Entries categorized as ‘Technology Strategy’
What are some of the hurdles we have encountered with Cloud Development? What mechanisms have we used to overcome them? The problems posed by the different cloud platforms are different. I will be writing on this topic in a series blog posts. I expect to blog on these topics. If you know of others, please let me know. These list items will get hyperlinked over time.
- Cloud Development for Google App Engine
- Cloud Development for Amazon EC2
- Managing software delivery from outsourcers
- Managing evolution of database configurations
- Performance and Stress Testing
- Security Testing
In this introductory post, I want to cover activities that cross all platforms. The premise of Cloud Development is that the company does not own any hardware. Under these circumstances, how does software development get done? (more…)
Categories: Requirements · Techniques · Technology Strategy
Tagged: Agile Development, Amazon AWS, Cloud Computing, Cloud Development, Entrepreneurship, Google App Engine, Issue Tracking, SaaS, Source Control
The good news with Cloud Computing is that our clients don’t have to sink precious capital into building or finding a data center or buying servers.
The bad news — at least the concern — is lock-in. Is a business locked in once they have grown? Do we have choices in case Amazon (or whoever) decides to raise their prices? Will the customers be able to take their business elsewhere if that happens?
There are a number of vendors out there providing cloud computing services:
- Amazon, of course.
- Rackspace
- GoGrid
Others will follow. IBM has made announcements regarding Cloud Labs, Microsoft is working on Azure, etc. But I want to focus on Amazon, Rackspace and GoGrid in this post. They offer services that are somewhat analogous, each has the equivalents of S3 and EC2. (more…)
Categories: Technology Strategy · Technology foundation
Tagged: Amazon AWS, Building Web Applications, GoGrid, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace, SaaS, Software as a Service
February 12, 2009 · 1 Comment
The force is with virtualization — hosting as many of your applications on as few machines as possible.
We have seen this movie before. Client-Server was all the rage when web technologies came into vogue. All of a sudden, we didn’t have to visit every desktop to “do an install”. Once the trend got going, the cost savings became quite compelling. It took a number of years but eventually most of the applications were rewritten to be web centric. The installation problems moved from user desktops to the company’s servers.
Virtualization is the next step in that continuum. The cost of managing your applications on your servers is getting felt and, slowly but surely, applications are getting SaaSified. They will probably need to be rewritten, just like they were in the transition from Client-Server to the web, but that will take time, effort and investment. The venture guys are reluctant to fund a new company unless it is a SaaS company.
What I don’t know is whether the economy is helping the trend or hurting it, which is why it is difficult to assess when SaaS will become the dominant trend. It might be helping by creating the pressure to reduce cost. It might be hurting by reducing overall investment. Time will tell.
What does it mean for early stage companies? (more…)
Categories: Technology Strategy
Tagged: SaaS, Software as a Service, Virtualization
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