Christopher Keene

I attended the GigaOm Mobilize conference (where VMware was well represented by CTO Steve Herrod) and came away with a few observations that are relevant for our overall mobile strategy: The web is the new app store. I had dinner with the heads of mobile for two large retail chains. Although each of them have multiple App Store apps, the vast majority of their mobile business is coming through the safari browser and not the app store. Consumer behavior is to go to the web to buy things, even on mobile. There are only two mobile markets, native iPhone and mobile web.The shift to HTML5 (+Phone gap if necessary) is happening rapidly. Almost every speaker talked of the html5/jquery/phonegap stack with a few native iPhone holdouts (e.g., gaming, iPhone only apps like Hipmonk). Phone gap allows html5 apps to access native smartphone features and be packaged for native app... (more)

Two Doors to Enterprise Web 2.0 Adoption

Chris Keene's "Keene View" Blog Ben Worthen of the Wall Street Journal recently posted an entry about Web 2.0 adoption. He cited a Forrester survey that concluded Enterprise Web 2.0 solutions would gain broad adoption in 2008 despite clear CIO resistance to the siren call of blogs and wikis. As a strong proponent of Web 2.0 in the enterprise, we at WaveMaker want very much to see a rapid adoption of these technologies at the corporate level. On the other hand, wishing won't make it so - the grab-bag of technologies and ideas that constitute Web 2.0 are bound to confuse the IT commu... (more)

Development Tools For Cloud Computing

Chris Keene's "Keene View" Blog For cloud computing to take off, there need to be tools available that enable a developer to build and deploy an application without having to download anything to their desktop. This requires an on-demand development tool that sits on top of the cloud and provides a development Platform as a Service (PaaS). There are two paths that a vendor can take to create a development platform for cloud computing: cloud-first or tool-first. Cloud-first approach to PaaS: first build a cloud platform, then build a development tool that runs on top of it. This is... (more)

Cloud Computing is the Hardware Equivalent of ATMs

Chris Keene's "Keene View" Blog Cloud computing is custom made for Silicon Valley - it is poorly defined, seemingly vast and has the potential to change human life as we know it (at least for those of us who live in Silicon Valley). Since so many people are jumping on the cloud bandwagon, I thought it would be useful to look not at what cloud computing is but at what cloud computing isn't. . Of course, we have our fair share of naysayers (like Larry and Richard), as well as theories about why those naysayers are down on cloud computing. Cloud computing is the hardware equivalent of a... (more)

Making Cloud Computing Ridiculously Easy

With all the hullabaloo about cloud computing, it is easy to get caught up in the trend of the day and miss the big picture. The big picture is that cloud computing disrupts the data center world by slashing the capital and skills required to deploy a web application. If that is the big prize, then most of what passes for news in cloud computing is more along the lines of "me speak cloud too." Today, cloud development and deployment is still the exclusive domain of highly paid web experts and just as highly paid hosting providers and systems administrators. As much as cloud provide... (more)