Breaking the Code

If the only tool that you have is a hammer ...

Duncan Johnston-Watt — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:11:05 +0100

In her Chronicle of a Feature Foretold, posted over the weekend, Lori MacVittie gracefully alerted us to fact that both her company F5 and Cisco were planning big announcements at this year's VMworld so naturally I've been keeping tabs on this while putting the finishing touches to the marketing campaign for our own announcement scheduled for September 14 at High Performance on Wall Street (Twitter #hponws.)

What is fascinating is that both announcements address the same fundamental challenge - application mobility - in broadly the same way. Both reference cloud as one of the key drivers which is absolutely fine, but then present what to my mind are complex solutions.

First there was F5 with their Live Application Mobility press release yesterday, which Lori covered in her official capacity in Migrate a live application across clouds with no downtime? Sure, no problem. When I say complex what I mean is the sheer number of components needed to make this magic possible. The press release reads like an Oscar acceptance speech -

An agile Application Delivery Network is the fundamental component required to extend virtualization beyond a single data center or VMware vSphere 4 instance. This integration uses F5's BIG-IP^® solutions with VMware vSphere 4, VMware VMotion^™, VMware Storage VMotion, and the VMware vCenter^™ APIs to overcome many of the networking hurdles that previously prevented organizations from migrating live applications to and from the cloud. The integration between VMware vCenter Server, BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager^™, and BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager^™ simplifies global traffic management to enable easier live migrations. The solution also takes advantage of BIG-IP WAN application delivery services to accelerate VMware VMotion and VMware Storage VMotion events over links that are limited by bandwidth, latency, or packet-loss.

There is nothing wrong with acknowledging the role played by all these components but I think you'll agree that there are a lot of them and the solution is heavily caveated in Lori's blog post.

This announcement was closely followed by one from Cisco on Long Distance VMotion published late last night PST. Not to be outdone this post comes complete with a link to a white paper. I rather like Omar Sultan's comment -

Looking at the jointly validated architecture below, one of the cooler things to point out is that, for Cisco customers, at least, the solution builds upon the gear they probably already have in place.

The white paper does a thorough job providing the details of the networking chicanery that is now possible which unfortunately, combined with the earlier press release from F5, brought on an epic migraine.

Just kidding. Nevertheless reading these posts I was struck by the thought that both F5 and Cisco illustrate perfectly Maslow's Maxim -

If the only tool that you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail.

In other words ever since VMotion was first announced way back in 2005 the holy grail has been to extend this to solve the general problem of application mobility.

If ever there was an example of the wrong level of abstraction being applied to a problem this is it which is why four years on only limited solutions are being announced. It is also why the Cloud Interop discussion tends to get bogged down in discussions concerning VM formats etc.

The solution to this problem? I would have thought this was clear but essentially it is about focusing on the middleware and delivering this in cloud-speak bundled as platform-as-a-service offering. Essential dealing with the cloud interop issue by making the problem go away (what Wittgenstein once called untying the knot). That's where we're headed as a company as that's what our announcement will be all about in a couple of weeks time when we get together with our partners in New York.

Thank God We Chose to Go to the Moon

Duncan Johnston-Watt — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:31:19 +0100

Over the past few weeks I've tried to explain the significance of the Apollo 11 Moon landing to my three children in the run up to the 40th anniversary. Unfortunately, surrounded as they are by technology and bombarded as they are by CGI animation it is as hard for them to appreciate the impact of this event.

40 years on my daughter, who is exactly the same age I was back in 1969, has a mobile, DSLite, Apple Macbook & iTouch plus sundry other gadgets and takes all this for granted so grainy pictures of guys "floating in a tin can" to paraphrase David Bowie's Space Oddity are about as interesting and relevant to her as our wedding video or Top of the Pops.

Even now it is hard not to be moved and inspired by JFK's speech We Choose to go to the Moon, delivered at Rice University in Houston, Texas fully seven years earlier in June 1962.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It doesn't matter that the space program was in place and well underway before this speech or that the backdrop was the Cold War because what JFK did was crucial - he inspired a generation of engineers to work on what is still ranked as the most complex project ever undertaken and, at the same time, crafted a coherent vision that lasted just long enough to enable them to succeed.

Whatever the political motivation at the time, thank God we chose to go to the moon not only because it was and is an audacious engineering achievement but because of its undoubted impact on our view of ourselves and our planet. (For more on this check out Exploring the Moon, Discovering Earth from NASA.)

The text of JFK's speech is worth re-reading in the next few hours ahead of the anniversary of the moon landing at 20:17:41 GMT this evening and the Neil Armstrong's small step at 02:56:15 GMT tomorrow morning. (If you are wondering why I am using GMT these timings were taken from the official NASA Apollo 11 Timeline.)

Fortunately for us, JFK worked with great speech writers not management consultants or masters of spin otherwise his speech would have sounded very different. To illustrate this I plugged his most famous lines into that MBA "must have" the Dilbert Jargonator and dialled in "Make it Sizzle" and "Punch it up". Here are the edited highlights of the resulting mission statement.

I and others opt for to go to the natural satellite of Earth in this decade in addition to do the optional things, not for the reason that they are easy, but in light of the fact that they are hard, whereas that objective will serve to organize and in addition to measure the optimum of our energies ... in light of the fact that this challenge is one that I and others are disposed to accept or agree to acquiesce ... in addition to one which I and others prospectively mean to to win ... This is of central importance to strategic management because it can either buttress or inhibit our commitment to excellence.

And the coup de grâce -

We should use these objectives to transform our strategic thrusts and investment programs into short-run targets and action programs.

On that - ahem - note, I'll leave the last word to REM & The Boss -

With that I'm off to see Moon at the Cameo Picturehouse. See you on the other side. Over and out.

Over the Moon

Duncan Johnston-Watt — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 10:18:18 +0100

This is definitely a Saturday morning blog entry. Purely personal as I am in a reflective mood.

I am a long time fan of Space exploration as, along with the Cold War and a stream of WWII movies, TV coverage of the Apollo Space program made a huge impression on me as a child growing up in the '60s.

Given this background I just had to share a story from the BBC that popped up on Twitter a couple of days ago. I follow BBC Breaking News and on Wednesday I was delighted to read about Armstrong's 'poetic' slip on Moon (where else!).

Basically the gist of this story was that after 40 years Dr Christopher Riley (author of Apollo 11 - Owner's Workshop Manual) and forensic linguist John Olsson have conclusively proved that Neil Armstrong really did say "One small step for man, one giant step for mankind" as he stepped onto the surface of the moon on July 21st, 1969.

For someone who didn't have a TV until I was six years old (hard to believe there was a time before YouTube) and then only a B&W one those grainy images fired my imagination. I'd have been gutted if after all this time it turned out that Neil Armstrong had merely said "One small step for a man..."

It is fair to say that I was over the moon!

Note: For those of you in the neighborhood Chris Riley and John Olsson will be presenting their findings at the Cheltenham Science Festival tonight where they will be giving a talk Apollo Mysteries. Unfortunately I will be 400 miles away at a Charity Highland Games and I don't have a matter transmitter beam.

Cloudsoft - Bringing Business to the Cloud

Duncan Johnston-Watt — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:33:50 +0100

I know I twittered on the topic of funding a couple of weeks ago but I'm delighted to formally announce that we've closed our seed round and that Cloudsoft is now up and running with a small development team based in Edinburgh led by our co-founder and CTO Alex Heneveld a.k.a. Red Threads.

We've secured seed funding from an innovative new fund Andromeda Capital along with Scottish Enterprise and we've taken up space at ETTC @ Informatics which is host to a number of other start ups including CereProc, Hubdub, Speckled Computing and VidioWiki.

Given the support we've received from Scottish Enterprise and Informatics Ventures (@infventures on twitter) we chose to post this today as we will be part of the Investor Showcase at Engage | Invest | Exploit 2009 (#eie09) this afternoon.

Rather than put out a press release (don't worry there will be plenty of time for those in the months and years to come!) we thought we'd mark the occasion a little differently by unveiling a limited edition poster featuring our mantra Bringing Business to the Cloud.

All too often we use language rather glibly so it is worth reminding ourselves what we mean by a mantra. Widipedia's entry for Mantra sums this up rather elegantly as a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that are considered capable of "creating transformation".

So that's what we are about - transforming the way business thinks about technology by bringing business to the cloud.

It's like computers on the Internet, innit!

Duncan Johnston-Watt — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:30:54 +0100

Let me start by stating categorically that I didn't invent the Internet, cloud computing or even dream up the title of this blog which I have borrowed under CC3.0 from Simon Wardley.

I've also lifted this eponymous slide from his Cloudcamp tour de force.

Simon tells ne this is a picture of a London cabbie but I am pretty sure it is actually Ross Brawn moonlighting - by day he is team principal of new kids Brawn GP and all round F1 god.

Either way I plan to use this to explain cloud computing to the audience at High Performance Linux on Wall Street later today.

If you are on twitter then you can follow this event on #hplonws throughout the day.

If you like this then you should check out Simon's blog Bits or Pieces. Also our very own Alex Heneveld whose musings can be found at Red Threads.

The Red Pill or the Blue Pill?

Duncan Johnston-Watt — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:24:43 +0000

As a sponsor of Cloudcamp Why Aye and Cloudcamp Och Aye I was asked whether we wanted to include something in their respective ungoodie bags when I met up with MrsBoogie and CloudIQ yesterday.

Because these are unconferences (which makes us an unsponsor?!) MrsB said it would be cool if I could come up with something a bit more original than the usual corporate giveaways. So that would be ungiveaways then? I said. (This was just as well, I thought, since we don't have any corporate goodies and have no plans to inflict Cloudsoft® pens, stress balls etc on punters anytime soon.)

So after a great deal of unresearch I've come up with an idea that appeals to me at least: let's make it interesting and put a little red pill in half the ungoodie bags and a little blue pill in the other half and have some fun.

Then attendees have a 50:50 chance of remaining blissfully happy (blue) or having a painful dose of reality (red). I think I've got that the right way round at least according to Wikipedia. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about check out -

According to Morpheus the choice is yours - You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed, and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

I've spoken to Red at M&M who in keeping with the philosophy of Cloudcamp unreliably informs me that their sweets have no such effect.

Therefore I'm now on Lexington and 125th waiting for my man with 26 dollars in my hand -

So what is it going to be - the red pill or the blue pill?

You'll have to come to Cloudcamp in Newcastle on March 24 or Edinburgh on March 25 to find out what I've managed to source as ungoodies and to learn about Cloud Computing (or not!).

Wake up and smell the OpenCoffee!

Duncan Johnston-Watt — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:26:04 +0000

Actually it is a little early to be awake period coffee or not but the rather cheesy title is a reference to the OpenCoffee Club. Encouraged by Jasper Westaway I'm helping to relaunch a local OpenCoffee Club in Edinburgh with the help of Colin Adams and David Richardson at the School of Informatics. (As Director of Commercialisation for the School of Informatics Colin is also our landlord as Cloudsoft has taken up office space at the Appleton Tower.)

Our inaugural meeting is at 10AM on Wednesday March 18 Appleton Tower, Level 8. To find out more and join our group check out Edinburgh OpenCoffee Club.

As for grumbling about being up to too early this is because I'm on the 5.50AM from Edinburgh Waverley to London Kings Cross and will be returning on the Caledonian Sleeper departing 11.50PM from London Euston tonight.

The reason? I've decided that this is the most efficient way use of my time if I want to do a "day trip" to London if you want to do something in the evening - in this case fly the flag for Cloudsoft at Cloudcamp London #3.

I don't want to sound like a walking billboard but, leaving aside the lack of a gym to compensate for the "Great English" (hmmm) breakfast in the restaurant car, what I love about the East Coast Line, besides watching dawn break over the North Sea, is the fact that it now has a rock steady free WiFi service.

Even better the infrastructure that underpins this service is provided by Nomad Digital an Amadeus Capital portfolio company. Their CEO Graeme Lowdon gave a great pitch at an Amadeus Capital Investor Day last year and its a great business as their addressible market is basically all rail track globally!

The only mystery - when I use Google on the train it defaults to www.google.se! Answers on a postcard please.

You can be in my Cloud if I can be in yours!

Duncan Johnston-Watt — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:07:49 +0000

With apologies to Bob Dylan for borrowing from Talkin' World War III Blues which still packs a heck of a punch 45 years on and closes with the haunting refrain

"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours," I said that.

Anyway I figured it was good segue to highlight our participation in High Performance Linux on Wall Street in New York on April 6.

I'm a huge fan of this family of shows having been involved with them one way or another for nearly a decade. Pete Harris and Russ Flagg have settled on a stripped down one day format that works really well.

We are delighted to be a sponsor of their latest show and I am really looking forward to moderating a session on Cloud computing -

You can be in my Cloud if I can be in yours? The case for a Financial Services Cloud

We bring together a panel from Industry and Financial Services to debate the finer points of establishing a Financial Services Cloud. While it is clear that establishing a Private Cloud can provide many of the economic benefits of Cloud Computing for a large enterprise there will always be value in moving beyond your firewall and going off premise. We discuss the pros and cons of establishing a Financial Services Cloud - provided by a trusted third party - with differentiated Financial Services Cloud Services backed by strong SLAs, as an alternative to some of the Public Cloud offerings available today. In short is there a sector Cloud play here?

We've lined up a great panel including Linda Bernardi (Founder, StraTerra Partners), David Crosbie (CTO, Leostream) and Larry Tabb (Founder and CEO, TABB Group) so I hope to see you there.

I love it when a plan comes together

Duncan Johnston-Watt — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:49:46 +0000

"I love it when a plan comes together" is one of my all time favorite quotes from the A-Team, in turn one of my all time favorite TV shows and one which, whenever I see it, takes me straight back to when I was a student at Uni in the '80s. Of course, context is everything and it normally guaranteed that complete mayhem was about to ensue!

So fast forwarding to 2009 it is great to see that in the midst of all the media generated hysteria about countries going bankrupt yada yada a plan is very definitely coming together and momentum is continuing to build around Cloud Computing.

Whether it is on twitter (stalwarts like @ruv, @elasticserver etc), online (new kids like Alltop - Top Cloud Computing News), unconferences (Cloud Camp) or regular events, there is something new popping up every day.

Coming up in the next few weeks there are a couple of London events that it is well worth taking a closer look at if you are planning to be in town.

The first is Powered by Cloud which is a two day event Feb 2 and Feb 3 with a very ambitious and wide ranging programme looking at Cloud Computing from all points of the compass. I have to declare an interest as I will be on a panel entitled "Finance, Investors and Cloud Computing". I'll be blogging on this in the run up to the conference itself but I think it will be the premier Cloud Computing networking event this quarter.

The other event is the third outing for CloudCamp London which this time around will be at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre on March 12.

Again I should declare an interest as we are sponsoring this event for the first time and it will feature the debut of our Co-founder and CTO Alex Heneveld. (He can't do a worse job than yours truly who at the last event in November staggered off a plane from Boston and tried to do a demo of Cloud Cover in under 4 mins ... not having quite grasped the format rigorous enforced by the merciless master of ceremonies one Alexis Richardson!)

In short, this is the age of viral marketing ... where Mad Men are but a dim and distant memory!

Finally you can now subscribe to this blog on Feedburner which I believe is viewed in some quarters as a good thing.

Oh no, not again!

Duncan Johnston-Watt — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:05:41 +0000

"Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the Universe than we do now."

As most of you will know that is one of the most famous quotes from Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but why bring it up now?

I guess it is because having been a VMware partner in a previous life (at Enigmatec where we were instrumental - along with others of course - in getting them to offer up their VCenter API) I knew it was only a matter of time before people cried "foul" when Amazon started to stretch its wings.

Or so it would seem if you take Reuven Cohen's latest posting Amazon Crushes Ecosystem - Launches AWS Management Console at face value.

However I think we need to be careful not to rush to judgement on either Reuven's posting or Amazon's announcement. After all we were warned well in advance (well last October anyway) when Jeff Barr posted his Big Day for EC2 ... annoucement so why the sense of outrage?

I would strongly argue that AWS are still very partner friendly and that this is nothing more than the natural process of functional sedimentation enriching the ocean floor. It benefits all of us and it is up to companies like RightScale to stay one step ahead.

Google have been much maligned for trying to create a particular culture but who - like all of us - turned out to have feet of clay. Or - if you prefer a different analogy - flew too close to the Sun and disappointed us all by being YABC (Yet Another Big Company). So what?!

Fortunately Amazon have not indulged in the same "do no evil" hubristic nonsense but have instead simply got on with their job - creating real market momentum and excitement around Cloud Computing. This is business not moral philosophy that we are talking about after all.

We should do the same. Our job? To continue to push the boundaries, of course. A great example IMHO is CohesiveFT. Their VPN-Cubed product is exactly the kind of innovation that AWS are looking for. Maybe - who knows - Werner, aka Victor Kiam, will like VPN-Cubed so much he buys their company. I don't know but it will be interesting to re-read this posting in 6 months time ...

Oh and by the way - better late than never - Happy New Year.