The Enterprise's Vision on IT Sourcing

Sourcing strategies are constrained by application level architectures. Closed application landscapes with proprietary interfaces, intertwined structures and poor identity- and access management will raise barriers to the feasibility of secure and flexible sourcing initiatives including the use of cloud computing, multiple provider strategies and seamless on premise interactions.

To gain full benefits of to-day’s sourcing offerings applications need to adhere to contemporary standards and architectural principles.

The challenges

The end-user has a responsibility to fulfill business processes or parts of it. He or she is facilitated by chains of applications. It is an IT-responsibility to maintain an adequate user experience in using the applications - including seamlessness, continuity, device independency and location independency - without distracting the user from the business process to be fulfilled.

At the same time it must be possible to outsource the applications in a flexible way, without being constrained by the supported business processes, being able to offer services at any place on any device to any user in a secured environment.

This leads to the following architectural challenges at the application layer:

• On premise accessibility, inbound and outbound interaction
• Cross-provider interfacing
• Seamless and quick workload transfer across multiple providers
• Universal access including single sign-on from any place on any device by anyone


The solutions

On premise accessibility

Legacy applications need to be wrapped with a standards based interaction shell and infrastructural middleware components need locally be installed to enable smooth communication between on premise applications and external applications in both directions.

Cross-provider interfacing

Applications must adhere to commonly implemented interoperability standards to enable communication between applications running in environments of different providers.

Workload transfer across multiple providers

Outsourced application component images must be portable between platforms running in environments of different providers.

Outsourced platform images - including the supported application components - must be portable between infrastructures running in environments of different providers.

Outsourced virtual infrastructure images - including the supported platforms and application components - must be portable between environments of different providers.

Universal access

Web bases access is required to enable application accessibility from any place and from any device.

Federated identity based access mechanisms must be in place to securely enable a single sign-on experience across multiple provides, including on premise access for potentially anyone.

Another great document on Cloud Computing

I recognize a lot of cynicism about Cloud Computing. People see it as a buzz word, which it is, and for this reason play down this technology trend. I think CIO's should not be happy when this happens in their office.

I am not going to explain or evangelize Cloud Computing in this blog posting. What I will do is refer to a downloadable powerpoint presentation by Pat Helland.

Pat Helland remade a paper of Berkeley's called Above the Clouds. Pat has made this document to an easy approachable yet comprehensive powerpoint presentation.

Every CIO dealing with applications in datacenters should be aware of what Berkeley try to tell us. I am really impressed by Berkeley's paper and Pat Helland's powerpoint sheets.

The 8 questions Berkeley answers in the paper are:

• What is Cloud Computing, and how is it different from previous paradigm shifts such as Software as a Service (SaaS)?
  

• Why is Cloud Computing poised to take off now, whereas previous attempts have foundered?
  

• What does it take to become a Cloud Computing provider, and why would a company consider becoming one?
  

• What new opportunities are either enabled by or potential drivers of Cloud Computing?
  

• How might we classify current Cloud Computing offerings across a spectrum, and how do the technical and business challenges differ depending on where in the spectrum a particular offering lies?
  

• What, if any, are the new economic models enabled by Cloud Computing, and how can a service operator decide whether to move to the cloud or stay in a private datacenter?
  

• What are the top 10 obstacles to the success of Cloud Computing—and the corresponding top 10 opportunities available for overcoming the obstacles?
  

• What changes should be made to the design of future applications software, infrastructure software, and hardware to match the needs and opportunities of Cloud Computing?

Proudly Presented: The Cloud

I came across a book titled "Collaboration in the Cloud". It's about business, collaboration and Cloud Computing. A PDF-copy is freely available and may also be distributed freely. You can download the 6MB PDF-file by clicking the link below:

Collaboration in the Cloud


The book is written by 5 experts, 3 from Sogeti and 2 from Microsoft. The authors address the changes and opportunities that come with a new world that is starting to show all around us. They talk about autonomous, bottom up organizations where innovation and collaboration are part of the culture. Analogies with the industrial revolution are used to illustrate the extraordinary era we witness today.

I share this file on my weblog to supply my blog readers with some interesting thoughts in order to make up an opinion about how conventional companies (till the extend of large enterprises) can gain the same advantage of these technologies as the bottom up organizations do. It may help you to develop a vision and to establish strategies.

Cloud Computing: From Custom-build via COTS to SaaS

A decade or two ago, we built all of our applications ourselves (well, except some generic products like WordPerfect). Common practice in most organizations nowadays is to first look for Commercial of the Shelf Software (COTS) before building an own solution.

But the weather is getting "cloudy" these days, and a storm is ahead.

With the maturity of the Internet a third branch is emerging on the decision-tree. Is the solution available as SaaS? Yes, do it. If not, is the solution available as COTS? Yes, do it. If not, build it yourself. And after you've built it, deploy it in the cloud.

The facts

Oracle has acquired SUN to get into the data center business. Microsoft and Google and others invest huge amounts of money to build data centers all over the world. Amazon offers virtual desktops (EC2) at a few cents per hour -and you only pay when you are logged in. Linxter offers an ESB in the cloud, Microsoft calls it the Internet Service Bus. Microsoft also offers Windows-in-the-cloud (Azure). Google offers rich email services to companies with (an ever growing) 7 GB storage at the price of one and a half cup of coffee a month. Salesforce offers business functionality at rates interesting enough to be taken seriously, no investments needed. Since the early days of the Internet suppliers offer storage in the cloud and their prices are decreasing. BPM is offered in the cloud to click together you business processes based on SaaS and your own local applications and services, using a Service Bus in the cloud and/or your own to route the messages around.

Virtualization to share resources not at an enterprise level, but at a global level decreases costs with a magnitude beyond any imagination. Pay-as-you-go and fast-scale models will make any investment and so any business case in your organization superfluous.

Identity services based on OpenID authenticate users in the cloud. In combination with secure federated provisioning services and legal certifications of cloud services providers, adequate levels of security are guaranteed.

In the short term emotions ("This is not secure enough for us... We have different needs then other companies... It's not flexible...") will be the main speed limiter, but eventually rationalism will win: do things ourselves in-house against huge costs, let things do dedicated for us by a provider in the cloud against high costs, or make use of multi-tenant and virtualized solutions with globally shared resources at extremely low costs.

Now is the time for organizations to establish a vision and policies and be prepared. Retink the role of the IT-department because things will change, soon, fast and overwhelming. If you as an IT-department don't, the business units will. Because most of what the enterprise's IT-department offers will be offered in the cloud as well, very fast, very scalable, very cheap, and instantly available to everyone. No company-WAN is needed; a cheap ADSL- or cable-access point will sufice to connect the business unit's LAN to the cloud. Be prepared!!

Do you recognize the cloud trend?

Let's focus on four business organizations (orange buttons), or enterprises if you like. They own and manage there own software systems (green dots). Even in the Before-Internet-Era, let's say the nineties of the twentieth century and before, there were heavily used mechanisms to have software components communicate (blue lines) across organization boundaries. See figure 1.

Figure 1: the nineties of 20th. century (before Internet)

Then the Internet came raging across the world, let's say in the first decade of the current century, and dropped a cloud. Pioneers on the Internet started offering software solutions from the cloud, much for free, enjoying the pride of being the first.

Commercial SaaS products started to enter the cloud domain and nerdy hobbyists (some from Google, some not) started to create mashup platforms and solutions in their spare time. I won't mention the Google Maps cliché. At the same time standardization organizations were making overtime to define and support open application level communication standards and protocols.

Figure 1 (above) changed to figure 2 (below), the blue lines between the organizations became a blue cloud surrounding the organizations. And more, the cloud not only offers communication facilities, but functional business services to be used as part of your own business processes as well. The green dots not only reside on the orange buttons, but also in the blue cloud. And they are directly in the hands of your employees and colleagues, without interference of your central IT department.

These green dots in the blue cloud are new and they are multiplying like mice; non-stop. Try to imagine what that means... if you can.

Figure 2: first decade of 21st. century

You doubt? What about a very recent example very close to me: Selling discount train tickets on eBay (green dot in the blue cloud). I just found this out by surprise today. I am an employee of the IT department of Dutch Railways and I really didn't know Dutch Railways started offering tickets that can be bought (including payment) on the Internet - as a temporary campaign. A colleague of mine informed me after he was notified by the Google Alerts service (another green dot in the blue cloud); not by the respective employees. Our IT department has completely been kept out (what could we do at all?). I even promoted a more sophisticated variant of a green ticket selling dot in the blue cloud, a few weeks ago on this blog, without knowing anything of this initiative nearby.

And what about yourself? Haven't you ever looked up your supplier via Google? Or looked at the CV of your colleague on Linkedin? Sent a business relevant email via Gmail? Subscribed to business relevant RSS feeds? Ordered some books for your company library via Amazon after querying a service that compares the prices of several book-stores? Booked a business flight via an air booking site? Published the pictures of your department party on Flickr? Sent a file that was too large for email via Yousendit to a colleague at an other location? Archived some files on box.net to be accessed from elsewhere? Well, I did.

Okay, these examples sound all a bit trivial, but it has just started. You didn't do all of these things 10 years ago, or 5 year ago. Before reading this post, did you realize that you and your employees already started using the green dots in the blue cloud as part of your business processes? And that some of your employees already depend on some of these public dots to fulfill their tasks adequately? It will be more and it will be pervasive. Don't be afraid and don't fight it, but seek to cope with it.

The green dots in the blue cloud become more and more robust, reliable and secure. Even better than organizations can organize and guarantee in their own orange button. And at a price that low, that the costs become irrelevant to business cases and ROI's: cost will be no hurdle to usage and change. Just because the software you originally owned and used by yourself is now used by thousands or even millions of users everywhere on the globe. Just because the blue cloud turned up.

Do you think of the electricity costs when you turn on the light in your bathroom? The cost of using software (or listening to music or watching movies) will go the same way as the cost of electricity at home; pay-as-you-go at a very low rate. Because of the scale. And that will become visible in the second decade of our current century.

As figure 3 shows, the green dots will leave the orange buttons and start a new life in the cloud. Some green dots that are very tightly glued to an orange button will stay there. These are the very specific applications that must guarantee your business advantage. But all the others will eventually populate the cloud. Do you notice that figure 3 starts looking a bit like the inverse of figure 1?

Figure 3: second decade of 21st. century

And now back to today, 2008. Do you recognize this trend? Do you think it will go this way? Can you mention any reasons why not? What do you think will happen if you don't believe this, but your competitor does? If he turns out to be right? Are you going to take that risk?

Whether you believe it is rapidly moving this way or not, it is not a bad idea to formulate a vision on this subject and either develop a strategy to cope with it or explicitly conclude you safely can ignore this trend...

SaaS explained

Are you not yet familiar with the idea of SaaS? Then watch this clip...

Invisible IT

According to York Earwaker's Weblog we are entering the era of invisible IT. He published a picture which tells us so. Unfortunately he didn't mention the source of the picture (might be his own) and he doesn't go into depth on the aspect of invisible IT. But it makes me think of my expected SaaS evolvement and cloud computing.

This is the picture...

BPM already offered as SaaS

A few days ago I posted about the Marriage of BPM and SaaS. A fellow-blogger - Roeland Loggen, whom I happened to meet last Friday in Amsterdam and who happened to be a BPM expert - commented on my posting telling me that BPM is already offered as SaaS.

The links Roeland added are very interesting. See how e.g. Lombardi offers a process design tool as SaaS:

• Features

• Flash demo (with sound)

The resulting process models can be exported to be run by leading BPM execution suites.

I don't intend to push forward Lombardi. I just use this company as an easy showcase of my previous posting. I hope they don't care (...)

The marriage of BPM and SaaS

From a very basic point of view you might say that with BPM-tools you are programming the application landscape. The current standard programming language for application landscape programming is BPEL.

Of course you want to use BPM to flexibly and rapidly model business processes. So it is a good idea to reshape the application landscape by service enabling or break down the applications in a smart way. The services should map to elementary business functions to be used as sharable building blocks in business process models, SOA...

On the other hand SaaS (Software as a Service) is evolving. Providers offer functionality to be consumed by their clients. Different providers deliver different services. This is a growing market, because it relieves companies from maintaining and supporting their own software solutions. But current SaaS products have a monolithic nature and are commonly delivered by ordinary web-interfaces.

Companies currently have to maintain a complex and cumbersome IT-stack to keep the application landscape - or SOA - running. Many companies try sourcing strategies to get rid of the burden of the lower layers of the stack. But the complexity of expensive service level agreements and procedures creates new burdens and limitations. The world would be a lot easier if companies could support their business processes with functionality fetched and glued from and within "the cloud".

If SaaS providers would offer service interfaces at the business logic tier of their products, the functionality could be addressed by the BPM-tools of consuming organizations. After all, well designed services are stateless, autonomous and sharable; just the perfect characteristics to be delivered as SaaS. Companies could build business processes from services delivered by different SaaS providers. The underlaying process server that executes the BPEL could be a SaaS product as well. And what if the user interface (UI) of the SaaS products would be delivered by UI-services based on WSRP. These UI-services could be consumed by the company's portal - which also could be a SaaS product. Organizations could run their business processes in their own house-style and completely based on SaaS, yet being able to compose their own processes with BPM. Programming the application landscape without any worries about software and the supporting stack underneath it! Wouldn't that be a wonderful world?

Today I attended a seminar about BPM and ESB. The seminar was organized by BEA, the middleware company that is planned to reincarnate into the body of Oracle this afternoon. BEA was talking about ESB, BPM and SOA. But they were also talking - as a middleware company - about getting started with SaaS (Genesis). Very interesting!