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The impossibility of speed

speed1Microsoft, founder, organizer and social chair of the Desktop First Foundation, now sees through their own well trenched oppositions and admits that maybe, possibly it makes some sense for some applications to simple live out on the internet.  They now join Google, Yahoo, Apple, Salesforce.com, NetSuite, ZoHo, Meebo, Zimbra, as well as an uncountable number of neuvo-funded startups who have banked on the internet as the universal delivery platform for the future.

Oh, also, Google and Amazon agree that users get antsy when they have to wait more than half a second for their application to respond, affecting customer satisfaction and repeat usage.  Google’s VP Marissa Mayer recounted having experienced a 20% drop in usage for results delivered as little as .5 seconds slower than typical.

Possibly not for the first time, your customers are demanding the convenience and portability of online web applications while still clinging to expectations that web applications should consistently respond as fast as desktop applications.  An immovable object just shook hands with an irresistible force.

The problem with web applications, frankly, is the web.  Months of tuning web code can save seconds in application speed only to be lost in the network through slow routing, lost packets, or bandwidth throttling.  This is the impossibility of speed on the internet.  You have very little control out there.

To keep up with our need for speed, we will have to move more and more interface code off the server and onto the desktop’s browser in the form of Javascript.  Google’s chrome team seems to agree, focusing their performance efforts for web apps on a high speed Javascript engine.  SproutCore, famous for running Apple’s MobileMe web platform, is a fully modeled MVC framework in Javascript perfectly suited for this kind of application.  Servers could begin to revert back to simply offering data storage.  Instead of pageviews, we may soon be tracking information requests.  An online ad industry addicted to clicks and impressions may have to get back on the wagon and find a whole new model (they’re so agile).  This could be interesting.

I’ll just suggest this to any kid starting out the web development world: Learn JavaScript

Photo attributed to pctalbot @ Flickr CC

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Is Your Website SaaS(y)?

SaaS, which stands for Software as a Service, is software that is hosted, updated, and supported by a vendor and that software is usually accessed through the Internet (either through a website, or widget, etc.).  When you’re considering adding services to your business website, you will probably run across SAAS vendors and it is important to understand the advantages and disadvantages before you make a decision:

Advantages

  • No software and hardware to maintain – The SaaS vendor provides all the support.
  • Frees up internal support resources for other tasks.
  • Ongoing fees mean you can quit using the system at any time.
  • Usually get enterprise-level services for much lower costs.
  • Often SaaS vendors have a large customer base to provide feedback, which can be beneficial for quality assurance.
  • SaaS vendors are often able to roll out new features (and bug fixes) very quickly since the software is running on their systems.

Disadvantages

  • No control over updates – The software will automatically be updated by the vendor, giving you little control over whether you want those updates.
  • Harder to maintain change control – If you have other systems that interact with the SaaS product, updates and changes to it may cause problems when the changes are unexpected or unexplained.
  • Little control over new features – While SaaS customers certainly have some input, you will have much less than software developed in-house.  But about the same level of input over vendor software installed and running internally.
  • Ongoing fees may be difficult to budget compared to one-time fees.
  • No ownership of software – must continue investment with ongoing service fees.
  • Lack of flexibility – You are at the mercy of the vendor.  Jeremiah Owyang has a good article with more information and a good discussion – The Problem With SaaS – Lack of Flexibility.

If you use SaaS services, what has your experience been?  Any advantages or disadvantages I missed? Please share in the comments below.

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Ruby Hoedown – What isn't a Cloud

Robert Dempsey has an excellent talk up on Confreaks where he looks at the Ruby language accessing Cloud computing.  As Robert knows, Standard Operating Procedure for a high level talk is to define the terms for the audience.  For this group the term ‘Ruby’ was a given, so he wisely focused on the Cloud.  Lemme recap what he lists as NOT being a Cloud if…

  • You cannot buy it with your personal credit card
  • They are trying to sell you hardware
  • There is no API
  • You need to rearchitect your system for it
  • it takes more than 10 minutes to provision
  • you need to specify the number of machines you want up front
  • you own all the hardware

This, in my opinion, is an excellent primer for evaluating that ‘Try our new Cloud Computing Service’ pitch your VAR is feeding you.  I can only add one point of my own, as in my mind it is not Cloud Computing if…

  • The the business model hinges on lock-in

Value Added Networks (VANs) can have a cloud-like smell to them when they branch beyond simple traffic passing and on into backend processing, but I have difficulty reconciling the lock-in potential.  If you cannot shift your system to a new Cloud provider easily, then I believe you are dealing with an entirely different animal.  Buyer Be Ware.