Toward the Open Cloud: A Manifesto Emerges
First, I’ll admit it: I am completely and utterly biased about the need for the Open Cloud Manifesto. At rPath, we’ve tried in our own focused ways to spur industry-wide discussion on definitions and good practices for cloud computing.
I like to think we’ve made a constructive contribution to this cause (see, as examples, The Cloud Computing Adoption Model and Cloud Computing in Plain English). But it really takes a vendor with the reach and resources of IBM to kick this sort of thing into high gear. rPath is glad to be part of this and any initiative that helps turn cloud confusion into cloud clarity. I think it makes our jobs a lot easier.
I’ve heard a few commentators suggest that the Manifesto is innocuous at best, vacuous at worst. Personally, I believe this misses the point—and the intent—of the document. The reality is that communication cannot happen without foundational knowledge and language as its currency of trade. Without this, any discourse is a frustrating exercise in futility where every exchange is like ships passing in the night.
The Future of Open Source: A New Age of Choice—and Complexity
rPath founder and CTO Erik Troan recently discussed the future of open source as part of a series of Ostatic contributions written by select participants in this week’s Open Source Business Conference (OSBC). In his commentary, Erik argues, convincingly, that the future of open source belongs to the developer community—but with an emphasis on frameworks and pre-built components, rather than tools.
Erik suggests this will drive productivity and shift developers’ orientation from features to application composition, and programming from the creation of features to the creation of the “glue code” that binds together pre-built components.
I think he’s quite right.
The State of the Cloud: What’s Real, What’s Not?
If you read the IT press these days, you’ll probably notice that the only trend more fashionable than cloud computing is the growing drumbeat of cloud bashers.
This dissent contributes to a healthy debate, keeps vendors in check and helps to deflate sweeping platitudes and empty promises. Some of it is well-argued and thoughtful, but I believe that much or most is the product of bandwagon naysayers trading on the momentum of a narrative—a narrative with a prevailing theme of “cloud computing, the hype machine.”
So, is cloud over-hyped? Yes and no.
When Agile Becomes Fragile
A report commissioned by Rally Software, a leader in tools for Agile development, estimates that Agile methods accelerate development teams by an average of 37%. While this is impressive validation, it’s not particularly surprising to the Agilests among us. For me, it draws attention to the fact that all the Agile in the world won’t yield a single ounce of true business value until these principles are extended to the downstream phases of test, deployment and maintenance.
While iterative approaches have enabled us to make great strides in application development, the testing, deployment and maintenance phases often remain firmly rooted in the dark ages. This is when Agile becomes fragile—manual, cumbersome functions that stubbornly stand in the way of business value.
That’s the premise of a Webinar series rPath is launching this week, which explores these downstream phases that could use some Agile-style reinvention.
