01.25.06
Posted in Technology Market Trends, Web 2.0 Apps at 10:03 am by Tony Baer
When anything is given a 2.0 version, by implication, it’s supposed to signify that a product has adopted a new architecture or sports major new features. Or it’s an admission that we’ve learned from the mistakes of version 1.
Ever since Tim O’Reilly coined the term “Web 2.0″ as a clever title for a web business conference, the name has taken a life of its own signifying the second coming of the Internet. It implies that the web generation is older and wiser, and maybe on this go round, actually has a business plan.
Is Web 2.0 a sea change for the ‘net, a correction of past mistakes, or an incremental upgrade? We think the latter.
Comparing Web 1.0 and 2.0, a common thread was democratization. Web 1.0 gave you a cheap website, 2.0 added the ability to make your site dynamic and interactive with everybody else.
During 1.0, the Internet was supposed to change everything. In 2.0, forget the sea change, just be content to add pebbles to the beach. That appeared the conclusion of a recent panel convened by a New York software industry group comprising a couple 2006 era dot coms, a VC, and a software gray hair.
They predicted Web 2.0 would create a vast universe of cottage industries, with the typical venture being a blog site that draws just enough traffic and affinity ads to make your monthly mortgage payments. Otherwise, leave it to Apple to repackage Desperate Housewives for $1.99 onto your handy iPod.
The problem with this conclusion is that it ignored the impact of Web 2.0 on the enterprise. In so doing, they shortchanged the vision.
To us, the legacy of Web 2.0 is added value through dynamic connections. The secret is the glue provided by commodity technologies like web services, RSS feeds, Ajax clients, and open source tooling. The product will be mashups that help organizations discover new ways of adding value for their clients, or making themselves easier to conduct business with.
Imagine a supply chain application that aggregates route planning from Google Maps, local traffic reports, and Accuweather forecasts to optimize deliveries. An HR system that helps employees tailor 401(k) investments based on personal profiles and Morningstar ratings. Or a location-based mobile application that combines Zagat restaurant ratings, GPS, and a portal for reserving the best table available in the neighborhood or town you are currently in.
Like Web 1.0, Web 2.0 won’t change everything. It probably won’t spawn new industries either. But used properly, it will augment business in the same way that Web 1.0 augmented retail with an online channel that complemented but didn’t replace brick and mortar. The connective tissue of Web 2.0 will make aggregated services more valuable than the sum of their parts. Web 2.0 challenges our imaginations to repurpose the data and services that in large part already exist.
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01.09.06
Posted in Application Development, Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) at 10:01 am by Tony Baer
A decade ago, Rational shook up the software development world with a vision for unifying the lifecycle. Back then, the software profession was reeling from the debacle of CASE (Computer-Aided Software Engineering), a rigid top-down approach to driving software development.
Having brought together key thought leaders, Rational helped coalesce the community on UML, a new language for modeling software. It cultivated a new methodology for iterative development and acquired the field’s broadest set of tooling, extending from requirements gathering to modeling and design, version control, issue tracking, and testing.
Having pieced together the industry’s first application lifecycle management (ALM) portfolio, Rational neglected its core offerings in favor of wild goose chases whose consequences ranged from near comical to near death. By the time the company sold out to IBM in 2002, many viewed Rational as over the hill.
We’ve been waiting for Rational to reawaken under IBM’s watch. Until recently it’s been IBM’s weakest software brand. But late last year, we began seeing new signs of life. A changing of the guard, new cross-fertilization with Tivoli, the first meaningful refresh of Rational process methodology, and finally, growth numbers that climbed off the basement. Was this a fluke or turning point?
Danny Sabbah, the new GM of Rational, wants to expand ALM outside the software engineering ghetto, something that’s critical in an age of Sarbanes-Oxley. But Rational isn’t alone – Mercury, Compuware, Serena, and even Microsoft are, or already have hopped the same bandwagon.
So we still don’t know yet if Rational’s turned the corner.
Rational faces three key challenges. First and foremost, it must renew the team tools that are the core of its franchise. It must demonstrate value in an era where open source is commoditizing tooling and processes. And it must respond to Microsoft, the player that first put Rational on the map, which has become a competitor post-IBM.
Rational says it will start addressing team tools later this year. Admittedly, you can’t blame Rational totally for procrastinating. If integrating the lifecycle were easy, Borland, Compuware, Serena, and Microsoft would have solved it long ago. The challenge? Programmers need different data and artifacts than architects, testers, and business analysts. The highway is littered with carcasses – including Microsoft’s – from past attempts at building the world’s ultimate software repository.
But we can get some hints of Rational’s next-generation strategy from the way they’ve renewed their methodology, the Rational Unified Process (RUP). First, they admitted that the world doesn’t revolve around RUP. They are kicking off Beacon, an Eclipse open source project, to build the vocabulary representing software processes (not just RUP) in an initiative reminiscent of UML. Significantly, they’ve even gotten rivals, such as Scott Ambler (known for agile development), to sign on. And Rational decoupled their new process tooling from RUP, enabling it to handle any Beacon-compliant process.
In the long run, a many-paths-to-the-same-summit goal is the only strategy that will work for Rational, or anybody else in the ALM market. A decade ago, iterative development introduced the notion that software development is a moving target. Today, development challenges are so diverse that no single set of tools or processes can provide all the answers for every business problem. The value will come in the knowledge of identifying and fitting the right pieces into place.
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