Latest research into mobile web user experience says that overall the experience is “miserable”, and cites the major issues with Mobile web usages, as well as looking at overall “success” rates which, although improved from results of research in the mid-1990’s are much lower than typical PC and workstation results.
This new report names two major factors to improving the aforementioned success rates; that is sites designed specifically with mobile use in mind and improvement and innovations in phone design (smart phones and touch screens perform best).
Jakob Nielsen, ex-Sun Staff member and Distinguished Engineer is famous for his work in the field of “User Experience”, and his site is a key resource to getting advice and best practice in terms of web, and other types of, user experience design.
At first glance you might be mistaken to think that aesthetically not a great deal has changed, however Marianne and I did a great deal of work on the site under Hal’s direction (mainly, “Yea, I like that, go with it”, after he saw the staging site we put together).
So what has changed? Well it’s still got the same great content and articles about innovation and innovators at Sun, we just marshalled the content a little better, provided more in site functionality and better meta-data support for all those web robots and crawlers that consume sites ready for inclusion in search engines.
I haven’t listed out all of the changes to the Innovation@Sun site that Marianne and I made, because that would make a rather dull and long list, however I have included the review of the original site that I did for Marianne, along with the suggestions I made, almost all of which were implemented.
Probably shows a little of how I think and break problems down too…
I’ve broken the recommendations into three primary areas: Aesthetic, Functional and Non-Functional, you’ll get the idea.
1.1) First off I like the design of the site, especially the left and right bordering panels, but they aren’t particularly balanced, so perhaps more content on the right hand side to balance this out.
1.2) Secondly if I scroll down by pages all content in the right hand bordering panel is used up in the first page, and all content in the left hand bordering panel is used up in the second page. However the number of posts you have on the site means that it will continue to scroll down for circa 17 pages of blog entries. This means for the majority of entries on the page there is no supporting information to contextualise it (unless you scroll up). Solutions could be move to a single border (not recommended for now), more content down the borders, and less entries per page. I recommend the latter two options, more content down the borders and fewer entries per page (if your going to have fewer entries per page we need to improve how people can find older content too, more on this below).
1.3) Third, less is more, avoid clutter, and minimize, minimize, minimize; check out my blog at http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/ which is actually an interpretation of Tim Caynes Sun Blog, you see I’m a technologist, got a graphic designer, but I do know when to get inspiration and help from other people.
1.4) Fourth, given the images on the banner I think it might be nice to link to those innovations, although this is a nice to have, rather than anything else.
1.5) Fifth, I’d look at how the post bodies are arranged them selves, and look at formulating a standard template model for the posts layout. The Innovation@Sun blog seems to contain one to four types of content per post (supporting text, optional supporting image, optional blog radio control, links). Personally I’d go with a model of Blog Radio control top right floating object, people will soon learn it’s always there, supporting text top left and under the blog radio control, any image on the bottom left hand side, followed by links / podcast links. I think this would provide a much easier to read page and thus one people may stay on a little longer and read other articles.
2.1) Jakob Nielsen, ex-Sun staff member, Sun Distinguished Engineer and proclaimed web usability expert first published a list of the top ten web design mistakes in 1996 http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html
For the most part, his original list of mistakes are still problematic today, he has also published a list of top ten “new” web design mistakes in 1999 http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990530.html followed by 2002, 2003 and 2005 too.
All of these are valuable and relevant sources of good design and functionality information, have a look if you get chance.
2.2) Remove “Blah words” – redundant repetitive text – get rid of it, for instance the calendar used on the site has no entries for this month and so is a ‘dead’ calendar which doesn’t link to anything. Furthermore lots of dates and times for the entries themselves, none of which matters a great deal, because no.1 is the content.
2.3) Next, blog post title doesn’t link top the article, they should, it’s the number one way people link to the article, plus allows to display article with comments and other data and meta data.
2.4) Current navigation to old articles (“Recent Shows” on the left hand side) link to dates and not titles, this should be changed, so that Recent Shows links to the articles themselves.
2.6) You may also want to improve the next / previous function and make it much more obvious and easy for the reader to find (making access to old articles easier to find too of course). Another one of the standard roller weblogger functions I replaced: the next / previous function. Basically I wanted this to be a little more informative, and host it as a menu list in the sidebar. Here’s my article on how to do that “Roller Weblogger alternative Next Previous function” available http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/entry/roller_weblogger_next_previous_macro
2.8) Do you have lots of blog postings, possibly over a number of years? And do you suspect that despite embedding search and tag clouds into your blog that your readers are still not finding content related to that they enjoy? In fact do you have evidence of that very problem from your web analytics data but don’t know what to do about it? Yes? So did I, so I created this roller weblogger code to generate a list of the most related blog entries based upon tag and category relationships. This is my favorite and most productive functional enhancement to Roller. The article “Roller Weblogger Related Entries and Blog Post code” describes it in detail and shows an example, it really is good, http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/entry/roller_weblogger_related_entries_macro
2.9) Tag display on individual articles, with links to other appropriate content aggregators. I would produce tag links to at least four popular tag destinations, your blog, blogs.sun.com, technorati and del.icio.us. It also ensures that the links are marked as tags, so that crawlers that look for and index tags and tag data will pick them up (microformat and semantic web focused applications, like the ‘Operator’ plug in for Firefox also pick them up of course). Article “Roller Weblogger blog post tag link code for blogs.sun.com, technorati and del.icio.us” over at https://horkan.com/2008/08/11/roller-weblogger-tag-technorati-delicious
3.1) Remember that good site design for attracting traffic is about designing the site for human and non-human visitors; a large number of your visitors will be web spiders and crawlers indexing your site for search engines, blog catalogs, directories and the like. So it’s important that as well as your human visitors you also design your site to be easily and throughly consumed and interpreted by these electronic visitors. My article “make Google notice your Blog” has lots of background info that can help here https://horkan.com/2009/01/20/make-google-notice-your-blog
3.2) My biggest problem with the Innovation@Sun site is it’s lack of semantic / meta data embedded within the main and other pages, this is a significant issue when looking at how this page relates to other sites on the web. The main page should have tag meta data at the very least. You could achieve this with a tag cloud, but frankly tag clouds are becoming rather ‘de rigueur’ and common place. Whether you want a tag cloud or not we should look at generating tag data for every page. For instance if you run a semantic / meta data analyzer on my site you’ll see there is a large amount of machine only readable data, all of which helps spiders index my site the way I want them to.
3.3) Make sure every article has tags and tag data and it is human readable once on the article only page (see 2.9 above which we could double to do this, also ensuring the sites above index it well too).
3.4) Standardise on tags, both format and content. I recommend that you standardize on a Tag format that is search engine friendly. Don’t over tag nor under tag, but try and match your articles tags with other similar articles, try and join in with the subject matter’s folksonomy if at all possible (i.e. the tags people are using when talking about that subject matter, technorati and delicious are both good examples). My article “Tic, Tag, Tow” here https://horkan.com/2008/01/08/tagging-tags-blog-tag-policy should help. Basically use tags which are already being used by the Sun blkogging community, this will also generate pages which display your content vis the main Sun Blogs interface.
3.6) Google’s PageRank algorithms work on links, inbound, outbound, number, and the PageRank of those inbound and outbound links. Link to sources, get inbound links from sources / reciprocal links if possible. Don’t forget to trackback articles that you reference, if the trackback fails try leaving a comment with a link to the article that references it.
3.7) Make sure you let sites such as Google know you’ve updated your site and that you’d like it re-“spider”ed, indexed and advertised. This is done by “blog pinging” search engines and blog directories so that they are informed that your site has been updated and to send over there spiders when they get chance (most search engines / blog directories want to do this quite quickly as they want to be first with any potentially newsworthy content that draws traffic). Personally I wanted a more granular level of control over this than offered with the standard blog ping functionality embedded in roller and so I wrote my own stand alone version, see my article “Free XML-RPC blog ping site submitter: “Blog Ping”” for more information https://horkan.com/2008/04/22/blog-ping-search-submitter-seo
3.8) Other things to consider…
* PageRank of your site and individual pages; how well does your article compete with articles of a similar nature.
* Have pages been bookmarked in del.ici.ous, technorati, etc., i.e. are they being shared.
* Improving site analytics and getting better visibility of visitor interaction with the site and using this to plan the next round of enhancements.
Shockingly the latest report from Forrester Research effectively ends up telling us exactly what we all know already; that the majority of CIOs, CTOs, and other IT leadership and operations management, are not interested in power saving.
As reported recently by The Register in the article “Study finds IT heads not interested in power saving” (available here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/30/pc_power_saving/) which confirms what most of us in the IT industry know to be true, in that in the majority of cases because power consumption comes under the remit of Facilities Management in most organisations the IT department is not responsible for paying for Power Consumed (whether that be for compute, storage and network infrastructure itself, or the cooling equipment that is required to maintain that infrastructure either) and so has no reason to be concerned about the size of the companies power bills (or the effect of poor IT power efficiencies on those bills).
Also in almost all companies the Facilities Management department is much larger, and has a much larger budget, than the IT department; easily often in the magnitude of ten times that of the IT department (in some organisations the IT department is part of the Facilities department, and we most often encounter this model when the organisation in question sees IT purely as organisational ‘infrastructure’ and tends not to see IT as a means to deliver competitive advantage).
Encouraging IT management to be concerned about power efficiency is still highly problematic whilst the IT department is not accountable for managing that Cap-Ex spend, although things are getting better, albeit slowly. Day to day I see large numbers of IT departments and management thereof being set targets for power savings, however I infrequently see any genuine penalties or incentives that ensure these targets are even remotely met (in most cases I see IT departments focus being that of maintaining business critical systems, especially during processing runs, whilst still attempting to build out new functionality at the same time, how little things have really changed).
What constantly amazes me are the number of organisations planning, and determined to, build out new data centre facilities, even now during the downturn. Many of these organisations would be much more sensible to look at refreshing there existing infrastructure, reducing server footprint, getting better energy efficiency and performance, as long as the risk impact and analysis of risk is low, and possibly even reducing their data centre footprint, but that would mean shrinking peoples corporate ‘power bases’ and personal ’empires’ and so often receives a lack of genuine support.
Frankly this would become an important topic if those responsible for the facilities budget where also responsible for the IT budget, but this is rarely the case; IT usually reports to Operations (which may also contain facilities), Finance, or occasionally even the the Main Board or Marketing (including Sales), followed rather infrequently by facilities (this becomes more complex when looking at the IT departments remit, and whether they have significant influence, or control, over the application development team and the business analysts from the profit generating business units).
The most obvious answer would be to get IT and Facilities to work much more closely together, and at least be set joint targets, which are ‘SMART’ (stands for “Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-framed”). The other that I’ve heard becoming more popular recently has been to redirect Facilities budgets to IT departments for them to run technology refresh programmes, with a recent example looking at an unprecedented 10% of Facilities budget being transferred to IT, nearly doubling that IT departments budget for the year.
Personally I don’t think this will be addressed well in the short term, but I’m hopeful that using budget earmarked for Facilities for Technology Refresh, and planning facilities reductions becomes a more widely recognised and sensible approach to help drive down the amount of energy consumed by the technology at use within enterprises, because, frankly, something needs to be done to reduce enterprise consumption of power and space resources.
In the future, once we’re all ensconced in our virtual reality worlds, is this the way it will all end? On February the 28th, 2009, Tabula Rasa, an MMORPG (like World of Warcraft and RuneScape) was shut down, after failing to attract enough subscribers related to the current economic downturn.
By the afternoon, the West Coast server Hydra was the last server standing. As more and more of its citizenry logged on for the last hurrah, and foreign players from dead servers poured in to squeeze a few more hours out of the game, it became increasingly congested, buggy, and lag-ridden. The intended scenario was indeed playing out not just in the game and the fiction but as a metagame: the active duty population swelled as humanity prepared to make its final stand.
Simon’s description reminded me a little of the recent Doctor Who episode “Utopia”, where at the end of time humanity are huddling together as heat death consumes the planets they had colonised. The ‘Futurekind’ almost like NPCs, also collecting together, prior to being finally terminated.
In a doubly ironic twist of fate, ‘Tabula Rasa’ is Latin for ‘blank slate’, or rather ‘slate wiped clean’, popularised by John Locke as a rather now out of fashion philosophical thesis that individuals are born without any built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception alone (the whole ‘nature’ versus ‘nurture’ debate is more balanced now). It also resembles the off state of the server infrastructure that would have supported the game that presumably had it’s ‘memory’ wiped clean, prior to being redeployed to support other functionality.
After the AGM itself I’ll be doing a presentation called “An Exploration of Cloud Computing” with the following synopsis:
An exploration of Cloud Computing looking at an overview of the subject of and some of the current common definitions available. Looking at the current state of the Cloud Computing market place and Cloud Vendors, what is actually being sold to people. Will also look at the different types of clouds, the differing approaches to engaging with cloud providers, the business models, impact on Business, and how Businesses can exploit the ‘Cloud’.
Answers to key Cloud Computing questions I hope to address include:
What’s Cloud Computing?
What’s different to what we’ve seen before?
What’s driving Cloud Computing adoption?
What types of Cloud are there?
How can I engage with them and use in my Business?
What’s the overview of the Cloud Computing marketplace now?
How is Cloud Computing likely to change?
A number of the members of the Birmingham Committee will be standing down at the AGM so we are looking for volunteers to join the Committee to take part in planning our activities for the 2009-10 session. If you are interested in joining the Committee please contact John Chinn, Branch Secretary, at john.chinn@manchester.ac.uk or you can come forward at the AGM itself.
Details for the event are:
Date: Monday the 18th of May, 2009
Time: AGM at 6pm for 6.30pm, Presentation at 7pm
Location: Trophy Suite, Tally Ho Sports & Conference Centre, Pershore Road, Birmingham B5 7RN
Cost: Free, Presentation open to all (including non-members of BCS), no registration required although we would prefer that you contact the Branch Secretary, John Chinn, at john.chinn@manchester.ac.uk or 0161 306 3733, so that we can advise the caterers of the correct numbers for the buffet.
Alan Mather has just released his excellent “Enterprise Architecture in Government” white paper from 2003. This white paper has mythic status in UK Government IT circles because of it’s visionary roadmap of an implementation for Enterprise Architecture (EA) for the UK. Pre-dating the “Cross Government Enterprise Architecture” (XGEA) work of the CTO Council (who hadn’t even been formed at the time, but nor had the CIO Council who commissioned them either) this is the earliest attempt at applying an EA vision to the co-ordination of the UK’s IT and IS portfolio.
Alan surely requires little introduction, and is a singularly authoritative voice, having been the been the Chief Exec. of the Office of the e-Envoy’s (OeE, then e-Government Unit, or eGU, and finally the CIO Council) e-Design Team (eDT, currently led admirably by it’s new Director, Chris Haynes, although the eDT itself is now part of DWP having moved there at the same time as the eGU transformed into the CIO Council). Alan spent a number of years at the heart of the Cabinet Offices push for ‘Shared Services’ and Government services online programmes, helping to instigate and then deliver the largest UK “Government to Government” (G2G) system, by volume and scale, the Government Gateway.
More than a few people are starting to get active again around shared services, enterprise architectures, shared data centres (and all of the SaaS, HaaS and maybe just plain old aaS that could bring). A while ago I wrote a document that I hoped would lead to a debate on delivering some or all of those things into UK government. The document largely languished on my hard drive gathering virtual dust like so many reports about what government should do to make things better. It never quite got finished although, looking through it now some 6 years after it was written, it still seems to hang together pretty well.
Alan’s being rather reserved here because I know it was released to a few, select, senior people across Government, and I genuinely credit this to having furthered, if not initiated, the conversation in Government about planning out it’s overall EA (both “as is”, “to be”, and strategy) in a much more pro-active manner. I’m glad to say I was one of the people Alan chose to review the document back in 2003, but frankly I thought it was excellent at the time and still do.
For the life of me I can’t understand why Alan isn’t at the epicentre of Government as an integral part of the UK Government EA programme, then again he is running a major programme at the moment, another large-scale system key to the future of the UK, so I imagine know he is kept pretty busy by that delivery.
Anyone and everyone interested in UK Government IT should read this document, I’m sure many of you would be shocked at how visionary the paper is, and how relevant it still is after six years. Alan Mather’s “Enterprise Architecture in Government” document is available from box.net (which opens in a new window): https://www.box.net/shared/ki3z6ejjiv
Are you concerned about the state of the UK economy in the future, because I know I am, so I’ll be exploring some of the issues being faced by the UK economy, especially when it comes to science, technology, engineering and industry contributions to the UK’s GDP in my next few articles. …..
Récemment, Eric Bezille compris le modèle de mon “Cloud Relationship Model” article dans son blog “Sur les pas du premier Camp Cloud à Paris …».Recently Eric Bezille included the model from my ” Cloud Relationship Model ” article in his blog post ” Sur les pas du premier Cloud Camp à Paris… “. And I thought I’d translate the article into French for Philippe’s readers. Et j’ai pensé traduire l’article en français pour les lecteurs de Philippe. I’ve had to use electronic translation (Google, actually) as I’m afraid my written and spoken French isn’t quite good enough to be able to do it manually in a reasonable amount of time. J’ai eu à utiliser la traduction électronique (Google, en fait) que je crains que mon français écrit et parlé est pas tout à fait assez bon pour être en mesure de le faire manuellement dans un délai raisonnable. I haven’t had time to translate the model itself, but you are more than welcome to recreate, reuse and distribute it, although I’d hope you would attribute the original version to me at this site. Je n’ai pas eu le temps de traduire le modèle lui-même, mais vous êtes plus que bienvenu pour recréer, de réutilisation et de la distribuer, mais je l’espère vous attribuer la version originale pour moi à ce site. Please let me know if there are any outstanding translation issues and I’ll amend them when I can. S’il vous plaît laissez-moi savoir s’il ya des questions de traduction en suspens et je vais les modifier quand je peux.
This article was originally a guest post I did recently for Stewart Townsend over at Sun Startup Essentials describing the cloud relationship model I had developed as an artefact when discussing cloud computing. Cet article a été invité récemment post, je n’ai plus de Stewart Townsend à Sun Startup Essentials décrivant le modèle de relation de nuages j’avais développé comme un artefact de calcul lors de l’examen de nuages.
I wanted a simply model which I could share with people and use as a discussion point, whilst still capturing the major areas of cloud computing which I considered most pertinent. I developed this model about six months ago and have since found it useful when talking with people about cloud computing. Je voulais tout simplement un modèle qui je pourrais partager avec les gens et utiliser comme point de discussion, tout en capturant les grands domaines de l’informatique de nuages que j’ai jugé plus pertinent. J’ai développé ce modèle il ya environ six mois et ont depuis trouvé utile lorsque l’on parle avec les gens sur les nuages de calcul.
Here’s the model and I’ll go though it’s major elements below. Voici le modèle et je vais bien que les principaux éléments ci-dessous.
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Major Cloud Communities Major Cloud Communautés
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In the cloud there are three major participants: Dans les nuages, il ya trois principaux participants: ¨C22C
the Cloud Providers; building out Clouds, for instance Google, Amazon, etc. Effectively technology providers. les fournisseurs de Cloud, la construction des nuages, par exemple Google, Amazon, etc efficacement les fournisseurs de technologie. ¨C24C¨C25C
the Cloud Adopters / Developers; those developing services over the Cloud and some becoming the first generation of Cloud ISVs. I have included Cloud “Service” developers and Cloud ISV developers together. les adoptants Cloud / développeurs, ceux de développer des services sur le Cloud et de certains de devenir la première génération de Cloud ISVs. J’ai inclus Cloud “Service” développeurs et éditeurs de logiciels de développeurs Cloud ensemble. This group are effectively service enablers. Ce groupe de services sont effectivement des facilitateurs. ¨C27C¨C28C
Cloud “End” Users; those using Cloud provisioned services, often without knowing that they are cloud provisioned, the most obvious example of which are the multitude of Facebook users who have no idea there favorite FB app. Cloud “fin” des utilisateurs; ceux qui utilisent les services Cloud provisionné, souvent sans savoir qu’ils sont des nuages provisionnés, l’exemple le plus évident dont la multitude d’utilisateurs de Facebook, qui n’ont aucune idée de là favorite FB app. is running on AWS. est en cours d’exécution sur AWS. These are the service consumers. Ce sont les services aux consommateurs. ¨C30C¨C31C
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I think it’s important to talk about these communities because I keep hearing lots about the Cloud Providers, and even more about the issues and ‘needs’ of the Cloud adopters / developers, but very little in terms of Cloud “End” Users. In a computing eco-system such as this where “services” are supported by and transverse technology providers, service enablers and service consumers an end to end understanding of how this affects these reliant communities is required. Je pense qu’il est important de parler de ces communautés parce que je continue à l’audience sur les lots Cloud fournisseurs, et plus encore sur les questions et les «besoins» des adoptants Cloud / développeurs, mais très peu en termes de Cloud “fin” des utilisateurs. Dans un le calcul de l’éco-système de ce genre où les “services” sont pris en charge par les fournisseurs de technologie et transversal, le service des facilitateurs et les consommateurs un service de bout en bout la compréhension de la façon dont cela affecte les communautés dépendantes est nécessaire. Obvious issues such as SLAs for end users and businesses which rely upon high availability and high uptime from there cloud providers come to mind; however other “ilities” and systemic qualities come to mind such as security, and that’s before looking at any detailed breakdown of functional services. Évidente des questions telles que la SLA pour les utilisateurs finaux et les entreprises qui s’appuient sur la haute disponibilité et haute disponibilité à partir de là, les fournisseurs de nuages viennent à l’esprit, mais d’autres “ilities” et systémique qualités me viennent à l’esprit, comme la sécurité, et que l’avant de chercher à tout ventilation détaillée des services fonctionnels. ¨C34C
The point here is that the cloud adopters / developers and interestingly the cloud “watchers” (ie the press, media, bloggers and experts) would be mindful to remember the needs and requirements of genuine end users; for myself it’d certainly be invigorating to hear more on this topic area. Le point important ici est que le nuage adoptants / développeurs et intéressant le nuage “observateurs” (c’est-à-dire la presse, les médias, les blogueurs et experts) sont conscients de se rappeler les besoins et les exigences de véritables utilisateurs finaux, pour moi ça sera certainement vivifiant pour en savoir plus sur ce sujet. ¨C35C¨C36C
Simon Wardley , a much more eloquent public speaker than myself, does a wonderful pitch which includes a look at the different “as a Service types” which he boils down to being a load of “*aaS” (very amusing, and informative, try and catch Simon presenting if you can). Simon Wardley, un public beaucoup plus éloquent orateur que moi, fait un merveilleux terrain qui comprend un regard sur les différents types de service »dont il se résume à être une charge de” * AAS “(très amusant et instructif, essayez Simon et les prises de présenter, si vous le pouvez).
I wholeheartedly agree that there is a large amount of befuddlement when it comes to the differing “aaS” types and sub-types, and new ones are springing up relatively frequently, however I also think it’s important to not ignore the differences between them. Je suis entièrement d’accord qu’il ya une grande quantité de befuddlement quand il s’agit de la différence “ AAS” types et sous-types, et de nouveaux voient le jour assez fréquemment, mais je crois aussi qu’il est important de ne pas ignorer les différences entre eux. ¨C40C
For me, and many others, I think first popularised by the ” Partly Cloudy – Blue-Sky Thinking About Cloud Computing ” white paper from the 451 Group, the differing “aaS” variants are identified as billing and engagement models. That white paper also postulates the five major Cloud Computing provider models, into which the majority of minor “aaS” variants fall. They are: Pour moi, et bien d’autres, je pense que le premier popularisé par “Nuages épars – Blue-Sky Thinking About Cloud Computing” livre blanc de la 451 groupe, les différents “* AAS” variantes sont identifiées comme étant des modèles de facturation et d’engagement. Ce livre blanc aussi les cinq principaux postulats Cloud Computing fournisseur de modèles, dans lequel la majorité des mineurs “* AAS« variantes automne. Ce sont: ¨C41C
Managed Service Provision (MSP); not only are you hiring your service from the cloud, you’ve someone to run and maintain it too. Fourniture de services gérés (MSP), non seulement vous votre service de recrutement des nuages, vous avez quelqu’un d’exécuter et de maintenir aussi. ¨C43C¨C44C
Software as a Service (SaaS); pretty much ubiquitous as a term and usually typified by Salesforce.com , who are the SaaS poster child. Software as a Service (SaaS), un peu comme un terme omniprésent et souvent caractérisée par Salesforce.com, qui sont les affiches SaaS enfant. ¨C46C¨C47C
Platform as a Service (PaaS); the application platform most commonly associated with Amazon Web Services. Platform as a Service (FQA), la plate-forme d’application les plus couramment associés à Amazon Web Services. ¨C49C¨C50C
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS); Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS); ¨C52C¨C53C
Major Architectural Layers Major couches architecturales
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Also included in the diagram are the major architectural layers that are included in each of the above billing / engagement models offered by the Cloud providers. Également inclus dans le diagramme sont les principales couches architecturales qui sont inclus dans chacune de ces facturation / l’engagement des modèles offerts par les fournisseurs de Cloud. They are: Ils sont: ¨C64C¨C65C
Operations; and this really is operations supporting functional business processes, rather than supporting the technology itself. Opérations, et cela est vraiment fonctionnel des opérations de soutien des processus d’affaires, plutôt que de soutenir la technologie elle-même. ¨C67C¨C68C
Service layer; made up of application code, bespoke code, high-level ISV offerings. Service couche composée de code, code sur mesure, haut niveau de l’offre des éditeurs de logiciels. ¨C70C¨C71C
Platform layer; made up of standard platform software ie app. Plate-forme couche composé de plate-forme standard des logiciels c’est-à-dire environ. servers, DB servers, web servers, etc., and an example implementation would be a LAMP stack. les serveurs, les DB serveurs, serveurs Web, etc, et un exemple de mise en œuvre serait une LAMP pile. ¨C73C¨C74C
Infrastructure layer; made up of (i) infrastructure software (ievirtualisation and OS software), (ii) the hardware platform and server infrastructure, and (iii) the storage platform. Infrastructure couche composée de (i) des logiciels d’infrastructure (ievirtualisation OS et logiciels), (ii) la plate-forme matérielle et infrastructure de serveur, et (iii) de la plate-forme de stockage. ¨C76C¨C77C
Network layer; made up of routers, firewalls, gateways, and other network technology. La couche réseau, composé de routeurs, firewalls, passerelles, et d’autres technologies de réseau. ¨C79C¨C80C
¨C82C
This rather oversimplifies the architecture, as it’s important to note that each of the cloud billing / engagement models use capabilities from each of the above architectural layers; for instance their can be a lot of service simply in managing a network, however these describe the major architectural components (which support the service being procured), not simply ancillary functions, effectively what are the cloud providers customers principally paying for. Cet excès de l’architecture, plutôt, comme il est important de noter que chacun des nuages de facturation / d’engagement de l’utilisation des modèles de capacités de chacune de ces couches architecturales, par exemple, peut leur être très simplement dans la gestion de service d’un réseau, mais elles décrivent les principales éléments d’architecture (qui soutiennent le service d’approvisionnement), et non pas simplement des fonctions auxiliaires, de manière efficace ce que les nuages sont principalement les fournisseurs de clients pour le paiement. ¨C83C¨C84C
Delta of Effort / Delta of Opportunity Effort de Delta / Delta de chances
¨C85C¨C86C¨C87C
This is much more than the ‘gap’ between the cloud providers and the cloud users, wherein the cloud adopters / developers sit, the gap between the cloud providers and the end cloud users can be called the delta of effort, but also the delta of opportunity. C’est beaucoup plus que le «fossé» entre les nuages et les nuages des utilisateurs, que le nuage adopteurs développeurs s’asseoir, l’écart entre le nuage et les utilisateurs de la fin des nuages peut être appelé le delta de l’effort, mais aussi le delta du occasion. ¨C88C
It is the delta of effort in terms of skills, abilities, experience and technology that the cloud adopter needs to deliver a functional service to their own “End Users”. This will be potentially a major area of cost to the cloud adopters. Il est le delta de l’effort en termes de compétences, les capacités, l’expérience et de la technologie que le nuage adoptant doit fournir un service fonctionnel à leur propre “End Users”. Ce sera peut être un domaine majeur de coût pour le nuage adoptants. But it’s also the delta of opportunity;in terms of ‘room’ to innovate. Mais c’est aussi le delta de l’occasion, en termes de «chambre» à l’innovation. ¨C89C
The more capability procured from the cloud provider (ie higher up the stack as a whole), the less you have to do (and procure) yourself. However the less procured from the cloud provider the more opportunity you have engineer a differentiating technology stack yourself. This itself has it’s disadvantages because the cloud adopters / developers could potentially not realise the true and best value of their cloud providers infrastructure. La capacité d’approvisionnement plus le nuage de fournisseur (c’est-à-dire en haut de la pile dans son ensemble), moins vous avez à faire (et acheter) vous-même. Toutefois, le moins obtenus à partir de la nuée fournisseur le plus vous avez la possibilité de différenciation ingénieur technologie pile-vous . Ce qu’il est lui-même a des inconvénients car les nuages adopteurs développeurs pourraient ne pas réaliser la véritable et la meilleure valeur de leur nuage les fournisseurs d’infrastructures. ¨C90C¨C91C
I suspect that there is an optimum level, around the Platform Layer, which abstracts enough complexity away (ie you don’t have to procure servers, networks, implementation or technology operations staff), but also leaves enough room to innovate and produce software engineered value. Arguably the only current successful cloud provider, based upon market share, perception, revenue and customer take up, is Amazon Web Services (AWS) who provide a PaaS offering. Je pense qu’il ya un niveau optimal, autour de la plate-forme de couche, qui résumés complexité assez loin (c’est-à-dire vous n’avez pas à acheter des serveurs, des réseaux, la mise en œuvre des opérations ou de technologie), mais laisse aussi assez d’espace pour innover et produire de l’ingénierie du logiciel valeur. doute le seul fournisseur actuel succès des nuages, sur la base de la part de marché, la perception des recettes et des clients de prendre place, est Amazon Web Services (AWS) qui fournissent une offre Paas. ¨C92C¨C93C¨C94C¨C95C
Summary Sommaire
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Hope you enjoyed the article, in summary if developing cloud services or even building out a cloud infrastructure I would recommend that you focus on your users and if your a cloud provider, your users’ users; remembering that only a certain percentage of those users will be customers (I won’t getting into discussing Chris Anderson’s 5% recommended conversion rate for the long tail , however I would recommend understanding what some of those calculations might be). Espérons que vous avez aimé cet article, en résumé, si le développement des services ou encore des nuages à la construction d’infrastructures d’un nuage, je vous recommandons de vous concentrer sur vos utilisateurs, et si votre fournisseur d’un nuage, vos utilisateurs, les utilisateurs; de se souvenir que seul un certain pourcentage de ces utilisateurs être des clients (je ne vais pas entrer dans la discussion Chris Anderson recommandé 5% du taux de conversion pour la longue queue, mais je recommande la compréhension de ce que certains de ces calculs pourraient être). ¨C99C
If you’re looking to develop services over the cloud, think carefully about where you and your teams skills lie, and where would you most want them focusing there efforts; working on installing and tuning operating systems and application platforms or writing business value focused applications and services, before choosing at which level to engage with your cloud provider(s). Si vous cherchez à développer des services sur le nuage, la réflexion sur l’endroit où vous et vos équipes les compétences se trouvent, et où vous le plus envie de les y concentrer les efforts, le travail sur l’installation et le réglage des systèmes d’exploitation et plates-formes d’application ou de rédaction de la valeur axée applications et des services, avant de choisir à quel niveau de dialoguer avec votre fournisseur de nuage (s). ¨C100C¨C101C¨C102C¨C103C
I haven’t mentioned enterprise adoption of cloud based services, and that’s because I’d like to post that in the near future in a different article. Je n’ai pas mentionné l’adoption d’entreprise de services basés sur les nuages, et c’est parce que je voudrais pour écrire que dans un avenir proche dans un autre article. ¨C104C
Hope you enjoyed the article and all the best, Espérons que vous avez aimé l’article et tous les meilleurs, ¨C105C¨C106C
Kürzlich Philipp Strube meiner ursprünglichen genannten “Cloud Betreuungsmodell” Artikel in seinem Blog-Post “Paas, IAAS, Saas: Den Überblick zu behalten ist wie immer ein Problem für sich”.Recently Philipp Strube mentioned my original ” Cloud Relationship Model ” article in his blog post ” Paas, Iaas, Saas: Den Überblick zu behalten ist wie immer ein Problem für sich “. And given all the traffic it’s generated I thought I’d translate the article into German for Philippe’s readers. Und da der gesamte Verkehr ist es, die ich dachte, ich übersetzen den Artikel in Deutsch für Philippe Leser. I’ve had to use electronic translation (Google, actually) as I’m afraid my written and spoken German isn’t quite good enough to be able to do it manually in a reasonable amount of time. Ich habe die Verwendung elektronischer Übersetzung (Google, eigentlich), wie ich fürchte, mein Wort und Schrift Deutsch ist nicht gut genug sein, um es manuell in einer angemessenen Höhe der Zeit. I haven’t had time to translate the model itself, but you are more than welcome to recreate, reuse and distribute it, although I’d hope you would attribute the original version to me at this site. Ich habe nicht genug Zeit hatte, um das Modell selbst, aber Sie sind mehr als willkommen zu neu, Wiederverwendung und zu verteilen, auch wenn ich hoffe, Sie würden Attribut der ursprünglichen Version für mich auf dieser Seite. Please let me know if there are any outstanding translation issues and I’ll amend them when I can. Bitte lassen Sie mich wissen, wenn es alle noch ausstehenden Fragen und Übersetzung ich ändern, wenn ich kann.
This article was originally a guest post I did recently for Stewart Townsend over at Sun Startup Essentials describing the cloud relationship model I had developed as an artefact when discussing cloud computing. Dieser Artikel war ursprünglich ein Gast-post Ich habe vor kurzem für Stewart Townsend über auf Sonntag Startup Essentials beschreiben die Wolke Modell hatte ich als ein Artefakt bei der Erörterung Wolke Computing.
I wanted a simply model which I could share with people and use as a discussion point, whilst still capturing the major areas of cloud computing which I considered most pertinent. I developed this model about six months ago and have since found it useful when talking with people about cloud computing. Ich wollte ein Modell, das einfach konnte ich mit Menschen und die Verwendung als Diskussion, während die Aufnahme noch die wichtigsten Bereiche der EDV-Wolke, die ich als besonders wichtig. Ich habe dieses Modell an etwa sechs Monaten und haben gefunden, da es für sinnvoll, wenn im Gespräch mit Menschen über Wolke Computing.
Here’s the model and I’ll go though it’s major elements below. Hier ist das Modell, und ich gehe auch wenn es die wichtigsten Elemente aufgeführt.
Major Cloud Communities Major Cloud Gemeinschaften
In the cloud there are three major participants: In den Wolken gibt es im wesentlichen drei Teilnehmer:
the Cloud Providers; building out Clouds, for instance Google, Amazon, etc. Effectively technology providers. die Cloud Provider; Gebäude aus Wolken, zum Beispiel Google, Amazon, etc. effektiv Technologieanbietern.
the Cloud Adopters / Developers; those developing services over the Cloud and some becoming the first generation of Cloud ISVs. I have included Cloud “Service” developers and Cloud ISV developers together. die Wolke Adopters / Entwickler, die Entwicklung von Diensten über den Wolken und einige werden die erste Generation der Cloud ISVs. Ich habe Cloud “Service”-Entwickler und ISV-Cloud Entwickler zusammen. This group are effectively service enablers. Diese Gruppe tatsächlich Dienstfunktionen.
Cloud “End” Users; those using Cloud provisioned services, often without knowing that they are cloud provisioned, the most obvious example of which are the multitude of Facebook users who have no idea there favorite FB app. Cloud “End”-Nutzer, die mit Cloud bereitgestellten Dienstleistungen, oft ohne zu wissen, dass sie Wolken vorhanden, das offensichtlichste Beispiel für die sich die Vielzahl der Facebook-Benutzer, die keine Ahnung haben, es Lieblings-FB App. is running on AWS. läuft auf AWS. These are the service consumers. Es handelt sich um den Dienst der Verbraucher.
I think it’s important to talk about these communities because I keep hearing lots about the Cloud Providers, and even more about the issues and ‘needs’ of the Cloud adopters / developers, but very little in terms of Cloud “End” Users. In a computing eco-system such as this where “services” are supported by and transverse technology providers, service enablers and service consumers an end to end understanding of how this affects these reliant communities is required. Ich denke, es ist wichtig, darüber zu sprechen, weil diese Gemeinschaften ich viel über die Anhörung Cloud-Provider, und noch mehr über die Probleme und Bedürfnisse “der Wolke Anwender / Entwickler, aber nur sehr wenig in Bezug auf die Ableitung von” End “-Benutzer. In einer Eco-Computing-System wie diesem, wo “Dienstleistungen” werden von Quer-und Technologie-Anbietern, Service-Enabler und Service der Verbraucher ein Ende zu Ende zu verstehen, wie sich diese auf dieser Reliant Gemeinden erforderlich ist. Obvious issues such as SLAs for end users and businesses which rely upon high availability and high uptime from there cloud providers come to mind; however other “ilities” and systemic qualities come to mind such as security, and that’s before looking at any detailed breakdown of functional services. Offensichtliche Fragen wie SLAs für Endnutzer und Unternehmen, die sich auf hohe Verfügbarkeit und hohe Verfügbarkeit von dort Wolke Anbieter kommen in den Sinn, aber andere “ilities” und systemischen Eigenschaften kommen in den Sinn wie Sicherheit, und das ist, bevor man eine detaillierte Aufschlüsselung der funktionsfähigen Dienste.
The point here is that the cloud adopters / developers and interestingly the cloud “watchers” (ie the press, media, bloggers and experts) would be mindful to remember the needs and requirements of genuine end users; for myself it’d certainly be invigorating to hear more on this topic area. Der Punkt hier ist, dass die Wolke Anwender / Entwickler und interessanterweise der Wolke “Watchers” (dh der Presse, Medien, Blogger und Experten) würden darauf achten, nicht vergessen, den Bedürfnissen und Anforderungen der Endnutzer echten, für mich würde es sicherlich belebend zu hören, mehr zu diesem Thema werden.
Simon Wardley , a much more eloquent public speaker than myself, does a wonderful pitch which includes a look at the different “as a Service types” which he boils down to being a load of “aaS” (very amusing, and informative, try and catch Simon presenting if you can). Simon Wardley, eine sehr viel beredter Redner als ich, hat eine wunderbare Tonhöhe, die einen Blick auf die verschiedenen “als Service-Typen”, die er läuft darauf hinaus, dass eine Last von “ Aas” (sehr witzig und informativ, versuchen Fang und Simon, die, wenn Sie können).
I wholeheartedly agree that there is a large amount of befuddlement when it comes to the differing “aaS” types and sub-types, and new ones are springing up relatively frequently, however I also think it’s important to not ignore the differences between them. Ich voll und ganz zustimmen, dass es eine große Menge von befuddlement, wenn es darum geht, die unterschiedlichen “ Aas” und Sub-Typen und neue Boden relativ häufig, aber ich denke, es ist wichtig, nicht über die Unterschiede zwischen ihnen.
For me, and many others, I think first popularised by the ” Partly Cloudy – Blue-Sky Thinking About Cloud Computing ” white paper from the 451 Group, the differing “aaS” variants are identified as billing and engagement models. That white paper also postulates the five major Cloud Computing provider models, into which the majority of minor “aaS” variants fall. They are: Für mich und viele andere, ich glaube, von der ersten popularisierte “teilweise bewölkt – Blue-Sky Thinking About Cloud Computing” weißen Papier aus dem 451-Fraktion, die unterschiedlichen “* Aas” Varianten sind als Rechnungs-und Engagement Modelle. Das Weißbuch postuliert auch die fünf größten Anbieter Cloud Computing-Modelle, in denen die Mehrheit der minderjährigen “* Aas” Varianten fallen. Sie sind:
Managed Service Provision (MSP); not only are you hiring your service from the cloud, you’ve someone to run and maintain it too. Managed Service Providing (MSP), nicht nur die Mieten Sie Ihren Service aus der Wolke, die Sie jemandem zu laufen und sie zu pflegen.
Software as a Service (SaaS); pretty much ubiquitous as a term and usually typified by Salesforce.com , who are the SaaS poster child. Software as a Service (SaaS), so ziemlich allgegenwärtig als Begriff und in der Regel gekennzeichnet durch Salesforce.com, wer sind die SaaS-Poster Kind.
Platform as a Service (PaaS); the application platform most commonly associated with Amazon Web Services. Platform as a Service (Paas); die Anwendung Plattform am häufigsten im Zusammenhang mit Amazon Web Services.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS); Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS);
Major Architectural Layers Major Architectural Ebenen
Also included in the diagram are the major architectural layers that are included in each of the above billing / engagement models offered by the Cloud providers. Auch in der Grafik sind die wichtigsten architektonischen Schichten, die in jedem der oben genannten Billing / Engagement Modelle von der Cloud-Anbieter. They are: Sie sind:
Operations; and this really is operations supporting functional business processes, rather than supporting the technology itself. Operations, und das ist wirklich funktionellen Maßnahmen zur Förderung von Geschäftsprozessen, sondern als Unterstützung der Technologie.
Service layer; made up of application code, bespoke code, high-level ISV offerings. Service-Schicht, aus der Anwendung Code, maßgeschneiderten Code, High-Level-ISV-Angebote.
Platform layer; made up of standard platform software ie app. Plattform Schicht; aus der Standard-Plattform-Software, dh App. servers, DB servers, web servers, etc., and an example implementation would be a LAMP stack. Server, DB-Server, Web-Server, usw., und ein Beispiel dafür wäre eine LAMP-Stack.
Infrastructure layer; made up of (i) infrastructure software (ievirtualisation and OS software), (ii) the hardware platform and server infrastructure, and (iii) the storage platform. Infrastruktur-Schicht, die sich aus (i) Infrastruktur-Software (ievirtualisation und OS-Software), (ii) die Hardware-Plattform-und Server-Infrastruktur und (iii) die Speicherplattform.
Network layer; made up of routers, firewalls, gateways, and other network technology. Network Layer; aus Routern, Firewalls, Gateways und andere Netzwerk-Technologie.
This rather oversimplifies the architecture, as it’s important to note that each of the cloud billing / engagement models use capabilities from each of the above architectural layers; for instance their can be a lot of service simply in managing a network, however these describe the major architectural components (which support the service being procured), not simply ancillary functions, effectively what are the cloud providers customers principally paying for. Diese eher übermäßige der Architektur, wie es ist wichtig zu beachten, dass jeder der Wolke Abrechnung / Engagement Modelle verwenden Fähigkeiten aus jedem der oben genannten architektonischen Schichten, zum Beispiel ihre kann eine Menge Service einfach in die Verwaltung eines Netzes, aber diese Beschreibung der wichtigsten Architektur-Komponenten (die Unterstützung der Service werden soll), nicht einfach Nebendienstleistungen Funktionen, wirksam sind, was die Wolke Anbieter hauptsächlich Kunden bezahlen.
Delta of Effort / Delta of Opportunity Delta Aufwand / Delta von Opportunity
This is much more than the ‘gap’ between the cloud providers and the cloud users, wherein the cloud adopters / developers sit, the gap between the cloud providers and the end cloud users can be called the delta of effort, but also the delta of opportunity. Dies ist viel mehr als die “Lücke” zwischen der Wolke und den Wolken Benutzer, dass die Wolke Anwender / Entwickler sitzen, die Kluft zwischen der Wolke und den Ende Wolke Benutzer kann die Delta-Aufwand, sondern auch das Delta der Chance. ¨C88C
It is the delta of effort in terms of skills, abilities, experience and technology that the cloud adopter needs to deliver a functional service to their own “End Users”. This will be potentially a major area of cost to the cloud adopters. Es ist das Delta der Anstrengungen im Hinblick auf die Fertigkeiten, Fähigkeiten, Erfahrungen und Technologien, dass die Wolke Anwender braucht, um eine funktionale Service für ihre eigenen “End User”. Dies ist möglicherweise ein wichtiger Bereich der Kosten für die Wolke adopters. But it’s also the delta of opportunity;in terms of ‘room’ to innovate. Aber es ist auch das Delta der Möglichkeit, im Hinblick auf die “Zimmer”, zu innovieren.
The more capability procured from the cloud provider (ie higher up the stack as a whole), the less you have to do (and procure) yourself. However the less procured from the cloud provider the more opportunity you have engineer a differentiating technology stack yourself. This itself has it’s disadvantages because the cloud adopters / developers could potentially not realise the true and best value of their cloud providers infrastructure. Die Fähigkeit, die aus der Wolke-Anbieter (z. B. die weiter oben in der Stack als Ganzes), desto weniger müssen Sie tun (und Beschaffung) selber. Doch die weniger die aus der Wolke Anbieter die Möglichkeit haben Sie ein Ingenieur differirende Technologie-Stack selbst . Dieses selbst hat seine Nachteile, weil die Wolke Anwender / Entwickler möglicherweise nicht, die wahre und beste Wert ihrer Wolke Anbieter Infrastruktur.
I suspect that there is an optimum level, around the Platform Layer, which abstracts enough complexity away (ie you don’t have to procure servers, networks, implementation or technology operations staff), but also leaves enough room to innovate and produce software engineered value. Arguably the only current successful cloud provider, based upon market share, perception, revenue and customer take up, is Amazon Web Services (AWS) who provide a PaaS offering. Ich vermute, dass es ein optimales Niveau, um die Plattform-Layer, die Abstracts genug Komplexität entfernt (dh Sie müssen nicht beschaffen Servern, Netzwerken, der Durchführung oder der Technologie Operationen Mitarbeiter), aber auch genügend Spielraum für Innovation und Herstellung von Software-Engineering Wert. die wohl nur die aktuellen erfolgreiche Anbieter Wolke, die sich auf Marktanteil, Wahrnehmung, Einnahmen und Kunden nehmen, ist Amazon Web Services (AWS), die eine Paas bieten.
Summary Zusammenfassung
Hope you enjoyed the article, in summary if developing cloud services or even building out a cloud infrastructure I would recommend that you focus on your users and if your a cloud provider, your users’ users; remembering that only a certain percentage of those users will be customers (I won’t getting into discussing Chris Anderson’s 5% recommended conversion rate for the long tail , however I would recommend understanding what some of those calculations might be). Hoffen, dass Ihnen die Artikel, in der Zusammenfassung, wenn die Entwicklung Wolke oder sogar Ausbau der Infrastruktur eine Wolke Ich würde empfehlen, dass Sie sich auf Ihre Benutzer und wenn Ihr Provider eine Wolke, die Benutzer “Benutzer; Erinnerung, dass nur ein bestimmter Prozentsatz der Nutzer Kunden werden (ich werde nicht immer in der Diskussion Chris Anderson, 5% empfohlen, Conversion-Rate für den langen Schwanz, aber ich würde empfehlen, zu verstehen, was einige dieser Berechnungen werden könnten).
If you’re looking to develop services over the cloud, think carefully about where you and your teams skills lie, and where would you most want them focusing there efforts; working on installing and tuning operating systems and application platforms or writing business value focused applications and services, before choosing at which level to engage with your cloud provider(s). Wenn Sie zur Entwicklung von Diensten über den Wolken, sich genau überlegen, wo Sie und Ihre Teams Fähigkeiten liegen, und wo würden Sie am meisten wollen, dass sie sich es Bemühungen, auf die Installation und Tuning-Betriebssysteme und Plattformen Antrag schriftlich oder geschäftlichen Nutzen sich Anwendungen und Dienstleistungen, vor der Wahl, auf welcher Ebene, sich mit Ihrem Provider Wolke (n).
I haven’t mentioned enterprise adoption of cloud based services, and that’s because I’d like to post that in the near future in a different article. Ich habe nicht erwähnt Unternehmen Annahme Wolke Dienste, und dass deshalb, weil ich möchte, dass die Post in der nahen Zukunft in einem anderen Artikel.
Hope you enjoyed the article and all the best, Hoffen, dass Ihnen die Artikel und alles Gute,
Or is that “Elephant on the table” I’m never quite sure which of the two you should use, but whichever is the case you’ll be unsurprised to know that it turns out for regulatory and legislative reasons we as individuals should demonstrate caution and discretion about blogging about ‘you know what’ or writing about ‘you know who’ or ‘them’ either. So there we go, that’s why there’s less of ‘that sort of thing’ than you’d probably like.
In the absence of opinion pieces coming out of the http://blogs.sun.com community it’s best to stick with the official updates which can be found below.
The Wall Street Journal has just broken the news that Sun is to be acquired by Oracle over at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124022726514434703.html This time it’s much more than a rumor or conjecture as both Sun and Oracle are announcing the news as well… …..
Glad to see the Monument to the Great Fire of London has been re-opened after spending the last eighteen months being refurbished. And to celebrate here’s a few of the photographs I’ve taken on, from, by, and of, the Monument.
I’m keen on the Monument seeing as I’m a bit of a nostalgist and it’s just by Sun’s London offices (55 King William St.) and Customer Briefing Centre (CBC, at Regis House, 45 King William St.), with the Fine Line pub artfully arranged betwixt the two (there are plenty of other pubs nearby, it’s just almost a certainty you’ll see someone you know here after work, prior to the inevitable journey home).
A couple of years ago I went through a phase of going up the Monument almost every lunch time I was at our London offices; for a bit of exercise (it’s 311 steps up) and because I enjoyed the view, and that’s when I started to take the photos.
Serendipitously my children were learning about the Great Fire a few months after I’d become interested in the Monument, in fact I think the commemorative certificate I received when I first went up there is still on the wall at their primary school, along with the information booklet and a few pictures.
Obviously the history of the Monument is more than interesting; it was commissioned in 1669, three years after the Great Fire of London of 1666 that it commemorated. And for a great deal of the time it has been in existence it was inscribed with a variety of text blaming the Catholic community for starting the fire (getting caught up in the ascension of William III to the throne), a lie so plainly untrue that Alexander Pope famously wrote “Where London’s column pointing at the skies, Like a tall bully, lifts the head, and lies.” (Moral Essays. Epistle iii.).
William the III marks the last successful invasion and occupation of England and Wales, and is often overlooked by many, as, of course, he and his Dutch forces were ‘invited’ to invade by Parliament, but invasion and occupation it was. The bloodshed was predominately kept to Scotland and Ireland, where supporters for James the II were most prevalent; in Scotland because of his links to and descent from the Scottish throne and in Ireland because of his support of Catholicism. Anecdotally I’ve been told by elder members of the Horkan family that a number of our ancestors fought at ‘Battle of the Boyne‘ on the side of James the II, this decisive battle marked the failure of James to regain the throne of England and a crucial turning point in the struggle between Protestant and Catholic communities in Ireland.
The English Parliament, had made it illegal for anyone to be Head of State who was Catholic, in part, as being so would mean that the Head of the Church of England would be subject to the See of Rome, something that could not be tolerated, but predominately because of the mainly Protestant make up of Parliament itself. Coupled with the complex relationship to, and composition of, allies and enemies, some united by and divided by religious alignment, across Western Europe, it led to the situation that saw the invasion take place (in fact many historians see it as being little more than an extension to the fighting across Europe attempting to keep Louise the XIV in check). The law still exists that dictates the religion of the Head of State of England, even though a number of the Royal family have chosen to convert to Catholicism, losing them their place in the ‘order of precedence’ for the throne for all time (unsurprisingly this is often done just before they need to receive their last rights, just in case I suppose).
Thanks to the wonders of tagging here’s a selection of pictures from the monument taken by everyone who hosts their photographs on flickr who’ve used ‘the-monument‘ as a tag (some of these will be mine, flickr doesn’t have complex search and sort around tags yet, that would allow me to exclude my photos from this selection).
I’ve recently updated my site to use Disqus the blog comment hosting and conversation site.
Done this for two reasons:
Firstly my usually frustration with any status quo means I want more functionality delivered yesterday, and although I’d started to have a look at the functionality I wanted and how I might add it as a Roller macro / velocity code I didn’t want to spend a huge amount of time coding it out (the functionality I specifically wanted was the separation of comments and trackbacks, as well as comment ‘threads’).
Secondly to gain readership and comments from the sizeable blog comment audience that Disqus have built up (Disqus is estimated to be running on over 30,000+ servers).
I’ve already had a couple of comments from Disqus members, and I’ll have to see how it goes before I start heralding it as an unprecedented success, but I’m very pleased with the results (both aesthetic and functional).
Sadly the Disqus comment import function was initially provided for WordPress and Blogger, but apparently wasn’t fully functional; subsequently an update is due out soon that will hopefully include Roller Weblogger. See this Disqus forum entry, and it’s threads for more info: How do I import comments?
Given this was the case I wanted to make sure my blog supported my new Disqus commenting system, but would still show my old comments if there where any for an entry. Here are a few examples:
The code I developed, which has to be separated into two components (number of comments associated with a blog entry, and comment entry form and comment display), is below, but if you use or copy it please note that you need to replace the Disqus supplied JavaScript for my site with your Disqus comments hosted sites JavaScript code. ¨C18C
Combined Roller Weblogger and Disqus Number of Comments code
For comment numbers I’ve broken it down into displaying “n Comments” for Disqus on it’s own, whilst “x Comments (new, via Disqus) and y Comments (legacy, via Roller)” for comments hosted on both systems.
This replaces the code in the Roller Weblogger “_day” template which displays the number of comments per blog entry.
Don’t forget to replace occurrences of ‘eclectic’, my blog handle, with yours (just one, about the fifth line from the end).
## Number of Comments
<a href="$url.entry($entry.anchor)#disqus_thread">View Comments</a>
#set($commentCount = $entry.commentCount)
#if ($commentCount > 0)
(new, via <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/http://www.disqus.com/" target="_blank">Disqus</a>) and
#if ($commentCount == 1)
<a href="$url.comments($entry.anchor)">$commentCount Comment</a> (old, via <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/http://rollerweblogger.org/" target="_blank">Roller</a>)
#else
<a href="$url.comments($entry.anchor)">$commentCount Comments</a> (old, via <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/http://rollerweblogger.org/" target="_blank">Roller</a>)
#end
#end
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Combined Roller Weblogger and Disqus Comment entry and Comments display code
This basically displays the Disqus commenting system, along with any Disqus hosted comments, however if any ‘legacy’ Roller Weblogger hosted comments are found it displays those too.
It replaces the code in the Roller Weblogger “permalink” template which displays comments themselves (the same changes may need to be made to the “weblog” and “searchresults” templates too).
## Comments
<h2>Comments (new, via <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/http://www.disqus.com/" target="_blank">Disqus</a>)</h2>
<div id="disqus_thread"></div><script type="text/javascript" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824js_/http://disqus.com/forums/eclectic/embed.js"></script><noscript><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/http://eclectic.disqus.com/?url=ref">View the forum thread.</a></noscript><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/http://disqus.com/" class="dsq-brlink">blog comments powered by <span class="logo-disqus">Disqus</span></a>
##showWeblogEntryComments($model.weblogEntry)
##showWeblogEntryCommentForm($model.weblogEntry)
<br></br>
#set($commentCount = $entry.commentCount)
#if ($commentCount > 0)
<h2>Comments (old, via <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/http://rollerweblogger.org/" target="_blank">Roller</a>)</h2>
#showWeblogEntryComments($model.weblogEntry)
<br></br>
#end
Additional benefits that I’ve picked up by implementing Disqus include:
Following commentators.
Having my, and my sites, comments followed.
Being able to easily ‘reblog’ my comments and make blog entries out of them (looking forward to trying this, although I haven’t yet).
Just been listening to BlogTalk Radio, who’ve kindly been hosting a number of slots for us on our Sun Startup Essentials programme in conjunction with WebMission08.
Web Mission 2008 sees twenty UK web2.0 startups traveling to San Francisco and exploring new opportunities for growth with key people across Silicon Valley.
Sun are a key Technology partner for the event and it is being covered by Sun’s local expert on Startups (based in the UK and beyond), Stewart Townsend.
For the translator I used the Yahoo Babelfish translation service, rather than Google Translate (which I use to produce on demand translations of the site, at the time of posting this it should be at the top of the right hand sidebar), because I didn’t want to become tied in to a single Translation Service Supplier.
During translation I switched to using “blog” rather than “weblog” for the title, as many of the languages would translate blog but not weblog (possibly a weakness of the translation service).
There are a number of ways to internationalize a blog running over Roller Weblogger, for instance at the Aquarium, another Sun Blog, they use multiple blogs instances, like the Japanese Aquarium, I didn’t go for this approach as I wanted to keep to a single blog instance (due to maintainability basically).
I approached the problem by having a language resource file which loads as the session begins based upon the locale determined in the URL.
At run time this is done dynamically like this:
Decide which locale the user is loading the page from
Load the language specific resource file / pack (from a repository of language resource files, of which there is one resource file / pack per language)
Variables are already allocated and populated with language specific data
Use the above variables throughout the Roller Weblogger template code (HTML mainly) to create the page
Present the page to the user requesting it
A number of language resource files were needed, all of which I populated with text based named variables (obviously the name of the variable stays the same, just the content per language resource file is different).
Then I replaced all the specific uses of text across my roller templates with calls to those variables.
This is a code snippet example of the code which decides which language resource file to load, and yes, before you say it, it’s not aesthetically pleasing, but I’m the only person who’ll be debugging it, so I’ll let myself off on that one. As you can see it checks which locale the page is being called from (based on the URL, but you can’t see that bit), once it finds a positive it loads the language specific resource file (notice I also ensure to load a default at the end if a match can’t be found).
And here’s an example of a specific language resource file, in this case this is the start of “_lang_de”, one of the files that would have been loaded based on the logic in the above piece. As you can see it has my (string) variables allocated and populated.
#set ($gtTitle = "Blog Wayne-Horkans: eklektisch")
#set ($gtMostPopTags = "Die meisten populären Umbauten")
#set ($gtSitePrefs = "Aufstellungsort-Präferenzen")
Here’s an example use of the $gtTitle (string) variable from above within the Roller Weblogger template, which Roller builds dynamically at run time, obviously if the page was being
$gtTitle
Probably the worst part of this was being adversely effected by Roller timezone and localization sensitivity issues as documented in ROL-1337 “all components involved in weblog rendering need to be locale & timezone sensitive”.
For instance when generating blog specific URLs in my templates, not all of the Roller Weblogger functions, macros and variables are timezone / localisation safe, and so for a number of them I’ve had to step though the templates modding the code to be timezone and localization safe as I go.
This meant that I had to bodge parts of the code with temporary ‘fixes’ to make up for the incomplete coverage, but it will do for now.
A couple of the most obvious issues was one with dates, as “$utils.formatDate” only produces day and month names in English, and another with “$entry.permalink” as it produces a non-locale specific URL
## Replaced instances of $entry.permalink with $entryLSP (Locale Specific Permalink)
#set ($entryLSP =
"http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/$model.locale/entry/$utilities.encode($entry.anchor)")
I may also have to write alternate macros which are locale specific, including the one that generates a list of recent entries:
#set ($rEntries = $model.weblog.getRecentWeblogEntries($chosenCat, $rEntriesTotal))
## Have to use this as locale settings don't yet effect "getRecentWeblogEntries"
#showWeblogEntryLinksList($rEntries)
I don’t want to give the impression that non of the Roller Weblogger timezone / locale specfic functionality works. In fact a lot more than I assumed would, did. Including the menu (content) functions and Tag URL functions, and I was very pleased that there was the level of support in Roller that there is for internationalization.
I’ll be providing more multi-lingual content, specifically the content rich, article like posts I’ve been doing, so far I’ve translated three posts of this ilk:
…after much comment – from workmates, colleagues, friends and acquaintances (but not, I might add, from family members) – as to the lack of a blog of any sort, and as the peak of the blogging phenomenon apparently arrives on the collective horizon, I’ve decided to go and start one.
According to Gartner (here), and reported by a number of my favourite news sites (here, at the Register, and here, at the Inquirer, for example) the growth of blogging will finally peak at around 100 million blogs by 2007. This is part of “the Gartner top ten predictions for 2007 and beyond” – and so where better to start than at a short review of these predictions. I have to admit that I’ve been asked to report on technology trends, make market predictions and even, occasionally, present on futurology – and find the subject of trying to second guess the future as fascinating as it is frustrating.
When it comes to predictions such as this it’s important to bring your own views and opinions to bear, and in regards to objectivity, I like to recall this quote from Warren Buffett: “Forecasts usually tell us more of the forecaster than of the forecast”.
Through 2009, market share for the top 10 IT outsourcers will decline to 40.0% (from 43.5% now), equalling a revenue shift of $5.4 billion: Gartner believes that as the market share for outsourcers declines (based upon current trends) there will be consolidation of outsource businesses and some closures. This is an extremely common prediction, in these circumstances, and is almost always true of maturing markets – frankly I can’t see how you could get this wrong – although it’s good to be reminded about the situation of the outsourcing market, even for those of us who are living with it’s effects everyday.
Only one Asia/Pacific-based service provider will make the global top 20 through 2010: Because of the relatively small number of “global players” in consulting coming from Asia it will limit the ability of the Asian economies to grow revenue streams quickly and become global leaders. I find it really difficult to see how the Asian economies will be limited in growth – I can see them simply buying into the areas they need to, when they need to – some of them already make significant revenues from IT offshoring, and building consultancies out of these organisations is very likely, for instance, Tata & Wipro both have consultancy departments which are growing and maturing fast.
Blogging and community contributors will peak in the first half of 2007: Trends in the average life span of a blogger and the current growth rate of blogs means that there are already more than 200 million ex-bloggers, therefore, the number of bloggers will peak around 100 million mark circa the first half of 2007.Although significant growth in bloggers may have slowed down, I believe it will settle down to more natural growth, plus I don’t see how this has factored in the increasing Internet population, nor the increasing world population. Growth may bottom out for a time but I would then expect there to be slow and progressive growth, much more based on the increasing number of people getting adequate access to Internet resources, fuelled by the overall growth of the world population. And that is without considering the next MySpace phenomenon, where massive expansion unexpectedly grows the overall blogging population.
By 2009, corporate social responsibility (CSR) will be a higher board – and executive-level priority than regulatory compliance: regulation has become a key issue for government and the corporate world, with the aim of ensuring more-responsible behaviour. However, the need for companies to be socially responsible to their employees, customers and shareholders is growing as well. The future will see corporate boards and executives make this social dynamic a more-critical priority. Collective awareness of corporate responsibility is growing, and not purely around green issues. How corporates treat people and conduct themselves in the wider world has needed focusing on for a long time. Plus I believe that CSR will be good for businesses, related to game theory, specifically the Nash equilibrium (developed by John Nash), where choice of optimal behaviour when costs and benefits of each option depend upon the choices of other individuals. Working with a community finance charity, I know that there is already research into this area, which suggests that this is the case – this is another topic I hope to approach in the future of this blog.
By the end of 2007, 75% of enterprises will be infected with undetected, financially motivated, targeted malware that evaded their traditional perimeter and host defences: the threat environment is changing — financially motivated, targeted attacks are increasing, and automated malware-generation kits allow simple creation of thousands of variants quickly — but our security processes and technologies haven’t kept up. Security in IT is an absolute arms race – and this is not going to change – but whilst money can still be made from the sector, legally in defence, and illegally in offence, we will continue to see a strong and healthy IT Security market. This is not to say anyone should be complacent, as the problems at TK-Max have just shown, we have to be rational about these issues, and approach them in a sensible manner.
Vista will be the last major release of Microsoft Windows: the next generation of operating environments will be more modular and will be updated incrementally. The era of monolithic deployments of software releases is nearing an end. Microsoft will be a visible player in this movement, and the result will be more-flexible updates to Windows and a new focus on quality overall. Microsoft have always been able to move there business empire juggernaut into new areas – however they are very often not the first, nor the second , but have often manipulated the market by having the largest installed base volume – look at how slowly they embraced the Internet for one (for instance, Microsoft didn’t even make the first 100 Internet Domain Name Registrations, more here, Sun are joint eleventh, b.t.w.), but when they did it – they did it. Although there have been reports of ramp down of Windows Operating Systems staff, I very much doubt Microsoft are ready to let go of exploiting that installed base to the maximum – there are still a lot of PC users not yet connected to the Internet and they will need a distribution mechanism to support those users.
By 2010, the average total cost of ownership (TCO) of new PCs will fall by 50%: the growing importance and focus on manageability, automation and reliability will provide a welcome means of differentiating PCs in a market that is increasingly commoditised. Many of the manageability and support tools will be broadly available across multiple vendors. However, vendors that can leverage these tools further and can graduate from claims of “goodness” to concrete examples of cost savings will have a market advantage. I’m finding this hard to believe: three years to see new PC TCO fall by 50%. Most people agree that the majority of cost is in systems management, and even with the expected growth in systems management tools (and the ilk), it doesn’t approach issues such as increasing functionality forcing TCO up. Nor the logistics of having staff support a distributed PC estate. Having helped manage the maintenance of a large, distributed PC estate, I know that one of my largest costs were the staff required to physically go around the buildings in question, often the PC required direct support, or for some reason would not be connected to the network (either off, broken, network / network card failure, not loading drivers, etc.). I believe that Thin Client and Ultra Thin Client (UTC) technologies like Sun’s Sun Ray, which have a centralised server model, most readily approach these issues, and that there will be an increase in the acceptance of what used to be referred to as Network Computing (NC).
By 2010, 60% of the worldwide cellular population will be “trackable” via an emerging “follow-me Internet”: local regulations have arisen to protect users’ privacy, but growing demands for national safety and civil protection are relaxing some of the initial privacy limitations. Marketing incentives will also push users to forgo privacy concerns, and many other scenarios will enable outsiders to track their users. Another believable prediction, although given the fact that this is “60% of the world wide cellular population”, I feel it might imply that this will be in what used to be called the “first world”. The issue of evolved versus planned systems play into this, and we all need to think more about what the implications are, so that we can put in place the best governance model available.
Through 2011, enterprises will waste $100 billion buying the wrong networking technologies and services: enterprises are missing out on opportunities to build a network that would put them at a competitive advantage. Instead, they follow outdated design practices and collectively will waste at least $100 billion in the next five years. I can well believe this prediction: having reviewed, audited, and helped close down a number of very large IT programmes, I am sadly becoming de-sensitised & acclimatised to the amounts of money which are needlessly lost, however this does not mean any of us should be dismissive about the massive amounts wasted. In fact I’m surprised it’s estimated as low as $100 billion.
By 2008, nearly 50% of data centers worldwide will lack the necessary power and cooling capacity to support high-density equipment: due to higher densities of processors proliferating, problems in this area continue to grow, and although the power and cooling challenge of high-density computer equipment will persist in the short term, a convergence of innovative technologies will begin to mitigate the problem by 2010. This is a trend which I see emerging every day amongst our customers, especially those who still host out of large cities, such as London. We have field research into this area, which easily backs this claim up too. However this prediction, doesn’t appear to take innovation, such as processor multi-threading, into account: technologies like Sun’s Niagara, and Niagara 2, will have a significant impact on this area, due to the massive decrease in compute footprint. This is an area which I’ll be exploring in more detail over the next few months.
At first I’d thought my title for this post was to do with my finally getting a blog online – but I think it’s as applicable to some of the predictions above. In the next few posts I hope to be looking at the UK Government IT ecosystem, macro IT estate issues & definitions, some more about me and what I do at Sun, and maybe just a little bit about motorbikes.
