Thinking of an MBA?

Seems like perceptions of the worth of an MBA are highly cyclical, but there's no doubt that a good business school has a lot to offer for professional development. I chose to go back for an MBA after a specific experience: I realized that I really didn't understand VC term sheets or the underlying financial models when I really needed to know what I was dealing with.

Once you decide you want an MBA, you have to decide where you want to go. I looked in the US and ultimately only applied to one school. It's been understood for a while that European business schools are very good. As BusinessWeek notes, they are getting progressively better: they also offer an attractive alternative to American schools for professionals that plan to invest their professional life outside the US.

The other thing that is striking: business schools are becoming a sign of economic sophistication in economies that not too long ago were devoid of private business altogether. I am happy to see new schools developing in Eastern Europe. BusinessWeek also provides an interesting peek at Skolkovo Moscow School of Management, a new B-school being built in Russia and a key development in the maturation of the Russian economy. I've been spending a lot of time on a study of the Russian business environment, and I can tell you that many managers are very excited about this.

It may be that my age has something to do with it, but I find that many of my friends are asking me if they should consider an MBA. At some point, I'll give my thoughts on the chief benefits of an MBA, at least based on my first-hand experiences. Whether the investment (the time investment is likely to be the most dear) is worth it is a deeply personal decision, but maybe I can add some insight. Though I believe that Wharton remains the best business school in the world, I think that prospective B-school students should look at a number of options and I would put international schools on the top of the list.

A Small World After All

I was doing some browsing and stumbled on this video that shows my great-uncle's house collapsing into an abandoned coal mine in the northeastern Pennsylvania town of Coaldale. A great metaphor for the decline of the region, with a personal twist.

Coal mining was hard work and often lead to a very short life. If you happen to be in the vicinity of the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania at some point, I recommend visiting the Eckley Miner's village for an historical perspective on the mining life. My great grandfather was fortunate, as he was able to run his own contract mining crew (not bad for someone that arrived in the US without any adults around the age of 10, speaking only Russian), though he ultimately died of mining related lung disease. My grandfather was doubly fortunate, as he was able to leave the region without working in the mines and before the economic base collapsed.

I don't know who posted the YouTube videos on Coaldale, but they are quite interesting on a personal level. In the business and church video, you can see a quick snapshot of St. Mary's Russian Orthodox church, which my great grandfather helped to build. The last time I was there was for a funeral when I was a child, but I believe it is still there and still functioning. This video is also a neat reminder of what small town America used to be like.

Social Not-working?

Some former colleagues, both old and more recent, have started a company called Ringside Networks, building a platform to integrate and host social networking technologies within corporate web sites. The company is releasing part of the source code on an open source model to drive adoption, so check them out: there's no cost and lots of transparency. I like the fact that new business models are emerging for startups, though the exit options are limited to acquisition, valuations have been high for companies with open source products that have gained scale.

In this case, the business model is doubly interesting, as it aims at a hybrid of SaaS and in-house technologies: part of the pitch is that social applications are too important to be captive to third-parties. If large companies (especially retailers) find that they want more ownership of their customers, this may be a very interesting play.

Cetaceans among us

I had a chance to take my family on a three hour whale watch chartered out of Half Moon Bay on Sunday. After about an hour we wound up spotting several gray whales; baleen whales that I am told can grow to as large as 14 feet. For the most part, we were seeing the smoke-like "poof" of the whale expelling through its blow hole. My daughter was able to spot the fluke at one point. Then, suddenly, the larger gray jumped out of the water, exposing the majority of the whale's body to view. Amazing.

We did not get a picture of the whale, as each spotting was quite sudden. However, the overall effect was considerably more dramatic than the spotting photo I have linked to from Wikipedia.

On a slightly related topic, the migration of the blow hole to its present position on the whale's head is one of the more interesting parts of aquatic evolution.

Israeli Startup Panel (This Week!)

There's a panel in the Palo Alto area this week looking at Israeli startups with ties to silicon valley, organized by a local group CoolTech, this week. Israel (Tel Aviv in particular) is one of the few places that has been successful in transplanting the "American" venture capital model. Clearly, enlightened government policies had a formative influence on venture capital development in Israel, as did a business culture tolerant of risk and failure; it is also an incredibly exuberant business environment. In fact, when talking with Israeli VCs, I'm struck by how similar their outlook is to American VCs. And yet, there is undoubtedly more to the story. Israel's domestic market is small and the target for intellectual property is invariably external markets. The differences may in fact be more important than the similarities, since they open up new channels for discovering innovative business models. For that reason, Israel is an essential case study for economies around the globe that aspire to a dynamic technology marketplace.

Creative Thinking in Private Equity

I recently had a chance to attend a meeting with a partner from Aventura Investment Partners as a part of a Wharton program looking at private equity in emerging markets, an area that I find extremely exciting. Aventura is doing several investments in Senegal, targeted at the value chain around agricultural production and also in health care. I can't go into the business models they are using right now, but there is some very innovative thinking required to bring development to areas like rural Senegal. As one of my Nigerian friends recently commented to me, traditional "aid" just hasn't worked. This is the kind of private initiative that has the chance to make dramatic and sustainable changes in a society. I imagine we will see a lot more funds take on challenges around development, especially if projects like these have success.

Civic Pride

Shamong was rated the 6th best town in New Jersey Magazine this year, owing no doubt partially to the fact that it is an attractive, quiet place, with a lot of nice people. Philadelphia magazine also showed that Shamong was one of the best residential towns in South Jersey for homeowners.

Gulag Archipelago

I try to read at least one novel a month to keep myself sane. Last month, I stumbled on an old hardback copy of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, which I picked up for 2 dollars in a used book store in New York City some 15 years ago and lost along the way. A riveting book that should serve as a reminder that humans are not inherently good. The book is a bit like reading Kafka's The Trial, until you realize it is not literature but a documentary.

New Pan-African Venture Fund

Hasso Plattner just launched a new pan-African venture fund. Most of the venture investment I am aware of in Africa has been heavily concentrated in South Africa, though I have been hearing a lot about private equity in Nigeria from some of my African friends. Kenya was also looking like a beacon in east Africa until the recent lamentable political destabilization.

Lunar Eclipse Picture

I was sitting at my computer in Redwood City worrying about the proper model for migrating composites from test to production systems when my colleagues from the integration team, Bo and Albert, called me over to Bo's office to see the lunar eclipse last evening. Pretty cool, though the eclipse was partially obscured by the cloudy weather in the Bay Area. Another friend, Deika, however, had a great view from Jamaica that she caught in a photo featured in the Telegraph. Wow!

An OSGI update

Dave and Khanderao wrote up a nice summary-overview on OSGI.

Business Process Management fallacies

I missed this when it first came out a couple of months ago, in case you did as well: Dubray wrote an interesting analysis of problems in BPM from conceptualization to implementation that is worth reading.

I don't agree 100% with the model for linking BPMN models to BPEL, at least not as the only normative approach to consider, but the runtime model is spot on. The only meaningful model for executable business processes is going to require composite models that incorporate more than just rote BPEL mappings: business rules, human task management, and some form of message mediation. If that sounds familiar, you've probably started to look at the Oracle AS 11 SOA suite preview....

And JJ gets why SCA is so central to getting BPM right. We had a brief conversation about this recently, which I think may make it to Infoq over the next couple of weeks.

The Next 4 Billion

I recently got a copy of the joint IFC and World Resources Institute report The Next 4 Billion. I am asking my friends in the technology sector to look carefully at the issues raised by this report: specifically, how to accelerate living standards, productivity and quality of life for the world's poorest using private sector resources and market-based mechanisms. Thinking in the developed world has changed radically in only a few decades: there is a genuine consensus that developing markets aren't there to be exploited, but to be developed into first-class market economies. Many (most?) of my friends are from emerging market countries, so I am confident this will be of interest to many of you.

I am convinced that business models are not yet there, but that that they are waiting to be unlocked by creative and innovative individuals. Since the problems with business oriented models aimed at developing markets is often one of scale, a big part of the solution is likely to be technology based. This is about developing a better future for humankind. Please give it some thought.

Turning back time

A really interesting paper appeared in this weeks Nature. (Unfortunately, requires a subscription to access the full paper, but you can get a copy at a local bookstore.) The authors used phylogeny based statistical techniques to reconstruct ancestral proteins for several bacteria. The results independently show (and collaborate other evidence) for paleotemperature trends from as far back as 3.5 billion years.

Phylogeny based ancestral protein sequencing is not fool-proof, but the evidence seems convergent: the seas were considerably warmer billions of years ago (30 degrees Celsius seems likely) during the early development of life.

Systems Integration 08

Tracks and a call for paper have been announced for the Systems Integration 08 conference in Prague this year. This conference is extremely practical and in my experience has excellent content for IT practitioners. It is also a great opportunity to get some insight into what is happening in IT and software in central Europe, especially the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

RVC, round 2

As a followup to my post on venture capital in Russia, the RVC maintains a new site, which indicates that they will soon be running a second competitive round of management company selection.

Conveniently enough, there is an RSS feed you can grab to track developments. Stay tuned.

A World of Change

Jeff Mischkinsky drew my attention to this interesting article by Parag Khanna that appeared in the New York Times recently. Parag deals with the geopolitical and economic developments that are unfolding before our eyes: specifically how the world is transitioning from US-based unilateral order toward a multi-lateral world dominated not only by the US but also by China and Europe. There is much to disagree with in the details, but the central point is an important one. There is a changing reality that Americans in particular need to come to terms with quickly.

Parag talks a lot about the "second world": countries that aren't really emerging in the sense in which the term used to be used. They have in many ways arrived and they are building important alliances with the major global powers. Of continuing interest to me is the innovative thinking that is happening in these countries; thinking to which we in the US should be paying close attention.

A few examples: the recent announcement that Israel is jointly working with Shai Agassi's new organization and Renault-Nissan to move the entire country to oil-independence. And we have seen similar bold thinking before: Brazil has been steadily moving toward energy independence for some time. This is incredibly exciting stuff. Here we have small and so-called "developing" countries leading the way to the future. Brazil, by the way, is trying to tackle issues around development and income inequality by pushing very significant investments in education.

It's very hard to say what the world will be like a decade or more from now. One thing is almost certain: the world will be a smaller place; hopefully, a better one as well.

Venture Capital in Russia

I spent a few hours last evening attending a panel discussion in Palo Alto on venture capital investing in Russia. The meeting was organized by the American Business Association of Russian Professionals. I was there because Russian economic development is becoming a serious area of interest and a topic on which I am doing some research work at Wharton. It took me about an hour and a half to get from Redwood Shores to Palo Alto, as 101 was shutdown the entire way at rush hour due to a major accident. The ride home was better, but 101 north was still closed most of the way.

When I finally arrived, things were just getting started. Most of the audience of about 100 spoke Russian (I do not): there was not a representative subset of the tech or finance community in the valley as a whole. I mention this because I find it odd: Russia strikes me as one of the few genuine and relatively untapped opportunities available to investors. Three factors to consider in this:

1) Russia has a very well educated population of top-notch scientists and engineers.

2) The government is dedicated to bringing private equity money and expertise into the country, developing technology businesses, and opening up investment opportunities to foreign sources (more on this later).

3)The Russian economy is growing at around 8% a year, as compared to 2-3% and slowing in the US economy. With world demand for energy continuing to grow, the economy and living standards are only going to go up.

From what I can tell from the panel, the deficits in Russia are: experienced managers, investor experience with early stage companies, and the web of specialized resources that characterize a culture of entrepreneurship. I find it hard to believe that this won’t change very rapidly.

Among the panelists were Ilya Shirokov, a young Russian Entrepreneur who shared his experiences founding the professional social networking business Moi Krug, which was acquired by the search company Yandex in 2007, and Yan Ryazantsev, Investment Director for the Russian Venture Company. The Russian Venture Company is a government fund with about 1.3 USD to invest as a limited partner in funds focused on Russian companies. My understanding of the RVC is that it will match investments in large funds with a very low required return on investment (5%). Currently, there are only two RVC backed funds. The third panelist was San Francisco VC Marc Friend, who shared his experience investing internationally, including in France, Israel, China and India.

These turn out to be useful experiences, as Russians are looking at three countries in order to learn from their successes in creating successful venture funds: China, India and Israel. There are notable differences from each of those countries: Russia’s population is an order of magnitude less than India or China and currently shrinking; Israel, though much smaller, has established a collaborative business model that is deeply linked to the US and also European markets. Russia will undoubtedly have to find its own model, but its clear they are looking at what has worked for others as a first step.

You can see the signs of change already. As of this month, the Russian laws have been updated to allow funds to use conventional capital commitments as opposed to pooling funds up front prior to investing; this was a major barrier to outside investors. Tax laws are being examined to attract investors. And there are plenty of other innovative models (the point was raised in the panel discussion that Israel and Canada match corporate R&D to stimulate investment) that could surely raise interest in Russian investment as well.

It strikes me that the biggest problem with Russia from an outside investor perspective is information asymmetry. Forget about individual deal prospecting: it’s very hard to understand what is happening in the markets as a whole. US press coverage of Russia tends to focus on either politics or Gazprom. I certainly feel I have a better handle on Israeli, Chinese and Indian markets, partially based on personal relationships, but primarily because the US business and financial press is flooded with coverage. I subscribe to feeds for several US language Russian newspapers, but I am hard pressed to understand whether I am getting accurate or biased information. It’s also unclear how to get deeply embedded in Russian business from the outside. Indeed, if you google Russia Venture Corporation, you have to go through several pages before you get a lot of solid information.

My own opinion is that all of this looks like it adds up to something special: the opportunity to participate in the start of the development of a new economic model.

Why live in the Northeast?

Most of my friends find it astounding that anyone would live in the Northeastern United States: cold winters, humid summers and far from the center of technology in the US. I often find it difficult to convince them that it can be a special place. I think Cameron did a better job with a picture that speaks a thousand words.

Too bad there's been no snow in NJ...

Venture Capital and China

When I was in China last year, we had a chance to talk with several private equity funds. A recent post by David Hornik gives his thoughts on PE in China.

This may be of interest to you WEMBA 33 Westers... good choice, by the way.

Oracle 11g SOA Platform Preview

We recently published a preview download of the next release of our SOA platform: I'm very proud of all the hard and innovative work that our team has done on this project. The project was a real team effort from its inception. It brought together some of the brightest folks in our middleware organization. I am convinced that nothing else in the industry comes close to combining the key elements of technology required for a SOA deployment into a single, integrated platform.

We use the Service Component Architecture as the overarching model for application development: it ties together process orchestration, declarative XML transformation and routing, human workflow, business rules, and sophisticated policy management. I like to think of it as an "application server for integration": a service platform that supports domain specific languages and technologies required for integration and SOA scenarios.

Download it and try it. I think you'll be impressed.

DOA 08 Call For Papers

Here is the CFP for this year's conference on Distributed Objects, Middleware, and Applications. I'd really like to see some solid papers on changing paradigms in application development and new directions for middleware systems. If you have some good ideas or interesting projects, you have until June to gel things up. The conference itself is in Monterrey Mexico, so it should also be a pleasant setting....

The 10th International Symposium on

Distributed Objects, Middleware, and Applications (DOA'08)

Monterrey, Mexico, Nov 10 - 12, 2008

http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/fedconf

Many of the world's most important and critical software systems are based on distributed object and middleware technologies. Middleware is software that resides between the applications and the underlying operating systems on every node of a distributed computing system. It provides the "glue" that connects distributed objects and applications and is at the heart of component-based systems, service-oriented architectures, agent-based systems, or peer-to-peer infrastructures.

Distribution technologies have reached a high level of maturity. Classical distributed object middleware (e.g., CORBA, .NET and Java-based technologies) and message-oriented middleware (e.g., publish/subscribe systems) have been widely successful. We are now witnessing a shift to coarser-grained component-based and service-oriented architectures (e.g., Web services). Middleware for mobile applications and peer-to-peer systems (e.g., JXTA) is also gaining increasing popularity, as it allows bridging users without reliance on centralized resources.

Common to all these approaches are goals such as openness, reliability, scalability, awareness, distribution transparency, security, ease of development, or support for heterogeneity between applications and platforms. Also, of utmost importance today is the ability to integrate distributed services and applications with other technologies such as the Web, multimedia systems, databases, peer-to-peer systems, or Grids. Along with the rapid evolution of these fields, continuous research and development is required in distributed technologies to advance the state of the art and broaden the scope of their applicability

Two Dimensions: Research & Practice

Research in distributed objects, components, services, and middleware establishes new principles that open the way to solutions that can meet the requirements of tomorrow's applications. Conversely, practical experience in real-world projects drives this same research by exposing new ideas and unveiling new types of problems to be solved. DOA explicitly intends to provide a forum to help trigger and foster this mutual interaction. Submissions are therefore welcomed along both these dimensions: research (fundamentals, concepts, principles, evaluations, patterns, and algorithms) and practice (applications, experience, case studies, and lessons). Contributions attempting to bridge the gap between these two dimensions are particularly encouraged. As we are fully aware of the differences between academic and industrial research and development, submissions will be treated accordingly and judged by a peer review not only for scientific rigor (in the case of "academic research" papers), but also for originality and relevance (in the case of "case study" papers).

About DOA

DOA 2008 is part of a joint event on the theme "meaningful Internet systems and ubiquitous computing". This federated event co-locates five related and complementary conferences in the areas of networked information systems, covering key issues in distributed infrastructures and enabling technologies (DOA), data and Web semantics (ODBASE), cooperative information systems (CoopIS), Grid computing (GADA) and Information Security (ISS). More details about this federated event can be found at http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/fedconf .

TOPICS OF INTEREST

The topics of this symposium include, but are not limited to:

* Application case studies of distribution technologies
* Aspect-oriented approaches for distributed middleware
* Component-based distributed systems
* Content distribution and multimedia streaming
* Dependency injection
* Development methodologies for distributed applications
* Distributed algorithms and communication protocols
* Distributed business objects and components
* Distributed databases and transactional systems
* Distributed infrastructures for cluster and Grid computing
* Distributed middleware for embedded systems and sensor networks
* Formal methods and tools for designing, verifying, and evaluating distributed middleware
* Interoperability with other technologies
* Microcontainers
* Middleware for mobile and ad-hoc networks
* Migration of legacy applications to distributed architectures
* Novel paradigms to support distribution
* Object-based, component-based, and service-oriented middleware
* Peer-to-peer and decentralized infrastructures
* Performance analysis of distributed computing systems
* Publish/subscribe, event-based, and message-oriented middleware
* Reliability, fault tolerance, quality-of-service, and real time support
* Scalability and adaptivity of distributed architectures
* Self-* properties in distributed middleware
* Service-oriented architectures
* Software engineering for distributed middleware systems
* Testing and validation of distributed infrastructures
* Ubiquitous and pervasive computing
* Web services


IMPORTANT DATES

Abstract Submission Deadline June 8, 2008
Paper Submission Deadline June 15, 2008
Acceptance Notification August 10, 2008
Camera Ready Due August 25, 2008
Registration Due August 25, 2008
OTM Conferences November 9 - 14, 2008

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Papers submitted to DOA'08 must not have been accepted for publication elsewhere or be under review for another workshop or conference.

All submitted papers will be carefully evaluated based on originality, significance, technical soundness, and clarity of expression. All papers will be refereed by at least three members of the program committee, and at least two will be experts from industry in the case of practice reports. All submissions must be in English.

Submissions must not exceed 18 pages in the final camera-ready paper style.

The paper submission site will be announced later
Failure to comply with the formatting instructions for submitted papers will lead to the outright rejection of the paper without review.

Failure to commit to presentation at the conference automatically excludes a paper from the proceedings.

ORGANISATION COMMITTEE

OTM'08 General Co-Chairs

* Robert Meersman, VU Brussels, Belgium
* Zahir Tari, RMIT University, Australia

DOA'08 Program Committee Co-Chairs

* Mark Little, Red Hat, UK
* Alberto Montressor, University of Trento, Italy
* Greg Pavlik, Oracle, USA

Program Committee Members

* Santosh Shrivastava, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
* Nick Kavantzas, Oracle, USA
* Stuart Wheater, Arjuna Technologies
* Aniruddha S. Gokhale, Vanderbilt University
* Michel Riveill, Université de Nice, Sophia Antipolis – France
* Gero Mühl, Berlin University of Technology, Germany
* Fernando Pedone, University of Lugano, Switzerland
* Graham Morgan, Newcastle University, UK
* Barret Bryant, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA
* Michael Stal, Siemens, Germany
* Jose Orlando Pereira, University of Minho
* Luis Rodrigues, INESC-ID/IST
* Francois Pacull, Xerox Research Centre Europe
* Aad van Moorsel, University of Newcastle, UK
* Gordon Blair, Lancaster University, UK
* Pascal Felber, Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland
* Joe Loyall, BBN Technologies, USA
* Mark Baker, Coactus Consulting, Canada
* Rui Oliveira, University of Minho, Portugal
* Harold Carr, Sun, USA
* Fabio Kon, University of São Paulo, Brazil
* Judith Bishop, University of Pretoria, SOUTH AFRICA
* Arno Puder, San Francisco State University, USA
* Shalini Yajnik, Avaya Labs, USA
* Benoit Garbinato, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
* Calton Pu, Georgia Tech, USA
* Geoff Coulson, Lancaster University, UK
* Hong Va Leong, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
* Nikola Milanovic, Technical University Berlin
* Jean-Bernard Stefani, INRIA, France
* Andrew Watson, OMG, USA
* Gregory Chockler, IBM Haifa Labs, Israel
* Gian Pietro Picco, University of Trento, Italy
* Patrick Eugster, Purdue University, USA
* Eric Jul, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
* Jeff Gray, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA
* Medhi Jazayeri, University of Lugano, Switzerland
* Richard Solely, OMG, USA

Spring Framework continues to accelerate

Something very interesting has happened, as noted by Rod Johnson: Spring framework skills are now in higher demand for Java developers than EJB skills. One implication is that the model for Java development has shifted to Java developers and away from standards bodies. For a long time now, we've seen standards bodies serve as collaboration or even research facilities for new programming models: while this has created new markets (J(2)EE, for example), it has also meant that many standards are being built by standards folks cooking up elaborate models, rather than building common standards based on proven models.

I wonder if this will serve as a wake up call and help change how the software industry develops standards? Or will we ignore this signal at our own risk?

DOA 08

I'll be working as a co-chair for the Distributed Objects, Middleware and Applications conference, which is part of the federated On The Move technical conferences that are held every year. Look for the Call for Papers in the coming days.

The conference itself will be held in November in Monterrey, Mexico, which may be an added incentive to submit a paper this year.

More details to follow...

Infoq picked up transaction discussion

JJ Dubray picked up the discussion Mark and I had bouncing back and forth between blogs.

And, yes, I owe a comment update to Mark.

Predictions 2008

Here are a few random predictions for 2008, most of which seem obvious. I won't be offended if you tell me I'm crazy.

1) Amazon music downloads will explode, causing Apple to re-evaluate both DRM and pricing on iTunes.

2) E-books will not take off this year.

3) Social networking spam will become unbearable, as tons of venture backed sites and technologies appear. Most will fail by the end of 2009.

4) The Wall Street Journal will becoming increasingly and inexplicably biased toward China and against Russia.

5) SOA hype will die down and real case studies dealing with large scale, enterprise deployments will show how this is an evolutionary technology that has passed the hype curve and is seeing real (and early) adoption.

6) There will be no widespread use of extended transaction models in large scale systems. (That one is for Mark!).

Transaction Models, Again

Unfortunately, blogs can sometimes lose the nice nested associations of discussions that characterized Usenet, but they remain an interesting and more accessible way to debate ideas. Mark replied back with a reply to my previous comment on transaction futures with a clarification. What I meant to say was that I more or less explicitly disagree with the position as he's clarified it: after looking at attempts to reconcile multi-party choreographies and efforts around BTP, I have come to believe that large scale systems that require a global coordinator are destined to fail. The future belongs to a different paradigm, where bilateral negotiation and local enforcement of "system" invariants are likely to be building blocks for successful applications. I am confident that infrastructure and frameworks will play an in important role, but in this case, I am inclined to paraphrase Nietzsche: "The Coordinator is dead!"

New York state of mind

New York has always been one of my favorite states: between the upstate wilderness and open space and New York City, it's difficult to find anywhere else in the US that has so much to offer in such close proximity. I had the chance after Christmas to spend a few days in New York, which reinforces my opinion that it remains one of the greatest cities in the world.

Regardless of your religious affiliation, Christmas in New York is something to experience. Here's the lit tree at Rockefeller Center:



And a tree entirely decorated with origami in the American Museum of Natural History:



And here's Radio City Music Hall celebrating its 75th anniversary:



It's hard to spend time there and not get swept away by the energy, commerce and diversity in Manhattan. I'd move there, but it strikes me as too expensive for the average person.

I wanted to recommend two things to fill a day if you are visiting Manhattan anytime soon. The first is a place to spend the day and the second, a place to have dinner. Plan at least one full day, preferably two, to spend in the American Museum of Natural History on West Central Park. I have never been to a better science museum, period. The exhibits are large enough to require a good deal of time to explore. The layouts are fantastic and the explanatory notes in each exhibit are accessible, yet not dumbed down. They do an excellent job of showing the interrelationships between animal taxonomies.

We spent most of the day and were only able to explore parts of two floors (of four) and never got to see any of the planetarium. Incidentally, they are running an Imax film called Dinosaurs Alive, narrated by Michael Douglas, that is worth seeing, especially with kids.

Here's a fossilized mammoth skeleton from the exhibit featuring mammalian fossils:



And here is a (crowded) photo of Lucy, the famous example of our ancestor australopithecus:



Here's a quick photo of a cast of archaeopteryx that I took (I've always been fascinated by this early link that shows the origin of bird species from their dinosaur ancestors):



All the other photos are by my wife. The guy with the good looking head that reappears in a couple of the pictures is me.

Lastly, I wanted to recommend the restaurant Russian Samovar in midtown, which was recommended to me by a friend that moved to New York from Russia. Most of the customers were Russian and we were greeted with the assumption we were as well (my wife is not). We enjoyed a great meal: the food is not extraordinarily fancy, just authentic.

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the Coming Year

Belatedly, I wanted to wish all my friends a happy holiday season. I hope you find peace and prosperity in the year ahead.

Alternate transaction models

My friend and sometimes co-author/editor Mark Little has a new post talking about recent work in extended transactions, by which he means transactions that relax the strict ACID requirements of traditional transaction management (of course, these are never really ACID to begin with, but it's a useful fiction that we can live with). In fact, our transaction book reviews different transaction models that helped inform the work on more general frameworks including the work in the OMG Activity Service and WS-CAF, as Mark notes.

For a long time, I thought that extended transactions would be very important. Actually, I thought they would be in wide use by now. In 2001, I was very interested to see what would become of BTP; the answer, at this point, is some very interesting additions to the literature and a few failed attempts at commercialization. The devil was in the details: with BTP, the application may subsume the role of the coordinator at which point it becomes less and less clear why the protocol is needed at all above and beyond the business logic itself. This led us to focus more on choreographies, with the notion of defining the business protocols through some formal structure that may or may not be automated by "transactional" infrastructure. The experience in recent years has led me to believe that transactions may be the wrong paradigm altogether for broadly distributed systems. The trouble is, we don't know what the right paradigm is yet.

Mark notes a recent paper by Pat Helland as an important read. I agree, but my conclusion is also increasingly heterodox with respect to the transactions community: that is, Pat's paper should be taken at face value to be about writing application logic. There are patterns here that need to be understood by application developers. Perhaps supported by frameworks. But it may simply be that transaction management won't play a broad role in that context.

iTunes as Content Repository

iTunes is one of these e-commerce systems, that, rather like Amazon.com, stands to become something more than an online retailer. A first glance suggests an aging and less-than-graceful application. The iTunes Store pop music motif looks like a kind of marketing-driven testament to bad taste. But under the covers, there is something else happening that suggests a permanent future for the service and its likelihood of growing importance. A few things to note:

1) The music library is growing extremely broad to include a full range of music that is hard if not impossible to find on CD. These include important Jazz musicians, especially classic works from the 20s, 30s and 40s, a very broad range of classical compositions, and international music that has a lower appeal in the US. I was surprised to find several versions of Charles Mingus's Tijuana Moods, including a recent re-release. If only the application got more attention in design to better automatically customize to a users profile and some help on navigation....

2) iTunes user comments continue to grow: it looks like Amazon may lose out in importance for album reviews. This is important, as it means that iTunes may be the first stop to find out about newer music.

3) The free content is growing, with podcasts available from many sources on almost any subject under the sun. This could be a daily draw for users from all over the world if the content was more openly accessible.

4) As a channel for Audible.com, it is now the premiere source of what spoken-word digital books.

5) Lastly, I highly recommend checking out iTunes U. There are a (still small) number of lectures from top tier universities, including UC Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania, and others. Seriously, there is not anywhere else I can find that offers relatively in depth lectures on topics from Heidegger's Being and Time to Greek classical literature.

Let's see where things wind up in the next three years. Seems that iTunes may be stumbling into a transition from the trivial to the important.

Some uncertainty resolved

I've been following event in two areas with interest: the credit melt-down in the financial services space and the uncertainty around Putin's succession plans in Russia. Looks like the latter is resolved with the selection of Dmitri Medvedev, a respected figure in Russia to be sure. Now let's see if the credit market mess will get some resolution soon!

Social Networking Data

I've been looking at the various social networking technologies, and I've been intrigued by the degree to which they focus on sharing information that seems like there is no conceivable reason to share. Example: I'm listening to "X" or I just bought "Y". In other cases, I can see real privacy concerns being an issue. Then I realized how much of this stuff I was actually making notes about and even googled around a bit for information on music artists that I hadn't heard of.

I've been listening to music most of the work day in the background and fortunately the iPod is able to tell me exactly what I've been listening to. In the spirit of the times, I'll share. So the three most listened to albums are:

1) Anna Netrebko's Russian Album.

Netrebko's voice has been described as dark, but it seems perfect to me in this album. I also have her doing Aria's from La Traviata with Rolando Villazon, but I much prefer this album, in general and day to day.

2) Wynton Marsalis's Black Codes (From Underground)

Marsalis remains one of my favorite musicians and an indispensable part of my daily life, despite my overall lack of enthusiasm for the latest and somewhat dreary From the Plantation to the Penitentiary album. Black Codes is a classic from an amazing and creative talent.

3) Helene Grimaud's Beethoven: Piano Concertos

Stunning. This album will take you to another place.

Not sure what is to be done with this information, but it's a minor contribution to the personalization of the web.

Good Reads

A few books I've snuck in over the last month, all of which I'd recommend:

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee: there is a reason that Coetzee received the Nobel Prize in literature, epitomized by this book, which is both extraordinarily difficult to read and almost impossible to put down. The book deals with complicated topics in such sparse text, that it seems like the literary equivalent of a spring trap: an ugly thing designed as a masterful piece of craftsmanship that traps the reader in a painful grasp. Far and away the best book I've read this year.

The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins: ever since the Selfish Gene, a really great book, Dawkins has been an indispensable popularizer of evolutionary theory. The Blind Watchmaker is quite good, piggybacking off the deist conception of life as the bi-product of a designer (where have we heard this recently?), to illustrate how evolutionary processes actually work. The most striking point by reference to the popular imagination is this: there is no point, or more properly, no fixed design. Infinitely better than the cringe-worthy God Delusion, this is a book that really ought to be required reading for high school students taking biology courses.

Corporate Finance: A Valuation Approach by Simon Benninga and Oded Sarig: ok, I confess, I had to read this book for a class, and the class was given by the authors. I probably would not have read this otherwise. (An interesting aside: both professors commute from Israel to Philadelphia to teach. I thought I had a bad commute!) However, I have done a series of courses on corporate finance touching on the topic of valuation and have read several books on valuation. This book continually gave me new insights into how to approach valuation problems, which, as I've noted, are a persistent challenge for entrepreneurs and software startups. The book is worth reading on its own, or at least worth knowing someone who has read it.

Moorestown Running Company

In the software business many people know Bob Bickel, who helped build up Bluestone Software through an IPO and sale to HP. After that, he ran HP's middleware business and then went on to build out JBoss (the company), which he in turn helped sell off to Red Hat. Pretty amazing guy.

I've had several people ask what Bob's up to these days. I had a chance to stop by his latest venture, the Moorestown Running Company. The store specializes in running gear and does a full fitting program to get runners paired up with the right shoes. Turns out that I am suffering from some moderate to serious pronation, and the folks at MRC were able to get me fitted with shoes with extra support. They feel great and I feel like I've lost another excuse not to exercise.

Moorestown is the tech center of the east coast (we like to think so anyway), stop by for a pair of sneakers on your next visit to the area.

Selling your IT Business

Like many people in software, I have cycled between large, established companies and startup opportunities. In recent years, I've focused more on large scale projects in bigger companies, but I've always tried to stay in tune with what's happening in the startup world. My interest in managing young software businesses was sharpened when I co-founded a company, which as ultimately unsuccessful, at the bottom of the dot.com crash. The thing I realized then was that I really did not understand much about valuations and financial measures. Over time, I've found that many other entrepreneurs struggle with these issues, so my first piece of advice to early stage companies that are looking to sell or raise capital is always: make sure you get a good finance person to help you. It can be hard to get a CFO involved at a very early stage, so this may have to be a board member with some knowledge of finance. Any capital of quality will have a huge advantage over the entrepreneur in this area, so this is one of the most important areas to manage, since it impacts the value entrepreneurs will realize from their venture. (Ironically, finance has changed for me from something of a weakness to an area in which I am much more comfortable, but this took a lot of time and pain.)

Anyway, there's a book I want to recommend for entrepreneurs that I just finished reading: Bob Chalfin's Selling Your IT Business. This is a very readable, easy to understand guide to the many of the legal issues involved with doing a business, including valuations. I don't think it can be a replacement for assistance, but it's a great overview for anyone thinking about selling a smaller business and wants to understand many of the core issues involved in the process. I know Bob from an investment project I've been involved with, so I can also say that he lives this stuff.

The Master and Margarita

As many of my friends know, I am a huge fan of Russian literature. Though I do not speak Russian (aside from a few holiday greetings I picked up as a kid), there's something intangible about Russian novels that I cannot find in any other national literary tradition that persists through translation. Perhaps it is the modernity of Russia's literary golden age or perhaps it is purely a personal bias brought on by my youthful recollections of exported Russian culture. Whatever the case, I still respond strongly to the works of Gogol and Dostoevsky, even on multiple readings.

I have not had a lot of time to read books for pleasure recently, but I did have a chance to revisit Bulgakov. The Burgin/O'Connor translation of The Master and Margarita is entrancing. Within the first few chapters, I found myself unable to put the book down: the first description of Pilate's trial of Yeshua is irresistible. I read one complaint on-line on the translation, but it reads wonderfully and is supposed to be quite true to the original. Definitely recommended.

Check out new links

I've started to add some more links of interest: specifically, to friends who have been doing innovative things in the field of applied distributed computing or internet services. This is not meant to be exhaustive nor to point out all the blogs I look at: you should use feeddo to keep up on that kind of thing (if you aren't using feeddo, you really should be). I've added Cameron, Hal, Rod, Mark and Edwin K. recently. If you don't recognize the first names, they are all worth getting to know.

New England Fall

Cameron got it (almost) 100% right: New England in the fall is for a time the most glorious place on the planet. What he missed: the great traditions of chasing pa'tridge and timberdoodle starting in October, which are the only appropriate source of loud noise generation I can think of for this time and place...

Some of my happiest memories are of hidden coverts surrounded by stone walls near abandoned homesteads and the crisp fall air in the northeast. It just doesn't get any better than that.

iPhone opens up

This is a great move, turning the iTouch from a closed marketing platform into a portable, internet-centric computing system.

Personal Inspirations

If you haven't already seen it, take a few minutes to look at Carnegie Mellon computer science professor's now famous "last lecture." Here's a man that is leaving life with elegance, courage and a sense of purpose. It's in the lives of "ordinary", extraordinary people that I'm finding the biggest sources of inspiration these days.

Another example: a friend of mine left a Wall Street position for military service after 9/11 because he thought it was the right thing to do. He completed his service and at the same time set up a charity called "Give to the World", which uses US troops to get basic supplies in to war torn areas where humanitarian organizations are unable to reach. This is worth checking out as well. My favorite quote from one of the founders is this: "Someone once said to me, 'you can’t save the world.' Hopefully one day, no one will ever believe a word of it."

Hong Kong

A semi-sovereign state now administered by the Chinese government, Hong Kong gives the appearance of an entirely different country from China itself: Chinese by ethnicity and culture, to be sure, but very different from the mainland. The city will be more familiar to westerners, though I would not describe it as western per se. This is a truely international city. While I was there, I saw plenty of British, Japanese, some Americans, French, Indians, and of course the majority Chinese population. The city is lit by neon and dominated by tall buildings, both offices and apartments with awesome views.





This is a mature economy. Sometimes Hong Kong is more reminiscent of parts of Tokyo, than Shanghai. Hong Kong continues to seek immigrants "of quality", which I take to mean professionals. The residents are clearly wealthy by world standards or in fact by American or European standards. The main economic driver is in finance, though retail and shipping are visible as well. A night time cab ride wound up behind two different Ferraris in 20 minutes. Hong Kong is certainly suggestive of the level of economic development that major Chinese cities will reach in time.

Hong Kong, of course, maintains it's own financial system (though currency is issued by private banks: my Hong Kong dollars were issued by HSBC). The Hong Kong stock market is highly successful. In fact, Hong Kong seems to be almost a pure capitalist system. Like the Chinese cities I visited, Hong Kong felt utterly safe. It also seems like a very attractive place to live and work. I can't think of a better location for sampling authentic foods from around the world, night after night.

Beijing

A note from the seat of the central government. Beijing is more interesting from a tourist perspective than Shanghai, though I have only been able to see things from a taxi en route to meetings. The buildings in Beijing are different: the layout is typically large and low, with buildings occupying a whole city block. The city has a feel of strong growth as well, but more planned and orderly. The feeling is less international and more distinctly Chinese. The air in Beijing was decidedly cleaner than Shanghai.

Private business is everywhere, but so are government offices. The government employees I met were extraordinarily smart, serious, but also very friendly. I saw little difference in form or function from what you might expect in the US. The more I travel, the more I learn that despite our differences, people everywhere are people: same basic concerns, same basic desires, not always the same perspectives on everything.

The food in China is amazing. Two evenings ago, I had traditional peking duck from a hickory wood fired oven. Most of the food I've had has been delicious, but the duck was just awesome.

As you drive by Tiananmen Square, you can see the new opera house, which is set to open shortly. Opposite the square is the smiling portrait of a benevolent looking Chairman Mao. The city is also a city of contrasts: as you drive past Mao, you also drive past a mini-Rodeo drive, replete with shops for Swiss watch brands that routinely sell for over 20,000 USD. Another striking statement on how much things have changed here.

The red government buildings are another study in how things have changed: does the red represent communism or prosperity and good fortune? Both or neither?

I write from Hong Kong, now administered by the Chinese government, yet under a completely different system. I have talked with Hong Kong natives who describe the arrangement as a family reunion, where earlier concerns have largely been put to rest. Again, not what I might have expected as an outsider and the different systems are another interesting contrast in China.

The excitement over the olympics is infectious. I picked up some souvenirs for the 2008 games at the airport. I have never traveled to the olympics before, but being in Beijing during the games may be worth the effort.

Shanghai

I just wrapped up a week long business tour in Shanghai, where I had the opportunity to meet with executives at MNCs doing business in China. Fantastic experience and I'll try to share some thoughts on this in a follow-up note. Just a few quick observations now.

It's difficult to describe the explosive growth and the level of investment that is happening here: I have not personally experienced anything comparable.

I did not know what to expect when I came here and my number one takeaway from the trip is this: you have to come to China to begin to understand what it is like here and to have any clue about what is happening here. I can say frankly that reading the western press does not prepare you for the experience at all.

The Chinese people are open and frank, as are westerners living here. The presence of European shops and the ubiquity of American and European brands was surprising. Retail business is huge here, and families appear to be always out and always shopping. Prices vary dramatically, depending on where you shop. A full dinner (and a couple of beers) at a popular Shanghainese restaurant topped out at 6 USD. On the other hand, a tall cup of Starbucks coffee was nearly 4 USD! There is clearly wealth asymmetry. Workers live in small and old apartments. On the other hand, nice Western style apartments appear to cost on par with Manhattan.

When you talk to the Chinese about how the country is governed, they talk about understanding the Chinese government in terms of Confucius, not communism. The people are fiercely proud of the success here and the middle class and business class seems very supportive of the government. I got no sense that this was anything but honest: in fact, Chinese were also quite willing to make critical comments on specific issues and openly acknowledge problems they face.

The best and brightest are said to go into government here. One executive compared the party education as on par with top MBA programs worldwide and emphasized that the leaders are thoroughly schooled in liberal economics.

There is a very strong entrepreneurial spirit here. I have talked with small business owners as well, some of whom fled China, then Hong Kong, only to return to live in Shanghai.

An amazing place. And I think it's fair to say that this is only the start of China's resurgence.

Marketing for Dummies

Having a platform for multiple consumer products is a marketers dream, especially if it can give effective differentiation with economies of scale in production. The danger of course is that the differentiation is not strong enough to prevent the lower margin product lines from cannibalizing higher margin products. Of course, the challenge is to make sure that all products are attractive to at least some segment of buyers. Wharton runs all MBA students through a great multi-period market simulation that really drives this home.

The ability to exploit a platform is why the iPod Touch was inevitable. On its face, it looks like one of the best moves Apple has ever made. But when you look at what they didn't include, the picture changes: no email client, no microphone, no bluetooth. Think about that for a moment: an Internet device without email. Wow. I'd say that it's not really an Internet device after all, just an incremental feature on the iPod.

Folks, people buy the iPhone because it is a phone. People won't buy this in lieu of a phone. People will buy the iPod Touch because it looks like the Internet device it isn't and because the last generation of iPods break too easily. Hopefully, the next iteration will get it right, because I know a lot of people that want the device that they are marketing but not selling, myself included.

Eternal Life

I was saddened to see the news that Luciano Pavarotti passed. There is nothing like the human voice as a musical instrument, though only a handful of singers have the capability of moving a crowd to tears by virtue of their natural gifts.

I have little hope for a life after death. But some people will live forever, or at least as long as civilization lasts. Pavarotti is one of them.

Becoming human

BecomingHuman.org is a web-based presentation on paleoanthropology. It is a great example of how interactive multimedia can be a much better learning tool than television. Of course, this also requires active engagement on the part of the user, which makes the target audience necessarily smaller. If every university department produced one introductory resource like this, the world would be a much richer place.

Edwin Khodabakchian's new blog

I wanted to point people to Edwin Khodabakchian's new blog. Edwin was the CEO of Collaxa when it was sold to Oracle back a few years: he and his team built out the first commercial BPEL implementation, which is widely recognized as being the best of breed product for service orchestration and process management. He's up to some cool, new stuff (more on that soon): this will be one of the "must subscribe" feeds in the tech field. Edwin has a unique way of looking at product development: he's one of the few people that are able to consistently blend simplicity and beauty in a software product.

Service Platforms and SOA Enablement

Demed L'Her and I wrote an article for SOA World that discusses how service platforms are emerging as key enablers for SOA. This is one of the more important trends in application integration. Demed is a Product Manager at Oracle responsible for a range of integration technologies; he's been doing a ton of work in Oracle Fusion Middleware. He's also a nice guy.

William Vambenepe joins Oracle

I'm pleased to report (or rather point to a reportrx) that William Vambenepe has joined Oracle to work in the enterprise management and SOA spaces. I worked with William a bit back at HP middleware and followed his work in the management standards space for some time; I think everyone that's worked with him is impressed by both his professionalism and smarts. It's great to see the talent inflow at Oracle continues.

Money for Nothing and Checks for Free

If you want to understand a bit more about what is happening in the markets, I highly recommend the IMF working paper "Money for Nothing and Checks for Free". If you are pressed for time, take a look at the graphic summaries throughout the paper.

Two things strike me in all of this:

1) The leveraged positions on some of these investments (in particular in hedge funds) on securities is almost an inversion of the historical norm of banks with required asset reserves for loans. The fact that these securities were not only over-valued but in some cases are unable to be valued is alarming

2) The subprime loan segment just blossomed a few years back as the economy was coming out of a recession via a major injection of money for the central bank (of course depressing interest rates); after today's rate cut, it's unclear that what Fed policy is going to look like. Could this mean things are really that bad? Obviously the equity markets didn't think so.

PS: Mauro Guillen of the Wharton School pointed me to this paper.

Oracle Coherence 3.3 released

In short order, the Oracle folks in Boston have gotten a new release of Coherence data grid software out the door. I expect that we'll see a very broad footprint for the Coherence software, both in Oracle software and with customer deployments across industries. There's a good computerworld article that discusses this in more depth.

What's the deal with Hedge Funds?

I got some recent questions from friends on how hedge funds work. There is no real answer to this question, so I thought I'd take a stab at explaining why that is. Over the weekend, I was looking around for good articles on hedge funds: somewhat to my surprise, I found that the finance information on wikipedia is not bad (to the extent it is up to date). The article on hedge funds is here.

Many people are surprised to find that many hedge funds don't actually hedge at all. Hedging is a strategy used to buffer against losses; in some sense, a diversified portfolio "hedges" against risk that can be diversified. Hedge funds often do something a bit different: they are looking to hedge against broad market risk, particularly in equity positions. But this too is somewhat misleading: some hedge funds take no equity positions at all. What really characterizes a hedge fund is that the fund is structured to avoid regulation, not its investment strategy.

Typically (as in the referenced article) you'll see that funds are targeted toward accredited investors. This is an allusion to securities regulations. Terms like "seasoned" and "accredited" basically signal that the investor has either savvy or money or both. Securities regulations allow private funds to escape many of the regulatory requirements by selling securities to accredited investors. These investors use their own judgment to determine if the risk in the fund is acceptable. Of course, they expect high returns and are willing to pay out high management fees for those returns. How the fund invests is specific to the fund and fund managers, not to "hedge funds" as a category. Hedge funds are never exempt from anti-fraud provisions of security regulations.

As you might imagine, this has all the hot button issues for controversy: "unregulated", "rich investors", "rich management", "opaque strategies". Hedge funds have been around for a long time. But let's be honest. These funds are putting a lot of pressure for efficiencies on a large scale and that has both good and bad results. As a category, it makes little sense to me to insist on special regulations or caps on management fees. Personally, I wouldn't lose sleep over hedge funds: they aren't new and they aren't sinister. Mostly they are risky bets that have the potential for big payoffs. In some cases, there are really well run funds that deserve a lot of credit. In other cases, they are disasters waiting to happen.

Bernanke versus Cramer

BusinessWeek has a good overview on how Bernanke is managing the money supply: tightening (but not tight) monetary policy to carefully control inflation. The recent OMC injection looks set to maintain existing target rates, which is a lot different than what folks caught in bad investment strategies, esp. around fixed income or housing, may want to see. This is in many ways contrary to what has been the dominant fed policy, esp. through the Greenspan years. Is this the right policy now? Well, we'll know soon enough. One of the key problems with managing the money supply to actively manage business cycles is this: different industries experience different conditions; a one size policy only makes sense under relatively uniform conditions. Mortgages and housing are awful right now, but the fallout hasn't generalized in a way one might have expected. It seems to me that the fed is being prudent at the moment. In fact, cutting rates could up long term inflation, which would drive housing problems into a worsening state.

Capital market credit crunch

I've had a bunch of friends asking me about what is going on in the capital markets over the last few days. If you have a wsj.com subscription or can get access to one, there was a very good article on how we got into the current credit market mess. Definitely worth a read.

As usual, there isn't only one element that bears the blame: much of this is a fall out of fed actions dating back to Greenspan's easy money policies after 2001; part of it is desperation for higher yields through fancy and often opaque securities that few purchasers really understand; part is the fact that hedge funds are able to avoid many securities regulations; and part is of course just short-sightedness. It is very hard to say what the ripple effects will be: my own take is that it would be very prudent to make sure you're not carrying variable rate debt and consider using a no-risk interest bearing vehicle for a chunk of liquid capital (the latter is what the CAPM would suggest anyway).

There also seems to be a lot of interest in hedge funds. I'll follow-up this weekend with a brief explanation of US securities laws and how a hedge fund avoids a lot of regulation.

Doing good, again

A friend of mine founded an innovative non-profit, which helps to supply essential supplies to areas that are currently torn by war. It's called Give to the World, and worth checking out.

Jim Gray life and rescue

Via Mark, a nice article on Jim Gray. Well worth the read.

Doing good

DonorsChoose.org is an innovative program where teachers in underfunded schools can get support for educational projects. This is something that can really help kids in need in the US. Check out the site and if you are an Amex card holder, consider voting for them in the American Express Members Project final round: it only takes a couple of minutes and they stand to win $5 million to help out school kids.

Favorite "Blog"

Time is our most scarce resource. Due to this fact, I have a hit or miss record with keeping up with blogs. One of my favorite "blogs" that I try not to miss is the Expat Life journal kept by Alan Paul, an American expat in China. I am not sure if you require a subscription to read this or not, but I'm linking to the latest discussion of his Chinese language instructor's decision to become a Buddhist monk. It's worth reading (if you can) as a matter of pure interest: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118483378755971491.html?mod=hps_us_inside_today

I will try to follow up with some thoughts on Buddhism, ethics and theism when I have some more time. I recently finished reading two books by the Dalai Lama (which obviously reflect the Tibetan take on Buddhism) so this topic has been on my mind a lot recently, but have been thinking more broadly about Buddhist teachings for several years. I do not consider myself a Buddhist, but I do think this is an important "religion" to understand and I'll try to explain some of the implications that may be of interest to Western readers. I put religion in quotes as most Western religions are theistic: I consider Buddhism a very interesting and important school of philosophy and ethics, from which there is a much to learn.

Of interest to engineers

The subject of responsibility and professional ethics is a hot topic in business. It is also a key and sometimes under-appreciated aspect of engineering. A great case study in engineering ethics can be found in Joe Morgenstern's 1995 New Yorker article "The Fifty-Nine Story Crisis." Yes, engineers have responsibilities to make things right.

On the topic of engineering, I am continually impressed with the engineering ingenuity involved with mechanical watches. I wish every software developer thought like a watch designer: efficiency, size, and reliability are permanent constraints on feature development. For some wonderful examples of modern engineering, see two (commercial) overviews of recent work done by Jaeger LeCoultre: the ingenious gyrotourbillon and the revolutionary master compressor LAB.

Mathematics for the Non-Mathematician

Just a brief recommendation. I had an opportunity over the weekend to re-read parts of the extraordinary book Mathematics for the Non-Mathematician. The history of science gets quite a bit of coverage, less so the history of mathematics as an independent subject. This book simultaneously makes a strong case for an interest in mathematics as a subject, its inter-relationship with civilization and is just damned interesting to read. This is actually in my top-twenty recommended books for everyone.

SOA platforms

Post updated with correct URL! A high level "white paper" on technology trending toward SOA platforms I wrote a while back, published on oracle.com.

Ibrahim Ferrer

Great review on NPR of Ibrahim Ferrer's posthumous album Mi Sueño. Though there is some background on Ferrer in Wikipedia, it's quite weak. I recommend just buying this album and his work more generally: both are available on iTunes.

One iTunes nitpick: what is the deal with categorizing this music as "tropical"? This is some of the most seductive balladry available, combining elements of afro-caribbean, jazz, cuban, and just sweet melodies. I can't think of a better or more classy backdrop to a evening out -- or at home.

JEE done right?

Sun has been trying to figure out what to do keep pace with innovation in the Java space and especially in JEE. The current proposal adds profiles, which I generally like, since it moves JEE forward in one respect: JEE services a la carte and lighter weight application server technologies. My friend Rod Johnson thinks this is a really great thing and I expect to see Spring take full advantage of this trend.

On other fronts, Peter Kriens asks why Sun isn't leveraging OSGI to its full potential. Well, depends what you really mean there: most of his examples are for app server internals, which can use OSGI regardless of how oblivious the JEE specs are to OSGI standards. But still, with the Java module system being proposed, it does look like we may be in for a dose of infrastructure bifurcation. At a minimum, I'd like to see a coherent and comprehensible strategy in this area for Java.

And I am concerned that there is not a coherent plan for SCA integration into J2EE. In fact, I think the statement on using SCA in JEE is a travesty. What does the current proposal for JEE really mean? How will JEE application expose their interrelationships with other services? And will JEE applications be able to bundle SOA components like BPEL processes used for embedded workflows?

My view is that there are still some very fundamental things to be worked out. We can -- in fact we must -- do better.

iPhone reaction

I've had the chance to play with the iPhone off and on for the last few days. Some quick thoughts:

First of all, I wildly underestimated the iPhone. It is unique and nothing else comes close. The ease of use and elegance is difficult to overstate.

Second, I am hoping that all iPods adopt this style: embedded macosx, wifi support and the large screen should be standard features. And thank the powers that be for flash memory: my iPod video hard drive lasted just long enough to go out of warranty.

Third, the Internet integration is just brilliant. I read the Wall Street Journal quite a bit on my Treo while traveling, and the experience on the iPhone is actually better than it is on my laptop computer. I feel like I'm reading the paper when I rotate the iPhone sideways and use the mobile content feed.

Fourth, the adaptive keyboard is also brilliant. It is not, however, a replacement for a real keyboard and from my limited experience, works better with the finger tips than the thumbs.

Fifth, the YouTube integration is horrible. Search is awful. At least let users comment back on videos. Not a big disappointment, but surprising.

Lastly, there is a lot missing. Top two items on my list: as far as I can tell, you can't do a bluetooth synch with a Mac laptop; no GPS. Means there will be plenty of room to grow features (and maintain margins) over the next year.

Slightly imperfect, this device puts the market to shame. I am disgusted every time I turn on my Treo now.

Queen Hatshepsut confirmed?

A note for those with an interest in ancient history: the remains of a mummy have been confirmed by diagnosis of a tooth fragment to have been Queen Hatshepsut, a woman ruler of Egypt at almost 2000 BC.

SOA Workshop Presentation

Keynote slide deck for SOA workshop preceding Systems Integration conference can be found here

Systems Integration Keynote Slides

Slide deck is here.

Greetings from Prague

I am typing from the Czech Republic, where I just attended the SOA workshop preceding the Systems Integration 2007 conference. I'm told this is the largest conference of its sort in the region. I presented at the workshop (slides to be posted by the conference) on the technology trends that are driving SOA as a viable application/integration strategy. I also sat on a panel with folks from HP (formerly Systinet), Progress, Sun, and the University of Technology, Sydney. Hot topics: SCA and governance. Expect to hear a lot more in these areas over the next year.

The interesting takeaway for me was the similarity of the views of the presenters and panelists. I believe this reflects a common experience with customer requirements. This is a particularly good thing, since it means that the SOA hype phase may be over, and now we're getting down to the real value proposition: easier, cheaper application integration, flexible business processes, and better alignment with business objectives.

Tomorrow I have a chance to keynote the main conference. I am planning to dwell on these three topics. In addition, Jon Maron and I are doing a three hour presentation for the Oracle field and customers on the next iteration of the SOA platform. Should be a fun, but very long day!

Addendum (a few notes on Prague): beautiful city with architecture going back to the middle ages. Mostly I have been in hotels or meetings, but the city is extremely pleasing to the eyes and a pleasure to walk around. We managed to do just that a bit and see the prague castle, the old town's powder gate tower and the famous astronomical clock. Ironically, the czechs are renowned for the high percentage of atheist citizens: the houses of worship are really amazing. This morning, we had a chance to explore the Jewish quarter, also fascinating (the Spanish synagogue is not to be missed). St. Vitus's Cathedral rivals Notre Dame as a massive, buttressed church: it also houses the tomb of "Good King Wenceslas".

JBI 2.0, does anyone agree?

JBI has always interested me for two reasons: 1) I was surprised to see a model pushed for describing how application servers should be built, rather than used. This was tried with JSR 111 and it failed pretty spectacularly: and this was after J2EE was already defined and agreed on as the standard model for integration servers. 2) It was originally proposed as some of the oddest combinations of technologies: WSDL 2.0 and very old school approach to solving the same problem solved by every dependency injection framework.

OK, now some years have passed: JBI hasn't taken off and now a few vendors are back at the table trying to decide what to do next. Since it's unclear what direction folks will try to take this, I thought I'd poney up a few suggestions on what could make the spec relevant and useful. Basically, get rid of a lot of cruft.

First thing to tackle: the "J2EE for integration servers" looks like it will clearly be SCA. So check SCA support as the standard model for service development. (This seems to be in line with where things are going, or so I thought: Out of the blue, my old friend Mark Little suggests that maybe they will support JBI without SCA. What? Invent a closed, Java specific model for composite services? Enter the matrix indeed!)

Once you build one of these things, it's pretty clear that most of JBI 1.0 can go away. Using SCA and OSGI, you really don't need to do much other than have an interface that passes normalized messages to service engines or binding components. In fact, OSGI provides most of the packaging and injection heavy lifting for building plugins to an SCA/JBI runtime model.

Once you boil down to a few interfaces, then the group could focus on simplifying those interfaces further. Add some management hooks and this is something that could really take off. I suspect this is really what the folks in the Eclipse SRP are really after. All of this suggests that the group could do something genuinely useful: explicitly focusing the JSR as the OSGI based plugin model for Java-SCA platforms.

In sum, narrow the scope, align with industry direction and build some real value additions.

More on Java and SCA

Thoughtful comments from Sanjay Patel at SAP as a follow-on to the SCA/Java discussion.

The Other Dave on SCA

The other Dave Chappell is suggesting that the Java community is fracturing on whether Java is a useful programming model for SCA. Let me give my perspective on this, since I've commented on this extensively in the SCA working group and in other forums.

There is no doubt that adding support for imperative programming models is important for SOA composites. This is where the Java/SCA model makes sense.

But does it matter? My argument all along has been that we should not teach a new model around Java. Everyone is already converging on a common model: the whole Java world is moving toward pojo programming stripped free of the framework cruft. In the first SCA f2f I sat with Rod Johnson and watched him implement some of the annotations in the original SCA JCI spec in a few minutes. SCA frameworks will bootstrap Java code. Write it for Spring and it will be useable in SCA. Or vice versa.

Put it another way: we can bootstrap basic BPEL processes into an SCA environment without changing the BPEL definition because you just use the language. We expect to see the same thing for Java platforms moving forward. If anything, this is the ultimate form of industry convergence.

Dave Chappell joins Oracle SOA team

Great news: Dave Chappell (ex-Sonic) has signed on with Oracle's integration and SOA team. He was already out speaking on our SOA strategy at JavaOne last week on the main SCA panel.

Update: bookmark Dave's blog here: http://blogs.oracle.com/davidchappell

Systems Integration 2007 (Prague, Czech Republic)

I will be delivering two keynote talks this year at the Systems Integration conference in Prague. This is a big event for central Europe and I'm excited to get a chance to talk with lots of people that are implementing SOA solutions. I'm also pretty excited about seeing Prague, if only between meetings.

Jim Gray Tribute Redirect

Some thoughts on Jim Gray. It's fair to say there's little I've done in the last ten years that wasn't laid out by Jim Gray.

ICSOC 2007 Call for Papers

I am on the Program Committee for ICSOC 2007 (in Vienna this year), if you're doing interesting work in the area of Web services, SOA or integration, please consider submitting a paper. Details below....

CALL FOR PAPERS

ICSOC 2007 seeks original papers in the field of service oriented computing, from theoretical and foundational results to empirical evaluations as well as practical and industrial experiences, with the emphasis on results that contribute to solve the many still open research problems that are of significant impact to the field of service oriented applications. Topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Business Service Modeling: Methods and tools for capturing business goals and requirements, decomposition into business services, business processes, business policies, modeling, analysis, and simulation, specification of functional and non-functional quality requirements
  
  
• Service Assembly: Development and discovery, model-driven development, service composition architectures, service registries, service discovery mechanisms, semantic matching, methods and tools for service development, governance, verification and validation, deployment strategies
  
  
• Service Management: Instrumentation and service-related data aggregation, end-to-end measurement, analysis, modeling and capacity planning, definition of deployment topology, infrastructure configuration, problem determination for SOAs, ITIL processes, change management in live systems
  
  
• SOA Runtime: Service bus for mediation, transformation and routing, runtime development and service registries, integration of legacy applications, information services for data access and data integration, scalability, topology and optimization, service-oriented middleware, policy based configuration & workload management
  
  
• Quality of Service: Reliable service-oriented computing, security and privacy in service-oriented computing, SLA and policy specification, QoS negotiation, autonomic management of service levels, empirical studies and benchmarking of QoS, performance and dependability prediction in SOA
  
  
• Grid Services: Services and architecture for management of infrastructural resources, data and compute intensive applications, execution and resource allocation services for job scheduling, protocols for coordination across multiple resource managers, business-value based allocation, innovative strategies for creation and management of virtual enterprises and organizations, prototype systems and toolkits

RESEARCH AND INDUSTRIAL TRACKS

There are two independent tracks for research and industrial papers, each managed by a different program committee and with a different set of evaluation criteria. Authors must clearly indicate the track to which their paper is being submitted.

• Research Track: ICSOC 2007 solicits original research papers, which should contain results that advance the state of the art in service-oriented computing, either through theoretical or experimental analysis. The paper should clearly articulate the research contribution and innovations, the relevance to service-oriented computing and the relation to prior research. Submitted papers will be judged according to their scientific merits and evaluated on significance, originality, technical quality, and exposition.
  
  
• Industrial Track: ICSOC 2007 solicits submissions covering the state of practice and real-world experience in service-oriented computing, including papers that describe innovative service-based implementations, novel applications of service-oriented technology, and insights and improvements to the state-of-practice. Case studies from practitioners emphasizing applications, service technology, system deployment, organizational ramifications, or business impact are especially welcome. Papers should provide sufficient details on the application domain, and the service-oriented techniques used, the issues surrounding actual implementations and applications, and the lessons learned in the field.

FORMATTING GUIDELINES

All papers should be submitted electronically (in PDF) and prepared in accordance with the Springer/LNCS camera-ready format. Both research and industrial-track papers are not to exceed 12 pages, including references. All submissions should include title, authors, and full contact information.

Submissions should indicate at least two main topics and the scientific area (or areas) that best fit the content of the paper. All accepted papers will appear in the ICSOC 2007 proceedings, published by Springer Verlag as a part of its Lecture Notes in Computer Science series, and must be formally presented at the conference.

SUBMISSIONS

Submissions must be made electronically through the ICSOC 2007 Online Submissions Site.
Guidelines for authors on using and navigating the submissions site are also provided.

So It Goes

Slaughterhouse-Five was the first Vonnegut book I read. I still remember being strangely indifferent. I never warmed up to Vonnegut completely as a novelist, but I did as an essayist. More importantly, I came to respect Vonnegut as a human being: humorous and humanist, but unwilling to be hopeful without warrant. Vonnegut's alien-outsiders were spectators on a humanity that should but won't do better. Most importantly, Vonnegut wanted people to think for themselves, a hard and sometimes rare thing. The world is a little less rich today.

Spring-OSGI milestone

Hal Hildebrand does a better job that I can on discussing the latest Spring-OSGI milestone.

Rich Friedman blog found

The funny thing about blogs is that you just kind of discover them by accident. Suddenly, you find your friends are out there publishing away and you have to catch up on everything. I am the worst when it comes to keeping up relationships in real life, so there's a bittersweet element of that discovery to me. I should be finding out about what people are up to by conversation, but these days work gets the best of me. Anyway, I just found out that Rich Friedman is blogging. Rich was a middleware programmer for Bluestone, then technical lead for our acquisition strategy at Bluestone, then chief technologist at HP middleware, making sure that partners and customers understood what we were doing over there. Now he's responsible for middleware systems management at Red Hat.

At some point, we need to organize a feed of ex-Bluestone bloggers....

Bob Bickel blog found

Bob Bickel is one of the nicest persons I know. He's also quietly had a huge impact on the software industry, first pioneering the web application server market and later turning the JBoss project into a successful business (and flipped to Red Hat), pioneering the current trend in "professional open source." I thoroughly enjoyed working for him back at Bluestone and HP. Despite a mild demeanor, he drove his team extremely aggressively. I'm not sure I showed proper respect for what I learned from him at the time, but it shaped who I am today.


Cool to find he has a new blog. Looking forward to reading it on a regular basis.

Tuscany Multiplies

Appears that the open source SCA implementations are subdividing.
In many cases, the value of these projects are in the experiments and learning experiences that fall out of the development effort. I'm looking forward to seeing where the different teams take the various branches.

SCA PPT

Just a quick update for those who asked: Philly JUG SCA presentation can be found
here.

Philly JUG SCA Presentation

First of all, thanks to Dave Fecak and the Philly JUG for having me over. It was great to meet everyone and we had some really good follow-up discussions. I'm definitely planning to make it over for some future meetings: next one features Cameron Purdy from Tangosol (soon Oracle!).

I promised I'd post the presentation slides here. Turns out Blogger only allows image uploads. The good news: Dave is loading the ppt on the JUG site. As soon as that is up, I'll post a link back to it from here as well.

In the meantime, feel free to post follow up questions as comments here or send me an email at greg.pavlik@oracle.com. I'm on the west coast now, so bear with me if you don't hear from me right away.

SCA goes to OASIS

Big news, the OSOA alliance has contributed the SCA and SDO specifications to OASIS. Dana Gardner has an interesting take on this: it will do for SOA what J2EE did for application servers. I'll be talking about SCA on the east coast next Tuesday at the Philly JUG and in more depth in Europe at the Systems Integration Conference.

Nex-Gen Application Platform

A brief interview with Thomas Kurian on the important trends that are likely to impact Java developers.

Philly Java User Group talk on SCA

If you are in the greater Philadelphia area, I'll be giving a talk on the Service Component Architecture, SOAs and Java programming at the Philadelphia Java User's Group on March 27.