Check out Sam Ramji's post on port 25, 'history.foward()'. As per his keynote today at OSCON, he outlines some new developments around Microsoft's support for open source interoperability: ADOdb contributions to support PHP connectivity to SQL Server, support for the Apache Software Foundation, and an update to Microsoft's Open Specification Promise. Checking out the PHP driver myself...Will post some feedback.
Wow, what a show!! I I attended the event as a guest of Novell to promote our work around interoperability. I had hoped to post sooner but we were extremely busy all week. To summarize, the interoperability partnership was a major driver at Novell's booth, especially the work we are doing around virtualization. We recieved a great deal of questions and were met with tremendous enthusiasm as we walked people through our strategy. Our demonstration was particulary well recieved showing Windows Server 2008 hosting SUSE Linux Enterprise server. We also highlighted the document translators in OpenOffice for the OpenXML file format, walking visitors through a seamless authoring experiece between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice 2.0. I think people are still shocked and amazed (positively, of course) when they hear our story and see that we are actually producing results. We had a great time walking visitors through our progress to date. For more information visit http://www.moreinterop.com.
Here is the CEBIT 2008 opening day with Steve Ballmer using the new Surface technology...
I volunteered at a local hospice for a few years while I was in school. During that time, in addition to some administrative support at the main office, I spent a significant amount of time with a young teenager who had been diagnosed with Duchenne ’s muscular dystrophy. If you don’t know the disease here is a brief synopsis: It is genetic. It is degenerative. And it is, unfortunately, always fatal. The young man with whom I spent time had been diagnosed with the disease in early childhood and - at the time of our first meeting - was bed-ridden and could only move his fingers. Aside from visits from me, spending time with his family, and watching TV – the remainder of his time was spent on the computer by way of a trackball mouse and special voice recognition technology.
What strikes me, when I think back about it, is that his use of the computer was probably the only autonomy and freedom he had. Any other activity - at all - was dependent on someone else. At that time, the Internet was still young by consumer standards and multimedia PC’s were just blooming. He was thrilled! Chat rooms, surfing the web, games, and email became a great past-time for him. I am happy that he had that freedom and I cannot stress how important technology was for improving his quality of life.
Now it goes without saying that technology improves everyone’s quality of life to some degree, but for those who have limitations for whatever reason – immobility, blindness, hearing loss – technology can be life changing. The challenge these days – as computing has become truly ubiquitous and more complex – is how to offer consistent and predictable experiences across form factors for those who are impaired.
Enter the latest collaboration between Microsoft and Novell: The User Interface Automation specification (details here). In short, Microsoft is releasing the specification to the technical community while working with Novell to improve cross-platform accessibility experiences. We’re already hearing positive feedback from the community, including the National Federation for the Blind, and look forward to a fruitful collaboration. After one year of working together, this announcement marks the sixth unique project that we are working on together to address our customers’ interoperability needs.
I am amazed to think about the progress we have made in such a short period of time.
As always, check out http://www.moreinterop.com for details.
For more on this announcement, see Microsoft’s presspass article here.
This morning Microsoft released a letter outlining its position and intent to foster interoperability with the Open XML file format (a recently passed ECMA international standard) and also raised concerns about competitor activity to interfere with our current ISO standardization process. The letter, a mon avis, is long overdue and I’m glad to see it published today. Anyway, I’ve thought about interoperability for some time – especially from the customer and market perspective – and have tried to figure out what, if anything, we are doing wrong or half-heartedly with respect to the Open XML file formats. After all, there have been concerns raised about our motive, the size of the specification, and the ‘openness’ of the process for its development and standardization. The letter addresses these issues pretty clearly – nothing we haven’t said before – and I find it difficult to believe that even our most ardent competitors would think this is anything but goodness. Looking at this from a logical perspective our position is pretty self explanatory in fact:
1. We focus on Customer and Industry driven interoperability: The market is the community that matters
We realize that heterogeneity happens. In response, Microsoft is fostering a pragmatic approach to achieving interoperability ‘by design’ that respects diverse technologies and business models, encourages vendor autonomy to innovate and protect IP, while meeting customer needs of managing the complexity of heterogeneous infrastructure. Examples? Sure…
a. The Interoperability Executive Customer Council has driven significant work stream activity since its first meeting in October
b. The Interoperability Vendor Alliance is evolving with Red Hat being among the most recent to join
c. Novell and Microsoft recently announced their technical roadmap
d. The Open Specification Promise has been made available to release IP for industry use
2. ECMA Standardization.
We worked through ECMA for nearly a year with key industry stakeholders - keep in mind, ECMA’s process is an open one. During its time in the technical committee, the spec grew from 2000 pages to 6000 pages. All but one company voted to approve the specification during its review for standardization – IBM. Looking at Bob Sutor’s blog (he’s the VP of Open Strategy at IBM), he states the following:
IBM voted NO today in ECMA on approval for Microsoft’s Open XML spec.
I think Rob Weir and I (as well as many others) have made it clear in the last few months why we think the (1) Open Document Format ISO standard is vastly superior to the Open XML spec. (2) ODF is what the world needs today to drive competition, innovation, and lower costs for customers. It is an example of a real open standard versus a (3) vendor-dictated spec that documents proprietary products via XML.(4) ODF is about the future, Open XML is about the past. We voted for the future.
Anyway, just wanted you to know.
Couple of points to consider re: those comments…
(1) ODF is incomplete, even for its own intended goals, and is currently being revised through OASIS (accessibility was a key issue in fact).
(2) ODF may be what Open Office needs today – don’t know that the world is screaming for it. If you happen to use Open Office, you may still run into the occasional Microsoft Office Open file formats –which happen to be supported by translators.
(3) What better place to start than the source of the binary files (Not sure I get how XML is proprietary?) We offered an open spec to the industry which grew into what is today. The great thing is that…
(4) While ODF is a forward thinking spec (which is fine), Open XML is backward compatible and future proofed, linking billions (yes with a ‘b’) of legacy binary files with a new world of XML based and extensible documents.
3. The size of the specification.
The spec was not intentionally written to be overly complex or involved. Granted, its long. Very long. 6000 pages. But I think it’s fair to say that we had to document all of the features plain and simple – regardless of how significant or mundane they were perceived to be. As I mentioned before, its size evolved over time as we took input from technical committee participants. The size of the specification reflects the degree of sophistication for the document authoring technology - MS Office is very robust.
4. Access and availability to Implement – No Strings Attached!
As aforementioned, Microsoft introduced an Open Specification Promise under which the Open XML specification was released. Anyone is free to implement all or a portion of the specification to fit their needs and Novell, Corel, and others, in fact, have already announced that this is part of their roadmap. The first round of implementation, of course, may take significant work – it took significant work for Microsoft. And after all, this is a major change in our own technologies to foster interoperability. Once done, however, and as the spec evolves, future iterations will be much more streamlined to implement.
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. I encourage folks to read the letter and think about what we’re doing. This is a huge step for the industry and a huge step for Microsoft. Anyone sitting in opposition to this effort must be putting their own interests before those of the market. C’mon IBM – where’s our Attaboy???
I hate that I missed Bill's keynote at CES, but this article provides a solid recap of some interesting philosophy on the future of technology and how we use it to drive the connected experience. Coming from the wireless space, I am very comfortable with the idea of a ubiquitous computing infrastructure that we (as consumers) navigate with a flexible, sophisticated hand-held device (think 'lifestyle' remote control). Specifically, a PDA, Cell phone, MP3 player (whatever) combines all features required to communicate, self-locate, recieve - manage - create content, and tender transactions. Imagine, now, a seamless computing environment that you simply tap into from wherever you are to access whatever information you need - regardless of the access point, and regardless of the device.
Closing the loop - we're in an age where such possibilities are now being realized and, with the convergence of mobile and fixed infrastructure, the evolution of intelligent devices, and the advancement of storage and processing technologies, the onset of new gadgetry, applications, tools, and "ways to use them" will be limitless. As a colleague of mine likes to say, we talk on computers, we drive in computers, we fly in computers, and we live in computers. The age of ubiquitous computing, suggested to have started almost 16 years ago, is now advancing at a seemingly exponential rate.
And I ask myself [a la David Byrne]...how did we get here? I mean really get here. After all, companies like ours didn't have a master plan to role this stuff out. Nor did all of this innovation happen by just a handful of companies...(Now, to interject for a moment on my own point. I bring this up because there seems to be a great deal of discussion these days about how to accelerate innovation through openness, community, and a removal of IP (think patents) from software...Open source combined with a bit of copylefting, some might argue, is the panacea for society's innovation and technical complexity woes...) It seems to me, however, that innovation has taken care of itself quite well over the years - re: how we got here, and today it is accelerating and maturing just as the market requires. The market, after all, is the community that matters. And the dialogue in that community - broadly through industry associations or standards setting organizations, or more focused through customer engagements - is sufficiently open in my opinion to drive progress and to address integration woes created by rapid innovation cycles. And intellectual property protection gives incentive to everybody in the market to keep on developing...(even the open source guys patent some things)
How do we sustain an ecosystem of heterogeneity and complexity? Keep working. Keep talking and working together. And when we make new islands of technology, simply 1) standardize enough to connect, 2) build technical bridges, 3) seed new markets or 4) all of the above.
I'm going to noodle on this a bit more. Thoughts and feedback welcome!
Time to blow the dust off of the ol' blog and chime in on our latest news. I spent some time with the Novell folks last week and must say that I am very excited about the work we'll be doing together in the coming months. Here is a link to Microsoft's press pass to highlight Wal-Mart's take on the new deal:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/jan07/01-22MSWalMartPR.mspx
Today marks a very important day on interoperability for Microsoft. Following a series of events that include the Open Specification Promise, the Interoperability Executive Customer Council, the Interoperability Vendor Alliance, and of course our partnership with Novell, ECMA (European association for standardizing information and communication systems - phew!) approved Microsoft's Open XML file format specification as an international standard.
The news of standardization is a welcome milestone after many months of work to develop (and document) the new file format. Leveraging an XML core, the format is not only backward compatible with billions of existing Microsoft Office documents, but is also future-proofed by complete openness and extensibility. Companies like Corel and Novell are already adopting the specification (all 6000 pages), which suggests a strong demand for the rich features that the file format will offer.
After hearing the news, I took a scan of the blogosphere to see what folks were saying. I have to admit there were some pretty serious crits out there, and I am floored that anyone can see this as a bad thing. The fact that Microsoft finally unlocked its files is a huge milestone! The fact that the specification is being adopted by other vendors so quickly is great. The fact that Open XML and other file formats (namely ODF) can co-exist - and that a translator has already been developed to go from one to the other - demonstrates tremendous value for the market! All goodness!
For those who are curious, Open XML is a very necessary effort. One file format specification will not work for all document authoring tools as the Open Document format has readily demonstrated. While the ODF became an ISO standard nearly seven months ago, its authors chose "right now" over "right," in terms of features. The specification is largely incomplete - lacking support for such things as accessibility and formulas (currently being addressed), which are key elements needed for effective usability (More on that at McGibbon's blog).
In terms of Microsoft's decision to evolve the file format, we realized that new technologies afforded us the opportunity to make our files more flexible for customers. Years ago, when the binary formats were developed, the technical ecosystem was a much different space. Today, formats and protocols allow us to link virtually any technology to another, suggesting that the nature of documents would, could, and should evolve. Today, we see a distinct seperation of content from presentation or formatting. What sits between the two is metadata providing a description for what the document's content contains. This has become a best practice for web development, and is now happening for documents as well. In the end, documents and their content become much more fluid in terms of how they are used, accessed, and managed. The great news for Microsoft Office users is that they have much greater access to, and control over, their data through this open file format.
OpenOffice, incidentally, is free to implement the specification just as Novell and Corel have done...
As a final thought, I think its very telling that IBM was the only ECMA participant to vote against the standardization of Open XML. For a company who's Vice President of Standards pitches openness, choice, and innovation, it seems odd that they would not support the standardization of a file format that was so valuable to so many of IBM's current customers!
Self serving? Makes me wonder. More thoughts on that in a previous post...
If you have 30 minutes and are keenly interested in how Microsoft's new Open Specification Promise works, check out this video at Channel 9. Included in the clip are Jean Paoli, General Manager of Interoperability & XML Architecture; Tom Robertson, General Manager of IP and Corportate Standards Strategy; and Amy Marasco, General Manager of Standards Strategy. I worked on parts of the project for Amy and Tom, and work closely with all three on other efforts. Check it out here...
This morning Zend and Microsoft announced a technical collaboration to drive improved performance for running PHP on Windows Server. Having worked with both technologies on multiple projects, I think this is timely and a great effort toward improved interoperability for the developer community as a whole. Granted, PHP has been running on Windows for some time, but simply 'running on' is not enough. This collaboration ensure that leading technologies - while developed under different models and by different organizations - will work together optimally for the benefit of the user. Specific to the project, I thought the scope was particularly interesting:
- Identify and implement improvements for PHP on IIS6 and IIS7 (32 bit and 64 bit) with that will be submitted under the PHP license to the PHP community.
- Microsoft will develop and release an IIS add-on component (FastCGI) that will serve as the interface between PHP and the IIS webserver - made freely available for users of Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server ‘Longhorn.’
- Zend will establish a Windows testing lab and conduct regular tests to foster improved performance as technologies evolve.
- Zend and Microsoft will actively participate in community outreach.
Public releases of this effort are expected over the next couple of months. Read more over at port 25...
I owe Chris Vidotto and team down under for bringing this to my attention (they blog a day ahead of me of course). The news? Biztalk 2006 was written up in InfoWorld recieving a rating of Excellent for enterprise interoperability. Read the article or check out the videocast...
It wasn't a month ago that IBM announced a sweeping patent reform strategy that - if adopted - "could help curb the rising wave of patent disputes and patent litigation" as reported over at seekingalpha.com. For further reading, you can download a pdf (not odf) of IBM's vision for an IP market here which was published last month at about the same time of this announcement. IBM's Bob Sutor also summarizes the announcement as follows:
- Patent applicants are responsible for the quality and clarity of their patent applications.
- Patent applications should be available for public examination.
- Patent ownership should be transparent and easily discernable.
- Pure business methods without technical merit should not be patentable.
So its interesting that in the mix of all of this - some several weeks after this pitch for quality, clarity, and transparency - that IBM lowers the boom on amazon.com for patent infringement. According to techdirt.com these are broad stroke patents that should never have passed the USPTO litmus test in the first place - after all they address such common Internet processes as online advertising, hyperlink technology, and electronic catalogs. Now I'm not a patent attorney, but I did go over to the USPTO website to check out the filings. They seem broad and they do sound an awful lot like e-commerce. A bit unnerving...
To drive this forward, IBM took amazon to court in Texas's eastern district - known, apparently, for rapid handling of infringement cases. If IBM pulls this off, I wonder what it will mean to the thousands of e-commerce merchants currently online? And what about the thousands of software vendors selling e-commerce platforms? Or open source projects for that matter? Where do they draw the line? Is is just the money or do they have something to prove as the world's leading patent holder? Seems they would not be in this position in the first place had they been a bit better at Sutor's four points above.
I'll be interested to see how this evolves...
For any of you who are Yes fans, the following might be of interest, although I would guess that we are going one fathom deeper into obscurity here. Jon Anderson, Yes lead singer, has released a number of solo albums over the years most of which are still available on disk. One of the more obscure titles, Animation, is now being made available through a UK distributor for the first time in over 20 years. Not sure why there was such a long delay on this, but its well worth $20 if you happen to like his (or their) sound. There are samples on the site in case you want to test the water first...Just noting at voiceprint records, his limited edition version (500 count) sold out in under 48 hours.
My guess is that most people don't even realize how 'at risk' they are to online threats these days. And what better way to take advantage of someone than by going through a trusted channel – their inbox. In response to these threats, Microsoft released SenderID nearly two years ago to foster online safety by preventing phishing, malware, spam attacks and other e-mail fraud. Today, and furthering its commitment to interoperability, Microsoft announced that it is releasing the SenderID framework specification to the global IT community under the Open Specification Promise. According to the press release, “The application of the OSP will promote further industry interoperability by making the e-mail authentication framework more clearly available to the entire Internet ecosystem, including customers, partners, Internet service providers, registrars and the developer community, no matter what model they use — commercial, open source or academic.”
In my mind - as important as email is to all of us - SenderID is one of those 'under the hood' technologies that we just can't live without. As an industry we fight online fraud every day and it’s only going to get more difficult as phishers (et al) become more sophisticated. Making SenderID available to the community (under any license) will help synchronize the industry to combat fraud with a widely adopted (600 million + users) and highly useful technology. Under the OSP, we are ensuring that anyone who wants to implement the technology – Microsoft’s Intellectual Property - can do so at no risk and completely free of charge. For more detail about the technology and the OSP, read Matusow's blog...
Other resources:
Press pass article here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/oct06/10-23OSPSenderIDPR.mspx
Interoperability at Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/interop
My cable provider launched a new concert on demand service recently so I have cued up 1/2 hour of Sonic Youth while I knock out a powerpoint. They've been at it 20 years and counting but I lost track of them some time ago. They still sound pretty good...
The on demand concert service is a great idea but their artist listing is fairly short and most sets are in the 10-30 minute range. This one has promo breaks as well. Nevertheless, not a bad alternative to the usual Thursday night fare...
...Or how well it works together. Its really about how well we connect people, data, and diverse systems to make processes more efficient right? It should not matter what the pieces are. Leave the choice of configuration to those who best know what they need. We'll meet them where they are!
I am borrowing the title from an interesting article by Simon Moores over at silicon.com entitled "Open Source: The New Front," an opinion piece suggesting that the future of technology is all about interoperability. I could not agree more - especially as he frames it so well in the following statement - so I thought I would share and offer two additional cents.
"By interoperability, I simply mean the ability of different IT networks, applications or components to exchange and use information, i.e. to 'talk' to each other.This goal can be achieved by four means - through the development of software that is 'interoperable by design' (e.g., inclusion of XML technology in software to facilitate the easy exchange of data across different applications); through licensing and cross-licensing proprietary technologies and essential intellectual property; through collaboration with partners, competitors and customers; and through the implementation of industry standards (including open standards and broadly accessible proprietary standards) in products and services."
For my part, I also want to offer that proprietary and open development (suggesting royalty free licensing and community contribution) can, in fact, go hand in hand - or coexist to put it more accurately. Consider Microsoft's Open Specification Promise under which we have released a number of web service specifications and most recently the Virtual Hard Disk Image Specification to the community - royalty free - in order to foster interoperability in the market. Likewise, we are seeing tremendous success of open source projects for the Window's platform - consider MeiRou, Phalanger,GibberMonkey and other projects on CodePlex or the ODF Translator over at SourceForge. Also consider the great work that was done between Microsoft and JBoss or SugarCRM for various interoperability initiatives and the Open Source lab team at Port 25. This is coexistence in action and it gets stronger and more collaborative as projects evolve. Do we compete? Of course, but our collective focus is customer need.
To finish my thought, the biggest mis-statement I hear about software these days is that 'open' (standards, source, etc) is the best way to achieve interoperability. Open development models and open licensing are great things if they work for your business - say if you sell services. But don't raise 'open' as a requirement for interop because open solutions can also be incompatible (as can competing implementations of standards). When this happens, as with non-open solutions, we must remember the unique quality of software as a bridging medium. This is unique to the virtual world of course - it would not be as easy to attach a firehose to a kitchen sink (enough duct tape perhaps), but digitally we get it figured out. I offer Biztalk Server as one example - with over 300 adapters - capable of connecting into any number of non-Microsoft technologies - in essence translating between independent systems.
I don't want to over simplify interoperability by any means, but in lock-step with innovation it happens every single day.
Its how the industry evolves.
