Has the WebOS Finally Arrived?

SphereOfInfluence writes "Dion Hinchcliffe over on ZDNet declared in a new post that the Web OS has finally arrived and that businesses and IT departments must adjust to the fact that everything's starting to move to the cloud. He cites John Hagel's so-called big business shifts of the 21st century and claims cloud computing, crowdsourcing, open APIs, Software-as-a-Service are the future of the workplace. He goes on to present a compelling visual model of the Web OS circa 2009 and examples to back up some of the statements."

Comments

Wait a minute.

[girlintraining]

Weren't we supposed to be all using thin clients right now in our flying cars, sucking the fat electrons straight from the coax at gigabit speeds by now? Now comes the latest proclaimation: We're going Carebears mode. Everyone into the clouds! Tenderheart's not going to be happy about this. I sense a big carebear stare coming for the Cloud-Mongers.

Re:Wait a minute.

[Philip K Dickhead]

Get Your Neuromancer On!

Maximum dystopian computing panopticon nightmare event horizon now imminent.

Please do nothing. We already know who you are and what you are doing. Should your innocence be established, the department will notify your surviving beneficiaries.

Re:Wait a minute.

[Hognoxious]

It's just another person predicting a paradigm shift that just won't happen due to inertia and unperceived limitations.

We just need to use a mashup of service enabled architectures to provide a seamlessly semantic experience.

If that doesn't work, then depolarize the bogotronic flux.

Re:Wait a minute.

[Atrox666]

..and it will all be linux on the desktop and will come with a free copy of Duke Nukem forever.

Flashing lights and the death of crap IT

[MosesJones]

There is a phrase about IT

"We don't understand the hardware, we don't understand the software... but we can SEE the flashing lights"

This has led to a whole load of crap IT dedicated to neither hard-core hardware or to hard-core software, its the land of the PHB and its the land of the powerpoint. What surprises me about clouds however is that its often the hard-core folks who are scared of the cloud, they bitch about security and latency but really its because they fear it will make them less important.

It doesn't.

What clouds do is hugely commoditise infrastructure and (in the case of SaaS) those massive package implementations that customise to death a package that would have worked much better without all that consultancy "help".

The people who should fear clouds are the ones who lived off customising packages that didn't need it and who revel in a world of powerpoints and meetings because what SaaS and clouds do is shift the buying of crap boring IT into the hands of the business and then leave the business with the real questions of how to deliver the stuff that actually matters... the hard-core software and genuinely high performing infrastructure.

So don't think of clouds and SaaS as a threat... think of them as kicking the PHB and his expensive package customising consultants in the nuts.

Re:Flashing lights and the death of crap IT

[Anonymous Coward]

The "people who should fear clouds" are the people whose network connection is not 100% (and I don't mean 99.999999999999%) reliable.

And let's not forget that all your data is now in the hands of somebody else, who is almost certainly subject to the USAPATRIOT Act.

Re:Flashing lights and the death of crap IT

[Simon (S2)]

The people who should fear clouds ...

The people who should fear clouds are the people who want their data in their own hands, and don't trust third parties to handle it for then. It's that easy, and it's what will make SaaS fail.
We write SaaS, and almost all our customers ask us where we store the data, and if it we don't guarantee them it is in the country they are from they back off. And we write software for small firms only. Bigger clients want the software and the data stored in their own datacenter. They will not trust the "cloud" for that (and I wouldn't either). Not in the near future at least.

Re:Flashing lights and the death of crap IT

[SerpentMage]

In 1953 when IBM introduced the first computer, who made it work? Ah yes a team of programmers who customized...

When UNIX was first introduced who made things work for your business? Customizations...

When...

Want to see the future? Look at IBM... They have been around over a hundred years, while all of the other companies have disappeared. Look at the latest balance sheets of IBM, cash rich cow! IBM is a "serious playa". And what do they make their money off? Services and customization.

My point is that IBM is a company that adapts to the times. They build what the client wants. And the clients wants customizations. Sure IBM is on the cloud computing bandwagon, no reason for them to not be. After all more customization money for them. After all, who would not want a "private cloud", which is sort of contradictory, no?

The real money will be in the ones who know how to customize the cloud... Oh wait IBM, yes?

Re:Flashing lights and the death of crap IT

[Youngbull]

The people who should fear clouds ...

The people who should fear clouds are the people who want their data in their own hands, and don't trust third parties to handle it for then. It's that easy, and it's what will make SaaS fail. We write SaaS, and almost all our customers ask us where we store the data, and if it we don't guarantee them it is in the country they are from they back off. And we write software for small firms only. Bigger clients want the software and the data stored in their own datacenter. They will not trust the "cloud" for that (and I wouldn't either). Not in the near future at least.

I agree, and to be quite honest I think that cloud computing for private people will make some fiz and then leave quietly, too many people are one of three categories: "dont get it", "don't want it" and "don't care too much to get it".

Re:Flashing lights and the death of crap IT

[vlm]

They're turning their business over to the mercy of the cloud provider, and should it go down, the entire business may go with it.

Don't forget massive asymmetry problems. At a past job I helped "support" outsourced email for small businesses. Basically, the same thing as gmail but more expensive, yet not expensive enough to drive them away to gmail, in retrospect a fairly pointless line of business.

In one memorable unhappy situation, a customers email access from China, in a very email centric line of business, was worth "thousands of dollars per day of revenue" to them, and it was down, and they were very unhappy. They were worth "approx fifty cents per day of revenue" to us. Guess what happened due to that massive asymmetry? I think they eventually went out of business.

Re:Flashing lights and the death of crap IT

[dkf]

The Cloud represents problems especially where some countries and or companies have strong data protection laws.

It doesn't actually. I can and do get my computation and storage (from Amazon as it happens) located in countries where such laws hold quite easily enough (I pay a small premium - about 10% last time I looked - but I don't mind) and I know that there are other companies that resell this (with the location guarantee) as higher-level services. Now, if your prospective provider won't offer you the same level of service, I suggest you don't use them. Maybe you should also tell them why you're not going to trade with them; it might encourage them to take your concerns seriously if they know why they're not getting your trade.

Re:Flashing lights and the death of crap IT

[benjamindees]

Consultants don't give two shits about the "right" solution because the "right" solution is the most expensive one they can get a signature on. The lack of trust in their permanent employees has ironically led to them being bled dry by people who don't give a shit about the company... They're only there to install or maintain a thing now, in and out in a day.

Personally, I spent years trying to be a consultant who implemented the "right" solutions, all the while telling everyone who would listen that I could do a better job and would be better off making half as much money as a permanent employee with budgetary control. It got me absolutely nowhere.

Businesses don't want the "right" solutions. They don't want more stable and longer-lasting hardware and software if it comes with fewer bells and whistles. They don't want to pay for security. Their accountants won't cede an inch of control over purchasing decisions. And they fall for even the most obvious marketing bullshit. Most businesses will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to automate IT instead of letting IT save them hundreds of thousands of dollars by automating the rest of their business.

I have had people with literally zero IT knowledge tell me that they want to do everything by themselves, and then ask me how to do it. If you were a consultant, what would your response to this be?

Head out.

[captnbmoore]

Someone needs to get their head out there ass before putting it in the clouds.

Backend mining

[NoYob]

When I read these Cloud Computing articles, I have these thoughts of writing a program that mines the data of all those companies that put their financials and other documents up there. Then use that data for: insider trading, marketing things to them, competitive advantages, and a bunch of thing that can be gained with confidential and insider information.

I think I'm a frustrated crook or security consultant.

Re:Backend mining

[Sebilrazen]

I think I'm a frustrated crook or security consultant.

No, you're just fat lazy virgin slashdot poster.

No, they've posted before, click their username.

ZzzS are the slippery slope for webBS adoption

[xigxag]

Assimilating all of that Web 3.0 content led me to strategically develop a fully horizontal organizational orientation. I immediately shifted paradigms and commenced "cloud computing" for about 15 minutes, dynamically visualizing an innovative brave new world.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I feel a rapid fluctuation in my supply chain.

Some issues with "the cloud"

[davidwr]

Beware the perils of outsourcing.

If you are using a 3rd party to host corporate data, make sure:

* it meets all legal and regulatory requirements you must meet, guarenteed
* it has performance and uptime you need, guaranteed
* it is responsible for break-ins that are beyond your reasonable control, even if they are beyond its reasonable control. If you can't get a guarantee, pick another vendor or buy an insurance policy to cover you from lawsuits if customer data is compromised
* you can keep backup copies of corporate data in a meaningful format, in case the vendor goes belly up. "In a meaningful format" typically means a published format, but it could be a proprietary format which is shared by many vendors. Open format is many times better than proprietary.

Depending on your needs and size, it may literally be cheaper to pay an outside vendor to "clone" their infrastructure at your shop and train your IT dept. how to use it, so you can keep everything under your control. If, for example, regulatory rules prevent you from shipping your data to Google, you could hire them to build a mini Google server farm inside your firewall and have it index your data and offer "yourbrandhere-Google-powered" web-based "office" applications.

Another option is to use in-house or, if you prefer, outsourced virtual servers which you control access to.

Finally, there's the default option of "keep doing it they way you are doing it now." That option should never be off the table until a better option presents itself.

Diskless workstations at last?

[PingXao]

I have been working for over 20 years with various people who proclaim the dawn of the Era Of The Diskless Workstation is upon us. Cloud computing seems to be another instance of this class. I predict it's going to NOT be the "next big thing". The next big bubble of bullshit is more like it.

techno-buzzword salad

[elnyka]

That article was an example of techno-buzzword mental masturbation.

USAPATRIOT Act? Who sez I'm Ameriken?

[davidwr]

And let's not forget that all your data is now in the hands of somebody else, who is almost certainly subject to laws in their country that give the local government unfettered access to all your company jewels.

There, fixed that for you.