials. Let's say, we choose Google.

Step-1: Web Icons
After my Google login, what I see in the desktop is set of "web icons" that comes from my Google bookmark. The examples of web icons are Gmail, Google calender, Google maps, Google docs, Facebook, Twitter, etc...It's basically my daily use of web bookmarks on the desktop.
I click on them to access it.

Step-2: Local Desktop
I have another desktop as local and can switch to it any time for using lcoal apps like office tools, photo/video editing sw, etc....

Step-3: X-Window System
Browser is the new X-Window system and it's boots with OS. We get rich experience, access to local storage for disconnected web and "web push" from the back end cloud provider for subscriptions.

Step-4: Plug-ins
I don't have to worry about plug-ins and their incompatibility.

Step-5: Security.
I can create a VPN with my cloud provider to create a specialized channel for my secure access to banks, 401(k) accounts, for any e-commerce transaction where I have to put my credit card or other sensitive information. (cloud providers can charge for it)

Step-6:Mobile desktop
I can switch my desktop easily between various devices and also carry with me where ever I go...

Summary:
Basically browser is the new X-Window system and runs native with OS with web icons on the desktop.

The question here is that who can/will build such an OS? Google is top on the list followed by Microsoft and Apple. Who knows, a startup can also do it if a strong technical founding team gets a good VC. It's not impossible but need resource & time. This is my dream to see a Web OS.

Real time Video Over Web (VoW)

2009-06-25T17:39:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting space which I was tracking since 2000. I wanted to blog about it but some how couldn't able to find that time to write it...The reason that now I am blogging is because of the T20 worldcup cricket match, which just concluded recently in UK. It may sound strange but there is a close relation between cricket & VoW!

I am going to write a little lengthy blog, so I am going to use my programing style to write it in Step by Step.

Step-1: CNET Tech Videos
As a passionate technologist, I watched most of the tech video clips in CNET. I particularly was interested in then my CEO Scott McNealy, Bill Gates, Carly Fiorina, Larry Ellision and few others because of their great ability to articulate technology/products and some times their sense of humor.

Problem: Short video clips instead of full videos.

Step-2: YouTube
Like everyone, it created my video interest beyond high-tech. The 2 notable one's are the cricket match highlights + some tamil movie clipings. I still had the full video problem.

Step-3: Proliferation of video sites and blogs
This solved my problem of full videos. But my expectation has gone up and was looking for real time videos.

Step-4: Paid Services
I haven't watched live cricket matches more than 10 years or so and as the VoW evolved, I was kind of curious to explore it on the web...found a website to watch the 2007 cricket worldcup matches. I payed $75 and quality was not bad. Indian cricket team exited in the early rounds and I lost interest in continue to watch. But my family watched some matches.

The end result was my $2k Sony Vaio laptop hard disk crashed for good. I then realised the "heat problems" with VoW.

So, paid service + loss of Sony Vaio laptop = lose of interest in real time VoW(again).

Step-5: YouTube & Desktop
We have a decent workstation at home and recently it is experiencing the heat problem + automatic shutdown. The reason is too many YouTube videos + other static videos. I think this may also crash any time. The thermal issue again...

Step-6:T20 Worldcup Cricket Final
My family is in India. Its a Sunday AM. My former colleague mentioned about a FREE Live website to watch cricket in Facebook. So, I turn on the desktop and watched the complete match live w/ NO PROBLEM!

At the end of the match, I said VoW = WOW!

The reason for my high quality, un-interupted no buffering live match experience was because of a P2P open source software called "SopCast". This time there was no commercial company and no fancy products for this live cricket video. I was really surprised and very satisfied.

But, still the heat problem is there in the client side desktop. I can see the fast spinning of fan and I wouldn't watch this match live on my personal MacBook!

Summary:
As you can see, the reason for my interest was mostly as a consumer of video but of course some technical interest too. IMO, at least after watching the cricket match live w/ no problem, real time VoW is reality. Most of the key issues of network, streaming, presentation and storage is solved. Or at least it looks like it works reasonably well w/o major issues.

They key issue is the heat/thermal problem in the desktops & laptops that need to be solved.

What do you guys think about the real time VoW & issues?

"India: A Glimpse of Past & Present"

2009-04-19T11:26:00.000-07:00

I came across a nice presentation about past & present of India. The author has done a nice job of putting together this presentation. I came across this presentation in B.V.J's LinkedIn profile.

Click here for the Google link and enjoy it. I am not sure who is the author of the presentation...It reminds me that don't forget to put your name & email id in the presentations.

Useful Spam

2009-04-17T16:29:00.000-07:00

I don't delete spam with out looking at the subject/name, just to make sure that there is no false positive. Today I saw a real spam message in my personal email with the subject as-

"Never Give up your dreams of!"

and it forced to me read the message. The message is,

"Believing in the Future is not delivered to the moments of crisis. It is to head up and continue their struggle in search of better times. It is not ever quit!"

I spend a minute to think about it and this is a useful spam!

State of Economy

2009-04-09T20:52:00.000-07:00

It was a very busy last few months for me and wanted to blog about few things...but never got time to write. I was reading a blog and came across:

"bad 2009 and a weak 2010 and maybe a better 2011".

I agree with the above statement. I remember all the talks about V, U shape recoveries after dot-com burst but it took 2001-2003(3 years) to recover it. That was just one sector crash. Now the complete economy is in toilet. The question is how long it will take? 3 years or 5 years or 10 years?

I am not an economist but I agree with the above statement- 3 years. IMO, it doesn't matter whether it's a single sector crash or multi-sector crash, recovery takes time and it's the same.

Why Twitter went down today?

2009-02-11T20:01:00.000-08:00

Today(Feb11, 09) Twitter went down in the middle of a busy work day. This outage was for an hr or so...The important thing is that just yesterday there was a news about Twitter planning to charge companies to generate revenue. Then it went down because of an infrastructure issue. How bad is the time...

As I blogged about earlier, the problem is that lot's of these web applications are built on top of 90's client/server infrastructure. Those infrastructure products can only scale on LAN but not on WAN.

This is like driving BMW on a dirt road. It doesn't matter how good is your car, your journey is going to be bad. ..

To answer my question, i don't think this outage is due to Twitter application problem. They are smart guys and know how to build scalable applications. It's because of an infrastructure component which failed them.

Web 3.0 = 3i (Innovation In Infrastructure)

2009-01-31T16:20:00.000-08:00

The times are tough and economy is in pretty bad shape. But it will come back strongly. It will take time. We have gone through it before. We have to make some adjustments. We can't just keep spending. We need to work hard. We have to focus on education. As our president says, it's not months for recovery and it may be years...before we see the light at the end of tunnel.

Just a reminder: dot com burst took 3 years for recovery. (2001-2003)

Every recession has brought out some new technologies/companies. I am sure this one won't be any difference...

In the high tech world, we saw the emergence of "Web 2.0" after the dot come burst. Now the web has become part of our life. It's even safe to say that web is the 4th thing (many)people needs to survive besides air, water and food.

So, the question is what are we going to see in the high tech world after this recession? IMO, we will see lot's of 3i. (Innovation in Infrastructure).

The majority of web systems are built using very old client/server technologies with so called 3 tier architectures. They are expensive, complex and hard to scale. The web2.0 folks are fixing this mess big time inside their infrastructure. Already there is a new wave in web architecture is going on... HTTP has become the de facto standard from browser to all the way back to data storage.

The question is how many of those great engineers are available? 10, 100 or 1000? So, how about the remaining 90% of IT shops to come to the Web20 style on-demand scale infrastructure? This gives opportunity to new companies to build great (simple,scalable,secure) web infrastructure products for the masses. We saw the emergence of infrastructure companies like Juniper Networks in the Web 1.0 and will see lots of it again in Web 3.0.

Again in my opinion, Web 3.0 is not about semantic web OR mobile web. Those are already here and is working. It's about 3i.

Happy New Year 2009

2009-01-01T11:25:00.000-08:00

I wish you all a very happy new year- 2009.

Uday.

Ubuntu & Firefox Resize Buttons

2008-12-20T11:24:00.000-08:00

If you are facing the "loss of resize buttons" on FireFox 3.x on Ubuntu 8.x and here is the solution to fix this problem:

Go to System/Preferences/Appearance and select the "Visual Effects" tab. Then choose the option "None-Provides a Simple Desktop Environment with out any effects" and it will solve your problem.

I had this problem and the above solution fixed it. I also read about executing the following cmd in terminal window but never tried...
"metacity --replace" &
"compiz --replace".

Hope this helps.

Good bye SQL

2008-12-15T16:42:00.001-08:00

The SQL, the language behind data bases access is one of the widely used languages in last 20 years or so in the computer history. A great language and played a major role in both client/server systems and Web 1.0 systems. It became part of the infrastructure to provide the "state" to the "statless" http protocol in the web 1.0 systems.

Now, the data scalability requirements for web scale computing has gone beyond data base capabilities and SQL is not always needed to built the modern systems. Also, the data is accessed through "HTTP" it self and it unifies the system from entry to end inside the datacenters.

It's the first time, i am seeing that some very big web scale systems are built with out SQL. Also, i am started hearing that even some wall street/financial companies are starting to use just file systems to store & retrieve data using technologies like ZFS. So, here also in side an enterprise environment, SQL is starting to loose it's value.

The technologies like "Object Databases" were try to kill RDBMS/SQL but failed. But now SQL is "slowly" starting to loose it's importance as it's not able to meet "web scale" computing requirements. There are already web systems built to serve millions of web pages on a daily basis w/o SQL.

Personally, I like SQL and used SQL to built systems. But time has come to say "Good Bye".

Arista Networks - Cloud Networking Startup

2008-10-23T07:37:00.000-07:00

If you missed the big news today about the new cloud networksing startup Arista Networks started by Sun's co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim & former Cisco executive Jayshree Ullal, here is it..
in GigaOm.

I will share my thoughts little later on here....

Why to Start a Startup in Bad Economy?

2008-10-18T16:58:00.000-07:00

There are so many negative blogger's out there who are consistently blogging about the bad economy and how it will impact high tech ecosystem in silicon valley. I don't reach much in to it... at least I can't do any thing about economy but i can do, what i can do best!

I regularly read Paul Graham's blog and this one is very good. It's about "why to start a statup in a bad economy?" Click here to read it...

High tech & innovation is the solution to get out of current mess.

Is IT of the Future Firmly Rooted in the 'Cloud'?

2008-09-28T19:40:00.000-07:00

This is NOT my title. Here is an article, which talks about Cloud Computing & Enterprise IT-
Is IT of the Future Firmly Rooted in the 'Cloud'?

Cloud Computing & ISP

2008-09-24T20:40:00.000-07:00

In my earlier blog, i talked about the impact of cloud computing on the sw/hw/network infrastructure and need for a new architecture. I got lot's of good feedback for it...

This one is about the cloud computing impact on ISP's.

I recently went to my favorite Peet's in Cupertino and after i made the payment for coffee, i got a small paper. As usual I told them that no need for receipt. But cashier told me, "no sir, it's for your 2 hr free internet -password for wifi". It was handy even though i used it for 15mins before my friend came...Easy to get connected.

Then, few days back on the gym i was watching TV. If i remember correctly, I think I saw the ATT Internet advertisement and it talked about how their internet service is "mobile". You can use it anywhere... I really like it.

Then happened an interesting situation for me. My wife asked me to buy some school uniform from a speciality store in Saratoga and I left my office little earlier in the evening. Only after I drove out of the office campus, i realised that i need the exact address in Saratoga downturn. Even though, i been to several times, can't remember it. Then, I have to drive back to office campus and open my laptop in parking lot to use the wifi to find out the address.

The above incident brought the memories of ATT Internet advertisement & Free Peet's internet.

Now, I am now wondering why should I pay close to $45.00/month for Comcast which offers internet only to my home? Why can't i take my internet with me?

The cloud applications are now part of our life - both from personal(consumer) perspective & business(employee) perspective. The ISP has to go mobile. It can't be just physically attached to a place.

I am one of the early customers of cable- @Home, ATT and Comcast. I am now seriously wondering why can't subscribe to some thing like ATT so that i can be connected all the time!

Cloud Computing & Infrastructure Impact

2008-09-03T15:50:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, i wrote a blog entry. It was a busy summer with vacation, back-to-school, new 1.0 product releases,etc... Hopefully, I should be able to write regularly here onwards, as the trees started shedding leaves!

I was thinking hard about "CC" & II(cloud computing & infrastructure impact) in the summer and thought of sharing some of my experiences!

There is no better time than today to blog about it, as we all just started using the Google's new browser.

Why Chrome? What is the II of CC? Is there any fundamental architecture changes needed? What about security? What about reliability?

There are so many questions... IMO, Cloud Computing does have great impact on the old infrastructure.

The simple reason is that Web1.0 was built on "Client/Server" architecture with a browser front end. It was the same client/server infrastructure which was built 20 years back and modified to spit out HTML/HTTP to the browsers. This thin web layer created ton's of patches & proprietary agents in the under lying infrastructure. It's funny that even the widely-used web server got the name from " a patchy" server to NCSA HTTPD. (Apache)

In the current generation, whether you call it as Web 2.0 or Cloud Computing or what ever buzz word, you like...these patches & proprietary agents are replaced with "true" web scale computing. For example OpenID.

So, it's NO MORE just HTML/HTTP to the browsers. It's more than that...it's about any-type of applications talking to any-type of applications...mobile interface to applications...SLA over web is becoming critical...transaction-oriented business applications in addition to the consumer apps...SaaS is becoming mainstream...2 way web with blogs & wiki's...service oriented communications....platform as service...scale, security & reliability becomes critical...the list goes on & on.

The old client/server infrastructure is getting replaced by the new real web infrastructure and is laying foundation for the next 10 years of Cloud Computing.

It's an interesting time in the web infrastructure space, to support the evolving cloud computing.

Vern Watts - IMS Inventor

2008-06-03T13:40:00.001-07:00

It is very inspiring to read about, Vern Watts the inventor of IMS database! Click here to read about him.

He invented this IMS database in 1950's and worked for IBM nearly 50 years.

and still he is keep going...He is a Chief Architect in a Database Startup in Menlo Park. It's called Scale DB. I am hoping to meet with him one day...

Why Prototype is important in High Tech?

2008-05-25T16:57:00.000-07:00

In the high tech industry, whether it's server or storage or network, it's important to build a prototype to validate a theory.

Why?
"To STOP waving hands".

Some times, experienced senior people(including me) in the industry, get carried away by not focusing on to build a simple demo first to prove the theory.

IMO, "TPC"(Technology-Product-Customer) model has great probability for success.
First create Technology - Innovation, it needs domain expertise.
Second build Product based on your Technology - Execution
Finally sell your product to your Customers - Success!, if your product makes $.

So, a prototype not just validates T & P and also can get a great feedback from the potential customers! In fact, it can get you a binary answer- worth or not to pursue an idea!

Silicon Valley & BuzzWord

2008-03-28T15:30:00.000-07:00

The Silicon Valley & buzzwords are like 2 rails in the rail road- inseparable! It keeps the train(business) running... & there is a reason to it.

The buzzword brings energy & enthusiasm. Then, this creates the bubble. The bubble brings the opportunity. The opportunity brings $ home!

This cycle repeats again & again! Valley never tired of creating this cycle...

If you think, Web2.0, Web3.0 or SaaS is the latest buzzword, sorry, you are 6 months outdated. The new buzzword is "Cloud Computing".

Rest of nation & rest of the world is now worried so much about the US economic recession, but NOT Valley. Unlike last time, where valley got hit badly, this time the energy level seems to be very high even in the midst of this recession- thanks to Cloud Computing!

Here are some pointers, if you are interested in learn more about Cloud Computing:
SDForum Demo Event, click here.
Fat east in Czech Republic, Netbeans & Systinet Founder(Roman Stanek) is also on to Cloud Computing for his 3rd startup. Click here & here, for details.

Welcome Cloud Computing!

SaaSCon 2008

2008-03-24T10:56:00.001-07:00

I am attending SaaSCon 2008 conference here in Santa Clara, CA. If you are attending this event and want to let you know that , I am open for networking... drop me an email or make a comment here.

Update:
I attended this event and it was a successful conference. I see a significant uptake in no of attendees, vendors and customer participation in the conference. Unlike typical tech conferences focusing on vendors, this was mostly towards the customers of SaaS.

Many CIO's participated in the conference and everyone of them confirmed that SaaS is the future for their IT needs. Infact one CIO mentioned that it was all internal apps in 2002 to all external(SaaS) apps now in 2008.

There is a big shift happening inside the enterprise, by moving the non-core apps to SaaS. There were even talk about SaaS1.0, SaaS2.0 and cloud computing.

All I can say is that now even transaction oriented apps are evolving in Web on top of the consumer focused apps. Web is the next Radio for humans!

"Netscape"- The name never dies!

2008-02-29T10:44:00.000-08:00

I was recently installing a software product and noticed that this product installs a low level library called "Netscape Portable Runtime". It immediately strike me that the 'Netscape' name is NEVER going to die!

Netscape was such a powerful company, which brought some fundamental technologies to the web like SSL, commercialization of LDAP, scalable webserver, etc...It's legacy still carries forward in many products like mozilla and wikipedia even claims that java uses Netscape Portable Rutime.

I worked in Netscape as a consultant and my office was in one of the Netscape buildings in Middlefield Road in Mountain View. It was an excellent experience and my email id used to be "subbara at-sign netscape dot com". Time has gone but memories are still fresh...

So, the Netscape name might have disappeared from the consumers perspective but not in the web products that they are using it...

Long live Netscape name!

Is 2009 = 2001?

2008-02-12T14:34:00.000-08:00

I just saw this blog entry from Om Malik himself about,
Cisco Layoffs In The Offing?
& wondering whether 2009 is going to be 2001 again for tech?

Cisco was first to see the tech recession back in dot com crash and did the layoff of 8500 people.

As the next one is around the corner, i was wondering for some time about how Cisco will react to it ... Then here comes the rumor of Cisco layoff!

This year is election year and won't expect a full blown recession like 2000. But comes 2009, are we going to see the 2001 again?

The big "R" word & Tech!

2008-02-03T15:47:00.000-08:00

The fear & pain of last "dot com bubble" recession is still fresh in people's mind and now this "sub prime mortgage crisis" is creating yet another recession in this decade!

Wow, 2 recession in a decade! It's too bad...

What is the difference between these 2 recessions? 1st one is about the job and 2nd/current one is about home. So, obviously the 2nd one is going to be more painful than the previous one...

I was wondering about what this means to the bayarea tech world? It's going to have an effect but how much is not clear yet... IMO, it will have minimal impact on the cloud computing.... Many enterprises may accelerate off shoring some of the internal IT into Cloud Computing. Bayarea tech economy may not be affected much, but never know...

I recently attended a couple of legal seminars about incorporating companies and now the buzz is that incorporate the startups in places like "Cayman Islands" so that startups has many options for exits. (Bombay stock Exchange, Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Shanghai or Nasdaq)

This "offshoring the incorporation" is very interesting. It used to be just Delaware, C-Corp and it looks like, not anymore!

The bottom line is that tech will suffer, cloud computing may not get affected much, bayarea may be ok and there will be a global tech impact.

Happy New Year-2008

2007-12-31T17:09:00.000-08:00

I wish all you a very happy and prosperous new year-2008. I look back 07, it started with lot's of promise and hope, ending with the same promise & hope. Good bye'07 and welcome '08.

My (tech) Predictions for '08

2007-12-22T21:05:00.000-08:00

This is the time of the year, we see lot's of tech predictions like this, this... I thought i can contribute some things for my share! In general, trying to predict in the tech industry is hard...because of so many factors like economy,etc..

My predictions are about the web and here is the list.

PC Web

I think the "semantic web" will start play some role here to make few things better, few things easier and even can monetize few things...Some people call this as Web3.0 but in general, this will start enable machine learning and machine to machine communication richer.

Mobile Web

Before i predict for '08, i would like to take a look at what happened in 07. "Mobile Web failed Jobs & iPhone" in 07. Yes, i too had great expectation of fwd thinking web architecture in mobile instead of client/server model. With the expected iPhone SDK from Apple in Feb'08, it's clear that for some more time, its going to be the native apps that's going to rule the mobile web. Sorry, the browser based apps in mobile have technical + human constraints!

Device Web

This is very interesting web. Apple's iPod, Skype Phones, Amazon's Kindle are some examples of devices getting connected to the web. Traditionally these devices were stand alone and boring ones...Let's see what other devices gets connected to web in next few years.

Enterprise Web

It's the SaaS. Slowly but steadily things are moving out of the firewall inside the enterprise in to the cloud computing. Did i say NetSuite had a good IPO recently?

I wish you all a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year-08!

Startups & Innovating the Problem!

2007-11-30T15:08:00.000-08:00

In general, i like to keep all my blog entries +ve and occasionally, i violate this policy. Here is one of those violations :-(

We all know that how hard it takes to make a startup, successful. There are many reasons for failure- people issues, technology issues, product development, market readiness, finance, sales, etc...

IMO, one of the core reason is, lack of clear 'definition of problem'. It should be very clear like these companies, when they got started:
Microsoft: Desktop OS
Sun: Workstation
Oracle: database
Google: search
ebay: auction
Amazon:books
YouTube: online video
Facebook: social networks

So, if you look back in the above list for last 25+ years, one thing it remained the same is the crisp definition of problem for successful companies.

The reason, i am blogging is that many times, i get very surprised when someone takes 30mins to "explain" about the problem that they are solving! I think this is where the lack of domain expertise comes into play...and this leads to the innovating the problem instead of innovating the solution. These type of companies goes for a spin, wastes time & money, eventually gets folded down... In the last few years, i tracked few companies and put them in to 2 buckets: innovator of solution & innovator of problem.

The solution innovators either succeeded or in a path to succeed and innovator of problem either folded down or on their path...

So, startups should be innovating the solution to solve the customers problem instead of otherwise... This is one of the thing that i learned in last few years and if you are looking to join a startup, find out the problem definition first!

Indian Startup: CitiPals.com

2007-11-27T16:04:00.000-08:00

I recently came across a startup called Citipals.com, founded by Ashish Baldua (ex-Yahoo Executive). It provides the "MovieMatch" for Indian movies.(basically Flixter of Indian movies)

They also have a Facebook App,
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=5173393793

Citipals service should be interesting to the Indians and wishing them all the best. I hope Ashish & team will expand to other cities soon and a mobile interface should be a nice feature addition...

There is a PR here.

Happy Deepavali

2007-11-08T11:39:00.001-08:00

I wish you a very happy Deepavali. (Indian festival of lights).

Google Maps of INDIA

2007-10-26T20:34:00.000-07:00

I was searching to get a direction for a temple in the state of Kerala and came across this Indian map website:
http://www.mapmyindia.com

It's not as user friendly as Google maps but quite handy to get some info... You have to spend some time to understand, how it works! For any one traveling to India, you can use this map to get an idea of your location.

I am on Facebook!

2007-09-30T20:19:00.000-07:00

I am using LinkedIn for last 2+ years and also pay $20/month for the advanced features. Now i am also starting to use Facebook.

I don't think i can keep myself updated in both networks and sometime in the (near) future, may have to focus on only one... Right now, i have lot's of contacts in LinkedIn and less contacts in Facebook.

For now, i see there is a value in keep using (& paying?) LinkedIn and revisit some time in the future to discontinue one....

Is the Facebook is the Google of SN? It looks like...

-Uday.

[Gartner] Open Source Is the Big Disruptor

2007-09-24T20:26:00.000-07:00

Here is the news article...w/ big numbers!

Success of COS model!

2007-09-17T12:35:00.001-07:00

Earlier, i blogged about COS (Commercial Open Source) here...
Today's news about Yahoo buying Zimbra validates it...for $350M!

Storage Developer Conference '07

2007-09-16T19:02:00.001-07:00

I attended this conference for first time here in San Jose and it was a great experience. (i like the venue)

Key take away from this conference are:

move towards application(i call this as AOS- Application Oriented Storage)
move towards general purpose hardware & cheap hardware
move towards open standards
move towards open source (Aperi is an example)
raise of Ethernet and slow death of Fibre Channel?
It looks like FCoE is the bridge for move towards ether?
XML/Webservice for management

So, it looks like a big shift is starting in the storage world!

Heart WALK, Cupertino.

2007-09-09T20:40:00.000-07:00

American Heart Association is conducting a WALK for Heart. For more details:
http://heartwalk.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=215896

Its starts in De Anza College, Cupertino. The date is Sep16th, 8:30am.

I am attending this walk and if you are in bayarea, may want to consider this...good social cause.

2 XML startup exit today...

2007-09-06T14:20:00.000-07:00

I was following the SOA startup exits last year and it kind of became boring, after seeing the numbers...today came across 2 more in the same category with focus just on XML:

[1] LSI buys Tarari, a network security-control co., for $85M
The blog has all the details...
Input =$42.8 & Output =$85M, you do the math.

[2]Citrix buys XML security firm QuickTree
not sure about input & output here...

Exit is an exit and better than folding it up...

Trip to Detroit

2007-08-31T13:33:00.000-07:00

I spend last week(Aug 20th week) in Detroit(South Field) for a business meeting. This is my 1st trip to Detroit. I like the area and lot's of green. Very nice people with clean air. I stayed in Town Center and its a very nice place.

I was really surprised to see the quality of infrastructure- poor roads, stagnant waters, broken homes?, etc... The fall of auto industry & poor economy is very visible. A friend of mine is living there for a while and he was telling me that even 10years back, place looked good. They are also thinking of moving out of the place...even though they like it very much! The local newspapers talks about the housing industry in details, everyday....the foreclosures!

Let's hope that the Detroit auto industry comes back and brings out eco-friendly cars with focus on MPG.

Xensource is bought for $500M.

2007-08-15T17:19:00.000-07:00

Earlier in one of my post, I mentioned about the importance of COS(Commercial Open Source) model and here goes a validation for it:

"We prefer more freeware and open source," said Boone, CEO of AppCentral Technologies, in San Francisco.
you can find more information about this deal, here & here.

This is just beginning of end of the closed source software products.

Barcamp, Palo Alto

2007-08-09T16:48:00.000-07:00

If you are in the valley during Aug18-19, you may want to check out:
http://www.barcamp.org/BarCampBlock

I am planning to attend this event, though i may not be spending all 2 days. (travel + family)

Andy Bechtolsheim about Mobile Web.

2007-08-06T15:54:00.000-07:00

Here is a great quote:
"Bechtolsheim predicted that mobile wireless access will have a major impact in the future of the Internet, untethering users from service providers".

For more information, read the zdnet blog here:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=5844

This is from the Stanford's AlwaysOn Summit.

The mobile web is getting pretty interesting and will have a huge impact on the application architectures in the data centers.

Commercial Open Source (COS)

2007-07-17T13:55:00.000-07:00

We all very well know the impact of open source software and how it became mainstream in the industry. The success of open source is very clear from the fact that only few closed source products are able to survive and move forward...Windows OS, Weblogic App Server, Oracle DB.

But there are lot's of challenge for the open source software to sustain in the long run if it doesn't have the resources or developer community. [i agree that there is no free lunch and developers can't be working for ever for free in the late evenings & week ends...it's from my own personal open source experience.]

I think, the next wave of open source products will follow the "COS"(Commercial Open Source) model. If open source is successful but if it needs resources, where does it will come from? It will come from the commercial software vendors. The latest success in the COS space are Zimbra & MuleSource.

Let's first take a look at Zimbra: It competes with Microsoft exchange server and still it succeeds, how? Simply it follows a COS model using open stds.

Then MuleSource: There are many opensource ESB's and half a dozen ESB products from big vendors. But still MuleSource has an impressive list of customers. How? Quality product + COS model.

The latest addition to the party is Interface21(guys behind Spring Framework)

Long live COS!

iPhone & Mobile Web.

2007-07-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

There was enough reviews written about Apple's iPhone but still it won't be like checking it out in person. So I decided to go to one of the Apple Stores in bayarea(Valley Fair mall) on Saturday & check it out. I spend quality amount of time to check out all the features, including things like network settings.

My opinion is that Apple yet again proved that they are superior in the GUI design and consumer devices. This iPhone is a game changing mobile device and it makes easier to browse the web, SMS & emails.(i didn't bother much about voice or music, assumed it will be good) IMO, in the long run this device will have a huge impact on the mobile web. If you look at the way, we used the web, it was PC made it simpler to browse the web. Then came laptops. Now people are increasingly wants to connect to the web all the time. But the current device that we carry are NOT good for mobile web. So, here goes Apple iPhone which makes it easier. I classify something like this for browsing web:

Web 1.0 Browsing Device : PC
Web 2.0 Browsing Device : Laptopbs & other limited mobile devices
Web 3.0 Browsing Device : Apple iPhone + ?

Overall, it was a very positive experience for me. I would buy one. It's a good device.

Back from vacation.

2007-07-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

I took a 3 week vacation to go to India and just got back home. This time I noticed lot's of changes back in India. Lot's of new developments including constructions, roads and airport expansions in small cities. There is an economic boom going on currently and it's not just IT. I could see that textile and mechanical industries are also doing very well.

Overall country is "developing" itself very well and if current India is different from 90's then India in 2020 will be much different from today.

John Doerr on Global Warming.

2007-06-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

John Doerr's latest presentation on Global Warming is here in YouTube.
It's bit emotional also...

W3C: Mobile AJAX Workshop

2007-05-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

W3C & Open AJAX Alliance are co-sponsoring a workshop on Mobile AJAX and should be a good one to attend... Here is the details:
http://www.w3.org/2007/06/mobile-ajax/

Future of California high tech.

2007-05-23T13:53:00.000-07:00

A report in the Mercury News says future of California high tech will have serious problem because of, out flux of college graduates to other states!!!
Here is the report:
Report: California faces looming skills gap as college grads look elsewhere

hmm...it doesn't sound good for silicon valley.

Open ID Presentation

2007-04-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

Few months back, I mentioned about "Open ID" and here is a latest presentation, which gives more info about it...

-Uday.

Positive Experience with OpenOffice

2007-04-26T10:12:00.000-07:00

I recently started using OpenOffice 2.2 products and love it! If you are paying ton of money to buy the office products and you may want to give Open Office 2.2, a try...it's worth it. I strongly encourage you to try this FREE open source product.

It is significantly improved from the previous versions and have used previous 1.x versions, this is one is much, much better...

Great work by the Open Office community.

Call Center: Dial A Human

2007-04-24T17:07:00.000-07:00

I came across this interesting website, here.
This website gives hints about how to get to the customer service representative quickly... good info, saves time.

-Uday.

Happy Tamil New Year.

2007-04-14T19:24:00.000-07:00

Today(14April2007) is a Tamil New Year. I wish you all a very happy tamil new year. Tamil year also has 12 months and 1st month is called "Chiththirai". Wikipedia has more info on tamil calender...

[website] Moving to Colorado.

2007-04-06T13:50:00.000-07:00

In my previous blog, I mentioned about a MW article called "Has Silicon Valley lost it's edge" and I said "hasn't"...

I think the main competition to the valley is going to be within US itself rather than outside...Boston, Austin,Colorado & Seattle are going to challenge the Valley for sure, in near future.

One of my colleague asked me a question about Silicon Valley's future, while ago...
"Can Silicon Valley get dis-integrated?"

Technically with the wider adoption of broadband, importance of place is not significant and "remote work" works just fine. But still it's important!

I recently came across an interesting website in http://www.opencoffeeclub.org and it's about how to move from San Francisco to Colorado!!! Here it is,
http://moveittocolorado.info/

So, what my colleague casually asked me was indeed a serious question and competition is heating up for the SV. If SV doesn't fix it's problems, it's going to be challenging here for the business & living.

[news] Has Silicon Valley lost its edge?

2007-04-05T13:48:00.000-07:00

Marketwatch has an interesting news article called, "Has Silicon Valley lost its edge?"
My answer is, "it hasn't". One thing for sure is that competition everywhere for silicon valley now...

Web 2.0 ==Bug fixing of Web 1.0???

2007-04-03T10:03:00.000-07:00

I was very busy for last few months and couldn't able to blog... Now I think is the best time to talk about the "reality" of Web 2.0, as the buzz meter has gone down and reality is emerging...
Note: I don't read much in to the names like web 2.0...what ever, i am fine.

I look at the evolution of web like this:
Web 1.0: 1995-2005 (Origin)
Web 2.0: 2005-2010 (Intermediary)
Web 3.0:2010-2020 (2nd Generation)

We all know about web 1.0 and let's leave it there... If you look at Web 2.0, closely from a user perspective, it's bringing 'better experience' than Web 1.0.
How?
There are 2 enabling factors: "broadband everywhere" & "fat pc"(fast CPU + more memory).
If I look from an engineering perspective(bottom-up), Web 2.0 is fixing the Web 1.0 bugs and this is a natural thing...nothing unusual. In the software engineering, as soon as we release any 1.0 product, the next thing is to go in to "bug fixing" mode to release a Service Pack or 1.1. In fact, many times 1.1 is the actual software that customer will use it in production. 1.0 is for to play with or to understand the product...

Let's take a look at some examples to compare Web 1.0 & Web 2.0:
HTML static mail -- AJAX automatic refresh mail
Mapquest -- Google Maps
Groups -- Social Networks
& many others...

This doesn't mean that Web 2.0 is bad and in fact it's good.(when is fixing bugs are bad?) The bug fix also involves innovation and there are lot's of healthy innovation going on now...It's very good for the web industry.

So, what's next? Is it Web 3.0? I don't bother much about the names... It's going to be "mobile". Current web is build primarily for the PC/Browser interface and it will change. The 2nd generation is about extending/creating the interface to Mobile and it will bring lot's of challenges and opportunities.

IMO, "Mobile Web" is the next wave in the web and already many ground works are happening now, including the standards work.
Here is Bill Joy's forward looking presentation and its worth listening to it:
SIX WEB
Long live Web!

[Infoworld] Will Boston succeed in a Web 2.0 world?

2007-02-08T10:39:00.000-08:00

This news article in InfoWorld is interesting...It asks,
Will Boston succeed in a Web 2.0 world?

It got my attention because a colleague of mine recently asked me, whether Silicon Valley will get dis-integrated because of the high cost here?

-Uday.

Cricket on Frozen (swiss)Lake!

2007-02-02T11:12:00.000-08:00

The following 2 pictures, got my attention today:
here and here ...
The pictures of cricket played on a frozen lake in swiss!

I think one of the beneficiaries of the flat world is going to be the sports, Cricket. I see that game cricket is getting popular across many continents and won't be a long time to see, more action in the US also!

I love this sport and it would be interesting to see, who will lift the World Cup' 07, played in Caribbeans.

What is my ID on the Web?

2007-01-25T14:14:00.000-08:00

There is a problem in the web today...creating profiles again & again.

Do you forget your ID on a web site? Do you forgot a password on a website? Do you use the same password on more than one website?

Isn't it sounds like a familiar to all of us? STOP WORRYING ABOUT THIS!

The folks @ OpenID are doing a great job. Your ID is a URI. For example, it will be http://someID.someDOMAIN.com. Then you can use this ID everywhere, no need to create profiles in the websites that supports OpenID.

How can I create a OpenID profile? If you are an advanced user(aka geek), then you can setup yourself one...For normal users, there are many providers:
http://pip.verisignlabs.com/
http://www.myopenid.com/

If you see a website that accepts OpenID, like
http://www.zooomr.com/,
then you can use your OpenID that you created to log in to the website.

You can also control how much/what information you want to share with the web properties! Isn't cool? Yes.

Here is a 5 min Google video, that explains this process well.

SOA Facts

2007-01-12T13:28:00.000-08:00

I wanted blog something else, but end up mentioning SOA again :-(

i been referred this site recently...so one more SOA blog from me, hopefully the last one for this year!

If you are a supporter of SOA, don't visit, otherwise enjoy...
http://soafacts.com/

CES & Mac World

2007-01-09T21:07:00.000-08:00

I am trying to follow the 2 big tech events currently going on in Las Vegas & San Francisco and it's hard to follow everything...One is CES and the other one is Mac World!

I am planning to dig deep in to iPhone technical details and looks like an interesting product. Let's see, whether this can open up the mobile platform like PC platform for innovation. My 1st Apple product is iPod and it looks like my 2nd Apple product is going to be iPhone!!!

Then in CES, I found this is interesting quote ...
"By 2010, 20 homes networked together in a neighborhood will have more load across their network than the entire Internet did in 1995," he said. "This is what gets a networking person excited."
-John Chamber, CEO, Cisco Systems, Inc.

To me, this is a very strong statement and also reflects the strength of consumer market space. Let's see what type of acquisitions will Cisco make in the near future and see the market growth here...

Enjoy your CES & Mac World news in the websites and blogsphere.

Silicon Valley Winter

2007-01-08T11:53:00.000-08:00

I am living here in Silicon Valley for last several years and never seen this much "warm" during the winters! Friends/family members across the nation are saying the same thing...warmness!

Last year(2006) summer was very hot in bayarea...I remember the temperature crossing over 110 in some places...

The time has come for the humanity to seriously think about Global Warming! Some pointers for you:

So, you can understand why this blog is in red color.

Lets all work together in small possible ways, to solve this danger to our next generation.

Good bye 06; Welcome 07!

2006-12-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

I look back now, 2006 was a great year...valley seems to be back on its foot, lot's of activities here...if we have to take one thing from 06 to 07(from a tech perspective), it's the "Internet computing"! I think in 07, there will be lot more action inside the Internet cloud than 06. The network effect will continue to grow, more & more desktop apps, business apps, personal apps, storage, compute power will be pushed inside the cloud as a retail computing.

Let's welcome 07 and hoping that there won't be much problem with the US economy...

I wish you all a very happy & prosperous new year-2007.
-Uday.

A Tip for Printing Directions

2006-12-20T19:48:00.000-08:00

I just noticed in the mapquest.com that there is an advanced option,
"Avoid Seasonally-Closed Roads"
available... I am not sure how reliable this option is but may be worth checking this option...

Happy holidays and safe driving.

Survey: SOA = Most Hated Buzzword

2006-12-11T15:33:00.000-08:00

I don't want to sound too negative here and based
on a survey, SOA is the most hated buzzword by the IT folks. You can see the results here... ->

I mentioned in my earlier blog that the term SOA may loose value and it looks like it's loosing more quickly than expected???

Also note, where Web Service is in the list...

Let's not worry about these buzzwords, distributed computing is real, challenging & fun.

Infoworld: Software Trend for 2007

2006-12-07T12:41:00.000-08:00

This is the time of year, we will start to see lot's of predictions for next year about technology trends...from individuals to companies to big web properties.

The Infoworld one got my attention, click here.

Did you see "SaaS" in there and I agree with them. SaaS/On-Demand with "pay as you use" model is the future for the lot's of applications!

Did you also notice "SOA" at the bottom...the way to read the paragraph is,
"...several years running....still in its earliest stages of adoption...."
Even in 2010, there is a good possibility that we may continue to read like this...but as I said earlier, the underneath technologies like SOAP, REST, XML, WS are all will continue to make progress. Infact, they are making progress right now as we speak about them. It's only the buzzword "SOA" will loose it's value.

Happy Holiday & take care.

When will it end, the 2.0 craze?

2006-12-04T09:23:00.000-08:00

We all used to the buzz word "next generation" or "next gen" in technology to describe the new products and after Tim Reilly coined the term, "Web 2.0" & popularize it via his conference, now we see this 2.0 every where...It basically replaced "next generation" with "2.0", not just in tech/products but also for country names!

Here it is, India 2.0 , thanks to Mercury News.

BEA-SOA Survey Report

2006-11-27T16:06:00.000-08:00

In my previous post, I mentioned about the SOA survey conducted by BEA...Here is the report, if you are interested -> click here

Here is an quote from this report:
"Of the projects where SOA justification is impeding progress, over half indicated that lack of confidence in a big payoff was a factor."

I am sure this report will make some noise in the industry...

"BEA survey indicates CIOs struggle to justify SOA projects"

2006-11-27T13:45:00.000-08:00

Business departments may balk at funding requests, analyst says
11/21/2006 4:50:00 PM
by Danny Bradbury

Here is the link: click here.

This is a recent news article...I was just thinking of writing a blog about "Impact of SaaS on SOA" and came across this news article...no time to give my comments and will share more comments later...

right now, enjoy or be concerned about this news article...

SuperComputing '06

2006-11-21T13:44:00.000-08:00

I attended the Super Computing '06 conference in Tampa, Florida and it was a good conference. Unlike other surface level conference, this one is a very serious event for the HPC customers. Most of the big players in the industry were present in the conference and this conference is mainly focussed on the HPC space...There were lot's of discussion about data center problems like power,heat,space,etc...

I saw many Universities around the world(US,Japan,Korea & Europe) were present and lot's of new research projects going on in Grid computing & HPC space...There was even some talk about new programming languages like X10 for HPC applications. NORDUGRID is one such research project and there was also something about NDL(Network Description Language)...

I couldn't able to attend any of the presentations as I was busy with meeting our customers & presenting in booth. I understood that there was good presentations over there and check out the conference website for the details.

I was also surprised to see that some HPC customers are developing applications in Java and they want to see how to run Java applications in a Grid environment...It was surprising because these apps are traditionally written in Fortran,C,etc... Good to see that Java is making some in roads into HPC space...

Last but not least, Tampa is a wonderful place and it's in the inner coast...beautiful weather, beaches, nice downtown and you can find many good restaurants....Good place to visit and Orlando is only 2 hr drive from here. I took Continental Airlines and not sure whether i will fly again with them!!! I didn't find the service good and more over, i have to stay overnight in Houston, Texas as i missed my connecting flight to San Jose,California because of my flight from Tampa got delayed...

It was a great experience for me.

Happy Deepavali

2006-10-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

I wish you all a very happy Deepavali.

-Uday.

How is SaaS different?

2006-09-15T14:11:00.000-07:00

I can't explain better than this image, from an article at Sun site...

The title explains all about the rate of innovation & change requirements directly from users to product development team. NOTE: SaaS is selling directly to users instead of buyers.

Then look at the simplicity of the SaaS model! Doesn't simple things scale better also? What about the new feature requests & bug fixes? It used to be months & years...Now it's about days,weeks & even hrs to get things done.

Another SOA startup Exit = Infravio

2006-09-11T17:31:00.000-07:00

First congratulations to Infravio team to make it an exit. I think this company is in business for a while and survived the dot-com burst. Good job, guys.

I don't want to put this exit in either one of the categories like before(successful exit or not) for 2 reasons:

I was involved in the world's first repository based registry open source product development and Infravio was one of the commercial vendors that endorsed this concept. So, I like them.
My friend is involved in Infravio...

[NOTE:I don't have any personal interest what so ever with this company.]
So, I leave it to the readers to come to a conclusion!

As I said previously, here and here, one more gone. IMO, this basically leaves few(3?) 1st generation (successful) SOA startups in the market...I don't want to name them here as any one in the industry, will know it. These exits most probably may wrap the SOA startup show(for now). I don't know any "copy cats" & "me too's" popping up but who cares about them.

If you notice these 1st generation SOA startups, (in general)they are ALL very successful companies(don't just look for the exit numbers alone-timing may be one of the reasons). They have defined a space/technology, build "deployable" products, deployed to many customers, generated revenue and educated the space. Great Job!

Then, this leaves the question:
Is SOA space is over startups?
I don't think so!

As everyone know, SOA is an evolution, this thing may go on for next 10 years easily(if US economy NOT slows down, it it does, then more)& it will create many more opportunities...IMO, SOA may break down in to many concrete sub-categories going fwd,like SON(which is my passionate sub-category), SOCS(Service Oriented Communication System),etc...

Tech is always fun.

Vision/Mission Statements

2006-09-10T20:58:00.000-07:00

Here in this presentation, Guy Kawasaki makes a very valid point about how to write mission statements. He gives some examples of how it should be...It should be 3 words instead of a paragraph to describe the mission statements.

In a different perspective, I found some mission statements with few words but it's totally vague...So, as Guy says here, it's very important that you write it clearly.... Otherwise the outside world may even think that you don't know what you are doing! It's a good tip for the startups.

An Executive @ Pep Boys says...SaaS is good.

2006-09-09T14:52:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting quote, I found today about IT & SaaS. It says:
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One quote from an executive at Pep Boys should send chills down an IT manager’s spine: “The less IT involvement there is, the less grief there is. The less grief there is, the faster I get to my ROI…[With on-demand] I don't have to go through the internal bureaucracy in the IT department to figure out what size hardware they need and how to fit this in.”
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This is a typical problem today in the business community. Why would an executive at Pep Boys has to worry about hardware,software or networking issues? This is very similar to back in early days when steel companies used to run electricity departments to generate power.

The SaaS here makes total sense and for him, IT should be like electricity, just pay as you use...Don't outsource your IT infrastructure, instead rent it. Outsourcing is not a permanent solution, you are just bringing another layer of people between your business & IT. Infact, some cases it may even complicate things for your employees.

Uday.

"Sun picks up a gem in JRuby"

2006-09-07T16:03:00.000-07:00

It's a news today.
Here is an introduction to JRuby.

What is Enterprise 2.0?

2006-09-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

Yet another 2.0! If you want to read more about it, click here

SaaS & Data Security

2006-09-01T16:31:00.000-07:00

We all hearing lot about SaaS & SaaS2.0, one thing I learned something new which may be of news to you is about what CIO of a Singapore Bank told to Dr. Timothy Chou...Check out the podcast here

It's about "Pl take my HR & Payroll applications. My DBA can check his salary, his boss salary and his boss salary...".

We heard about "data security" is a problem with SaaS providers. Look at this case, this is quite opposite, data can be much safer with SaaS providers than with the customer itself. Dr.Timothy Chou talks about why it so...

SaaS is not a buzzword, it's not a evolution and it's a REVOLUTION. It's going to change the enterprise sw in a big way.

Motivation

2006-08-31T21:04:00.000-07:00

There are some things in life, which keeps us motivated and keep going in what we are doing...for me, watching/listening to these great people who changed the world motivates to work even harder and keep going...

I love history and especially "computer history" is very near & dear to my heart... I have watched Woz's interviews in the video cassettes(from santa clara city library) and many other videos...

Here is the latest one, thanks to Stanford/Always-on to make this video available online. Here is the URL, check it out: Steve Wozniak sharing his thoughts

I am sure you will love it.

"Google will set up a server farm in India"

2006-08-16T16:01:00.000-07:00

I put the quotation mark in the title to indicate that its NOT my title...It's a news here .

This is interesting...building server farms is something I never know of in India during my times...may be it's all changed and have now better infrastructure available...

This is the second time, I am hearing about setting up server farms by silicon valley companies. The first one earlier this year was this news...
"CollabNet Sets Up Data Center in Chennai"

This is all very interesting development because as we move more & more stuff into the Internet cloud, operations & datacenter will play a major role in the SaaS/Web20 space. Here is Tim O'Reilly's blog, which talks about the importance of operations...

I am happy to see that web is becoming ubiquitous not just at the surface level but deep inside!

Arrival of Multi-Core MIPS into Server Land!

2006-08-13T21:16:00.000-07:00

We all know that today's server architecture is predominantly dominated by Sparc,PowerPC and X86 chips. But on the other side, MIPS plays a big role in Networking devices.

There are few startups like Cavium Networks are pioneering the multi-core MIPS chips...The success of this startup itself shows the need for this type of chips but the interesting question is, does these types of chips has a role to play in the server land? It's too early to say yes or no, but the startup Movidis thinks that there is a server market out there for these chips by developing Linux based servers. This PR says that they have ported some real world sw products like Apache Webserver, MySQL database,etc.... This is interesting.

This is not the end, just beginning...For example, what about Java or .NET ecosystem for MIPS? I did some research few years ago for porting JVM to MIPS, the answer I got was that it will take nearly 1.5 years to port it. If JVM alone takes this much time, what about heavy weight servers like App Servers/Web Servers?

Another perspective to this is the new evolving Application Oriented Networking devices! These devices are some where btn servers & networking. Does multi-core MIPS has a role to play in AON?

I think it's interesting to watch the evolution of multi-core MIPS architecture and to see whether it has any role in the server land.

MySQL DB: Good Product

2006-08-11T16:15:00.000-07:00

I am recently started using MySQL 5.X database and found that it's a great database to build high performance systems. It has a good sets of tools(easy to use) and nice online documentation. In the past, i have used commercial dbs like Oracle, MS-SQL Server to build products and the current quality of MySQL is as comparable to those commercial products, or even better in few aspects.

The ease of use & stability of MySQL is great.

Yahoo Finance using MySQL shows how stable, reliable the product is...

I would say that if you need a database for your system, take a closer look at MySQL.