Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Google Wave and Today's IBM DP Call

I know we didn't compare the 2, but I kept thinking has anyone watched the video inside of IBM yet? Of course they have, they'd be crazy not to.

Wave is impressive. How it works and what the User Experience is like is nice. The UI, not so great, very "Google bland" but if that works for you, why change it.

Would love to know what the back end looks like, but so does everyone else want to understand Google's server armies. Also how do you manage it, administrate it, all without a proper Directory?

Some of what we discussed on the DP call will be impressive to everyone when it comes out. And the products are becoming more like what every day users expect to see.

The problem which I am pondering is, and this came out in the DP call, how to convince companies that a "fixed" or "set" desktop model is not practical anymore.

Someone stated companies do not want yet another install to add to their desktops. I think they don't realize that it's not just one more install, it's a bunch of them and they are called updates and come out almost daily if you look at every product your company uses.

Unless you update your fixed desktop model monthly, which for 95% of all companies is beyond their imagination although well within their capabilities, your company probably has limited end users capabilities in ways which probably cost your business time, money and resources every minmute of every day.

This must stop.

I respect you have ancient systems that will break, or modern ones which were hard coded to IE6 or Java 1.4.2.8a-1 or some other hangup...and of course money issues. The problem from everyone so far has been a products fault, not theirs. No one ever says we need to spend the money to rewrite it. It's like brakes on your car, waiting until they don't stop your car is too late.

Will Facebook harm your network? Perhaps but as I found out today, so can a local non-profit organization website that got hacked.

Google Wave might be cool and new but will it make it into corporate environments? Unknown.

Will it get blocked? Perhaps.

Should you as an IT person be scared of it? No more than anything else out there.

Yet.

9 comments:

  1. I guess once the open source site arrives, we'll all know what the back end looks like. I suspect it is lots of different servers(the spell checker and language translation are obviously separate apps - but how many others are there?) An interest question is how much will be open source and how much will be Google only?

    It is the open source angle that is the most impressive here. How many other "Wave's" will there be apart from Google Wave? Any? (Fail). Many? (success).

    Character interactive back ends are an interesting new paradigm for delivering services without a desktop install - but how scalable will there be if you do not have (are not willing to pay for) and infrastructure of the power of Google's?

    And, yes, what about directory, groups, management, archiving, backup, etc. Lots more servers? Lots more complexity?

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  2. "has anyone watched the video inside of IBM yet?"

    Definitely.

    "Would love to know what the back end looks like, but so does everyone else want to understand Google's server armies."

    http://code.google.com/apis/wave/
    and
    http://www.waveprotocol.org/

    "Also how do you manage it, administrate it, all without a proper Directory?"

    How do you manage interenterprise email and IM without a Directory? That's all the Wave protocol really is.

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  3. Stuart,
    An interesting idea for roll your own clients?

    Nathan, Thanks for the links, but I already read the first one. Not being a developer some of it is lost on me. I did request sandbox access to play with it though, that's how interesting I found it.
    The second link is interesting, so it's just another port on my firewall which is being used for transporting data, so why not just use the existing torrent ports?

    Peer to peer, so this is like Groove?

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  4. "The second link is interesting, so it's just another port on my firewall which is being used for transporting data, so why not just use the existing torrent ports?"

    Because it's XMPP, which is the Google Chat protocol (AKA Jabber.) http://code.google.com/apis/talk/open_communications.html

    "Peer to peer, so this is like Groove?"

    No. Where did you get peer-to-peer from my question? SMTP and IM protocols all use client/server models, yet there are frequently no central directory servers. It's peer-exchange between organizations.

    So far, the platform itself doesn't provide specific provisions for directory services. The spec only calls for users to be identified by a unique username@domain syntax. Presumably anything than can serve up LDAP would work fine for resolving such an id to more information about a user.

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  5. Nathan,
    Sorry about that, my reading of the Google docs led me that direction.
    If it is XMPP and uses LDAP, then we are back with how does google administer these things?
    And if there is no client aside from a browser and if everything you do is in the browser, why not just plug in a USB with your personal files/id into a monitor and work that way, no OS or Linux I guess is most likely.
    Or is there a Google Linux(or other NOS) on the horizon too which runs Chrome natively?

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  6. Or is there a Google Linux(or other NOS) on the horizon too which runs Chrome natively?

    Android?

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  7. "If it is XMPP and uses LDAP, then we are back with how does google administer these things?"

    I'm working on a blog post to detail this stuff.

    "why not just plug in a USB with your personal files/id into a monitor and work that way"

    There's no particular reason why you couldn't. Theoretically, you don't even need a local storage model for that. You could have diskless kiosks that boot a low-overhead OS and a browser from a key, allow Wave work over the wire, then clear themselves on exit.

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  8. Mark, I guess, but how does Android run from a USB? I haven't tried it but i see others have. an interesting idea perhaps.

    Nathan, Thanks for writing the post, look forward to it.

    Now off to look into android on a USB.
    :-)

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