Netflix Phenomenon and Mobility

Three weeks ago, I attended a two day workshop called the mGov Strategy.  This workshop's purpose is to provide input to OMB's mobility strategy for the US Federal Government.  Steve VanRoekel, OMB CIO, sponsored this workshop.  US civil servants from various lines of government joined the workshop. OMB split the working group into five sub-groups.  The sub-groups were:

1. Acquisition - How can US government address acquisition of mobile technologies and services? Can the US government streamline the acquisition process.
2. Security - How to safeguard government information and technologies from hackers.
3. Privacy - How to protect mobile user information from inappropriate use especially when they interface with US government mobile sites and apps.
4. Citizen apps - How to develop a mobile presence to engage US government's biggest customer US citizen.
5. Infrastructure - How can US government address the evolution of mobile technologies and associated technologies like cloud computing, social computing and others.

As the member of the security sub-group, we discussed several policy and technical approaches.  The thing that caught my eye and basically sums up any future technical advancement is the ability to do use any application from anywhere and anytime.  I call this the "Netflix phenomenon"

Even though Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO, won't win the CEO of the year award, I still give him credit in taking the movie watching experience from a cinema theater to any possible device which is accredited by Netflix.  I admit that Google introduced this feature with YouTube however Netflix took it to a new level.  I can now start a movie via  my laptop, pause it and then resume it on my iPad.  I like this DirecTV commerical which captures what I am talking about.


To develop this type of an IT service, enterprises need to invest in the following technologies and architectures like:

• Cloud computing - IT departments need to centralize their business applications and act as cloud brokers to outsource some of their applications to third party clouds like Amazon EC2, Google Cloud, Rackspace and others.  I believe unless OMB makes significant investments in IT infrastructure, agencies will have to act as cloud brokers. It's a cost effective mechanism.
• Smarter Pipes - Where is Mario when you need him?  With all of the data and information streaming back and forth between clouds, user devices, government needs to influence how IT networks should evolve.  Since mobile users are constantly starving for the fastest network, vendors have to realize that simply scaling up the networks is not a sustainable model.  Vendors and research institutes need to look at how data should traverse the network and optimize it.  A good example is that vendors need to develop information caching mechanisms at the network level.  
• Smarter security - One of the best phrases used by the mobile users in the government space is, "brick". Users can call and email on a brick but nothing else.  Security personnel should realize that clamping everything defeats the purpose.  IT risk management should be a key in developing a smarter security posture. Single sign on is key as well. No one wants to sign on with multiple usernames and passwords to do their work.
• Usability - One of the best parts of using Netflix is how intuitive the user interface is.  Ease of use is a key phrase to describe Netflix's user interface.  We need to identify and prioritize what functionality is needed or desired on a mobile app.
• Flexibility - Use sound architecture principles like loose coupling, simple interfaces and architectures.  Simpler is better.  
• Standards based architecture -  Eventhough there is an over abundance of  standards especially XML (frankly I am sick of how folks are misusing it), we still need to emphasize it and design appropriately.  Having a 50MB XML payload in SOA enabled information exchange is NOT smart architecture.  I am not going to expound on the 50MB XML example since it is aggravating.

Even though Reed Hastings didn't make alot friends with Qwikster or jacking up the monthly Netflix fees,  he did build a pretty cool service called Netflix streaming.  As I write this blog, my youngest son is watching Power Rangers in Space via the WII and my oldest two are watching a Dreamworks movie via the PS3.  My third one is having fun the old fashioned way. She is attending a birthday party. Thanks Reed and now bring down the monthly fees.

Day 3 @ Gartner Symposium

I spent the third day attending sessions about Wireless IT capabilities; a discussion between 2 Gartner analysts and Paul Maritiz, CEO of VMWare; and session called CIO Power Politics.

Gartner Sessions on Wireless
The wireless sessions were quite good and they validated some of things I would like to see implemented in the agency I work for. They also highlighted the explicit dependencies associated with setting up an enterprise wireless capability. Gartner also didn't emphasize any variables associated with security when developing a mobile strategy. Frankly I think the IT community is struggling on how to balance with innovation, operations, and security. This was evident on how Gartner is skimming over the security components of mobile technologies. I therefore think that IT departments in general will eventually abstract themselves from system/infrastructure security and interface with the security components using IT risk management. IT system security will exist but it will morph into a security science discipline where software and hardware will be developed and embedded into systems (ala McAfee and Symantec). These components will be combined at the IT DNA level (firmware, network stack, etc, etc) and will be implicitly be everywhere in the cloud stacks and device (mobile, desktop) OS stacks. IT department won't have the resources dedicated to look at explicity system security.

Paul Maritz
This leads me to the next point. According to Paul Maritiz, CEO of VMWare, labelled clouds as software mainframes. The Gartner analysts tried to see if VMWare is going out of the virtualizations and going in application and information tier. Paul answered "No". They want to support application development by producing nooks and hooks into the VMWare stack. He was asked about VMWare's acquistion of DIgital Fuel. Paul answered that Digital Fuel was acquired to provide VMWare's customers tools and methods to monitor their VMWare products. Paul kept emphasising that automation is the key and not management. My favorit quote of the Gartner Symposium was said by Paul Maritz. The quote is, "You cannot put management lipstick on a chicken." During the whole session, Paul reminded me of Pavaoritti, the great opera singer. After listening to the session, I am of the opinion that VMWare is betting that Paul Maritiz will hit the right notes in leading VMWare to succeed in the Opera of Cloud and Virtual computing.

CIO Power Politics
I attended this session with a colleague of mine. Session was an assessment on what it takes to be a successful CIO. I could go into the details but it comes down to common sense. Key tentants are: know your organization; know the mission and vision of your organization; understand your strengths and weaknesses; and work hard. Hard work doesn't mean slaving as a code monkey or developing shell scripts. It means take ownership, be passionate about it and user your common sense. This will inspire your team and create a positive synergy. The other thing that caught my eye is Gartner's mission. What is it? Is Gartner providing information regarding trends and analysis or sessions on what it takes to succeed as a CIO.

In closing I was caught by Mr. Maritz' s analogy of the cloud as software mainframes. In 1970s and 1980s, we had hardware mainframes. In 2010s, we have software mainframes. I believe by 2020, we will have information mainframes. What are information mainframes? They are data and information sets available on the internet and these sets will be avaiable for a cost. Applications of these information mainframes could be for visual analytics, information sharing. These information mainframes will replace architectures like SOA which will never succeed in an enterprise scale. Information mainframes will allow companies to run federate queries, data discovery and data management. To get there, technologies and methodologies need to be developed to increase data quality, semantic harmonization, data security. We are not there yet. Social networks like Facebook, and Linkedin are people information mainframes however we are not there yet for enterprise business information.

Assessing IT Trends via Google Trends

After spending more than eleven years in the Information Technology, it is amazing to see how technologies evolve and trends are created and destroyed. I did a workshop on Thursday March 17,2011 with my colleague, Mr. Giora Hadar, on social media at FAA's IT\ISS conference where I discussed the evolution of social media and how FAA is using it. While preparing for the presentation, I realized how US government information policy is influenced by technology trends. Anyway here are some trends as viewed on Google Trends:

• Query: "cloud computing"
  
• Definition: "Cloud computing refers to the provision of computational resources on demand via a network." - Wikipedia
• Google Trends:

  

• Query: "Service oriented architecture"
• Definition: "Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a flexible set of design principles used during the phases of systems development and integration in computing." - Wikipedia
• Google Trends:

  

• Query: "social media"
• Definition: "Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue." - Wikipedia
• Google Trends:

  

• Query: "bpms"
• Definition: "Some define the BPM System or Suite (BPMS) as "the whole of BPM." Others will relate the important concept of information moving between enterprise software packages and immediately think of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)." - Wikipedia
• Google Trends:
  

  

• Query: "knowledge management"
• Definition: "Knowledge Management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences." - Wikipedia
• Google Trends:

  

• Query: "enterprise architecture"
• Definition: "An enterprise architecture (EA) is a rigorous description of the structure of an enterprise, which comprises enterprise components (business entities), the externally visible properties of those components, and the relationships (e.g. the behavior) between them. EA describes the terminology, the composition of enterprise components, and their relationships with the external environment, and the guiding principles for the requirement (analysis), design, and evolution of an enterprise.^[1][2][3]" - Wikipedia
  
• Google Trends:

  
  

As you can see, "cloud computing" and "social media" are the hottest IT trends while "service oriented architecture","knowledge management" and "enterprise architecture", are declining. BPMS is also on the rise. What this tells me that CIO will try to align their strategies to the latest trends. These trends correlate to the Gartner Hype Cycle. I wonder if folks are doing any analytical strategic work using a tool like Google Trends.

SOA will die!

I think Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) will die with the whole notion of Cloud computing. If you were to follow to the history of Google APIs (Application Programming Interface), you will notice that Google had quite a few XML based Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) web services in the 2003 - 2004 time frame. If you were to surf the Google Code base, you will notice that there aren't alot of web services enabled APIs. What does this mean?

I think with phenomenon like Cloud computing, there will be a decrease in system to system level integration. How many of us can say that Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) will make a come back? Maybe one or two handfuls around. The reality is that IT is evolving so fast that complexity of the accessible API is more simplified. Who would ever have thought that JavaScript is the favored scripting language to access APIs? It does make sense though. JavaScript is here to stay as long as the web browser (workstation or mobile). In this ever changing evolving IT world, services will be designed and developed using JavaScript. I am waiting for a JavaScript specifically for system integration. I like the JavaScript libraries that were built for Facebook and Google. Goodbye SOA and welcome to JSOA aka JavaScript Oriented Architecture in the cloud. I believe cloud will also cause the fall of the relational database management system (RDBMS) and rise to the Reduced HashMap. I will expound on this evolution in the data tier in the near future.

The image is taken from David Chou's blog entry, "Cloud Computing and the Microsoft Platform" at http://ht.ly/3ACCE