Saas Infrastructure, an update

A few months ago, I wrote about how building a platform for Software as a Service is all about the data platform. Since then, a lot has changed. I thought it might be worthwhile to summarize some of the interesting evolutions:

Sun: as I left Sun on June 9th, Sun had recently launched officially the Sun Grid Compute Utility in the U.S. at $1/CPU hour. In essence, compute power on a network cable, available in the 'cloud'. The offering was targetted at a specific set of compute intensive, and more importantly, data limited, applications. Since input and output data needed to be uploaded in a zip file, the Sun Grid Compute Utility has a narrow target audience. To familiarize yourself with the Sun Grid Compute Utility, try to run the sample application, if you can get it to run. On opening day, it was in trouble and unaccesible. Today, the Podcast your page with the Sun Grid isn't cooperating either: Due to overwhelming response to the free Podcast applications the service is currently busy. Please try your request later or Register for an account to login in to the Sun Grid to access the Cepstral text to speech sample job. Hardly an On-Demand application. Still, the biggest limitation of the Sun Grid is the non-existence of a storage and data platform. (And the lack of a developer environment, like the Google Code Hosting, see further.)

Salesforce.com (and the AppExchange) are on cloud 9. The company is doing financially (stock: CRM) great with 500K paying customers and a recent jump in stock price of 19% in a day. Also the AppExchange appears to attrack more and more developers. Interesting to note are:

• The AppExchange OEM edition (press release): an AppExchange beyond CRM. In geek terms, the center of the AppExchange is no longer the CRM database schema. BYOS, bring your own schema. Salesforce.com is opening their infrastructure (aka data platform) to other applications (even if it were a competing CRM app?). The AppExchange OEM edition is a logical step and highly strategic. Wow!
  
• The AppExchange went international and offers a second site, the Japan AppExchange, in the local language.
• Salesforce Online User community
  

Amazon has surprised me the most. While they already had launched the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), in recent months other key infrastructure building blocks have complemented the offering:

• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) : Sun Grid, are you ready for a real competitor, who undestands on-demand platforms quiet well? and offers it at $0.10/instance hour?
  
• Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) : messaging on demand.
  

It is however not clear who is using this building blocks or what markets Amazon is targetting.

Google has been releasing several applications on-demand, including a spreadsheet and a word processor and appears to be busy integrating several services. On the on-demand infrastructure front, worthwhile to mention:

• Google Code, Project hosting: a place for developers to host their code and develop, a la Sourceforge. (Or what a Sun Grid Developer Utility could be.)
  
• Google Checkout could eventually offer a billing system, like Paypal has become for many other sites (i.e. the Sun Grid)

I haven't kept much track of what Ebay is doing.

All and all, it remains a recurring theme: it is not he who has the biggest computer who will win in the Saas world, but he who holds the data. Software-as-a-service, it is about the Data Platform!

Technorati: Saas Google Amazon Salesforce.com Sun Microsystems

Meet the dentist

A dentist office in Belgium is little Taj Mahal (were Shah Jahan a dentist). The office is squeeky clean, marble floors, spectacular cabinets and the latest chair and drills. Cleaning your teeth is a pleasant experience where a special tool does all the work.

My experiences with dentists in California has been quiet different. The offices have nowhere the same look and feel: often with carpet, the dentist chair could be easily from the 70's. I've rinsed afterwards at a kitchen sink. My first dentist was a husband and wife office. Everyone was very friendly. But when it was time to clean my teeth, the metal scraper from the middle ages came out. Since both were from Teheran, I thought, their training must have prepared them to practice dentistry in every situation, even when no drills or electricity was around. Teeth cleaning was overall unpleasant.

So I switched and I called 1-800-dentist (from the commercial on television). This is a free dentist referral service. My new dentist was more of a car salesman than a dentist. After evaluating my teeth, he concluded quickly I needed a new crown. He went into his side office, and started tapping on his calculator. A bit later he came out and told me: "The procedure normally costs $xyz, but after taking the insurance into account it would be $xy. However, if I were willing to agree to the new crown procedure today, and only for today, it would be $y." Hold on a second. Next up would be a pitch about upgrades, I guess. So, I thanked him and left his office. Oh yeh, again teeth cleaning was done via the metal scraper. By now, I was convinced this was the common practice. I went back to my first dentist. But I had seen nothing yet.

A few days ago, I took my son to a pediatric dentist. The waiting room is wonderfully decorated in a Hawaian theme. There are three reception islands. They were well prepared: they greeted my son my name and asked him who he had brought along with him. This is all about him. After we watched a bit of Dora the Explorer on television, we were invited by the Patient Counseler. Her job was to make the kids feel at ease and answer if we had any questions. She explained him what to expect next. She also took a picture to hang at the wall of smilling kids, and if there were no cavities, he would join the no-cavity club and could win prizes. Then, she invited us to meet the dentist. The room had six modern chairs in two rows. There were four more in offices along the side, for more involved procedures. Everything continued in the Hawaian theme. There were about six dentists, overseen by two head dentists. Each kid gets a wireless headset to listen to the cartoons, playing on six televisions in the ceiling! It was amazing. Prior to the visit, we completed a form with personal info: his favorite colors, movies, etc. When he got stickers, they were the ones of the cartoon he likes. The balloon was in green with a black ribbon, to match his new tootbrush, and in his favorite color. You can not make this stuff up. But I got to tell you: it was the best customer service of any dentist I've visited. And they make the kids love the dentist. My son asked the next day, if we could go and visit again.

Early detection, early response

Several months ago, Larry Brilliant was named Executive Director of the Google Foundation. I had never heard of Larry Brilliant. Google watchers headlined: “Grateful Dead doctor to head the Google Foundation”. So, they hired a hippie. It wasn’t until I watched the presentation of Larry Brilliant at TED, that I understood why he was an excellent choice to preside over some of the Google monies.

Download this talk: Audio (MP3) | Video (MP4)

More TEDTalks: TEDTalks website | iTunes (audio) | iTunes (video)

TEDPrize winner Larry Brilliant is an epidemiologist who presided over the last case of Smallpox on the planet. He also founded the Seva Foundation, which works to reverse cases of blindness, and co-founded several technology start-ups, including the legendary online community, The Well. He was recently named Executive Director of the Google Foundation. In this talk, he explains in fascinating detail the key behind the successful WHO campaign to eradicate Smallpox, and then unveils his TEDPrize wish: to build a global system that detects each new disease or disaster as it emerges or occurs. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 26:34)

Another great series of well-doing is the three part interview of Charlie Rose with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, following Buffet's $31Billion gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
Charlie Rose - Warren Buffett: The Man - Part One in a Three Part Series (Part 2 and 3 can also be found at video.google.com).

Technorati: Google TED Larry Brilliant Warren Buffett

breydel.blogspot.com as a graph

Today, I came across an interesting way to look at websites: websites as a graph. Here's a way the HTML of http://breydel.blogspot.com looks like. (Other graphs can be find at flickr tag websitesasgraph.)

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

Attitude Control

I've been several weeks in my new job, when an email about attitude control arrives in my inbox. Great, after merely a few weeks and unbeknown to me, I apparently have rubbed somebody the wrong way. Week 2 coincided with the annual company offsite and retreat (this year to the Chaminade in Santa Cruz) with all the families. So, I got to know and interact with everybody in the company. However, my day to day interactions are with a small team of about ten people. Who was it?

Upon reading the email, my fears subdued and I was convinced it was a typo and should have been altitude control. Wrong again. When I consulted the reference book for the project I am currently working on, attitude control system or attitude determination and control system (ADCS) stabilizes a spacecraft and orients it in desired directions during the mission.

Pew, no attitude control required. I am still the quiet lamb I used to be. Baaaah Baah

Arrogance through ignorance

I've bitten my lip several times in the last weeks when it comes down to the American commentary on the World Cup. Leading the pack of the ignorant are Pete Wilson and Rich Walcoff (on KGO AM810 radio).

I've been creating my short list on why Americans do not like the game. Here's what I came up with.

• In soccer, size or quantity does not matter

"The low-scoring thing, I get that now, how cool one goal can be when you have to work 90 minutes for it. Hey, when a guy goes to a singles bar, is it a disappointing or boring night if he doesn't walk out with 83 women?" - Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle

• In soccer, there is no script.
  "Make some noise" does not need to be announced on a big billboard. You do not get regular beer breaks or commercials. Only half time. Anything can happen any time. Supporters will respond to the game, not to a dancing monkey or chicken. Cheerleaders would however be welcome ;)
• In soccer, stats do not count
  Nobody soccer fan I know keeps track of how many tackles a defender makes. Or how many times a team in the last 10 minutes came back from a 2-0 deficit. Or the total weight of the defenders on a squad. Goals, yes, they are tracked per player, or how often a player is selected.
  
• In soccer, loyalty is part of your blood. Teams do not move
  Teams are rooted in the town. Can you imagine Manchester United to move out of Manchester? Lately, I've seen some soccer teams merging: i.e. two neighbouring towns join the teams into one stadium close to both town centers. But you will not encounter a move like the Raiders moving from Oakland to Los Angeles for a couple of years, and back to Oakland.
  

Day 1

06:00AM - Korea vs Togo (2 - 1)
08:00AM - Say bye to my wife and kids + Coffee
09:30AM - Stroll over to RTI on the 6th floor of the Mission Towers at Freedom Circle

10:00AM - First day at RTI

My new little office, all ready to go.

Second Harvest

Over twelve thousand pounds of food! That's how much food we sorted and repackaged last night at the Second Harvest Food bank in San Jose. With a group of ten Belgians and one Italian, we joined a team of volunteers to sort through pallets of donated food. And although the work isn't very difficult or strenuous, everybody was working at an incredible pace, as if Hurricane Katrina was looming around the corner. There wasn't much chit-chat going on. Instead all you heard were the grunts of everybody hard at work: from creating and preparing boxes, to sorting the food, cleaning up the trashed items, to handling pallets and empty boxes.

The Second Harvest Food bank is an amazing organization, unlike anything you find in Belgium. Check it out (More statistics on their website):

• Each month we serve an average of 163,500 people; enough people to fill Candlestick Park more than twice. Of those that we serve:
• 60% are low-income families
• 37% are children
• 20% are seniors
• The average income of the households we serve through our direct service programs are: $1,270 for a family of four; $900 for a two-person senior household; $700 for a two person volunteer household.

• We are the primary source for donated, surplus and purchased foods for non-profit agencies and our direct service programs. In fact, we distributed 27 million pounds of food to our local communities last year.

Power

Yesterday, we hosted a get-together for the group of Argentines at my wife's company : un asado argentino. Mind you, this is a Saturday. A Sunny afternoon. The sangria is ready. A big bucket is full of chilled beer. And the barbecue is already cooking the sliced zuchinnis.
An hour late (which is expected - la hora argentina always runs about an hour late), people start trickling in ... with their laptops. And not immediatly thirsty for a beer. No no, thirsty for power, to recharge the batteries. Only in Silicon Valley. And yes, we did dive into the sangria and had plenty of grilled meat and beer afterwards.

In a month, we'll celebrate yankee doodle day - Belgian style. There won't be a problem of electric power: Belgian still run on primarily on ethanol.

While on Saturday, we cooked on a traditional American Webber barbecue, I couldn't help it to add a picture from our recent visit to Argentina: an asado en El Trapiche, San Luis, Argentina:

The number: 2687

On January 29, 1999, I joined officially Sun Microsystems. I had interviewed months before that, accepted the employment offer as soon as the traditional first quarter hiring freeze had passed, and had been awaiting the transfer of my H1B visa. I have worked in Market Development Engineering the entire time. I have had three different positions in the organization: first in the I/O Technologies group, then in the eBusiness team and finally in Horizontal Technologies.


A few days ago, I tendered my resignation from Sun Microsystems and have decided to take on an exciting new job at Real Time Innovations in Santa Clara.
Ironically, RTI headquarters are located in the big Mission Towers building next to highway 101, with a big "Sun Microsystems" logo on top of it - although there aren't any Sun offices anymore in the building. (In Silicon Valley, big building facade has important advertising value). It's a little freaky: the offices, the furniture, the layouts, even the carpet I believe: it looks all too familiar.

June 9th will be my last day at Sun. All together, I will have been 2687 days at Sun Microsystems.

Technorati: Sun Microsystems Real Time Innovations