cloud computing

Nov 20 2008   9:08AM GMT

Windows Azure video demo

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
Uncategorized, Microsoft, Virtualization, Web 2.0, programming, operating systems, Web services, WhatIs.com, Web applications, software development, cloud computing, utility computing, the cloud, Windows

Here’s Manuvir Das’ presentation about Windows Azure, from Microsoft’s 2008 Professional Developers’ Conference:

Oct 22 2008   5:44AM GMT

Joel Maloff on SIP trunking

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
VoIP, Networking, wireless, Web 2.0, communications, cloud computing, Mobile Computing

“For a service that was forecast by Gartner last year to be part of a more than $2 billion market segment by 2011, SIP trunking remains one of those technical phrases used in vendor circles that is marched out with pride to prospective distributors and customers and received by the marketplace with bewilderment.”

I’m always extremely impressed when marketing people actually demystify terms, instead of spinning hype and building the “baffle ‘em with BS” model to new levels. In this article, Joel Maloff, VP of Marketing for BandTel, explains SIP trunking. Here’s an excerpt:

In a survey commissioned by my company earlier this year, we discovered that even so-called industry experts — analysts, reporters, and others — could not agree on a definition for SIP trunking, nor could they consistently identify the leaders in delivery of SIP trunking services. However, it is not hard to understand the confusion in the general marketplace. For example, a February 2008 Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) draft document entitled “What is aSession Initiation Protocol ( News - Alert) (SIP) Trunk Anyway?” provided the following definition:

A SIP trunk is a virtual sip entity on a server constrained by a predefined set of polices and rules that determine how to process requests. (J. Rosenberg, 2008, http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-rosenberg…)

No wonder there is confusion!

The same draft also describes SIP trunking in more mainstream circles as a service for enterprises that allows connection to the PSTN as a displacement for circuit-based connections, and as a replacement for costly leased lines connecting distributed telephone systems within an enterprise.

So let’s cut through the mystery and confusion. SIP trunking, simply put, is a way for organizations to accomplish something that they already do, but for less money, with equal or better quality, and with greater functionality. It is also a way for enterprises that were too small and could not afford leased line services to achieve comparable benefits as the big boys but for much more attractive fees than previously. All of this is now achievable because of the underlying packet-switched technology of the Internet as opposed to circuit-switched architecture from the past. SIP is simply the framework that vendors and service providers have agreed to use to accomplish the completion of telephone calls and much more.

Another challenge is that SIP trunking providers differ from one another, and can roughly be grouped in the following three categories: SIP trunks via dedicated lines, SIP trunks in conjunction with hosted services, and pure SIP trunking providers.

Read the rest of the article.

Sep 2 2008   5:21PM GMT

Chrome: A shiny Web browser from Google may just be the next global platform for running Web applications

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Google, Microsoft, business, Mobile, applications, Web 2.0, operating systems, Apple, software, Technology, Web services, AJAX, video, YouTube, Internet, search engine, innovation, cool, social bookmarking, social publishing, reviews, Silicon Valley, downloads, collaboration, freeware, advertising, desktop, Office, geotargeting, social networking, blogging, buzz, communications, Web applications, buzzword, cloud computing, the cloud, Windows, SEM, demonstration, SEO

Techies and geeks returned from one last weekend of sun, sand and summer to find news of a disruptive change sweeping the online business world. Meet Chrome, Google’s new Web browser.

News of the announcement was leaked yesterday when Philipp Lenssen, an avid blogger of all-things-Google, received the comic book Google put together for the release and posted it, along with his first impressions. My director, ahead of the curve as usual , picked up on it right away and added it to WhatIs.com’s Buzzword Alert.

Google has since put up a high resolution of the Google Chrome comic book. I highly recommend going over and reading through the comic. Google put considerable time into clearly explaining the challenges faced by the designers of modern Web browsers with respect to memory bloat, rendering engines, Javascript threading errors and much more.

Since Lenssen broke the news, the tech blogosphere has of course been awash with reviews, opinions and speculation about what, exactly, Chrome will mean. Walt Mossberg posted a comprehensive review of Chrome in the Wall Street Journal, including speed and feature comparisons with Safari, IE 8 and Firefox. Rafe Needleman liveblogged the press conference introducing Chrome over at Webware. John Furrier colorfully blogged that the search wars just turned into the operating system wars. That’s true — except (as he notes) that Chrome goes far beyond search. SEO/SEM hounds and search engine watchers, however, will find Danny Sullivan’s thorough evaluation of Chrome’s search functionality quite useful.

Following below is own my two cents, both with respect to the browser itself and the significance of its introduction. First, however, I’ll let the video embedded below provide a quick introduction:

Obviously, Chrome has a lean, clean interface. This is Google, after all. Menus, dropdowns, extra bars and dialogs are largely stripped away. So what’s left?

The Web pages themselves. What a concept! I downloaded and installed the browser this afternoon without a hitch, imported my bookmarks and search history from Firefox and was off to the races. Chrome is quite speedy.

The address bar has been merged with the search field you’d see on the right in IE or FF. Firefox 3 includes a predictive search in this field already, so this isn’t ground breaking, but it is a clear recognitiion that search has become the default navigation method for most Web users. Enter your desired search terms and away you go.

Google is calling the new address field the “Omnibox,” a nod to its ability to incorporate “everything” you might need to explore. The Omnibox’s utility is another sample of Google’s secret sauce, in this case combining a record of your search and browsing history with Google’s own PageRank for given terms. The Omnibox is eerily good. With only a little use, it could predict precisely which page I was looking for after only a few characters were entered.

Chrome also features tabbed browsing, a key improvement introduced by iBrowse in ‘99 and then popularized by Opera in 2000. Once Mozilla included it in Firefox, the feature took off and is now a default feature in Internet Explorer and Safari. Chrome expands the tabbed interface in a number of innovative ways, including grouping related tabs and designing each tab so that it acts as an independent browser. Bookmarks, the Omnibox, menubar icons and menus are all inside of the browser, which again frees up more space for displaying rendering Web pages.

The pop-up blocker and phishing or malware alerts also included in Chrome may not be innovative at this point but they’re certainly effective and useful. The private browsing mode, aptly called “Incognito.” (This clever feature name was perhaps made in hopes that it will avoid the “Porn Mode” moniker that has dogged a similar feature of IE 8, InPrivate.)

There’s another key development: Chrome may not be the fastest Web browser currently available but Google hopes that it will be the most stable for pages loaded with Javascript. In a Web 2.0 world ruled by AJAX, that’s no small thing. And anyone that’s used one of Google’s many online applications knows that a stable, reliable environment for this kind of scripting is crucial.

This hints at perhaps the most important detail of all, and one that I tipped my hat to in the title of this post. Microsoft made an early bid for Internet dominance in the infamous browser wars of the 1990s by including Internet Explorer in each copy of Windows. Despite the Justice Department’s successful antitrust suit, IE continues to have upwards of 75% of the world’s browser share. Firefox has made inroads on this market share, to be sure, and the most recent version of Mozilla’s browser has been the best option around for speed, privacy, safety and usability since its introduction this summer, following close upon the success of Firefox 2.

Now it’s Google’s turn.

Google’s introduction of its own browser has the potential to upset the market in a way that no other company can, simply because of Google’s ability to promote the download and use through its various Web properties. As Google’s various Web applications and cloud computing architecture continue to mature, the Web itself can develop into an operating system. If this sounds familiar, that’s because Sun’s vision of network computing in the 90s using Java popularized such a concept long ago. Vastly improved broadband connectivity, viable Web-based apps and an Internet technology giant flush with revenue from the world’s best advertising platform change the dynamic a bit, of course. Google built its own Javascript engine to improve performance and, crucially, integrated Google Gears with Chrome to allow true offline access to its various Web applications. That adds up to something that distinctly resembles a fully-fledged desktop operating system and productivity suite.

While it’s true that consumer and enterprises haven’t been making a run on thin clients running on Linux quite yet, the potential to further erode Microsoft’s dominance of the operating and desktop productivity software markets is embedded within Chrome. I’m far from the only writer prognosticating on this count, of course. Michael Arrington thinks Chrome is Google’s Windows Killer. As Michael points out, this clears the way for “millions of web devices, even desktop web devices, in the coming years that completely strip out the Windows layer and use the browser as the only operating system the user needs.” Given that both the enterprise and consumer markets haven’t exactly been hot about Vista, I suspect Microsoft may be somewhat concerned about this development. Henry Blodgett over at the Silicon Valley Insider sees the development from precisely this angle, blogging that Google has launched a cloud operating system and called it a ‘browser.’

Who else should be concerned? Maybe Mozilla, though judging by this interview with its CEO, they’re putting a good face on the development for the moment. What’s next? Harry McCracken asked 10 questions about Google Chrome over at Technologizer that address Mozilla’s future relationship (and relevance). Jeremiah Owyang has added a few more questions in thinking about what Chrome could mean long term. Both ask for response and speculation in their comment sections, so have at ‘em.

Microsoft hasn’t been standing still, of course. They’ve been chasing search revenue for years, as evidenced by the failed Yahoo! acquisition. As the folks over at the Google Subnet blog at NetworkWorld point out, IE 8’s InPrivate mode thwarts Google’s targeted advertising. Unless the world upgrades to IE 8 and begins to browse InPrivate en masse, however, I’m guessing that GOOG’s 3+ billion of revenue per quarter is gonna be safe for the moment.

That’s especially true when you consider another critical element of Chrome: its future relevance to mobile search. Google’s Eric Schmidt has been quite bullish in this area, estimating that mobile search revenue will likely surpass desktop search in the not-so-distant future. The iPhone has shown what a data connection and full Web browser can do to mobile search (Try 50 times as many searches originating from iPhones vs. a normal cellphone). Here’s a prediction you can take to the bank: Just as the iPhone features a stripped down version of Safari, Google’s Android OS will have a similarly light version of Chrome optimized for a mobile device and poised to fully take advantage of the possibilities for geotargeted advertising based upon a user’s demographics, Web history and location.

Louis Gray is dead-on when he points out that Web browsers are now about the hooks. Apple’s Safari will be increasingly optimized for the iPhone and working with the private cloud that is MobileMe. Microsoft has built IE to be integrated with Windows and Office, though because of the bundling issues presented by antitrust has always had to walk a fine line. Flock, the social media-optimized version of Firefox, carves out a niche because of its tie-ins with the various networks and services. Chrome is no different, as I pointed out above. If you are already a power user of Gmail, gDocs, gTalk, gReader or g-Anything, Chrome may make more sense. Chrome is, I should note, only available for Windows Vista or XP at the moment. Guess they figure Safari will do the trick for a Webkit-based browser for Mac users and that the Linux crowd will be satisfied with Firefox and Opera for the moment.

To poorly paraphrase Lando Calrissian, Google’s Chrome is likely to allow all mobile users to truly surf with them amongst the clouds.

Jun 26 2008   1:16PM GMT

What is Google’s vision for enterprise applications in the cloud?

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Google, business, interoperability, applications, Web 2.0, compliance, enterprise, software, data, Technology, Web services, video, Internet, innovation, collaboration, conversation, governance, trend, buzz, communications, Web applications, buzzword, cloud computing, utility computing, the cloud, government, conference, enterprise 2.0

Three TechTarget editors interviewed Rishi Chandra, Product Manager, Google Enterprise, at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston.

Barney Beal, Zach Church and Alex Howard covered a wide range of topics over the course of this exclusive thirty minute interview, questioning Chandra about Google’s vision for enterprise applications, cloud computing, security, compliance and more.

Jun 17 2008   11:08PM GMT

Podcast: Live from Enterprise 2.0, discussing how to use social media

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Web 2.0, podcast, enterprise, Technology, new media, MP3, social publishing, event, WhatIs.com, forum, feedback, community, interactive media, social networking, communications, Web applications, cloud computing, the cloud, government, conference, enterprise 2.0

Last week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, I was pulled into a podcast with Chris Brogan, Aaron Strout and Sam Lawrence. We talked about what was going on at the conference, what we’d learned so far and what strategies individuals, businesses and enterprise might find useful in using social media.

Download the MP3

These guys are deeply immersed in the enterprise social software world, aka enterprise 2.0. Aaron is a VP at Mzinga, Sam is the CMO for Jive Software and Chris Brogan, is, well, everywhere in the social media world, along with being a VP at CrossTechMedia.

P.S. Feel free to call me “Andy” from here on out.

Jun 10 2008   12:16PM GMT

What is enterprise 2.0? Cloud computing proponents mix with social software vendors in Boston.

Posted by: Alexander Howard
open source, Microsoft, Networking, business, interoperability, news, Web 2.0, enterprise, software, Technology, Web services, video, new media, Internet, innovation, useful, social bookmarking, social publishing, interesting, invention, event, entrepeneurship, startup, collaboration, participation, Development, wiki, conversation, streaming, productivity, spreadsheet, trend, social networking, buzz, communications, Web applications, interface, buzzword, software development, cloud computing, the cloud, word meanings, conference, demonstration, enterprise 2.0

The question of creating an agreed upon definition for enterprise 2.0 continues to come up here on the Boston waterfront, as hundreds of software executives, CIOs, software vendors, media and curious technologists mix and explore the latest in enterprise collaboration technologies at Enterprise 2.0. Zack Church and I collaborated last month to formulate this:

Enterprise 2.0 is the strategic integration of Web 2.0 technologies into an enterprise’s intranet, extranet and business processes. Enterprise 2.0 implementations generally use a combination of social software and collaborative technologies like blogs, RSS, social bookmarking, social networking and wikis. Most enterprise 2.0 technologies, whether homegrown, free or purchased, emphasize employee, partner and consumer collaboration. Such technologies may be in-house or Web-based. Companies using YouTube for vlogging or a private Facebook group as a modified intranet, for instance, are implementing a form of enterprise 2.0.

The conference organizers have formulated the following definition, loosely based upon Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAffee’s definition for enterprise 2.0:

Enterprise 2.0 is the term for the technologies and business practices that liberate the workforce from the constraints of legacy communication and productivity tools like email. It provides business managers with access to the right information at the right time through a web of inter-connected applications, services and devices. Enterprise 2.0 makes accessible the collective intelligence of many, translating to a huge competitive advantage in the form of increased innovation, productivity and agility.

So what’s the story? Buzzword akin to Web 2.0 or something “real?”

In a session exploring the state of Enterprise 2.0, however, Dion Hinchliffe offered up one of the best, most succinct definitions to date that moves beyond the specifics to a more overarching purpose:

Enterprise/Web 2.0 is made up of “networked applications that explicitly leverage network effects.” — Tim O’Reilly.

In this case, a network effect is “When a good or service has more value the more that other people have it too.” (Wikipedia)

Here at the conference, over 60 different vendors are demonstrated different kinds of communication and productivity software that creates such network effects by helping workers to collaborate more easily, efficiently and socially. We’ll be posting videos, articles, interviews and other content over the next two days, as long as the wifi allows. Livestreaming has been balky, due to heavy network use, but you can check in on WhatIs.com’s live conference coverage of Enterprise 2.0 at uStream.com to see if we’re online. Check back here for more coverage on cloud computing, Dan Bricklin on SocialText’s new social spreadsheet or demonstrations of new social software like Newsgator’s Social Sites 2.0, a plugin that turns MSFT Sharepoint Server into a Facebook-like environment.

If you’re at the conference floor and would like to demonstrate your software or talk about enterprise 2.0 and social software, feel free to email me at ahoward@techtarget.com or send me a tweet at @digiphile on Twitter.

Jun 5 2008   10:12AM GMT

Video: What is cloud computing?

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Google, business, Web 2.0, video, YouTube, commentary, event, forum, conversation, trend, buzzword, cloud computing, the cloud, word meanings

Sure, WhatIs.com has a definition for cloud computing. And our director has posted one of the best explanations of cloud computing you’re likely to find anywhere. That being said, it’s always useful to hear more takes on any given topic.  Joyent Software sent a representative to the Web 2.0 Expo and asked an eminent collection of bloggers, journalists and other technology pundits to explain cloud computing on camera by asking each of them the same question:“What is Cloud Computing?”

Since that’s right up our alley, I wanted to share the video. Here’s the result:

Appearing are Tim O’Reilly, Dan Farber, Matt Mullenweg, Jay Cross, Brian Solis, Kevin Marks, Steve Gillmor, Jeremy Tanner, Maggie Fox, Tom McGovern, Sam Lawrence, Stowe Boyd, David Tebbutt, Dave McClure, Chris Carfi, Vamshi Krishna and Rod Boothby.

Mar 14 2008   10:10AM GMT

Video: gOS installed on an old IBM Thinkpad.

Posted by: Alexander Howard
open source, operating systems, command line, video, YouTube, cool, desktop, buzz, cloud computing

This video from a 15 year old UK student demonstrates a successful installation of gOS on a laptop nearing a decade of service.

He installed some snark in his YouTube video notes as well, noting that:

I managed to install gOS on a 9 year old IBM ThinkPad 600E laptop. This video shows just how well Linux will run on pretty much any hardware. Vista doesn’t look much better than gOS and would never even boot on old hardware like this, let alone run demanding applications such as GIMP.

You can download and try gOS from ThinkgOS.com.

Dec 4 2007   2:54PM GMT

Year in Review: ‘Tis the season for the top tech trends and tools of 2007

Posted by: Alexander Howard
open source, hardware, Mobile, applications, Web 2.0, Web services, AJAX, Internet, innovation, blog, commentary, culture, social publishing, invention, green, reviews, resource, downloads, Development, listings, tool, trend, telephony, backup, science, nanotech, humor, communications, Web applications, e-cycling, buzzword, cloud computing, Amazon

Ah, December. The first real snow has fallen here in Boston, the malls are full of holiday shoppers and the blogosphere and pages of industry mags are full of annual summaries of the best and worst of the year in technology. We’ll be coming out with our own most notable word of the year, as you’d expect from an IT encyclopedia, so stay tuned. In the meantime, read on for a summary of some of the best (and worst) tech of 2007.

Around this time year, I laid out the top 20 IT buzzwords of 2006. To be fair, calling some of these technologies “buzzwords” now looks like a bit of a stretch, in terms of the strict definition for buzzword. Virtualization is everywhere now, in the network, server, desktop PC, storage hardware and data center. Web 2.0 may have been massively overhyped, but blogs, RSS, Ajax, wikis, podcasting and social bookmarking have all made an impact this year too, in a wave of adoption that many have now settled down to term “Enterprise 2.0.”

“2.0″ itself could be the word of the year, were it not for the discussions of Web 3.0 that led to some buzz fatigue and gentle reminders of the Semantic Web. (See this list of semantic apps for some insight into how this space is evolving).

SaaS applications from industry giants continue to be important for CRM. And at the end of every year, IT admins and CFOs alike can’t help but think of SOX compliance. Mash-ups, VoIP, BPM, 3G SOA, XML and data mining all continued to be relevant too, with nary a buzzword to be seen.

Anyone who creates, markets or sells content or services online know the value and importance of search engine optimization (SEO) by now as well.

While they didn’t make the number one spot (you’ll have to wait for that one) there’s no question that IT became greener, as tracked by the surge in spending, research — and hype. Green data centers , green computing, LEED certification, and, unfortunately, greenwashing all make the trend list.

Dealing with Vista is also right at the top of any trend list. Microsoft’s new OS has met with slow adoption and a slew of backwards compatibility headaches, and, as SearchWinIT’s Christina Torode reports, “Few Windows shops had plans for Windows Vista migrations in 2007, and it appears that there may also be little interest well into next year. Of more than 800 responses from IT managers to an online survey conducted by SearchWinIT.com, 37% said they had no plans whatsoever in place to install Vista, while 8% said they would begin adding the new desktop OS in the first quarter of 2008, and 9% expect to begin the upgrade in Q2 2008.”

So what else is new? What else mattered? If I just pulled from the words on WhatIs.com that received the most attention from you, our audience, you’d think it was dialectric materials, FUBAR , chaos theory, IEEE, heuristics, nanometers and compilers — but there’s more to the year that that!

I won’t aggregate every 2007 list here (after all, Fimoculous.com has, yet again, done a great job of pulling together 2007 lists) but following are some of the best that cover IT. You’ll find great new Websites, tools and services — exactly what we promise to provide you in this space from week to week.

Enjoy the lists — and, of course, don’t forget to subscribe to to our newsfeed for the best enterprise IT news or subscribe to our tipsfeed for the best enterprise IT tools and expert advice to help you work better and faster.

Jason Hiner takes aim at hardware and software in The 10 most important business technology products of 2007, noting the i-Mate, Sprint Xohm, Salesforce.com, Vista/Leopard, LinkedIn, Zoho Office, Cisco Telepresence, Microsoft Office 2007, OQO and the Apple iPhone.Personally, I agree with the commenters that the XO of the OLPC project should be in the conversation, though perhaps not on this list, as Jason says. I’d add OpenOffice, personally.

PCWorld misses that one too — though not many others — in this immense roundup of the Top 100 Products of 2007.

This list is a grab bag of hardware, software, Web sites and services. Techies will find plenty to quibble with — can you really compare the Intel Core 2 Duo with Pandora.com, Guitar Hero 2 and Netflix without segmenting them out — but if you’re looking for a good list of what mattered to techies and netizens alike to discover the best of the best, you could do much worse.

PCWorld also featured a terrific list of the top 100 undiscovered Web sites in August, if you missed it, along with their top 100 classic Web sites.

Some of my favorites (and now bookmarks) include Wink, Footnote, Wikisky, DZone, Programmable Web, VideoJug and Zoho and Meebo. Happy surfing!Time Magazine, in much the same vein, offers up their 50 Best Websites of 2007.

My favorites here have to be CellSwapper.com, Last.fm, Newsvine.com, Tumblr, Twitter, GrandCentral and, for some of the best laughs of the year, the outrageous FunnyOrDie.com.

If you didn’t see Will Ferrell’s “The Landlord,” you missed out. StumbleUpon is, for my money, the breakout Web site of the year, though YouTube and Facebook fans may disagree.

(Stumble this blog and find out what I mean).

I liked Mozy.com for online backup, too.

It isn’t quite a 2007 roundup but Esquire’s six ideas that will change the world offered such intriguing suggestions that I couldn’t help but mention them:

• a low energy method for getting rust nanoparticles to bind to arsenic for water purification in the developing world
• Internet “hacktivists” who use Psiphon to provide uncensored Net access to netizens stranded in regimes hostile to the free flow of information and ideas
• flexible circuits embedded in silicone skin that can be used for prostheses and wearable computers
• self-modeling robots who use the principles of natural selection found in evolutionary theory to arrive at the optimal model for a structure or mechanism
• CO2 sequestering in the deepest water of the oceans to force it to become a liquid heavier than water
• biodegradable plastic produced in an environmentally friendly way

For more in that vein, make sure to consult the pages of MIT’s Technology Review, where they list the following exciting emerging technologies:

• optical antennas and meta­materials
• peer-to-peer video,
• personalized medical monitors
• compressive sensing
• nanohealing and quantum-dot solar power
• single-cell analysis
• mobile augmented reality

On the other side of the coin, eWeek’s Brian Moore illustrated a list of technologies and services that flopped, floundered or aren’t quite ready for prime time in 2007’s Biggest Emerging Technology Disappointments. You’ll find virtual worlds, in the form of Second Life, ultramobile micro-PCs, home-based VoIP, mobile security for smartphones, IPv6, ebook reader (Hello, Kindle!), WiMax, BlueRay/HD DVD and MuniWiFi.

It’s hard to argue with the selections, though I do think that Kindle’s eInk technology offers the closest thing to a pleasant electronic reading experience yet.

Wired is calling for nominees for its 10th anniversary vaporware awards, too, if you want to get in on voting for what didn’t materialize this year.

Personally, and I know I’m burying the lede here, 2007 was the year that the network took a huge step towards being the computer, a trend acknowledged by Amazon, IBM and Microsoft in one form or another. (And yes, I’m talking about our word of the year again here.) Sun talked about that phenomenon ten years ago, though it missed an opportunity by not open sourcing Java. This model of Internet-based supercomputing, where vast stores of information and processing resources can be tapped into remotely by a laptop, PC, smartphone or other connected device is still building momentum..

2007 saw the introduction of more devices than ever before, including the gPC, iPhone and XO, that all move the user into this browser-based, Web application world, enabled and enobled by Ajax. Between open source operating systems, browsers, office productivity applications and inexpensive hardware, users and organizations can do more and create more than ever before, albeit in increasingly insecure environments.

We may take a stab at some predictions for the year ahead some time soon, once we finish digesting the year that was. Feel free to let me know what YOU think the most important trends and technologies for 2008 will be through email or in the comments.

Sep 17 2007   1:49PM GMT

Andreesen on the three kinds of platforms, the cloud and the future of the Internet

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Microsoft, interoperability, programming, operating systems, Web services, Internet, innovation, blog, learning, interesting, futurism, Silicon Valley, entrepeneurship, code, social networking, buzzword, cloud computing, Amazon, the cloud

One of my favorite discoveries of the past year has definitely been Marc Andreessen’s blog. From the moment he first started posting long, chewy, thoughtful discussions of his thoughts on technology, business and startups (along with wonderful digressions into great new sci-fi writers, Web 2.0, and essential online cheat sheets), Marc has been on the must-read list for most of the techie blogosphere.

Now, the famous co-founder of Netscape and co-author of the Mosaic browser has moved on to Ning, a social networking startup that’s jostling with Microsoft, Amazon, Sun, Facebook and others to provide a platform for all manner of distributed applications, all within “the cloud.” Amazon even calls their platform the Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2.

Therein lies the rub. The word platform has become overused to the point of losing any precise meaning. WhatIs.com has long provided two definitions for platform:

1) In computers, a platform is an underlying computer system on which application programs can run. On personal computers, Windows 2000 and the Mac OS X are examples of two different platforms. On enterprise servers or mainframes, IBM’s S/390 is an example of a platform.

A platform consists of an operating system, the computer system’s coordinating program, which in turn is built on the instruction set for a processor or microprocessor, the hardware that performs logic operations and manages data movement in the computer. The operating system must be designed to work with the particular processor’s set of instructions. As an example, Microsoft’s Windows 2000 is built to work with a series of microprocessors from the Intel Corporation that share the same or similar sets of instructions. There are usually other implied parts in any computer platform such as a motherboard and a data bus, but these parts have increasingly become modularized and standardized.

Historically, most application programs have had to be written to run on a particular platform. Each platform provided a different application program interface for different system services. Thus, a PC program would have to be written to run on the Windows 2000 platform and then again to run on the Mac OS X platform. Although these platform differences continue to exist and there will probably always be proprietary differences between them, new open or standards-conforming interfaces now allow many programs to run on different platforms or to interoperate with different platforms through mediating or “broker” programs.

2) A platform is any base of technologies on which other technologies or processes are built.

Fortunately, in this mammoth post, Andreessen both modifies and adds to these definitions, putting the term in the context of the Internet and then exploring three different levels of online platform: the “Access API,” the “Plug-in API,” and the “Runtime environment.”

As a rather famous online pundit often writes,  read the whole thing (RTWT). If you’re at all interested in programming, online business strategy and the concept of the cloud, you’ll be glad you did.