Red Hat ramps up virtualization drive for RHEL 5

The good news for virtualization just keeps on coming. Monday, we reported that start-up Desktone had gotten an infusion of venture capital and that Cisco was buying a chunk of VMWare.

Now, Red Hat's Emerging Technologies Team has a blog posting that shows how customers are using virtualization for fun and productivity in Red Hat's Enterprise Linux 5.

The team's blog pushes the idea of "para virtualization," a technology that offers high performance, but doesn't require special processor capabilities. The team feels this will help drive the adoption of virtualization more pervasively, so that para-virtualization will become the default deployment for Linux 4 or 5 applications.

The blog includes a quick-hit bullet list of the main points and, for those with more time and interest, a longer discussion, as well as a case study.

SOA Insights analysts on Web 3.0, Google's role in semantics, and the future of UDDI

Listen to the entire podcast, or read a full transcript of the discussion.

The notion of a world wide web that anticipates a user's needs, and adds a more human touch to mere surfing and searching, has long been a desire and goal. Yet how closer are we to a more "semantic" web? Will such improvements cross over into how enterprises manage semantic data and content?

Our expert panel digs into this and other recent trends in SOA and enterprise IT architecture in the latest BriefingsDirect SOA Insights Edition, volume 17. Our group also examines Adobe's open source moves around Flex, and how UDDI is becoming more about politics than policy.

So join noted IT industry analysts Joe McKendrick, Jim Kobielus, Dave Linthicum and Todd Biske for our latest SOA podcast discussion, hosted and moderated by yours truly.

Here are some excerpts:

I saw one recent article where [the semantic web] was called Web 3.0, and I thought, “Oh, my Lord, we haven’t even decided that we are all in agreement on the notion of Web 2.0.”

[But] there is activity at the World Wide Web Consortium that’s been going on for a few years now to define various underlying standards and specifications, things like OWL and Sparkle and the whole RDF and Ontologies, and so forth.

So, what is the Semantic Web? Well, to a great degree, it refers to some super-magical metadata description and policy layer that can somehow enable universal interoperability on a machine-to-machine basis, etc. It more or less makes the meanings manifest throughout the Web through some self-description capability.

You can look at semantic interoperability as being the global oceanic concern. Wouldn’t be great if every single application, data base, or file that was ever posted by anybody anywhere on the Internet somehow, magically is able to declare its full structure, behavior, and expectations?

Then you can look at semantic interoperability in a well-contained way as being specific to a particular application environment within an intranet or within a B2B environment. ... The whole notion of a "semantic Web," to the extent that we can all agree on a definition, won’t really come to the fore until there is substantial deployment inside of enterprises.

Conceivably, the enterprise information integration (EII) vendors are providing a core piece of infrastructure that could be used to realize this notion of a Semantic Web, a way of harmonizing and providing a logical unified view of heterogeneous data sources.

Red Hat, one of the leading open source players, is very geared to SOA and building an SOA suite. Now, they are acquiring an EII vendor, which itself is very SOA focused. So, you’ve got SOA; you’ve got open source; you’ve got this notion of a semantic layer, and so forth. To me, it’s like, you’ve stirred it all together in the broth here.

That sounds like the beginnings of a Semantic Web that conceivably could be universal or “unversalizable,” because as I said, it’s open source first and foremost.

If we build on this, it does solve a lot of key problems. You end up dealing with universal semantics, how that relates to B2B domains, and how that relates to the enterprise domains.

As I'm deploying and building SOAs out there in my client base, semantic mediation ultimately is a key problem we’re looking to solve.

The average developer is still focused on the functionality of the business solution that they're providing. They know that they may have data in two different formats and they view it in a point-to-point fashion. They do what they have to do to make it work, and then go back to focusing on the functionality, not really seeing the broader semantic issues that come up when you take that approach.

One thing that’s going to happen with the influence of something like Google, which is having a ton of a push in the business right now, is that ultimately these guys are exposing APIs as services. ... They're coming to the realization that the developers that leverage these APIs need to have a shared semantic understanding out on the Web. Once that starts to emerge, you're going to see a push down on the enterprise, if that becomes the de-facto standard that Google is driving.

In fact, they may be in a unique position to create the first semantic clearing house for all these APIs and applications that are out there, and they are certainly willing to participate in that, as long as they can get the hits, and, therefore, get the advertising revenue that’s driving the model.

[Google] is in the API business and they are in the services business. When you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound. ... You start providing access to services, and rudimentary on-demand governance systems to account for the services and test for rogue services, and all those sorts of things. Then you ultimately get into semantics, security, and lots of other different areas they probably didn’t anticipate that they'd get into, but will be pushed into, based on the model they are moving into.

... Perhaps Google or others need to come into the market with a gateway appliance that would allow for policy, privilege, and governance. This would allow certain information from inside the organization that has been indexed in an appliance, say from Google, to then be accessed outside. Who is going to be in the best position to manage that gateway of content on a finely-grained basis? Google.

Listen to the entire podcast, or read the full transcript for more IT analysis and SOA insights. Produced as a courtesy of Interarbor Solutions: analysis, consulting and rich new-media content production.

TIBCO donates Ajax messaging bus to OpenAjax Alliance

TIBCO Software is easing the way for Ajax component interoperability with the donation this week of its core Ajax message bus technology to the OpenAjax Alliance (OAA) Hub project. TIBCO announced the donation today, at the same time as it released its PageBus, a related open source product.

What's in it for you? Well, besides the technological benefits, developers could walk away with a 50-inch plasma TV or a 30-GB iPod, if they enter -- and win -- the Ultimate Mashup Ajax Challenge.

PageBus applies "publish and subscribe" message bus programming patterns within the context of a single Web page, allowing communication among multiple Ajax components. This allows developers to create composite applications from reusable parts and services. All of this is designed to reduce development costs, improve interfaces over HTML and increase business agility.

The message-bus approach solves one of the key problems that comes from combining increasingly sophisticated composite applications. As the number of composite applications and mashups increase, the programming -- and needed event-driven reliability -- required can increase exponentially.

What's more creating client-SOA applications is easier because the same conceptual architecture -- publish and subscribe -- is used for both rich Internet client (RIA) activities as well as for compositing backend services. TIBCO says it has large banks and other users delivering mission critical, real-time data through SOA backends to scads of Ajax-enabled components on RIA clients.

Users get a quick, rich experience, while developers and architects gain flexibility and speed-to-deployment. TIBCO gains by riding the wave of increased demand for back-end SOA integration and messaging infrastructure to support the RIA ramp-up.

TIBCO, as a member of the OAA, is working with more than 70 companies to standardize key aspects of Ajax. The OpenAjaxHub 1.0, the group's first specification implementation, aims to provide Ajax interoperability through the publish/subscribe interface. The specification will formally be out in about six weeks, but the code is now at Sourceforge.net.

PageBus is open source and can be downloaded. It's also shipped as part of the TIBCO Ajax Message Service.

The above-noted mashup challenge is a developer community project to build the world's largest mashup using PageBus and TIBCO's General Interface. The contest runs through September 30, after which TIBCO and co-sponsor Artima will award prizes for the best entries.

'Desktop as a service' coming soon to a PC near you

Desktop virtualization as a service has gotten a big boost with Desktone Inc.'s announcement today of $17 million in venture capital funds that will allow the company to finance global sales, marketing, and development.

Desktone, a Chelmsford, Mass., startup offers what it says is the industry's first unified virtual desktop platform. I call it "desktop as a service." The company's turnkey solution provides enterprises an on-ramp to virtual desktop computing that integrates all virtualization layers -- storage, applications, client devices, servers, processing, and network technologies -- allowing them to be controlled from a single management console.

The ability to deliver a PC operating environment in a way users are accustomed to via grid/utility efficiencies in a way that appeals to the realities of enterprise IT departments and needs may be a seed that has a long way to grow. But compelling economics and the movement generally to services delivery portends a fast-growing new market segment for home, SMB and large business users. Telcos and cable providers will need to provide these kinds of services, for sure.

The first round of Desktone financing was co-led by Highland Capital Partners and SoftBank Capital. It also included Citrix Systems, Inc., a leader in application delivery infrastructure, and China-based Tangee International.

Desktone's management lineup boasts a collection of industry heavy hitters, including CEO Harry Ruda, formerly CEO of Softricity, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2006; COO Paul Gaffney, formerly CIO of Staples and a senior VP at Schwab Technology; CFO Michael Hentschel, who hails from Resilience, Avaterra, and TechVest Ventures; CTO Clint Battersby, who has over 15 years experience in LAN, WAN, Internet and storage acceleration; and executive VP Scott Andersen, former CEO of GlobalServe and Exist.

Ron Fisher of SoftBank Capital said his comnpany's interest in Desktone's technology was spurred by the growing need to manage large-scale PC and server environments. "Enterprises have a tremendous need to accelerate desktop virtualization adoption in a way that is cost-effective and simple, and doesn't drain IT resources," Fisher said.

The Desktone announcement comes on the heels of the news that Cisco Systems has plans to invest $150 million in virtualization giant VMWare, Inc. That news was accompanied by an announcement of a collaboration agreement between the two around joint development, marketing, customer and industry initiatives.

The stars and planets finally appear to be aligning in a way that makes utility-oriented delivery of a full slate of client-side computing and resources an alternative worth serious consideration. As more organizations are set up as service bureaus -- due to such IT industry developments as ITIL and shared services -- the advent of off the wire everything seems more likely in many more places.

Of course, there are those who will maintain that "software plus services" is the only best bet. The competition of the more fully virtualized desktop approaches like Desktone with the heavy, PC-based OS legacy can only be good for the IT use market -- and overall productivity.

Only a matter of time before Microsoft combines ad business with 'software plus services'

Looking over the reports from the Microsoft financial analysts gathering this week in Redmond, Wash., I'm reminded of baseball ... modern ballparks in particular.

Far as I know, most major league baseball teams have been profitable for many years, many decades. Most of the teams in large cities are doing better than ever, in spanking new stadiums.

What's different now is the explosion of advertisements, endorsements, sponsorships, hucksterism and crass visual commercialism. Whether you attend a game or watch one on television, there isn't a time or place where you are not treated to literally dozens of commercial pitches while you try and figure out the real pitches.

Why on Earth would people who love baseball, or even just tolerate baseball, allow such a plastering of advertisements across their consciousness (and perhaps unconsciousness)? Well, because they don't have a choice, of course.

Baseball, like Microsoft (and soon, Google?), is a monopoly. There are few if any real choices for most anyone who wants to watch a major league game but to incur the ad wrath.

And that's why it's only a matter of time before Microsoft starts injecting scads of ads through their "software plus services" portfolio. That's right, when you open your online (or offline or hybrid-line) applications for a spreadsheet, word processor, email, calendar, ERP interface -- just like you're now thoroughly accustomed to on Web pages and services -- there will be ads. Lots of them. Targeted right to you as an individual or business (or both) with your pre-analyzed budget to spend in anticipation

Local, state, regional, mobile, location-based, keyword-oriented, and fuzzy-warm branding types of ads. All over your visual perimeter -- just like at the ballpark -- you'll be served up ads, ads, ads while you toil away to offer more cookie crumbs of insight into what the next ad should be that you see. Attention!

The implications for this, of course, are enormous. If Microsoft and the other services providers -- for they will all have to follow suit, just like each ballpark followed the other -- can better target these ads to you based on your relationship with them and the technology cauldron that forms from your use of "software plus services," then all the other providers of platforms for online ads will be sunk.

We used to have the division of church and state between media editorial and advertising, but what of the division between technology and advertising? There isn't one. You may think you own your PC (vendors would differ) but you don't own the servers that toss up your "software plus services." You want to play ball? You gotta look at the ads. You gotta see the craplets.

Reminds me of the line from fictional Southie strongman Frank Costello in The Departed: "I don't want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me." You, dear readers, will be a product of the environment that your "software plus services" provider wants for you, based on what's good for their investors.

Even, over the next 3 to 10 years, as the newspaper business thinks it can reinvent its paper-based revenue streams from the Internet, in comes the IT vendors. These "software plus services" providers will -- from start-up of the first craplets when you turn the thing on until the last mouse click before you die -- have you pegged. They will know what you want before you do. No other entity can better match ads to users than a combined IT platform provider and online services provider whose business is based on advertising revenue. The marketers will finally have the tools they've always wanted.

And so those other media company web sites that dish up the highest-quality content, that provide top-line fourth-estate journalism will do okay (we hope), but the largest ad dollars growth will go to those "software plus services" providers that can give the advertisers the best on-target and metrics-based match-up between buyers and sellers. And then the IT companies buy the media companies, and then they buy the telecos and cable and mobile providers. Nice and tidy. On stop shopping to get inside of your head/wallet.

Who to blame? No one. It's inevitable. Government regulators could scarcely keep up, even if they will and budgets existed. If Google and Microsoft don't do it someone else will. Mark Cuban thinks those alternatives could well be the local broadband providers, and he's right ... but only for a time. Once the total online ad monopoly kicks in, it will be a digital Standard Oil on steroids with no Sherman Antitrust Act.

Is Google the white knight and Microsoft the evil empire? Nope. Just like in any good vs evil saga (Star Wars?) both sides need each other desperately. For the better that Google does in making ad-based online applications and services work acceptably, the easier it is for Microsoft to inject that model into its current stable of software, and present it as ... services.

And the more successful (could they be any more successful?) that Microsoft is at providing PC applications and services locally, online or both, the easier it is for Google to make its SaaS alternatives look good enough. These two massively and globally influential companies will ratchet each other up to the level of the modern-day ballpark. It's not either-or, it's both Microsoft and Google propelling the shifts in the market to ad-based everything online, including your business applications, including your high school yearbook.

We are all just going along for the ride. For many of us, we think we get the functional services cheaply because the ads pay for the "software plus services." But when was the last time you saw the price of admission tickets to a ball game fall as they hoisted yet another billboard up over left field?

It won't be ad-based revenue or subscription. No, it will be ad-based revenue and subscription. Has to be. We have no choice.