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Rich Internet Applications: "This Conversation Is Bullshit"

The liveliest session at RedMonk’s annual unconference at Sun Microsystems CommunityOne event on Monday was the rich Internet application discussion. Given RIA was the last chat of the day, that was pretty good going. A point that Stephen also makes here with some photographic evidence. Its always interesting to see the way our industry makes progress, without any agreement on definitions. From a personal perspective the RIA session felt like a vindication of the unconference format. It wasn’t a panel, with the “experts” telling everyone else what to think, it was a discussion where we were all peers. I took some positions to keep the conversation lively (I prefer Poor Internet Applications). Unfortunately I lost the notes I took while moderating so I can’t provide a formal writeup [fail!] but here are some impressions. The whole session was taped though, so I will provide links later.

Funnily enough, it was a strong injection of cynicism that really transformed the conversation from belly button fluff gazing to something valuable. We’d been toying with the question of RIA definitions when Dain Sundstrom of the Apache Software Foundation stepped in:

“I didn’t say that RIA is a load of b/s. I said this discussion is b/s”

Dain’s point was that we were talking about esoteric technically focused issues, when the truth is that what really defines a rich Internet application is good design. At this point I have to make an embarrassing confession - I left the notes from the session at the venue when we left, so I am writing this up from memory. Although it wasn’t his quote, Dain’s point, and the point of the discussion as a whole as that:

“People conflate RIA with good design”

It was pretty funny to see Adobe evangelists face an audience not comprised of fanboys. Without naming names I know that at least one of the Adobe guys left the session feeling that: “we got our butts kicked”. Don’t beat yourself up guy… Its great to test Adobe’s ideas in an open environment. Barack Obama will hopefully blow John McCain away - but without being fire-tested by Hilary Clinton, forget about it.

Adobe has an intriguing working definition of a RIA - “an approach that mimics real life.” RIA should learn and improve based on our experiences (that’s a core Web 2.0 pattern, as Duane pointed out) . On the flipside go to a bank and try and do something and you’ll find the existing process is sub-optimal. Or as I put it:

“Real Life Sucks”.

I really can’t understate how much I appreciate the guys that came to our show last year and then came along in 2008 again and made such a solid contribution. RedMonk super-platinum-with-diamond-sparkles card holder Savio Rodrigues said our second annual unconference rocked summed up the RIA session thusly: 

The RIA discussion benefited from the “industry experts” from Adobe and Sun (i.e. JavaFX) in attendance. Surprisingly enough, we couldn’t agree on a definition for RIA. Adobe’s James Ward suggested that “RIA is anything that lets you interact with computing in a way that you would with the real world”. Someone asked if the Wii was a RIA using James’ definition and James agreed that it was. Others felt that RIA was just another name on things the industry invented 15-30 years ago. Everyone agreed that not all applications should be RIAs. And that a pretty app that is useless is still a useless app.

I think that was the really important point - our industry has a goldfish memory, especially when it comes to learning and driving best practices. Pure eye candy can be a bad thing. Usability is far more important than glitz. Too often we forget the basic principles of good design. Some like me never learned them in the first place.

A good HTML design will always beat a poor Flash one.

One important distinction we tried to tease out was where RIA had value in the enterprise. Jeremiah Stone from SAP argued that specialised roles, and training, could and should help with better UI design, but admitted that SAP screens have a poor reputation for ease of use. I used by favourite example of rich Internet apps in the enterprise- T-Mobile US uses Flex to front end its SAP HR apps, and uses vanilla or “chrome” rather than a custom design, to help with maintainability, and allow for more rapid development.

Lauren Cooney recently left IBM to join Microsoft and brought one of her new colleagues along. Sadly we couldn’t here about Silverlight from Michael because he had to leave early. But it was cool, if not a little trangressive, to have Microsoft people at CommunityOne. Next year I will try and get more along.

I am going to post this blog now, even though it feels a bit unpolished. I want to spend some with my family… after being away most of the last two weeks.

 

Thanks for the image use Ted Leung!

links for 2008-05-06

Booting Open Solaris in Upper Class

I have decided to leapfrog desktop Linux and move straight to Solaris on my Thinkpad after meeting Chris Armes, senior director Solaris engineering on my flight over to JavaOne. I am only half-kidding. Chris sat next to me on the flight over to SF, and we got talking. He showed me OpenSolaris booting off a USB stick. So my Thinkpad was running Solaris, and the experience was slick. GNOME-based, nicely put together. 

Stephen is a long time Compiz guy, but it was cool to see OpenSolaris including things like the 3-d desktop Mr Tecosystems uses. I am hoping it will be new to him on Solaris. Seriously: if i can tell my colleague something he doesn’t know about Solaris I will be in very good shape indeed. Its not every industry analyst that goes to kernel engineering conferences.

One thing that really brought home to me how far Sun has come with a usable desktop environment was the virtualisation stuff Chris showed me on his Thinkpad. Chris described Virtual Box as the best acquisition Sun has done (He is a bit of a fanboy). It brings the kind of virtualisation experience many Mac users are familiar with (Parallels) to OpenSolaris. Run what you want when you want it. For example: I recommended Chris use the Windows Live Writer blogging client on an XP instance he has on the machine.

It was fun to be running Solaris on my laptop in Upper class. I mean- I don’t even run Ubuntu so it was a big deal. Sun has made a lot of progress in a short space of time. Chris credits Jeff Jackson.

So Sun - when are you going to be ready with laptops for me, Stephen and Cote?  Or will you just take over our Lenovo hardware?

 

In case you’re wondering, the person looking at the camera in the foreground is not Chris.

 

disclosure: Sun is a client. It paid for me to travel premium economy and I used miles for the upgrade.

links for 2008-05-02

On RedMonk @ CommunityOne and Why Sun is OK

communityone

Monday we’re running an unconference at Sun’s CommunityOne show in SF. Its free and open to all. We promise some of the coolest t-shirts ever, with ones for women too (not just small size). Expect really good conversations about open source, open standards, community development, dynamic scripting languages, Twitter (of course), social media tools and mores. Our event is sponsored by our client Atlassian, but the major sponsor is Sun Microsystems itself, which provides the facilities.

On the subject of Sun its latest results are not certainly not anything to write home about. Revenue fell .5%. MySQL is a transformative acquisition that will take time to bed in, which weighed the numbers down a bit.

But consider that Windows revenues this quarter fell by more than 24%.

I am not a financial analyst but a 24% fall across a much higher base, in a companies core franchise, when it is considering spending a ton of money on a very uncertain acquisition (YHOO) would likely scare me more than a .5% shortfall across a far smaller one.

And the upside for Sun is next week. CommunityOne is going to be amazing. I predict an explosion of creativity and good times for the exact audience Jonathan has set his hearts and minds on - developers. Sun is in recapture mode. It needs to have the make-side in its pocket before the POs start rolling in. The make-side: makers and doers, hackers and players. The people that get things done long before a CIO asks them how they did it.

At RedMonk we pride ourselves on having our finger on the pulse of developer trends and directions. Sharing a working environment with people is a great way to learn from them. Why is jQuery important, say, or Firebug? What is the advantage of a distributed source code management system? How difficult is the Rails deployment experience? Why are people looking at Erlang?

The RedMonk track is going to rock sure, but the whole schedule looks awesome. StartupCamp for the win! Oh yeah one thing I didn’t even realise til yesterday. There is an event on Sunday to bring together non-profits and developers. awesome.

I think Sun should market Java less aggressively, but I can understand why they do. But by creating forums both online and offline, and tools to support them, for all the other good stuff-notably dynamic scriping languages, Sun is creating an opportunity to prosper. And if we really hit recession my bet is MySQL adoption in the enterprise is going to accelerate nicely. Enterprises like to pay for software. We’ll see after next week, but if markets are conversations I suspect the market may be saying something fairly positive about Sun through next week.

Sustainability On Steroids: IBM, Nortel, SAS, SAP etc

That’s what I am talking about over here.

IBM is also pushing into certification. I think the firm needs to think bigger though and to take on bigger challenges (not often I say that). Data center energy optimisation is interesting, but IBM should be looking at driving power improvements in supply chains, manufacturing plants, building central heating and so on. IT currently accounts for around 3% of world energy consumption. Lets get to work on the other 97%.

and

Nortel is going after Cisco “ruthlessly” based on better power performance of its gear. This is the most aggressive use of a energy benchmarking I have seen so far in the industry. Great - bring on competition on the basis of power consumption.

and

I am liking SAS pitching its BI tools for the triple bottom line. with Global Reporting Initiative indicators and KPIs based relating to environmental, social, and economic sustainability.

links for 2008-04-28

“IBM news may signal enterprise mashup maturity”

Infoworld.

“Anytime IBM gets into something, it usually calms people down as something safe to use in their business,” said Michael Coté, an analyst with Redmonk.

What he said. I talked to IBM mashup strategy here.

links for 2008-04-25

IBM copies Sun on containers, has the best PR machine

I keep reading this headline and metaphorically rubbing my eyes/scrubbing my ears.

Cloud Computing Gains Steam With New I.B.M. Gear

What’s up with that? “Cloud” meets “Gear” in a huge PR triumph. Cloud… Gear… geddit?

So Microsoft announces Mesh, and Amazon cloud growth is exploding. But not when we’re looking at the traditional hardware business.

What I hadn’t realised (the NY Times story has been an open tab all week) was this:

The I.B.M. systems will mostly be made to order for large customers. One offering involves putting 1,500 server computers into a 40-foot truck trailer, ready to plug in from a parking lot, Mr. Gargan said.

The corporate customers who have been trying out the I.B.M. systems include Yahoo and other Internet companies. But some large companies in finance and other traditional industries have been testing them as well.”

Sounds like Black Box to me.

As legacy boy I am also very pleased to hear that IBM using water cooling is now “innovative” - company used to get hammered for needing a water supply. Water-cooled mainframes. Remember? What’s old is new again.

The point of this post is not that IBM is doing anything wrong. On the contrary - what a roll its on. But - IBM is not leading in cloud computing, its redefining it.

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