Oracle's Java

Normally when I refer to 'Oracle' on this blog, I refer to 'Enterprise IT Oracle'. This time I am however referring to Larry Ellison's Oracle Corporation on this blog. It is because its acquisition of one of the significant technologies of 21st century, viz. Java programming language and associated paraphernalia.

This is BIG. Large chunk of enterprise IT is done these days, using Java technology and it is assumed to be 'De facto' and 'open' standard. Now with Oracle's acquisition of Sun, the openness of Java is under question.

What should organisations with large Java investments do? Well IBM is one of those, with large Java investments. Most of IBM's Internet stack under WebSphere brand is based on Java. What would IBM do?

What would other hardware vendors like HP, Dell do? Do we see three hardware blocks emerging? Sun/Oracle, HP/Microsoft and IBM? Where would Cisco/Google servers fit in this scheme of things?

Continuing this analogy would we see three software blocks viz, Java, .Net and possibly IBM's own Java like technology (may be a rehashed EGL with its own byte code) emerging?

Will cloud providers be bound to one of these blocks? If these three blocks start erecting Chinese walls around themselves, in order to lock customers in, then how does one allow seamless movement from one 'cloud' provider to another?

What would be de-risking strategy for enterprises, to avoid a lock-in within one of these blocks, even in an on-premise scenario? Does MDA sound attractive now? Is it the time that enterprises start focusing on separating their intellectual property from execution platforms?

Interesting times. Time to activate your enterprise IT Oracle and see which parts of Enterprise Architecture needs re-looking.

Of TLAs and FLAs

In my previous organisation every employee used to have a three letter acronym (TLA) made from employee first, middle and last name, instead of an employee number. There was an anecdote about it as well. The company's then chief, who is also called "Father of the Indian Software Industry" had actually ordered a four letter acronym (FLA). But the software that was used to generate those acronyms, produced a nasty one for the chief. (If you know his name, you can imagine what that four letter word would have been). So he ordered it to be changed to a three letter one. (BTW, Many happy returns of the day Mr. Kohli).

It appears to be going in reverse within IT. In IT, there were a lot of TLAs. ERP, SCM, CRM, EAI, BPM and SOA to name a few you may have come across. Of late however the trend is moving towards FLAs, what with SaaS, PaaS and so on. However the most enduring acronym which survived the test of time is neither a three letter one nor a four letter one. It is actually a five letter one - RDBMS.

The reason it has survived for this long, is because it is more than an acronym. It is a well thought out piece of technology backed by solid science. It is not just an acronym coined by sales and marketing guys nor an industry analyst. This technology has proven to be easily standardised, exetensible and serving the vast array of requirements some of which was not even envisaged when technology was initially developed.

Sadly same cannot be said of all the technologies you see around these days. Many of them are rehash of old ideas in new packaging. They rely on finding the right audience at right time to proliferate and thrive on inherent problems they carry to generate more revenues for their owners.

Enterprise architects need to possess the vision to see thru the marketing fluff and reach the bare bones of technologies they are going to employ. Analysts can help to an extent, but the generic analysis may not be completely applicable in your situation. You need to equip your 'Oracle' function with this capability.

Cloud or SaaS?

In response to my earlier post Apoorv  has pointed that there are questions on viability of SaaS model. My take is that SaaS is a commercial model whereas Cloud computing is an architectural approach. One can deploy cloud computing in an enterprise need not be as SaaS. In the same vein one can deploy SaaS with traditional tools, over proprietary infrastructure without cloud computing.

I feel Chrome has hastened the cloud up-take in enterprise. SOA has been found useful for integration of apps and sharing of services. SOA also promotes a vision of composite apps, where ultimate control of composing apps is put in end user's hand. SOA has not realised that vision yet. In my opinion cloud computing is a required enabler for this composite apps vision propagated by SOA. Without Cloud computing combined with SOA,  realising the composite application vision is very difficult - if not impossible. 

I also believe cloud may have positive impact on SaaS as a model. SaaS as commercial model may have viability issues. Again, I dont have enough data points, but my gut feel is a pure commodity applications can be successfully deployed in SaaS model. Trick is to make many users to accept it as commodity without any customisation. Does such pieces of commodity applications exists within enterprise application space? I believe so. But carving them out and putting them in SaaS mode is a challenge more in terms of organisational  inertia than a technology challenge. Without sufficient scale SaaS model is indeed doomed. The question is who buckles first, orgnisational intertia to change or the surviving capacity of SaaS providers.

So does cloud computing has future? Definitely. Does SaaS model have a future? May be, if SaaS providers can build the required scale by somehow overcoming orgnisational inertia.