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Professor Tedlow of Harvard Business School visits the Valley

Barton George — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:37:05 +0000

When I was at the Computer History Museum last month to attend Cloud Connect, I came across a familiar name outside one of the doors. Turns out that Proffesor Richard Tedlow had recently set up shop as the museum’s first resident scholar. Although he wasn’t my proffessor I definitely remember the name from my time at business school. I decided to knock on his door and find out what he was working on.

To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.

Some of the topics Professor Tedlow Tackles:

His work around the Intel 386 processor.
Harvard Business School’s case-writing outpost on Sand Hill road.
How technology has effected the business school and using YouTube in class.
What in technology right now really excites him.

Pau for now…

Force.com at Cloud Connect

Barton George — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:25:22 +0000

Salesforce.com was one of the Platinum Sponsors at Cloud Connect. I stopped by their booth and had a quick chat with Kavindra from developer marketing, Ash, a Force.com evangelist and Ryan a technical marketer.

To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.

Some of the topics Kavindra, Ash and Ryan Tackle:

Speed Geeking and Chalk Talks.
Why Force.com is great for building enterprise Apps.
Where to go to get started (hint: click here)

Pau for now…

“Stalking and capturing a Business Process” — Blueprint grabs virtual ink in Forbes.com

Barton George — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:19:45 +0000

When I was out at Cloud Connect, I met Dan Woods who writes the Jargon Spy column for Forbes.com. Turns out Dan has a particular soft spot in his heart for BPM and I was able to give him a quick demo of Lombardi Blueprint. The result was his piece that came out yesterday, “Stalking and Capturing a Business Process — We need a process for creating business processes.”

Be vewy, vewy quiet, we’re hunting pwocesses

Dan is clearly sold on the value of business processes and BPM:

“For large and small firms, the business process is the right way to think of what to do and how to do it better, whether or not it is automated or supported with technology. BPM puts the focus where it should be–on what you must do to make your company successful, not on the capabilities you happen to have.”

What he wants to know however is how are these processes captured in the first place? If the processes being submitted aren’t of quality, how can you expect the BPM results to be? Garbage in, garbage out.

Incremental and Collaborative…that’s the ticket

Dan argues that developing the processes incrementally is the only way you can be assured of solid inputs. The three approaches he advocates are: Wiki-based process discovery, Task-based process discovery and Mash-up based process discovery. And this is where the Blueprint shout out comes in:

Lombardi Software has recognized this trend and recently launched a Web-based service called “Blueprint” that allows for collaborative brainstorming and definition of processes. Using this service, you start with a bunch of ideas and can end up with a nice diagram. The JargonSpy imagines such a system could be used as the scratch pad for capturing and refining the processes that emerge in the other three methods.

Thanks for the mention Dan, and thanks for pointing out the importance of iterative and broadly inclusive input collection up front. For without that, are we not building our BPM castles on diagrams of sand?

Pau for now…

The rise of the Google Enterprise team and Cloud

Barton George — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:17:52 +0000

On the second day of Cloud Connect I caught up with Kevin Gough of Google. Kevin leads marketing efforts for Google Apps, website search, enterprise search and geospatial products and we chatted a bit about the evolution of the Google Apps team.

To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.

Some of the topics Kevin Tackles:

Growing the Enterprise team from less than 20 to over 500.
The evolution from Search -> Maps -> Earth -> Google Apps (Google’s thrust into the cloud for businesses)
Python and App Engine, going with what’s familiar and plans to expand

Pau for now…

Talking “Cloud” with Rajen Sheth — Inventor of Google Apps

Barton George — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:38:19 +0000

The week before last, the Cloud Connect event in Mountain View kicked off with an “Evening in the Cloud.” Representatives from Google, Amazon Web Services, and Force.com pitched heads of IT on why they should move all their IT to the cloud. (Not sure who convinced whom, but it was an interesting debate nonetheless )

Representing Google was Ragen Sheth, its lead Product Manager and the person credited with inventing Google Apps. After he finished speaking I was able to grab a few minutes with Ragen to learn more about what Google’s been doing in the Cloud. Check it out.

Take a listen:

>> My talk with Rajen (9:47): Listen (mp3) Listen (ogg)

Rajen Sheth of Google Apps.

Some of the Topics we tackle:

How Google Apps is Google’s platform for businesses to run applications in the cloud.
Google App Suite is all about bringing the cool things Google has created on the consumer side and presenting it to the businesses.
Gmail opened up a whole new model for people to build web-based applications by bringing in AJAX.
Over the last 3-4 years a lot of really advanced apps have been built in the browser that utilize the unique leverage points of the cloud.
CIO’s have switched from “no way,” to talking feature sets when the subject of the cloud is brought up.
What will we see in 09 in the cloud? (The recession should help to drive adoption.)
Is Rajen seeing more cloud-interest from big or small companies?
When will we hit the Cloud tipping point?

Stay tuned

More Google tomorrow when I post a video I did with with Rajen’s partner in crime, Kevin Gough.

Pau for now…

Alistair Croll – The Cloud, Meta-data and Predictions for ’09

Barton George — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:43:03 +0000

Along with Sam Charrington of Appistry and Bob Sutor of IBM, Alistair Croll, a partner at BitCurrent made up the panel at Cloud Connect that tackled standards and data portability/lock-in.

I grabbed some time (2:31) with Alistair after his panel to follow up on a comment he made during the session regarding meta-data in the cloud and who owns it. I also asked about his predictions for ’09.

To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.

Pau for now…

Talking to Sam Charrington of Appistry

Barton George — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:31:58 +0000

The first full day of Cloud Connect last week in Mountain View began with a panel discussion on standards and the cloud. One of the panelist was Sam Charrington, the VP of product management and marketing at Appistry. I was able to grab a few minutes (2:37) with the affable Sam after his session and talk a little about Appistry and how they play in the cloud.

To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.

Some of the topics Sam Tackles:

Offering a cloud platform delivered as software and tailored for enterprise users (think Google app-engine available as software and deployable on your cloud platform of choice e.g. private clouds or Amazon EC2 or GoGrid.
Freeing customers from lock-in and elevating the customer experience from managing individual virtual instances.
Appistry’s cloud predictions for 2009 (and how Jack Bauer fits in).

Pau for now…

Sun’s New VP of Cloud Computing Strategy: Ian Murdock

Barton George — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:37:07 +0000

Last week at Cloud Connect I was able to grab a few minutes with my old boss from Sun, Ian Murdock. Ian, the founder of the Debian Linux distribution, came to Sun to lead the Open Solaris charge and after that tackled Developer relations. Turns out that with the latest Sun re-org Ian has now landed in the Cloud Computing group as the VP of Strategy.

To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.

Some of the topics Ian Tackles:

How cloud computing today reminds him of the Open Source world back in 1993 when he first got involved with Linux and Free Software.
What might be the equivalent of the Linux distro in the cloud space.
The importance of standards and how Sun might play there.

Extra-credit reading:

Here is the blog Ian did the day after I interviewed him: What will be the cloud equivalent of the Linux distro?
Unfortunately I missed Lew Tucker’s talk at Cloud Connect but here are a couple of articles that resulted:
- Sun Cloud CTO: ‘Your Data Center Is Your Computer’
- Sun: Look for IDEs to tackle the cloud

Update — Articles based on this post:

Sun’s OpenSolaris chief leads cloud-strategy hunt – The Register
Debian Founder Murdock Now Sun’s Cloud Strategist – Linux Magazine
Debian-Gründer Murdock ist Suns neuer Cloud-Stratege – Linux Magazine Germany
Ian Murdock, estratega jefe de Could Computing para SUN – Historias de Queso

Pau for now…

Live from Cloud Connect: David Berlind

Barton George — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:52:20 +0000

Ok well maybe its not live but here’s a short (3:34) video I shot yesterday with David Berlind, the man behind Cloud Connect. The conference kicked off Tuesday night and continues, as I type, until this evening.

To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.

This video was shot right in the middle of the “speed geeking” section yesterday where attendees visited nine different cloud demos being presented by the sponsors: Amazon Web Services, IBM, Mosso, Google, Right Scale and Salesforce.com.

In the Video David talks about

The idea behind Cloud Connect and whats going on
Where the cloud works best
His predictions for whats going to happen in the cloud space in ’09 (hint, watch out for the big boys).

But wait, there’s more…

If you’re interested in hearing more from Cloud connect Check back here over the next week since I’ll be posting about six more videos as well as an audio podcast with the founder of Google Apps.

Pau for now…

Heading to California, Cloud Connect and Customers

Barton George — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:58:08 +0000

From the Computer Museum's brochure collection.

Next week I’m making my way back to the Bay Area to attend the Cloud Connect un-conference that is being held Jan 20-22 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

The conference is being held in the unstructured un-conference style which I prefer. It allows more time for meeting people and talking about what you want to talk about. That being said, the event won’t be total anarchy and in fact I’m looking forward to the talk David Berlind is moderating Tuesday night. There is also a cool panel that Red Monk analyst and fellow Eph, Stephen O’Grady is leading the following day on the Cloud and Lock-in.

I will be attending the conference armed with an audio recorder as well as a brand new Flip Mino to try my hand at Video podcasting. Attendees, you are forewarned

Checking out Blueprint in Action

While I’m out in the Valley I’m going to visit a couple of big accounts to see first-hand how they are using the Lombardi Blueprint and also get their input on what they’d like to see in the way of new functionality going forward.

The other area that I want to research is the applicability of Blueprint in the supplier chain/operations world. I think it would be a great fit but i want to check with some contacts out there to get their thoughts.

Stay tuned.

Pau for now…