The final weeks of the year are a wonderful time — for me, it is an opportunity to spend time with my family, get my financial house in order (taxes are only 4 months away) and catch up on reading.
Last week, I ran across Rick Milenthal’s blog post on the direction for our agency, an entry that sparked my interest in thinking further about the transformational ideas that our clients can expect in 2009. To get a better perspective on where we’ve been and where we’re going, I decided to revisit the history of software development. My search took me through various event but two in particular seemed to jump out at me. These events included:
Open Letter to Hobbyists (1976)
In 1976, Bill Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists, a one-page letter that urged software development to become more efficient. Mr. Gates wrote it because at the time he was upset about the level of effort that was required to write and release good software. In his letter, Gates called onto a community of software development enthusiasts (aka hobbyists) to get serious about software development if they ever want to get paid for their craft. The message the Gates tried to drive home was that there’s great value in software development.
The Cathedral and the Bazaar (1997)
Fast forwarding to 1997, Eric Raymond spoke to software development enthusiasts at a conference about the execution of a new software development model. The model was based on one that Linus Torvolds used when he coordinated (and lead) the development efforts for Linux, an open-source Operating System. Raymond’s presentation focused on 19 points/tenets of development, including a call for developers to focus on a problem/challenge that they love and for developers to better collobrate on code release. The main message that Raymond tried to convey was that development can be done efficiently in a parallel effort.
So What’s to Come in 2009
As you can see from the above, software development has been focused on detailing their best development strategies while also dealing with infrastructure challenges. One of the areas that is showing great promise in freeing developers from this Achilles heal is Cloud Computing, which refers to running software on the internet. With cloud computing, developers can simply focus on designing a solution that fits the needs of the business. From a business perspective, cloud computing seems to allow agencies to deliver innovative (and creative) software solutions that can make the business more efficient (aka, cut costs).
The good news is that we’ve seen significant participation/investment in cloud computing over the past twelve months, including:
Amazon teamed with Facebook to enable developers to create web applications for Facebook on their EC2 platform.
Google helped fuel the fire by releasing their Google App Engine, a platform for software developers to create web services/applications.
Microsoft joined the cloud party by releasing a platform for .NET developers called Azure.
From my perspective, cloud computing can/will continue to move quickly through the Hype Cycle (a la Gartner) to mainstream adoption if the big three (Amazon, Google, Microsoft) can offer their cloud platforms at a reasonable price in comparison to owning/purchasing their own infrastructure. Of course, a little help from Congress via an extension of a tax deduction can’t hurt things either.
Cloud Computing Offers Bright Spot for Software Development in 2009
The final weeks of the year are a wonderful time — for me, it is an opportunity to spend time with my family, get my financial house in order (taxes are only 4 months away) and catch up on reading.
Last week, I ran across Rick Milenthal’s blog post on the direction for our agency, an entry that sparked my interest in thinking further about the transformational ideas that our clients can expect in 2009. To get a better perspective on where we’ve been and where we’re going, I decided to revisit the history of software development. My search took me through various event but two in particular seemed to jump out at me. These events included:
Open Letter to Hobbyists (1976)
In 1976, Bill Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists, a one-page letter that urged software development to become more efficient. Mr. Gates wrote it because at the time he was upset about the level of effort that was required to write and release good software. In his letter, Gates called onto a community of software development enthusiasts (aka hobbyists) to get serious about software development if they ever want to get paid for their craft. The message the Gates tried to drive home was that there’s great value in software development.
The Cathedral and the Bazaar (1997)
Fast forwarding to 1997, Eric Raymond spoke to software development enthusiasts at a conference about the execution of a new software development model. The model was based on one that Linus Torvolds used when he coordinated (and lead) the development efforts for Linux, an open-source Operating System. Raymond’s presentation focused on 19 points/tenets of development, including a call for developers to focus on a problem/challenge that they love and for developers to better collobrate on code release. The main message that Raymond tried to convey was that development can be done efficiently in a parallel effort.
So What’s to Come in 2009
As you can see from the above, software development has been focused on detailing their best development strategies while also dealing with infrastructure challenges. One of the areas that is showing great promise in freeing developers from this Achilles heal is Cloud Computing, which refers to running software on the internet. With cloud computing, developers can simply focus on designing a solution that fits the needs of the business. From a business perspective, cloud computing seems to allow agencies to deliver innovative (and creative) software solutions that can make the business more efficient (aka, cut costs).
The good news is that we’ve seen significant participation/investment in cloud computing over the past twelve months, including:
From my perspective, cloud computing can/will continue to move quickly through the Hype Cycle (a la Gartner) to mainstream adoption if the big three (Amazon, Google, Microsoft) can offer their cloud platforms at a reasonable price in comparison to owning/purchasing their own infrastructure. Of course, a little help from Congress via an extension of a tax deduction can’t hurt things either.