Gartner's Predictions Predict Exactly What We've Been Doing... Uncanny!
Today, via my Google Alert, via ZDNet (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6560), Gartner has published a list of what they view as the top 10 strategic technologies for 2008. #7 is "Web Platforms"... and I think they're right on the money. Especially since we'll be launching our Complete Web Platform in 2008!
The article has this poignant quote:
Longer term, however, Web platforms will be the model for the future. Ultimately everything–infrastructure, information, widgets and business processes–will be delivered as a service. All of these intertwined APIs will give us a acronym: WOA (Web oriented architecture.) “Put this on your radar screen and start with some ‘what if’ models,” says Cearley. These Web platforms will also make mashups more common in the enterprise. In fact, Cearley argues that enterprises will need an architecture just to manage mashups.
Check out the similarities behind the above statement and our platform vision as outlined in my blog post "From Libraries to Platforms". I'd say our vision has once again been validated, which is a Good Thing. What it means for us is that, well, we were right (and not meaning to sound arrogant, but we knew that), but also that the world is starting to agree. That is a Great Thing.
I also read an article this morning in Information Week where they did a poll among CIOs, and the #1 concern in the US today is "Recruiting, developing and retaining IT talent". The article goes on to talk about the looming decline of IT professionals in America because of all the baby boomers retiring and not many kids taking tech courses in college. What I thought was interesting is how the proliferation of the Web Platform, and the hosted infrastructure, and the exposing of intuitive powerful application (mashup) development tools via a browser could be a powerful means to combat that scenario. What I see is that more and more non IT people will be implementing their ideas by themselves, which is already starting to happen anyway, and the role of the "tech" department will change dramatically. We may not find ourselves in quite the poor state that all these doomsday predictions would have us in.
For anyone interested in keeping up with our progress, please subscribe to this blog's RSS feed, and also remember to keep tabs on the platform's official blog (this one here is just my personal blog): WidgetsAndMashups.com.
-Ryan Gahl
I work as a professional software engineering consultant, specializing in web-based (inter/intra/extranet) applications, Ajax, and C#.
My services can be purchased by calling the following number: 1-262-951-6727
I am becoming an expert engineer.
posted by Ryan Gahl at
8:03 AM
4 Comments:
Ryan --
I agree with most of what you wrote here.
I think the problem to be solved is making enterprise-level integration easy enough AND intuitive enough that the average business user can handle it. Salesforce.com has gone part of the way there with the AppExchange, but you still have to hire people to do a good bit of the integration.
I look forward to tracking the progress of the platform.
By
Scott Barstow, at 8:36 AM, October 10, 2007
I agree with Scott. There will be a stratum of developers who are not traditional "Enterprise" developers but at a level we think of as "Web" developers. These guys and girls will build the compelling applications that orders of magnitude more people will use without needing to dip into the code. This idea that everyone and their ma wants to write a mashup is mistaken - there just aren't that many interesting, unique mashups in the world.
By
Anonymous, at 10:01 AM, October 10, 2007
Thanks Scott and Jon. There is certainly a lot of value with this idea as it pertains to the enterprise, and it's very important that the tools be a) secure, and b) intuitive.
For the consumer side the same is true, to what extent the tools are found to be compelling to "the average Joe/Jill".
@Jon: I am not as quick to dismiss the notion that "everyone and their ma wants to write a mashup". The thing is, everyone and their ma already seem to be doing this already, to a lesser extent, as evidenced by the myriad Google maps mashups, Facebook apps (perhaps not true mashups but custom apps built by many different types of people and groups), yahoo pipes, etc. To that, I guess I would say if the tools are easy enough, who knows who will use them and for what end. Perhaps your (somewhat tech-literate) ma has had a killer idea stuck in her head and no idea how to get it out, but if she was exposed to a wizard driven interface with perhaps some community collaboration she could get that idea created. I wouldn't call the notion "mistaken", just "unknown". I actually believe we'll see quite a bit of apps come out of this (movement) where you and I as developers would look at them and think "huh?, wow I never would have thought to make something like that" but it fit that one person's needs (and maybe many more people after it's discovered). IBM calls mashups "situational applications", but of course the have a 100% enterprise bent. I can totally see this being used widely on both sides of the enterprise fence though...
By
Ryan Gahl, at 10:17 AM, October 10, 2007
i agree with what is said above...
I am a IT manager in a telco and in last two years i have been extensively involved in project management and ISV solution implementation. Entire BSS solution is based on SOA,CRM was also part of implementation and there was heavy integration done with network components. I wonder during this project that services provider like SalesForce.com having hosted CRM could have been a great potential if they extend the hosted web platform to companies require integration like Telco. The way services are taking over the web, it seems that in near future entire services oriented architecture will become virtual implementation for upcoming new big companies. But the important question still stand un-answered... Will there be a end to end integration of web with end points ready to be plug and play...????
By
Wikki, at 5:43 PM, November 12, 2008
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