Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: SaaS

Startups: Apply for Your Free #Gluecon Demo Pod (Deadline March 24)

Can the Glue Conference get any better? This will be the third annual, and I can honestly say this year's event will blow the roof off. Listen: if you're a developer or tech startup founder, get your ass to Denver, May 24-26. You will kick yourself over and over in said ass if you don't! The quality of the programming and attendees is the best of any cloud/developer/big data/mobile conference out there. Trust me — I go to a lot of conferences. I know these things. And the #Gluecon crew is making it even easier for a bunch of startups to get visibility there this year…

Glue-DemoPavilion-banner How? Thanks to the main event underwriter, Alcatel-Lucent (and its OpenAPIservice), the Glue Conference is awarding 15 startups with a free demo pod at the event. Here's the post on the great Gluecon Blog that will tell you all about this oportunity.  You have till March 24th to apply, so go for it!

What will the conference program offer?  Well, that's taking even more shape as we speak, but check out this post on the Gluecon blog for juicy details about just some of the Gluecon sessions.

A quote from event organizer Eric Norlin: "We're working our butts off to make sure that Gluecon is the single most impact-filled conference for cloud/API developers this year. I hope you'll choose to join us."

[UPDATE: In a previous post, I wrote this: 'Glue' is a Cloud Conference That's Different – It's for *Developers* (and some interesting new twists on the next one)]

For basic details on this year's event, hit this register page and read the summary. Omni-BroomfieldThen register while the price is the lowest! (Try this code and see if it still gets you an even lower discount: alu12.)  And make your hotel reservation. The venue is a very cool place called the Omni Resort in Broomfield, and the rate is quite reasonable. Gonna be tons of great learning, killer networking, and it's always lots of fun, too!  See you there.

 

My Live Blog: Defrag 2010

Defrag-StageSign I'm in Denver for my fourth consecutive Defrag conference, which is every one since it started in 2007.  This time, it's actually in Broomfield, CO, a suburb, at a nice place called the OMNI Interlocken Resort. I'm starting the live blog on Tuesday evening, as we're gathering in the hotel lobby to go to some sponsored dinners. (I'm headed to Boulder with Gist.)  The conference fires up in the morning, when my live-blogging will begin in earnest.  Check out the agenda.  In the meantime, I have my twitter stream appearing in the live blog, and that of the conference organizer (@defrag), Eric Norlin.  I also have it set up so that any tweets with the hashtag #defragcon will appear in the live blog window, at least for now. (I'll probably shut that off starting in the morning, or it would get to be too much.)  [UPDATE: Decided on the morning of day one to leave it all in! Makes for a more interesting live-blog, and archiving the whole conversation, in proper chronologial order, is pretty cool for anyone who may want to refer back. There were so many *great* Twitter exchanges going on during the event!  I know I made a whole bunch of new Twitter friends… 🙂 ]

I'm looking forward to a great conference!  When the event is completed, I'll archive this live-blog, which switches it around to proper chronological order. And the link for this blog post will remain pemanent for the live-blog archive. That's the big advantage for me to document a conference with this live-blogging tool, compared to just tweeting the event. (Have you tried going back to get an archive of your tweetstream for a certain day or event?  Good luck.) Plus the fact that I can do posts longer than 140 characters. Hope you like it!

How to Get Buzz for Your Startup Launch: Write a Book!

Okay, not everyone can pull this off.  But one experienced Minneapolis tech entrepreneur, George Reese, is doing it in a big way with a new book on "cloud computing."  What's cloud computing, you ask?  Did you just come out from under a rock?   If you're involved in any way in IT, even on the fringes of it, you've been blasted for months with an almost endless amount of media coverage and discussion about this topic — a recent example being on the front page of The Wall Street Journal the other day.  Even most casual Internet users are now aware that many of their consumer web apps are accessed "in the cloud," as opposed to being software they install on their own computers. Google's Gmail is probably the best known example of that.

George Reese is cofounder of a new Minneapolis startup, enStratus, GeorgeReese-headshotand is right smack in the middle of all the buzz. 
Thanks to his new book, which he worked on for six months, he's in a great position to help clear the air surrounding a lot of the cloud computing hype that's flying around out there now.  He's especially interested in helping enterprises that are looking to take advantage of the economic benefits of this form of corporate IT. 

GeorgeReese-book-200w
On April 10, George's new book will be released by O'Reilly Media:  "Cloud Application Architectures: Building Applications and Infrastructure in the Cloud."  And here's the Amazon link.  It's now available at both these links for pre-ordering. I've known George since 2006, in relation to his previous startup, Valtira (a SaaS marketing platform), from which enStratus is being spun out.  (I also know David Bagley, the CEO of Valtira, who's the other cofounder of enStratus.)  I thought it would be fun to get George's thoughts about this uber-hot topic of cloud computing, and hear the story behind his book.  This is an interview I conducted with him earlier this week, which first appeared on the cloud computing site Cloud Ave. and, later, on our own Minnesota tech news site, Minnov8.

Graeme:  How long have you been involved with cloud computing, and what made you decide to write this book?

George:  I suppose that depends on what you mean when you say "cloud computing." I've been developing SaaS systems for the past five years, but got into Amazon Web Services and Infrastructure as a Service in late 2007 when my company Valtira needed an alternate approach to a high-availability infrastructure. During this time, I've developed a body of experience in putting transactional database applications into the Amazon Cloud.  My editor at O'Reilly, with whom I've written several books in the past, heard I was doing cloud work and asked me to put together a book on the subject.

Graeme:  Why is cloud computing gaining adoption like it is?  What is its attraction?  We know Internet and IT startups love it, but do you think it will catch on in any significant way with larger enterprises?

George:  The primary attractions to cloud computing are cost and flexibility. Cloud computing enables you to build out a world-class IT infrastructure with no up-front capital investment and pay for the growth of your infrastructure as the business it is supporting grows.

I believe enterprise IT has a strong need for the benefits of cloud computing, but they have higher expectations with respect to reliability and scalability than startups. My company enStratus is all about dealing with these two concerns for enterprise IT, and I talk a lot about that in the book.

Graeme:  For what types of readers did you primarily write the book? What will they get from it that they can't get elsewhere?

George:  The book is for people tasked with making the move into the cloud and guiding them through that move. I start by establishing what the cloud means from my perspective and what its value is to an organization. The book covers how you evaluate what makes sense to move into the cloud and, once the decision is made, the security, availability, and disaster recovery planning necessary to operate at an enterprise level in the cloud.

Graeme:  Do you deal in the book with the issue of choosing a cloud computing provider? In not, why not?  Do you attempt to compare providers?

George:  No. Anything I might say in the way of a comparison would be out of date by the time the book hit the shelves. Jeff Barr from Amazon reviewed the book for technical accuracy, and E.J. Johnson from Rackspace and Randy Bias from GoGrid both provided appendices describing their offerings.

Graeme:  What are some of the other key issues you deal with in the book, such as security and reliability of the cloud?  And what does the book deliver that's not available elsewhere?

George:  Given my role at enStratus, cloud security and reliability are obviously key concerns of mine. I spend an entire chapter on security issues and cover how to architect your applications for maximum availability throughout the book. I have not seen much of this kind of talk available on the Internet; mostly warnings about how security and availability are things you should worry about.

Graeme:  Readers of the book will also learn about the management tools you have developed for use in your own company, Valtira, which offers a SaaS marketing platform. Please tell us how those tools led to the formation of a separate, spinoff company.

George:  Valtira was looking to build out a new service offering that required a high-availability infrastructure. We priced out a managed services infrastructure to support our needs, but that proved too costly for a new product offering. We then turned to the Amazon cloud to see if it would meet our needs. We ran into a number of obstacles along the way. Some of these obstacles have since been addressed by Amazon through new service offerings like Elastic Block Storage. For other obstacles, we built out tools to take care of things. It turns out that people who were not Valtira customers really wanted our tools, so we spun them out into enStratus.

Graeme:  You began working on the book many months ago. The release of the book seems now to be right at a time of intense focus on cloud computing, undoubtedly driven in part by current economic conditions.  What's your take on all the hype?

George:  Cloud computing is the most disruptive technology to hit business since the Web. It's not hype. Like any disruptive technology, however, there's a lot of misinformation flying around. To make matters worse, every person has a different internal definition of "the cloud" that frames their discussions on the subject. So, the hype is warranted, but everyone needs to pay particular attention to context and definitions in their discussions.

Graeme:  With the book's release, your speaking schedule is naturally heating up.  Please tell us where people can find you in coming weeks and months.

George:  Well, first, I'll be presenting at CloudCamp in New York City on April 1. Following that, O'Reilly has a webcast on "Getting Started with Amazon Web Services" scheduled for April 8.  In Minneapolis, I'll be speaking at the Minnesota High Tech Association's spring conference on April 15, and then at CloudCamp Minneapolis/St. Paul on April 18 at the U of MN.  Recently, my company enStratus was chosen as a presenting startup at the Under the Radar conference in Mountain View, CA, on April 24.  The following month, I'll be speaking on the topic of information privacy and security in the cloud at the Glue Conference in Denver on May 12. Then it's off to London, where I'll be speak on May 15 at WebTech Exchange 2009 on the topic of hardening an EC2 infrastructure.

Graeme:  That definitely qualifies as a whirlwind, George! Thanks for taking some time to tell us about your book, and I look forward to seeing you at some of these upcoming events.

By the way, follow George on Twitter @GeorgeReese and his company's tweets @enStratus.

(Disclosure: the author has a consulting relationship with enStratus.)

Ranting on Apple: Not All Developers Are Happy

UPDATE 8/10/08:  Check out Apple’s Rotten Decision (via eWeek). It’s a report from the Black Hat Conference, where the writer says "Apple’s image was pilloried on the show floor."

A smart friend of mine, who’s the founder of a startup with a successful online application/platform — and a longtime Apple user and developer — told me recently he’s really unhappy with Apple of late. I must say I was taken aback!  Rant
What, with all the hoopla about Apple’s latest consumer hits: the iPhone 3G and the wildly successful iTunes App Store (which I’m sure is up to 50 million downloads by now)?  Can Apple actually do wrong?  (Okay, with the obvious exception being the recent MobileMe launch, which they’ve already admitted they flubbed, and I have no doubt will be fixed soon — Steve will make sure of that.)

So, this was a real surprise to me — that such a longtime Apple believer and supporter could say something like this. I had to probe: "What on earth do you mean?"  I wanted to get at what could possibly be behind his newfound negative feelings toward Apple. 

Well, it turns out my friend has some very real concerns, and he makes a lot of sense — particularly because he speaks as someone who really understands the SaaS (software-as-a-service) business. So, here — unedited, in the raw — is his response to me:

BEGINNING OF APPLE RANT:

Graeme, I think part of the issue is that Apple’s culture is now at a mismatch with the SaaS and developer worlds. There certainly is a pattern here: arrogance and secrecy. Namely, SaaS and developer communities require transparency; Apple is more secretive than the CIA.

Ringtones
Apple tried damn hard to prevent people from making Ringtones of music they legitimately own. And you still have no mechanism for making Ringtones out of DRM’ed iTMS purchases without paying again for the song. And it is hard.

iPhone 3G Activation
In my opinion, the downfall of Apple (no, I am not really about to add myself to the legion of idiots predicting Apple’s doom over the years!) began with acquiescing to AT&T on the activation issue. I understand the legitimate business concerns involved, but the reality is that Apple re-invented the way a cell phone works with the original iPhone, and they gave away one of the coolest things about it with the iPhone 3G (the activation process). You can’t buy iPhones as presents any more!

But that was a nuisance.

MobileMe
So many things. One, the fiasco illustrates that Apple does not know a damn thing about web-based application hosting. They have iTunes working (more or less) right because it is so narrow in focus and so tightly controlled. But the MobileMe fiasco should not happen with any SaaS based system, ever.

And then their silence. They were silent for so long. When we finally heard from Apple, it was really just a note saying how Steve was forcing some dude who would give only his first name to blog about it every day or so. Contrast that with Amazon’s recent S3 fiasco. Amazon had updates every half hour for the duration of the outage, even if only to say we still don’t know any more than we did a half hour ago. For our online platform, we have a Twitter feed dedicated to system status so that our customers have ready access to what we know is wrong.

Every day or so? And saying nothing at all really in those communications. Inexcusable. The technical issues were about hard problems. The communication issues were easily fixed and never should happen in any scenario.

DNS Vulnerability
So, Apple knows about this vulnerability long before the rest of the world. The work of patching it is done for them. All of the major vendors of the world coordinate the announcement of the vulnerability and sending out patches.

Apple does nothing.

Weeks go by. Apple does nothing.

Exploits appear in the wild. Apple does nothing.

Eventually, Apple sends out a patch with the version of bind that is supposed to have the vulnerability patch. Somehow or another, it does not actually include port randomization features that protect against the vulnerability.

Apple does not send out the patch to non-server versions of OS X.

Apple never bothers to explain what it is up to or why it is failing to deliver timely patches.

I move my DNS off OS X for good. This was the final straw in the back that breaks OS X Server for me. I have been learning slowly over time that Apple is way too untrustworthy as a vendor of business services. This proved it.

In the meantime, Apple still has the vulnerability out there.

The App Store
Apple has proven the App Store concept is screwed up beyond belief. No ability to reasonably allow for trial use. No ability to reasonably have beta programs (the ad hoc deployment stuff is a fiasco in itself). But those are just feature complaints.

No one company should ever control what you can put on a device you own. If I want to pay $1,000 for "I am Rich", that’s my own damn prerogative. But even if we grant that right, the idea that they can remove apps from the store and tell no one anything about why it was removed? And what about if Apple corrupts my iTunes library and I need to re-install an app that I bought, but Apple later determined is not appropriate for their store? This is unacceptable.

———

END OF APPLE RANT.  What do you think?  Please speak your piece in the comments below.