IT Investment Research

Cloud Computing Is Like Obscenity

The March 27-29 weekend dustup over The Open Cloud Manifesto (always spelled with upper case O, C and M) reminds us again that leading information technology (IT) suppliers such as AT&T (T), Cisco (CSCO), EMC (EMC), IBM (IBM), Novell (NVLL) and Red Hat (RHAT) think they can easily manipulate the IT user. 

This whole thing seems to have been timed to a NYC trade show about cloud computing (which, interestingly, apparently could not be attended via the cloud). It tells you something that the Cloud Computing Expo runs simultaeously in the same hall with the same keynote speakers as an event called the Virtualization Expo.  Didn't like one buzzword, try another.

The controversey also reminds us that IT users didn't just "fall off the turnip truck."  The Manifesto says on the first page:

"In order to understand the core principles of an open cloud, we need to first agree on some basic definitions and concepts of cloud computing itself. First, what is “the cloud”? ... While definitions, taxonomies and architectures are interesting, it is more important to understand the value propositions for cloud computing."

In other words, The Manifesto authors could not even agree on a definition of cloud computing. But just as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stewart Potter famously said of obscenity, "I know it when I see it," IT users know cloud computing is simply utility computing. 

 

IT users think that's a good thing by the way.  It's just not worth writing a manifesto over 45 years after the concept was developed.

 

-- Dennis Byron

In Mortgage Securitization Mess, Also Follow the Technology

In a recent blog post, I said that is was as important to follow the information technology (IT) to get to the bottom of the Madoff scandal as it was to follow the money in the Watergate scandal. 

It can't be rocket science. All Madoff did, it now turns out, was take in about $17 billion from investors, send some of them $16 billion in checks and printouts, and send the rest of the investors printouts that said the money they gave him was now worth $50 billion.  All it would have taken--must have taken--was a simple COBOL program from the 1970s.

Except I am not qualified to write the story myself.  And the guy who is--certainly not Madoff--is probably afraid of being lynched. 

Which is what made it all the more interesting that the IT guy that wrote the software that enabled mortgage securitization has come forward and both told his story... and where he lives. Subtitled "How I helped build the bomb that blew up Wall Street," this New York article by Michael Osinski published March 29 is a must read for those who want to begin to understand the current financial meltdown. 

I admit that even though I followed financial-services software in the late 1990s, I never heard of Intex. And they have an office only a few miles from where I lived at the time. I always thought all of this stuff was custom written by rocket scientists on big hunking Sun (JAVA) workstatsions. Which is exactly how Osinski began. But later, according to Intex' web site and Osinski's story, it was packaged just like the mortgages it worked on and even apparently ported to Windows. Go to Radio Shack and get a Wintel machine and you too could get in the game (if you also ponied up $500,000 for the software).

And Intex is still proud of the product. It is true that they have not put out a press release since 2006 when they opened a European office but it looks like they had never put out one before then either.

Now as for Madoff's COBOL programmer....

-- Dennis Byron

March from UNIX to Linux Servers Relates to Virtualization

Research conducted by IDC in February 2009 confirms the continued replacement of Unix by Linux on servers. That is a trend we have been seeing for 10 years but there is one methodology caution in the survey: the 'n' uses only respondents that deploy Windows along with Unix and/or Linux and other operating software. It appears to exclude the very substantial demographic that uses only Windows as its server operating software.

A complementary summary of the research is available from Novell (NVLL).  It is full of good statistics on general IT budget planning and industry trends as well.

Interestingly, IDC said:

"Nearly half of the survey participants stated that moving to virtualization is accelerating their adoption of Linux. Eighty-eight percent of respondents plan to evaluate, deploy, or increase their use of virtualization software within Linux operating  systems over the next 12-24 months."

This indicates to me the limited support of virtualization among older Unix products rather than any particular Linux accelerant.  Of course, I believe Linux is UNIX--but that's another blog post.

IDC also surveyed about adoption plans related to Linux as a single-user operating system. The top factors among the sample are security/reliability, usability/familiarity, and application and peripheral support. Given that the sample surveyed is made up of open choice adherents and not the extremes of either Microsoft or open-source bigotry  (see Methodology note above), this is probably a good indicator of what will drive the emerging netbook market.

-- Dennis Byron

The Never-Before-Told Story of How Microsoft Influences European Union Open Source Software Strategy

On February 26 some organization called Wikileaks (just what you think it means) proudly outed an alleged Microsoft (MSFT) front group's alleged comments on the alleged working draft of an alleged European Union (EU) workgroup on open source software.  I have no idea if any of the allegations are true but the pomposity of Wikileaks and the poor quality of the document, whatever its source, provide a little humor in these dark economic times.

Wikileaks says it only outs documents with "political, diplomatic, ethical or historical significance." If this document--full of the usual EU nonsense mispositioning open source software--is of any significance, it demonstrates how low politics, diplomacy, ethics and history have sunk. The document is full of comments of all types so it is not clear which comments allegedly come from the alleged Microsoft front group, called the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT). (For the record ACT is listed as a K-Street Washington, D.C. lobbyist funded by eBay, Microsoft, Oracle, Orbitz, Verisign and--according to its web site--3000 other companies.)

I certainly hope the EU is not paying anyone to write this document because it has the quality level of a bad high-school term paper. In a good old 11th-grade-approach, the authors have come up with the findings first and are now sending "Erwin and Charlotte (out) to find some evidence." The misspellings of EU-based companies are embarrassing. But I am afraid it might be a legitimate EU document because it has that "outlawing misshapen fruit" feeling about it.

And I hope for Microsoft shareholders' sake that it is not funding anyone to take the time to comment on this crap.

No matter the source, the original and the comments are all rubbish from the first sentence. Richard Stallman did not start the open source movement.  He despises the term violently.  (As an aside, I do not believe he is or ever was an "MIT scientist.")

More important, open source software is neither a complement to (apparently Microsoft's alleged contribution that makes this of Wikileak-level historical significance) nor an alternative to non-open-source software. 

• Open source is a widely variant set of legal terms and conditions (Ts&Cs)--some of which date back to the 1970s--by which a relatively small amount of software is distributed. 

• Open source is secondarily a 50-year-old culture/philosophy within the quickly shrinking worldwide software development community.

The document sets up a false taxonomy of open source "creators, which includes everyone except--not unexpectedly but inaccurately--Microsoft.  10-year-old companies are incorrectly labeled as new and companies that only license using open source Ts&Cs are incorrectly classified as hybrid. The hybrid idea is as old as the information technology industry. Software distributed with open source Ts&Cs is no more standard or non-standard than any other software.

And although I believe software has no nationality, open source has not "evolved faster in Europe than anywhere else in the world."  All the leading open source projects are multinational but primarily funded by large U.S. information-technology suppliers (e.g., IBM (IBM), HP (HPQ), and others behind the Linux Foundation; Google (GOOG) behind the Mozilla Foundation, all the leading technology companies behind the Apache Foundation, and so forth). Most of the most popular open source technology began as products sold with non-open-source Ts&Cs and was later released with open source Ts&Cs as its functionality became a commodity. (The Apache web server--probably the most popular piece of open source software--is an exception.)

-- Dennis Byron