Google’s Meaning of Open

Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, Product Management at Google sent a long essay to the Google Product Managers and Engineers in an effort to put some clarity around the meaning of “Open” at Google.  The well written essay called “The Meaning of Open” ended up on the Google blog and is well worth reading.

Jonathan outlines Open at Google as …..

There are two components to our definition of open: open technology and open information. Open technology includes open source, meaning we release and actively support code that helps grow the Internet, and open standards, meaning we adhere to accepted standards and, if none exist, work to create standards that improve the entire Internet (and not just benefit Google). Open information means that when we have information about users we use it to provide something that is valuable to them, we are transparent about what information we have about them, and we give them ultimate control over their information. These are the things we should be doing. In many cases we aren't there, but I hope that with this note we can start working to close the gap between reality and aspiration.

and he goes on to make points like these ….

If we can embody a consistent commitment to open — which I believe we can — then we have a big opportunity to lead by example and encourage other companies and industries to adopt the same commitment ….

whenever possible, use existing open standards. If you are venturing into an area where open standards don't exist, create them. If existing standards aren't as good as they should be, work to improve them and make those improvements as simple and well documented as you can …..

We believe in the power of technology to deliver information. We believe in the power of information to do good. We believe that open is the only way for this to have the broadest impact for the most people. We are technology optimists who trust that the chaos of open benefits everyone. We will fight to promote it every chance we get ….

The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom. The future of science and medicine is collaboration. The future of entertainment is participation. Each of these futures depends on an open Internet ….

I give Jonathan credit for jumping in and offering an opinion and a direction for the Googler’s while at the same time welcoming comments and differences of opinion. I applaud the effort and feel that Google should lead by example. I also like the fact that Jonathan identified Open Information as well as Open Technologies because I feel that Open Information/Data is often missed in discussions about the Open Web.

CloudCamp Boston - Security and Private Clouds

I spent the second half of my day at Cloud Camp Boston which is a great unconference for those folks looking to learn more about cloud computing. I really like the unconference format which has grown in popularity from many podcamps and barcamps. This conference was moderated by David Nielsen @davenielsen who did a great job keeping the conversations flowing and everything else moving forward.

There were three main sections to this cloudcamp

• 5 Minute Lightening Rounds – Mostly by Vendors
• 10 Questions identified from the attendees and answered by attendees with experience in the cloud
• 2 45 minute breakout sessions informally voted on by the attendees

The Lightening Rounds were good, the 10 questions were better however the best part of the evening was the two breakout sessions that I attended.

I attended Chris Hoff’s @beaker Cloudanatomy talk on Cloud security and was very impressed with Chris’s talk. Chris stated that he does not want to scare people away from the cloud, but instead he wants us all to be able to ask better questions of the Cloud vendors and make sure that we really understand what we are responsible and liable for and know what the cloud vendors are responsible and liable for.  However, Chris really lays out cloud as a house of cards built on older legacy protocols like DNS, BGP and SSL that can come thumbing down at any time. Chris’s point is that you should understand where your possible points of failure are and know your terms of service and plan accordingly.

I also attended John M Willis’s @botchagalupe Private Cloud discussion and identified the private side of this equation as “You own the hardware” and “You have control over the customers”. We compared the Amazon Public cloud to Eucalyptus which can be built as either a public or a private cloud. There was a lot of discussion about when and why should we use each model (Public & Private) which was reminiscent of the discussions we had 4 years ago when we started looking at virtualization. Questions like is this a solution for dev and test, and when do we go to production were common. John’s point was that every organization and data center should have 3 types of platforms for their applications to consider:

Bare Metal Servers  -  Virtualized Resources  -  Cloud Resources

With three platforms you can determine the best environment for you applications and if you are unfamiliar with building and maintaining applications in the cloud then a private cloud is a great starting point to cut your teeth on before moving to the Public cloud, and when you have both virtual and cloud resources internally, you can identify the best fit for you applications.

Overall I really enjoyed myself and see a lot of value in the CloudCamp model, and would encourage anyone investigating cloud technologies to attend a cloud camp.

Technorati Tags: Cloudcampbos,Cloud

Content Management Systems

I am attending my first Gilbane Content Management Conference in Boston and find it very interesting. It is obvious to me that the content management space is a niche market with many vendors and many organizations using some form of Content Management or Document Management. My initial interest is around the Web Content Systems (WCM) space and I am hoping to identify some strategies and solutions to help us better manage our disparate web resources. We currently manage many different web resources from applications delivered via portals and websites to a crude mix of document management solutions that all need to be managed and integrated with multiple different systems. I have heard a lot of talk about Document Management Systems (DMS), Enterprise Content Management Systems (ECM), Content Management Systems (CMS), and Web Content Systems (WCM). I am not sure of the differences between a CMS and a WCM and I have seen them used interchangeably so for now I will refer to both as WCM.

I am looking for a WCM that is part CMS, part Wiki, part Document Management System, and part Portal. I do not have a budget or an authorized project however we have a need to upgrade our older html and cgi web environments and the thought of a WCM framework behind our complex site would be a real benefit. With no budget I am looking at Open Source Vendors, and I sat in on a discussion about the “Rise of Open Source Content Management” with Kathleen Reidy from the 451 Group and Seth Gottleib for Content Here. Kathleen did a nice job of grouping the Large, Medium and Small Open Source Content Management players along with the proprietary and non-proprietary products, and I found a similar slide deck from Kathleen on Slideshare. Seth outlined the Open Source players into three different open source groups:

Community Open Source - Commercial Open Source  - Institutional Open Source

Seth’s advice was to understand the support and ecosystems of each vendors and that will help to make a good decision surrounding the Open Source vendors. This goes hand in hand with your needs and requirements however often folks looking for Open Source solutions are often looking for an inexpensive solution and you also need to consider support and the viability of the solution you choose.

Another consideration for Web Content Management which I have that I have not worked out is how well will WCM integrate with Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise Social Computing. Integration with blogs and wiki’s look like a good starting point however another point to consider would be improvements to search within your organization. Content Management systems deployed correctly can provide structured data to your organization which in turn will provide the meta tags to enhance search in your organization.

Technorati Tags: Gilbane,Content Management,WCM

Enterprise Social Computing

I struggle with the term Enterprise 2.0 but not the concepts. Recently I have heard multiple vendors throw out the term Enterprise 2.0 and I cringe every time that I hear that. I question if they know what they are talking about or are they just trying to sell me something.

I have been in favor of terms like “improved collaboration” for a while now but really see collaboration as a result of Enterprise 2.0 but not the label for it. The next question the business folks usually have for improved collaboration is “how are you going to do that?” and by the time that we get to integration of blogs, wikis, and portals they are completely lost. The term that I am most comfortable with lately is  “Enterprise Social Computing”.  The business folk are starting to see and understand the value of social networking but still need to better understand how it can integrate with their applications and business process to be effective.

I have seen this term a lot lately and first saw it on Dion Hinchcliffe’s Enterprise Web 2.0 blog. Here is Dion’s explanation of Social Computing:

What is social computing? It’s the use of social software within and between organizations and any interested parties such as employees, customers, and partners. Social computing, as explained here, can usher in significant large-scale shifts in where productive forces and innovation come from. Organizations will all adopt enterprise social computing tools in slightly different ways and will generally proceed from ad hoc usage, often by applying widely available consumer tools at first, to more evolved open business models.

Social tools on the Internet have different requirements than Social tools behind the firewall, however a lot of organizations are starting to open up tools and functions that allow folks outside to organization to access data and resources inside the organization. This shift from a totally insulated Intranet to a somewhat open type of Intranet is starting to emerge. MIT is a great example of this with the our OpenCourseWare Project, sharing data and resources with non-MIT students, faculty and staff.

To enable this shift, the tools used by the Enterprise need to change as organizations allow partners and customers access to real time data within the Intranet. Architecture, Authentication strategies and Identity Management will play a big role in security and deployment strategies. Organizations need to balance the security requirements of their most confidential data with the transparent needs of their employees, partners and customers. The “lock everything down model” is no longer acceptable in our 2.0 world and organizational culture will play a big role in adoption and in the transparency of these tools.

So for me, the concepts are the same, but my terminology is different.

Three Books in Three Weeks

In the last three weeks I have read three books with the help of audible.com. My weekly TWIT, BUZZ OUT LOUD and FLOSS WEEKLY podcasts are piling up because I have just pushed thru “Trust Agents”, “Weaving the Web”, and “The Accidental Billionaires” and really enjoyed them all.

Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith is a great book about motivation, social media and how to put them both together with some hard work and determination to improve you online presence. I was left with this thought …

Take what you have and what you are good at and share it with others. Do not wait on the sidelines. Get in the Game.

 

Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee is a great story about how the World Wide Web and HTML was started. After reading this book I which was published in 1999 I was struck by how much work we still need to continue the evolution of the web. Has a real local flavor to it with Cambridge and MIT and I am waiting for the follow-up book on the Semantic Web.

I enjoyed The Accidental Billionaires especially the local (Cambridge MA) setting and listening to how they worked 24 x 7 to get this up and running, but was left with a distain for Marc Zuckerberg who according to the allegations in the book, screwed multiple folks on his rise to the top.