Coté Memo #057: Is Cloud Foundry a Thing, EU Coffee, and developers
Tech & Work World
The Cloud is Developers
It's an exaggeration, but for the most part "cloud" is all about supporting developers. What I mean by this is that it's not exactly the best way to run packaged applications: there's VMware, Linux, etc. for that it seems.
When I was working on cloud strategy at Dell, I'd often joke that we should do some field material ("field" == "sales") that was a crude decision tree, like you'd see in magazines. The point of it would be, only sell cloud to them if they get to the "sell cloud" node in the tree. I doodled out that diagram, so here it is for your entertainment:
We have some recent survey data at 451 that lines up nicely with this theory:
To put it another way, if you know a way to use cloud that does not involve developers, you're probably educated enough not to need a cheesy decision tree...but if you're not sure, start with the crude tree.
Is Cloud Foundry a thing?
We had an internal thread in Cloud Foundry, the foundation announcement of course being the cause. The main question from those who don't follow PaaS, middleware, and appdev was, basically, "is this a thing?" Here's what I typed:
I think it's important, indeed. Pass has never really taken off (beyond Salesforce, Heroku, and EngineYard), esp. in private PaaS. Part of the issue is that there has been no "standard" to agree on. Historically, unless you're Microsoft, middleware needs a standard (formal or de facto) to adhere to (think of J2EE, the LAMP stack, even rails, etc.) for wide, enterprise adoption. Cloud Foundry appears to be "the OpenStack of PaaS." With IBM on board, HP, Pivotal/VMware/EMC, and others there's some good backing: even better, those companies seem to have commercial offers that they take very seriously.
Aside from "the big folks," I also think relatively tiny ActiveState/Stackato is a good proof point. They've been in GA with Cloud Foundry for a long time and seem far from dead. My hope is that Cloud Foundry (along with Docker-as-PaaS)finally ushers in a new middleware era. We'll see.
Slow Business Travel
Last week I was on a week long travel tour taking me from Santa Clara, to being stranded in DFW, to Amsterdam. It was fun, but a week is a long time. Each work-day I rush to finish things up at the end, to cram as much in as possible. Time seems to move quickly.
When you're doing business travel, time moves slowly. You realize how slow time can move if you're not distracting yourself with the check-inputs/do work/check-inputs loop constantly. My brain is wired to always check on Twitter, email, listen to music, file expenses, go get a glass of water: find anything to do but the core work.
Plane time reminds you that things can move slower. Of course, what did I do with most of my plane time? Well, after working on what work projects I could, doing some planning...I watched movies an read books.
Quick Hits
First apps from the IBM/Apple partnership - I think they look good!
DockerCon - I was at DockerCon EU last week. Check out this thenewstack.io podcast recording for my take, mostly.
2nd Watch Identifies Most Popular AWS Services, Instances - what's running in the cloud?
Part 3: Docker vs hypervisor in tech tussle SMACKDOWN - the whole series from Trevor is nice, if only to see Docker through his perspective, that of the crass sysadmin.
IDC: Chromebooks Overtook iPads in Q3 Sales to U.S. Schools - as you know, somewhat randomly, [I'm interested in how Chromebooks do](- IDC: Chromebooks Overtook iPads in Q3 Sales to U.S. Schools
A look inside Dell's compute centric strategy). It looks like they'll do well in education.
Can CoreOS Win the Container Fight it Has Picked? - lots of coverage of the Docker/Rocket deal around. We talked about it on this week's Software Defined Talk podcast a lot.
United Airlines buys iPhone 6 Plus for all its flight attendants to handle payments, manuals & more - among many others things, what's interesting is that they chose Apple. Why not Android? On paper, Android would seem to be "cheaper" and better long-term in the same way that Microsoft became the default choice for enterprise applications for many people over past decades. Also: soon we'll stop saying "mobile apps" and just say "apps."
Fun & IRL
European Black Coffee
I've been lucky to be in Europe twice for work in the past month or so - the OpenStack Summit in Paris and DockerCon in Amsterdam. I drink black coffee, a lot of coffee. Probably too much given the history of heart attacks in my family.
Having drank European black coffee a lot, I can tell you that it's not like American black coffee. It's pretty, well, "motor oil" class. Thick, bitter, and far from smooth. Perhaps this means American coffee is "watery coffee," which, having just grimaced down a cup of EU black coffee, sounds lovely.
The type of coffee you want, then, is an Americano. I'd always thought it was an odd drink, but in fact it's the best simulation of "normal" to me black coffee you can get in Europe. I just had two cups, and found myself thinking: finally, some good coffee!
Sponsors
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