I am just about to set off on a weeks vacation and then to Europe so I thought I'd leave you with some of my musings.
So, my Apple Mac I got a couple of weeks back - I love it.
Running VMWARE on a mac is sweet. I have multiple VM machines and it truly creates a discipline of keeping "machines" loaded with software specific for those purposes so they are fast. I can honestly say, my VMWare sessions on my Mac are 2-3 times faster than my standalone Dell PC (My PC was probably more cluttered than it should have been but even so, it's incredibly responsive on the Mac).
Now what is really cool, is I have written a little Mac application that calls a Web Service that OpenSpan exposes in a VMWARE session running on the same machine. This means my "legacy" applications services can now be accessed by building portals/apps on the MAC as well as the PC - inside the same machine. Integrating virtualized applications together this way has been hard, to near impossible and this is no longer the case with OpenSpan. I'll post some screen shots in a few weeks so you can see. It's lightening fast and what it really demonstrates is that any Legacy Application is no longer tied to just one presentation interface and can be mashed up virtually anywhere. We released our OpenSpan SOA addition just a few weeks ago and the power of it in the enterprise is readily apparent. We have lived for years with limited or mostly in fact, zero API's for our desktop applications. No more. It's like legacy applications can finally come alive and participate in the new world of technologies (SOA, Web 2/3.0, Mashups, portals, virtualization). Combine that with the speed in which OpenSpan enables you to build integrations into virtually any legacy application and expose that as service, and what you have is pretty incredible. When we say our customers can be in production with solutions in weeks, we can really demonstrate it.
It's hard to get the stats but I'm willing to bet that OpenSpan now has more licensed customers than all of the desktop integration vendors combined. The number of new clients we are signing up each quarter is amazing. Well I guess it's not really amazing, we have a great product :)
We will also be announcing relationships with some of the core mash-up vendors shortly, so watch this space for that too.
On another important note before I depart on my cruise around the Caribbean in a few hours. Damon Lockwood, our VP of Development and one of the OpenSpan founders (btw - he really is a smart cookie and I have really enjoyed the pleasure of working with him now for 3+ years), has just started his own Blog at DO IT ON THE DESKTOP - The term "Do it on the Desktop" was always a funny term we bantered around now and again for Marketing but it never quite made it to the outside world - I wonder why ;) I can see the tee shirts now :)
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Long time no see !
Well a few interesting updates from my last Blog!
First, I have turned over to the dark side and brought my self an Apple MacBook Pro (my first Apple since about 1985 !). Of course, I have VMWARE on it and running both XP and Leopard at the same time. My first integration problems were human (aghast, no mouse right-click). I also tried to move my Apple Itunes music from my XP but Apple assumes I am a thief and won’t let me migrate most of my music or even my pictures. My 16 year old son assures me there is a way to do it but likely it will not involve integrated Apple software :)
Second, I am finally hip as I have added a song to my verizon phone (which you'll hear when you call me!). Thick as Thieves. A little biased because the single of this track from the Dashboard confessional album is out next month and my son made the video (and is the star doing the magic – in one take…).
OK, so now onto business. This month saw OpenSpan release it’s version of Studio that enables existing and new automations to be turned into consumable web services with just approximately 10 clicks of a mouse and a few property settings. I show a Microsoft Excel function calling a web service to extract information out of an old VB billing system (hidden), on the fly. It is so fast and robust. What’s really cool too is that Excel and the automation are running in different virtual machines so it is fun to see MS Office and legacy applications work together over virtual machines. I’ve been tracking analysts who started to pass on that enterprises are finding the lack of Virtual-Virtual machine integration a stumbling block! Not any more!
I also have a server, running automations in VMWARE sessions exposing web services to the world. The VMWARE / OpenSpan sessions are integrating into previously closed applications and presenting a web service API (in this case as a REST function). Who would have thought some idiot (me) would web service enable the win32 windows calculator – just to prove a point – LOL – but wickedly cool.
Going to be announcing two other major enhancements in the next few weeks so watch this space. This technology gets more exciting by the minute and judging by the new customer and partner wins we are not alone in this excitement.
Signing off (next post will hopefully be from the Mac ;) ).
First, I have turned over to the dark side and brought my self an Apple MacBook Pro (my first Apple since about 1985 !). Of course, I have VMWARE on it and running both XP and Leopard at the same time. My first integration problems were human (aghast, no mouse right-click). I also tried to move my Apple Itunes music from my XP but Apple assumes I am a thief and won’t let me migrate most of my music or even my pictures. My 16 year old son assures me there is a way to do it but likely it will not involve integrated Apple software :)
Second, I am finally hip as I have added a song to my verizon phone (which you'll hear when you call me!). Thick as Thieves. A little biased because the single of this track from the Dashboard confessional album is out next month and my son made the video (and is the star doing the magic – in one take…).
OK, so now onto business. This month saw OpenSpan release it’s version of Studio that enables existing and new automations to be turned into consumable web services with just approximately 10 clicks of a mouse and a few property settings. I show a Microsoft Excel function calling a web service to extract information out of an old VB billing system (hidden), on the fly. It is so fast and robust. What’s really cool too is that Excel and the automation are running in different virtual machines so it is fun to see MS Office and legacy applications work together over virtual machines. I’ve been tracking analysts who started to pass on that enterprises are finding the lack of Virtual-Virtual machine integration a stumbling block! Not any more!
I also have a server, running automations in VMWARE sessions exposing web services to the world. The VMWARE / OpenSpan sessions are integrating into previously closed applications and presenting a web service API (in this case as a REST function). Who would have thought some idiot (me) would web service enable the win32 windows calculator – just to prove a point – LOL – but wickedly cool.
Going to be announcing two other major enhancements in the next few weeks so watch this space. This technology gets more exciting by the minute and judging by the new customer and partner wins we are not alone in this excitement.
Signing off (next post will hopefully be from the Mac ;) ).
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Desktop Integration and Virtualization
There is no doubt, the adoption and acceptance of Desktop Integration technologies is now a fundamental and crucial piece of ammunition in the integration arsenal - across the entire enterprise. More un-integrated applications are actually popping up on user’s desktops - not less! Virtualization is now just adding to the problem of complex integration issues of these desktop applications (yes, they are now less open for integration than before!). OpenSpan has approached this problem wisely as we believe virtualization has a phenomenal future. You can now integrate, not just desktop applications in physical machines, but also integrate applications across virtual machines too - even on remote virtual servers! This is game changing because it paves the way, not just for physical desktop application integration, but brings virtualized integrated applications into reality - even before some users had recognized there was going to be a problem!
A couple of news / items worthy of putting on my blog too. Be back soon.
Shepherd Chartered Surveyors Selects OpenSpan to Streamline Business Processes across Desktops
Serve Customers more Effectively with Microsoft CCF 2008 and OpenSpan Platform
.
A couple of news / items worthy of putting on my blog too. Be back soon.
Shepherd Chartered Surveyors Selects OpenSpan to Streamline Business Processes across Desktops
Serve Customers more Effectively with Microsoft CCF 2008 and OpenSpan Platform
.
Friday, January 11, 2008
OpenSpan record 2007 year
Wow – is it really 2008 already ?
A phenomenal year for OpenSpan with 440% revenue growth, over 30 New customers, New OEM channels, New major SI Partner relationships. Customers in UK, Germany, Singapore, Australia and South America isn’t too bad a reach either :)
5 of Fortune 30 are now OpenSpan customers. 5 of top 40 global telcos and 4 of the top 20 US Banks. Yep, an extremely awesome year for OpenSpan.
Some nice very recent recognition too with:
10 IT Companies to Watch in 2008 (Robin Bloor – Hurwitz Analyst)
10 It Companies to Watch in 2008
The Redmond 2008 Editors Choice Awards (Easiest to Use/Manage Category)
Redmond 2008 Editors Choice Award
Integrate your World from Peter Varhol at Redmond
Integrate Your World
I'm off on a trip to Europe today but will blog in the next few weeks about some major technology advances we have made recently with regards web services and also virtualization. I'll talk about OpenSpan and the game changing technology we have. As they say, “you ain’t seen nothing yet” ..... keep on watching..
Speak soon.
A phenomenal year for OpenSpan with 440% revenue growth, over 30 New customers, New OEM channels, New major SI Partner relationships. Customers in UK, Germany, Singapore, Australia and South America isn’t too bad a reach either :)
5 of Fortune 30 are now OpenSpan customers. 5 of top 40 global telcos and 4 of the top 20 US Banks. Yep, an extremely awesome year for OpenSpan.
Some nice very recent recognition too with:
10 IT Companies to Watch in 2008 (Robin Bloor – Hurwitz Analyst)
10 It Companies to Watch in 2008
The Redmond 2008 Editors Choice Awards (Easiest to Use/Manage Category)
Redmond 2008 Editors Choice Award
Integrate your World from Peter Varhol at Redmond
Integrate Your World
I'm off on a trip to Europe today but will blog in the next few weeks about some major technology advances we have made recently with regards web services and also virtualization. I'll talk about OpenSpan and the game changing technology we have. As they say, “you ain’t seen nothing yet” ..... keep on watching..
Speak soon.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
My little pet peeves of 2007 (and earlier) that will still be so in 2008 – can you relate? Do they all have something to do with “integration”? I think so.
I have four programmable TV remotes in my house, and not one works everything, all of the time – consistently.
I have a fairly nice (not cheap) German Mercedes that can go faster than I dare, that has electronics running at light speed over a fiber Optic backbone, opens the doors by a simple touch, doesn’t need a key to start and even knows exactly how far the car in front is and even brakes for me if I get a little careless. However, this piece of German Engineering does not actually seem capable of simply knowing that British Summer Time is different now. The time on my clock will always be out for 3-4 weeks a year by an hour. (Even though the built in GPS knows exactly where I am and what the time is to the nearest nano second!!!
Just when I thought we might actually be headed to some resemblance of a standard with more and more of my devices supporting the same 5v mini USB to charge and connect devices – my dreams have been shattered. My wife’s new Motorola phone actually detects that the same mini connector we used to share now reports on her phone that it’s the wrong adapter and won’t charge. Oh well, at least the phone is smart enough now to report the “error” – progress
The electronics used for stop-lights at the junctions I seem to frequent will remain broken so that at 2am in the morning (after a late night out), they will remain almost permanently at red despite the fact no other cars seem to be coming in any other direction (I reported a ground sensor out over a year ago and despite trying, DOT can’t seem to fix it so I won’t bother to report the other one thousand or so I seem to run into!!).
Oh, and I brought a new Apple Itouch in 2007 and in 2008, the browser will still crash more than my windows desktop and it does not support copy and paste – and yes – I do miss Copy and Paste – on this device at least.
Here’s a toast to 2008 and may all things be more integrated than in 2007 – thanks at least, in some part to me and what we do at OpenSpan - for software anyway!
I have four programmable TV remotes in my house, and not one works everything, all of the time – consistently.
I have a fairly nice (not cheap) German Mercedes that can go faster than I dare, that has electronics running at light speed over a fiber Optic backbone, opens the doors by a simple touch, doesn’t need a key to start and even knows exactly how far the car in front is and even brakes for me if I get a little careless. However, this piece of German Engineering does not actually seem capable of simply knowing that British Summer Time is different now. The time on my clock will always be out for 3-4 weeks a year by an hour. (Even though the built in GPS knows exactly where I am and what the time is to the nearest nano second!!!
Just when I thought we might actually be headed to some resemblance of a standard with more and more of my devices supporting the same 5v mini USB to charge and connect devices – my dreams have been shattered. My wife’s new Motorola phone actually detects that the same mini connector we used to share now reports on her phone that it’s the wrong adapter and won’t charge. Oh well, at least the phone is smart enough now to report the “error” – progress
The electronics used for stop-lights at the junctions I seem to frequent will remain broken so that at 2am in the morning (after a late night out), they will remain almost permanently at red despite the fact no other cars seem to be coming in any other direction (I reported a ground sensor out over a year ago and despite trying, DOT can’t seem to fix it so I won’t bother to report the other one thousand or so I seem to run into!!).
Oh, and I brought a new Apple Itouch in 2007 and in 2008, the browser will still crash more than my windows desktop and it does not support copy and paste – and yes – I do miss Copy and Paste – on this device at least.
Here’s a toast to 2008 and may all things be more integrated than in 2007 – thanks at least, in some part to me and what we do at OpenSpan - for software anyway!
Friday, November 2, 2007
Enterprise Applications
I really enjoyed this post and as an importantly, all of the replies to it.
Khoi Vinh, posted
If it looks Like a Cow, Swims like a Dolphin and Quacks Like a Duck, it must be Enterprise Software..
It really does show just how many companies are struggling with their enterprise applications and of course cannot just get rid of them (else they wouldn't be struggling, right?). I am absolutely not convinced that even the new applications we are building are not going to fall into the same traps, because alarmingly, there are not many answers to this problem, even with hindsight!
As you know, I am a big advocate of enabling agile and flexible API’s into Enterprise Applications. You can do so much more once these API’s exist. Of course, if the Enterprise Application doesn’t have an API or the right one for you, you can use OpenSpan to provide it. Using OpenSpan to enable your application to be customizable too is pretty cool, even if I do say so myself!
Anyway, enjoy this post and the great replies, it speaks for itself, IMHO. (Yes I’ve replied a couple of times as well).
Khoi Vinh, posted
If it looks Like a Cow, Swims like a Dolphin and Quacks Like a Duck, it must be Enterprise Software..
It really does show just how many companies are struggling with their enterprise applications and of course cannot just get rid of them (else they wouldn't be struggling, right?). I am absolutely not convinced that even the new applications we are building are not going to fall into the same traps, because alarmingly, there are not many answers to this problem, even with hindsight!
As you know, I am a big advocate of enabling agile and flexible API’s into Enterprise Applications. You can do so much more once these API’s exist. Of course, if the Enterprise Application doesn’t have an API or the right one for you, you can use OpenSpan to provide it. Using OpenSpan to enable your application to be customizable too is pretty cool, even if I do say so myself!
Anyway, enjoy this post and the great replies, it speaks for itself, IMHO. (Yes I’ve replied a couple of times as well).
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Agile SOA - without the wait
Create Web Services by wrapping legacy applications - now that's agile
You have a workflow that involves 2 legacy (10 year old) windows applications (say written in VB and C++), a legacy web application (say 2 years old with embedded DHTML and Ajax), a packaged Java application and an SAAS application like salesforce.com. This workflow (transaction) is carried out 10’s of thousands of times every day by hundreds of users.
How quickly would you expect to build a service around some or all of this process? 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years perhaps?
Assuming you can persuade your SAAS and packaged application vendors to do their share in your timeframe, there is still no telling really how long this will take. All of the business logic needs to be replicated, that so far took thousands of man years to develop and assuming you actually know where to find it! In the mean time of course, your business user requirements around improving and extending this workflow are not standing still. Indeed they must not stand still in today’s competitive environment.
What if you could wrap these existing applications and workflows, and have your SOA that way? What if you could taking any of your (or your vendors) existing web services (if they exist yet) and have them participate immediately in these workflows without waiting the 1, 3, 5, or 10 years? You wouldn't even need to understand your existing business logic because it would automatically get carried forward in the wrapping.
At OpenSpan, we believe in SOA but we believe it should not take away the critical importance of remaining Agile. This applies to remaining Agile around the deployment of SOA as you build it out as well as being agile around changing business requirements. If you build a web service, your existing applications should be able to consume it right now (see Last Mile of SOA).
A successful SOA strategy will be an Agile SOA strategy. IT and Business both win with this approach. IT get to work on their long term SOA strategy yet remain the superstars for introducing SOA immediately, and whilst continuing to deliver on the ever changing real-world business needs.
You have a workflow that involves 2 legacy (10 year old) windows applications (say written in VB and C++), a legacy web application (say 2 years old with embedded DHTML and Ajax), a packaged Java application and an SAAS application like salesforce.com. This workflow (transaction) is carried out 10’s of thousands of times every day by hundreds of users.
How quickly would you expect to build a service around some or all of this process? 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years perhaps?
Assuming you can persuade your SAAS and packaged application vendors to do their share in your timeframe, there is still no telling really how long this will take. All of the business logic needs to be replicated, that so far took thousands of man years to develop and assuming you actually know where to find it! In the mean time of course, your business user requirements around improving and extending this workflow are not standing still. Indeed they must not stand still in today’s competitive environment.
What if you could wrap these existing applications and workflows, and have your SOA that way? What if you could taking any of your (or your vendors) existing web services (if they exist yet) and have them participate immediately in these workflows without waiting the 1, 3, 5, or 10 years? You wouldn't even need to understand your existing business logic because it would automatically get carried forward in the wrapping.
At OpenSpan, we believe in SOA but we believe it should not take away the critical importance of remaining Agile. This applies to remaining Agile around the deployment of SOA as you build it out as well as being agile around changing business requirements. If you build a web service, your existing applications should be able to consume it right now (see Last Mile of SOA).
A successful SOA strategy will be an Agile SOA strategy. IT and Business both win with this approach. IT get to work on their long term SOA strategy yet remain the superstars for introducing SOA immediately, and whilst continuing to deliver on the ever changing real-world business needs.
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