Anyway, this is the time for lighter blogging, and I'm taking a clue from ReadWriteWeb who came up with the idea of publishing the 2008 Redux series. There's only a small problem: CloudAve did not exist for most of 2008, having launched only in September, so I'll be picking up some of the posts from my personal blog: not the best ones, not the most popular ones - just random picks I felt are still somewhat relevant.
Most CloudAve readers probably know that Zoho is our exclusive sponsor. When we launched in September, the speculation that this will turn us into nothing but a PR outlet for Zoho was inevitable. I think in these few months we have proven otherwise, by being very conservative with Zoho coverage (if anything, we have a negative bias) while generously talking about potentially competing solutions.
But when ReadWriteWeb declares Zoho the Best LittleCo of 2008, it deserves a mention here, too. Besides, it’s holiday time and I wanted to show off their updated logo.
We felt that Web Office vendor Zoho best represented the 'LittleCo' ethos this year, due to its David vs Goliath effort in competing head on with products from several very large companies: Microsoft Office, Google Apps, Salesforce.com's core CRM platform.
Zoho not only competed with these bigcos, they were innovative and scrappy about it. And in a year that will be remembered for the economic downturn, Zoho is a reminder to us all that we can work ourselves out of a down economy.
Talk about working ourselves out of a down economy: Zoho itself was born as a result of a turnaround, when parent company AdventNet had to reinvent itself after the collapse of their then primary market, the telecommunications industry.
Whether they are LittleCo or BigCo today is all relative: with 800 employees, of which 300 focus on Zoho, they are certainly now a scrawny little Web 2.0 startup – but when you compare them to the real Goliath they are competing with, they certainly are still little. Something tells me that even at 2,000 employees in many ways they will continue to act as LittleCo.
Part of the secret sauce of survival and growing has been self-efficiently: they are entirely funded by revenues. I’ve stopped counting the number of products Zoho offers somewhere above 20, for fear I would be wrong, but looking at some of the recent funding news to one-product companies, can you imagine what level of investment would it take to build a business that offers all the combination of Office and Business applications, tools and even the infrastructure to provide it as SaaS?
Not that I am against Venture Funding, in fact via my participation at SVASE I help bring entrepreneurs and VC together, but there is something to be said about bootstrapping, frugality and efficiency as means to prosper, rather than just surviving a recession.
‘Nuff said: congratulations to Zoho, thanks for continuing to sponsor CloudAve as an unbiased Cloud Computing forum, and we now continue our regular programming…
Update: also Congrat's to fellow Editor Ben Kepes, having been marrried for 12 years today.
When several, seemingly unrelated threads on TechMeme discuss the same things, you know they are onto something big. Today it’s data. Where you store it, how accessible / safe it is – and no, today’s s safety discussion isn’t about protecting it from intruders: it’s about whether you, the rightful owner can assess it safely.
Computing Without a Whirring Drive is an interesting article in The New York Times about how hard-disk industry executives are worrying about their future with the advent of of netbooks, smartphones and other devices. Some data may be on SSD’s in these gadgets, the rest in the Cloud – and today’s teenagers increasingly don’t care where it is, they trust it will always be available.
Which operating system is best for solid-state drives? –asks ComputerWorld, ironically the same day a new forecast predicts Netbook SSD usage may fall in 2009. Whichever way the trend goes, hard-disk execs don’t really have to lose a lot of sleep: data has to be stored somewhere, even in the cloud. In fact if you buy into to IDC's Storage Paradox ( I don’t), we’ll soon create more data than we can store.
But whether you store it locally or in the Cloud, how certain are you you can always access your data? Not only computer-generated data, but your music, photos, videos – even paper. Paperless office was a popular phrase but remained largely a dream for decades, but it’s now happening for real. Hardly any new information is generated on paper, so finally we are now willing to digitize old stuff and shred the paper originals. Soon all our information will exist only electronically. But there’s a problem as discussed over @ Technium:
The storage medium itself can decay. Turns out that paper is much more stable over the long term than most digital media. Magnetic surfaces flake, peel, shatter. And the supposed durable CDs and DVDs aren't very stable either.
The proposed solution: move your data regularly, probably at least once every 5 years. Now, for most of us, with computer-generated data it’s never been a problem, as we keep on replacing old computers with new ones, copying data over and over again. But do you have digital archives of really old data (rarely accessed documents, music, photos..etc) typically stored on CDs and DVDs? They may not be perfectly readable after a few years.
We don't know what the natural movage respiration cycle is for digital media yet since it is still very new, but I suspect the cycle is much shorter than we think. I would guess it is 5 years. No matter what digital format you have your precious stored on, you should expect to move it onto new media in five years -- and five years after that forever!
Move it, move it, move it.
For some of us the solution will be keeping everything on large hard-disks, syncing it between multiple machines, backing it up locally or online. But there is some naivete regarding online backups, as illustrated by this comment to the Technium post (emphasis mine):
i keep all my data on the built-in hard drive of my laptop. no dvds, no external drives. this way i can always be sure the physical media is still working. whenever i run out of disk space i buy a larger hard disc (and one for backup of course) and copy everything over.
in addition i push the really important stuff to amazon s3 regularly - in the cloud there are no physical media. oh wonderful world.
“In the Cloud there are no physical media” – really? Information still has to be stored somewhere, Cloud or local. When we move it to the Cloud, we’re simply pushing the responsibility onto others, trusting they do a better job then we would. But let’s face it, Cloud services have not been around long enough to face the issue of storage decay, and until they start talking about it, we don’t really know how they safeguard rarely accessed old data.
Then there’s the issue of formats and continuity. I’m not even talking about media formats (Last year I found my old University Thesis on a 5 1/4” floppy disk – I keep it as a souvenir, but can no longer access it). No, let’s assume you moved all your stuff from floppies, VHS tapes ..etc: you are savvy enough to take care of media format conversions before they become obsolete. I keep all digitized (formerly paper) documents in PDF format, hoping that will last forever.
But here’s the hidden trap: your application data my become inaccessible, even while you keep on upgrading to the most recent release of the application itself. A few examples:
The list could probably go on and on. The point is, that you’re in danger of losing access to data where you expect it the least: when you’re a “good customer” upgrading to new releases, and think you are safe, since all your data is created by the same application.
Digital continuity is important, and not something you can take for granted. Whether you take care of it yourself or outsource it to a provider “in the Cloud”, make sure your data is:
Watch (and listen to) this video while reading this post - it's the start of the end of the world as some people know it and here at CloudAve we feel fine!
In recent days we've heard some pretty exciting CloudOS elated news. First Good OS the other day debuted their product "Cloud" an operating system that boots directly into a browser allowing for lightning quick access to all the important things we do each day (well - the important things for those of us living in the Clouds). Good OS is built inside the Google Chrome browser and looks like a nice lightweight Cloud OS should.
Cloud gives users access to their important web-apps and most importantly is super quick to both boot and shut down, Demo vid below.
More details about Cloud will be released at CES in January but already there is significant excitement building about the product.
Then only a few days later reports surfaced of significant amounts of web traffic originating from Google employees that had it's operating system information deliberately concealed to the outside world.
Google has always said that Android, the OS already released for mobile devices, is not limited to mobiles - one can't help but think that this blocked traffic is a massive test of an extended and full size device ready Android OS. This combined with the announcement of the release of Google Native Client heralds the coming promise of a browser/OS that can harness all the power a device has to offer.
The tide is turning for traditional operating systems. I posted over a year ago questioning the future need for the operating system as we know it. As I said (admittedly somewhat simplistically) back then;
...what is an operating system? It runs a few drivers that control some peripheral stuff. It launches the web browser that allows me to do whatever it is I want to do. But what else?
Seems like a hell of a lot of disk space, code and processing speed for very little actual use. And if this is the case then there is a serious lack of design over this aspect of the way things work.
So taking a step back from this and looking at the strategic questions facing Microsoft and Google, one can't help but (yet again) wonder how Microsoft will compete in this new paradigm. In the same way that they're ultra dependant on Office for revenue and as such there are challenges to moving to a SaaS office productivity model (announcements of future announcements notwithstanding) so to is the traditional OS a significant revenue earner for MS - in a future world where the browser is the OS, where the app is no longer installed and where revenue models have become subscription (and cheap at that) where does this leave the monster from Redmond?
I normally rely on automatic Windows updates, but reading how big a monster this Tuesday’s patch is (the biggest in five years) I decided to get a head start now and let it cook overnight. Yeah, right:
Windows could not search for new updates. But luckily enough there’s a Get help with this error link…
1 result for "WindowsUpdate_8000FFFF" : Troubleshoot problems with installing updates. Click again, we’re almost there:
Oops.. none of these describe the error. As usual, Google finds more on the problem than Microsoft. In fact too much for my taste. Sc**w it, I will leave it to auto-update, whenever it may happen… I’m p****d, but not badly – after all, nothing unexpected happened. Failure, as usual. Vintage Microsoft. 
Today is the Day of Apologies. President Bush is sorry about the economic crisis, but his biggest regret is the flawed intelligence that led to the Iraq war:
"The biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein," Bush said.
A lot of people had a lot more than their reputations on the line. More than a million casualties later “Sorry” just doesn’t cut it. Too little, too late - he can’t bring those lives back…
Lets’ leave politics, and turn to other mistakes that can still be corrected.
Microsoft apologizes for Cashback glitches – reports CNET News. Their s Live Search Cashback site failed spectacularly on Black Friday. Nowhere felt customers more cheated than at Hewlett-Packard’s hopping site: HP and Microsoft together promised 40% discounts. People spent hours hitting refreshing their browsers – after all, the promised discounts could have easily amounted to $500 and more. Some customers who actually got through only received 3% cash-back, instead of the promised 40%.
Microsoft apologized:
"We deeply regret customer inconvenience with respect to the outage"
Again, too little, too late. But, unlike Bush, Microsoft and HP can actually do something about it. Don’t just apologize – deliver. Black Friday is followed by Cyber Monday, there is talk about Mobile Tuesday - for all I care they can call it Regret Wednesday, Sorry Thursday, Live (Sometimes) Friday, but declare a day of online shopping with 40% off when HP and Microsoft jointly deliver on their promise. That’s the only real apology.
Steve posted about the newly available (well soon and only if you're in the US) online versions of Exchange and SharePoint. It seems the Microsoft boffins have worked out that the change could see small businesses access a level of functionality recently only available to massive corporates (say oh ah please) like Coca Cola and Phillips. Steve recounted that;
In a nutshell, this is Microsoft offering to host Exchange and SharePoint in our datacenters for customers of all sizes. Previously available only to big businesses like Phillips, Coca Cola and others with many thousands of users, the door as now open for business (in the US at least) for all businesses.
As Ina Fried reports, Elop told the crowd that Microsoft estimates that companies can save at least 10% (and up to 50%) by letting Microsoft run their messaging and collaboration software for them.
Microsoft waxes poetic about the advantages saying that;
Some of the customers quoted today were Lotus Notes users who have chosen to move to Exchange using this Online option and for those scenarios there are potential big savings in the move from capital expenditure on hardware (CAPEX) to operating expenditure on software and services (OPEX). You don’t need to know much about the current economic climate to know that is music to the finance directors ears.
You don't say - haven't us SaaS evangelists been spouting OPEX vs CAPEX for years - all the time shouted down by the MS crew claiming that installed is the way of the past, present and future?
Anyway - enough sour grapes. I'll see your 10% ( yeah OK 10% and up to 50%) and raise you a little. It's called Google Applications Enterprise Edition and it costs $50 per user per year.
Worried that, contrary to its motto, Google is in fact evil? (And no - I don't concur with that view).
Cool - go Zoho (disclosure - Zoho sponsors CloudAve) the services comparable with the Microsoft offerings (Zoho docs/wiki/mail) are free for a sub 10 person company. Thereafter $50 a year per person sees you sorted.
Royal flush anyone?
Live Mesh or Live Sync? It looks like Microsoft is still suffering from chronic productitis and branditis: two competing, overlapping products are being touted today:
Live Mesh is obviously not new, it was available since the spring, albeit barely live then. In the meantime it improved, can actually be installed and runs more or less flawlessly. In fact after the initial hassles I’ve installed it on three computers, and am using it as a replacement for my previous favourite, FolderShare.
The writing has been on the wall for FolderShare for a while: outages, failures, less reliability (never synched orphan placeholder files): why would Microsoft maintain this when they are building out the new Live Mesh services?
But today Microsoft announced the replacement for FolderShare, and it’s not Live Mesh: it’s something else called Live Sync. Why bother? We already have Mesh, it’s good enough. Yes, I know, Mesh has – and will have – a lot more services, but a subset of its functionality can do what Sync will – unleashing yet another product and brand only leads to confusion.
But then again, that’s nothing new. Remember the MSN / Live confusion? The 3 competing Messenger versions at a time... let alone countless Office and Windows flavors? Confusing customers is deep in Microsoft’s DNA. 
Related post:
And I don't mean Azure.
Reading CloudNews the other day (yes, even the CloudAve team know where to go for the best Cloud Computing news ) , I came across this press release that announces Microsoft's partnership with Fengyun Network Services which sees Microsoft provide some backend technology while Fengyun customises Microsoft applications for specific industrues. The portal is live - but my Mandarin isn't very good so I have no idea what they're actually offering.
The press release states however that;
Microsoft will provide SaaS back-end technology and SaaS platform software, while Fengyun will build on Microsoft frameworks to custom-tailor Microsoft-provided software to better fit the needs of different industries, and then finally to provide these solutions to SME users
So is this a way for Microsoft to slowly morph itself to SaaS? Developing new software offerings directly for SaaS delivery rather than installed? Or is it similar to what I posted about awhile ago, Microsoft providing existing installed applications as SaaS in *third world* countries?
The former is highly unlikely I'm afraid - Microsoft dabbles with these sort of geographic specific partnerships from time to time. It's a way to eke out a few more percentage points of market share rather than providing any real new strategic direction.
However as a test case it's going to be interesting to watch - customisation of software hasn't been a forte of Microsofts thus far, in this world of the long tail however customers will more and more demand a tailored solution - these sorts of partnershps could just be a way for MS to deliver on that demand.
