Notes on offline availability measures...

Considering the wider-spreading of cloud solutions nowadays and the sometimes still limited possibility of full scale online availability, it is important to define if a certain solution or software is available offline as well or not. Therefore we define the followings terminology and definitions.

Let s be a certain cloud solutions or software. Let Fall(s) be the number of all functionalities or services provided by the s cloud solution. Let Foffline(s) be the number of functionalities or services that are still available even if the cloud solution is offline. So we can define the offline capability of a cloud service as:

Coffline(s) = Foffline(s) / Fall(s) 

The number of services that are available offline per the total number of services. 

Similarly we can define the amount of time until the cloud service can remain offline but working further, as cloud service availability.

Aoffline = the amount of time until a the cloud service can operate offline as well...

The cloud computing and the battery...

Cloud technology generally supposes that you have valid and practically always live internet connections, similarly that all of the electronic devices suppose that you have some kind of an electricity somehow. Electricity itself is actually produced pretty well with the help of the highly effective infrastructure, however it is important to note that it was taking about a hundred years until the electrical infrastructure got so stable. Well with internet it is still not the fact, even sitting in the middle of one of the most developed country in the world, Zürich, does not automatically mean that you gave stable mobile intranet. Certainly there are some software that support offline availability, for a certain amount of time, with certain functionalities and somehow providing the possibility to synchronize, some when, somehow...

Well the original idea of cloud computing is a little bit ideal, you will be online always, I guess it will be taking a couple of years to be realized. Until that point it would be important to build some kind of a standardized ways for offline availability. Similarly as batteries for electricity : if your electricity system is down, you can use batteries or accumulators having certain characteristics, like kwh indicating how much can you operate something without the electrical network. So is it possible to define something similar to the inernet? How long and how far is an internet gadget or service operational without net? Is there perhaps a way to really define a "battery" in an Internet way ? Like simulating and storing a certain level of Transactions until the network is really back? 

8 months MatchPoint / Snow experience summarized...

8 months MatchPoint / Snow experience summarized...

Is it time to "sell short" on the on-premise SharePoint market ?

Well current trends show that on-premise SharePoint market is going down. Microsoft has been being communicating for years that there is only Office 365 planned on the long run. As still there is a version for SharePoint 2016 on premise, but a lot of integrated functionalities like MySite, OneDrive or search are provided rather (or only) in different hybrid cloud scenarios. Hence developer certifications are cancelled as well; there is only Office 365 in the future. It basically means that the SharePoint on-premise market will go down, not because there is no demand for the technology, just because Microsoft communicates so strongly and consequent: Firstly the experts and the partner companies will change expertise, concentrating rather on other technologies than SharePoint. Secondly, the end customers will recognise as well, even if there is a demand for the technology, there is not enough expertise on the market, there is not enough support from Microsoft and last but not least, most of the cool new features are only available in the cloud. So the market is falling...

So, what is gonna happen ? Certainly it is possible that everyone changes to the cloud, although I think there are gonna be companies that still want to make sure to have the data privacy. Perhaps there is gonna be sometimes a so called "black" or highly secured cloud, where really nobody is capable to get the data apart from the owner, but until only the standard scenarios exist, the only option will be for companies who want to store high privacy data is to build and host a private cloud, that is gonna be pretty much expensive.    

So is it possible not just quitting from the market, but really "sell short" in a stock exchange sense, meaning betting on the falling of the market and trying to make capital gain from the fall ? Well it is not typical to interpret "sell short" for a technology cycle, but I think it is not impossible. I can imagine two scenarios, focusing on the customers who still want to use internal collaboration and intranet solution with high data privacy and they are having SharePoint: 

a. Creating regional private hosting solutions, to host Office 365 private: well as it is certainly a solution, it is actually not sure how much and which scenarios will be from Microsoft supported. As it is surely possible to host in a private cloud Office 365, I am not sure if all functionalities or integration possibilities are supported. As an example, what about Azure Data Mining services or Cortana analytics ? It is pretty much questionable if something similar will be supported in a private cloud scenario. 

b. Start to rechange SharePoint with another technology, that surely will develop on-premise scenarios in the future as well. The process and the idea can be actually the same that Microsoft uses to attract SharePoint companies in the cloud. 

Let we find such a T technology that:

   - T can be good integrated with SharePoint

   - T provided on-premise solutions on a long run.

   - T provides collaboration, corporate intranet functionalities and possibly rapid application development capabilities a well.

   - T provides useful extensions to SharePoint. 

   - you can scale up and out T.

   - on a small scale T has got a moderated entry price.

   - T should not be from a no-name provider, otherwise nobody buys it.  

   - start sell to T with SharePoint integration in a way that new SharePoint functionalities are fully or partly realized on T.

   - As the SharePoint on-premise market falling start to re change or re implement existing functionalities  on T with or rather without SharePoint integration. That is the reason why rapid application development is important, you will never have the chance to get alive your SharePoint 2010 source code on another platform, you have to re implement the business applications. 

   - At the end, migrate everything to T, forgetting SharePoint.

Does anybody know T ?  

The four horsemen of the IT (R)evolution

"Forget offshoring or near-shoring, machines and algorithms'r gonna be always cheaper...."

1.  TAXING Systems: The taxing systems actually punish pretty much the live work comparing to the capital gain. On the other hand there is no such "taxing" punishment for the industrial achievements. It Implies that software, machines, computers and algorithms will be always much cheaper than having live labor force and due to the taxing system and capitalistic competition, these solutions will be preferred.  

2. AUTOMATION and Robotisation: Every physical work that can be done by machines will be done by machines. Considering the current trends, automation, robotisation and internet of things, it can be pretty much.

3.  ARTIFICIAL Intelligence: Artificial intelligence has been evolving from decade and actually till this point we did not reach the level that can be seen in the science fiction movies. Despite there is a huge development, the go world champion has been beaten from algorithms, a digital assistant called Cortana is installed on each mobile device and AI support getting to be part of our daily life. It is of course questionable what can be exactly automatized, but it is sure everything that can be covered by AI algorithms will be covered by  AI algorithms.

4. THE Blockchain: The previous trends will be summarized by difference manifestations of the blockchain that enables automatic cache-flow systems, practically automatic companies or corporations, running hundred percent without humans.

Notes on Agile software development

The role of Agile development is sometimes pretty much overestimated. Actually, the problem is that in most of the agile development methods it is supposed that the specification and the deliveries can be changed sprint by sprint or delivery by delivery. However most of the software projects have got a fix budget and a fix delivery time that is pretty much a contradiction....

Notes on infrastructure reversal

I heard today a great and genial presentation from Andreas M. Antonopoulos about Bitcoin and he used an analogy that is pretty much existing: that is infrastructure reversal at appearance of a new emerging technology. He used three examples for demonstration: 

Automobile industry: well nowadays it seems to be trivial that driving by car is much better than riding a horse, however at the appearance or invention of the car the situation was much less trivial. Most of the roads were "optimised" for horses and the lack of petrol stations actually implied that driving a car was less effective, slower, more complicated, more expensive than riding a horse. From pure economical point of view the automobile industry did not have the chance: there were no need for better asphalt streets and more petrol stations because there were not enough demand : people who drove care. There were no demand for more cars, because due to the lack of infrastructure the it was actually worse than riding a horse. Despite slowly the infrastructure has been changed, giving place for asphalt roads and petrol stations provided a better infrastructure to the cars, but allowing riding the horse as well....

Electricity: a similar process can be recognized by making light and heating with electricity. As actually infrastructure for gas provided both the infrastructure and technology for heating and lighting houses, actually there were no need for electricity. As there were no infrastructure for electricity, it was not very much logical to use electricity, on the contrary as there were not too many customers for electricity there were not very much logical to invest in the infrastructure itself. Despite a couple of 10 years later there only electricity used for lights and sometimes for heating as well...

Internet: imagine the heroic age for internet, you use the classical telephony network that is highly optimized only for voice transfer with modems to transfer data. It is actually a big fight, the network is optimized for voice transfer, having to filter only a couple of Kbytes, so transferring data is not easy. From a supply - demand perspective it is not very much logical that the situation changes: there is not really a good transfer for data, so it makes not really sense to invest into the technology. On the other hand there is not enough people who uses the internet, so there is no sense to invest into the infrastructure. Despite only a couple of years later, there are practically only digital transfer possibilities optimized for data and even voice transfer is released on the top of digital transfer....  

After that I would have just three questions...

Microeconomics:  Why did supply and demand model not work in these examples ? Or did I learned only bullshit from this subject ?

Cloud ?: Do we have the same effect with cloud ? Will we have in 5 years something like on-premise infrastructure or just special parts of the cloud ?

Blockchain ?: Do we have the same effect with Blockchain or Bitcoin ? Do we have in 10 years something like national central banks, or just special implementations of the Blockchain ?

Notes on Blockchain Apps

Bitcoin and Blockchain technologies seem to live theirs second hype cycle. The focus however seem to be chaining. Previously the major focus seem to be to create new digital currencies, like Bitcoin, Litecoin or for instance Dogcoin. However the focus is getting to go to technologies that are build on the Blockchain technology but not necessarily focusing on a digital currency, rather general applications as well, like private decentralized web sites (Zeronet), or blockchain based contracts (Smart Contracts) or Smart Property. It is however more interesting that not only out of the box products (or perhaps I should say networks) are possible, but general development framework as well. As an example Ethereum provides not only a general Blockchain product but rather a framework that allows to build further applications on the top, the so called decentralized Apps or simply Dapps. As of course it is still questionable if ethereum will succeed on the market, despite such platforms provide the opportunity for individual developers or developer companies to create small scale projects and application without the challenges of a whole product development.

Notes on User Interfaces based on Artificial Intelligence

The grid provides or at least at the moment promises a desing and user interface web technology that changes based on the average user pattern of a site. The usage is measured analysed by different artificial and data-mining algorithm and a new design a new, a new site structure is proposed automatically. 

As the idea seems pretty much science fictional for the first run but actually the idea itself is not so wild. Basically every search based user interface and application follows the same pattern. Certainly not only whole user interface is restructured, only a part and it is basically regarded to content as opposed to structure. As an example consider an news portal that automatically shows some information based on different sources and selection criteria. Despite the field is rather regarded as search than like data mining, the pattern is pretty much the same: 

 1. collect data

 2. analyse data

 3. show something different on the user interface.   

The two differences are : 

 a. The field is regarded as search and not data mining or artificial intelligence: well it does not seem to a be a huge difference. Basically most of the search and indexing algorithm show some similarity with data-mining. Actually the two fields were pretty much common a couple of years ago. 

 b. In search based applications, only small area of the user interface can be dynamically changed, like a search result or a filter result. However it is not necessarily a big different either, technically the whole user interface could be reconstructed. If it makes sense from an endure point of view is certainly a more difficult question.   

Notes on OOTB Software Products

It is pretty much interesting how different the meaning of the world Out Of the Box in IT. If we say "think out of the box" the meaning rather think extraordinary thinks special, think in a non-standard way. On the other had if one says out of the box software product, the meaning is not exactly the same, one might say it is a little bit contrary, it practical means a ready product that can be used without modification: "An out of the box feature or functionality (also called OOTB or off the shelf), particularly in software, is a feature or functionality of a product that works immediately after installation without any configuration or modification." - Source - Wikipedia

As the two meanings are different, it is always a question what exactly means if we use the world "out of the box" in different context for something else, like for a company for an idea for non-software product ... Does it mean something innovative or extraordinary, or does it mean something ready or ready to go ?

Even if we concentrate on the out of the box software products it is pretty much a question if it is possible to have a product really ready to go. Unfortunately most of our software products are pretty much complicated, in this sense apart from the most simplest software the others usually require an amount of customization, configuration and training activity. In this sense it is better to define the OOTB that you can get a ready product for a certain prize with let we say 10 - 20 - 30 percent customization, parametrisiation, installation, and training on top. It is certainly a question where is exactly the limit between an OOTB and a non-OOTB product ?