Brent Phillips - Interoperability Blog : tech biz

The connected experience and a bit on how we got here...

brentphillips — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 07:46:00 GMT

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!

Wal-mart on-board for Microsoft and Novell partnership

brentphillips — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 02:44:00 GMT

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

Zend joins Microsoft to optimize PHP for Windows Server

brentphillips — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 18:22:00 GMT

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...

IBM on Open Source

brentphillips — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 23:25:00 GMT

I found this post over at ipblog.org which puts in perspective how Big Blue really thinks about open source software: So Much for IBM’s Commitment to Open Source.

In all fairness their business model doesn’t surprise me at all. With an emphasis on growth (what else right?), an IP portfolio that – for the 13^th time - won IBM more patents in 2005 than any other company, and middleware sales in excess of $15 Billion – does anyone really believe that IBM’s investment in the open source community is anything less than self-serving?

The following expands on my comments above and serves as a follow on to the ipblog post. Interesting points all taken from the IBM 2005 Annual report.

2006 Priorities? According to their own annual report is as follows:

IBM’s strategic priorities for 2006 include:

Capitalizing on technological, business and social trends and the need of enterprises to innovate in addressing those trends;
Maintaining market-share leadership in systems, middleware software and services, as a platform to drive growth;
Focusing investment and resources on emerging growth areas, including Business Performance Transformation Services an emerging countries;
Continuing the global integration of IBM, driving productivity gains and higher value in service delivery;
Furthering IBM’s leadership in innovation initiatives, including advanced semiconductor design and development, collaborative intellectual capital, business process expertise and integration, and advanced systems for supercomputing capability—including mainframes and “grid” networks;
Acquiring businesses that contribute strategically to its portfolio, and exiting businesses that no longer support its strategy for innovation and higher value.

I do not find anything wrong with these priorities, but I do want to highlight – IMHO - that the link between IBM and Open Source probably ends with what revenue and market-share it can collect.

…And Intellectual Property?
If you read Sutor (and I do because he’s a smart guy) you really get a warm fuzzy about IBM and the world of open source. Keep in mind the following however…

that “IBM’s research and development (R&D) operations differentiate IBM from its competitors. IBM annually spends approximately $5–$6 billion for R&D, including capitalized software costs, focusing its investments in high-growth opportunities. As a result of innovations in these and other areas, IBM was once again awarded more U.S. patents in 2005 than any other company. This marks the 13th year in a row that IBM achieved this distinction. “

…” The company’s investments in R&D also result in intellectual property (IP) income. Some of IBM’s technological breakthroughs are used exclusively in IBM products, while others are used by the company’s licensees for their products when that new technology is not strategic to IBM’s business goals. A third group is both used internally and licensed externally. ”

…And on Open Standards?

“IBM’s support of open standards is evidenced by the enabling of its products to support open standards such as Linux, and the development of Rational software development tools, which can be used to develop and upgrade other companies’ software products.”

(Linux, the last I checked, is an open source operating system. Not a standard…)

…And on Software Sales?

“Software revenues totaled $15.8 billion in 2005, an increase of 4 percent. “ All derived from strengthened middleware brands (according to the report).

So again, nothing new to report here. Nothing profound to bring to the world – all public info. But to echo the point made at ipblog,

…to all the activists who are continually trumpeting about how IBM has embraced open source software, well, guys, it's not quite as ideological as you would like people to think…

It seems rather risky, in fact, for IBM to walk such a superficial line with this community – after all, don’t they need open source more than open source needs them?