In this episode, sponsored by Reductive Labs, I talk with returning guest Luke Kaines (of Reductive Labs) and RedHat's David Lutterkort. David has been an active member of the Puppet community for several years now, and we spend much of our time talking about the projects he's worked on that incorporate Puppet. We also get into a discussion of how RedHat internal IT uses Puppet in their for their own applications from development to deployment.

We start out talking about Augeas, one of the projects David is currently working on. In my horkly words, it provides a "configuration file normalization API." That is, Augeas provides a layer to read in, modify, and then spit back out all sorts of *nix configuration files, each with it's own syntactical essentracies. For Puppet - which spends much of it's time updating those configuration files - the connection is obvious. Indeed, as Luke says, it wouldn't be far fetched to think that, sometime in the future, Puppet would consider replacing it's current config file engine with Augeas. In the meantime, there's some docs on using the two together.

Next, having been around Puppet awhile, I ask David what other uses of Puppet he's been seeing recently. This draws up a conversation about how RedHat's internal IT uses Puppet through Genome through their internal application development process to build development boxes and servers. We get into a discussion of how this use of Puppet effects the development cycles and tries to address the "wall of confusion" between development and operations.

We next talk about Cft (pronounced "sift") that provides a sort-of command line recorded for admins to build up Puppet manifests. We wrap-up by talking about Cobbler which sets up and configures Linux machines over a network. And, of course, how Puppet interlaces therein.

Disclosure: Reductive Labs is a client and, as mentioned, sponsored this podcast.

Download the episode directly right here, subscribe to the feed in iTunes or other podcatcher to have episodes downloaded automatically, or just click play below to listen to it right here:

While at CloudCampAustin recently, my good friend Zane Rockenbaugh of Dog Food Software brought all his fancy podcasting gear again we recorded another short series in the Profiles in Courage episodes. In this second episode, we talk with Rackspace's Todd Morey.

Being one of the co-founders (along with Jonathan Bryce) of Rackspace Cloud, or "Mosso" as it used to be called, I jump right in and ask Todd to tell us the history of how the Rackspace Cloud came about. Todd had been working on UIs at Rackspace. As such, they had access to really chap Rackspace servers on which they developed some "side applications," but found the administrative tasks - like dealing with hackers - to be a hassle. Hence, Todd and Jonathan started looking into something more, well, "cloudy" as we'd say now.

We then jump into a name game discussion. First, where the name "Mosso" game from and then, we discuss why "cloud computing" won out over "utility computing." We discuss the awkward feeling, at least early on, of "cloud": as Todd puts it, "it sounds almost a little too magical." But, now that its been here awhile, we all agree it's a dandy term.

Getting back to the history of the Rackspace Cloud, I ask Todd to tell us how the Mosso idea evolved over time. We go over several times where they had to, essentially, figure out where to apply constraints on the system. This gets us into a discussion of when an application requires too much customized access and thus, doesn't fit well into Mosso, but would fit better in more traditional hosting.

On the topic of applications, Todd brings up email (or "messaging" as some like to call it when thrown together with calendaring and, sometimes IM) as one of the best examples of a cloud-bound application. Along those lines, we discuss some customers who're using the Rackspace Crowd.

Thinking back to a conversation Todd and I had back at SXSW, I ask him to lay out his thinking about how (what I'd call) Collaborative IT Management applies to cloud computing. Rackspace acquired Slidehost last Fall, who had a large, active community around its knowledge-base. Todd speaks to thinking he's been having recently about applying those practices to the wider practice of cloud support. This gets me thinking about how the traditional, packaged software role of "technical writers" could transition into this community gardening world. Never mind writing manuals, we need skilled people to document the day-to-day finds and helpful advice from the community.

Closing out on a completely non-technical topic, since Todd lives down in San Antonio, I ask him about Fiesta, the yearly, city-wide party. He gives us the folkloric story of how it came about and tells us what its like, complete with the "royal court."

While at CloudCampAustin recently, my good friend Zane Rockenbaugh of Dog Food Software brought all his fancy podcasting gear again we recorded another short series in the Profiles in Courage episodes - or, "Profiles in Courager" as we dub this one. In this first episode, we talk with Lombardi Blueprint's Barton George.

He starts out telling us what Lombardi is doing at a cloud conference: they have a SaaS version of their Business Process Management (BPM) product. Recalling the Lightening Round presentation Barton gave (by virtue of being a CloudCampAustin sponsor), I get Barton to tell us how being SaaS vs. on-premise makes the BPM offering different and, we hope, better. One of the aspects we talk about is the ability to update Blueprint more often, "streaming" features into the product, as Barton puts it. This prompts me to ask Barton if people actually want all those updates.

I also ask Barton if hosting something as a SaaS makes customers think they should pay less for the software. The (cooked-up) reasoning being: it's less hassle to setup and run than on-premise, so it seems like "cheaper" so you'd think to pay less. As you might expect, Barton says, no, people still will pay for the value (functionality that helps make money) that the software brings.

Being a conference interviewer himself, I ask Barton George to tell us about the brief video interviews he does. We then procede to dork-out about hand-help cameras, like the Flip mino that Barton uses.

Throwing out a broad question, I ask Barton to pull from his previous experience working in open source at Sun and tell us what he thinks of the current state of the open source world. It's always fun to ask someone who was previously an insider what they think once they get on the outside. Barton's answer confirms what most people seem to be saying: open source is very close to mainstream now. This gets Barton to recall his first, big public talk wherein he happened to follow Richard Stallman. Barton says he was a good, down-to-earth speaker.

While at barcampAustin this year, my pal Zane Rockenbaugh (Dog Food Software) and I recorded a series of interviews with barcampAustin and SXSW attendees and friends. We dubbed it Profiles in Courage, and now they're yours to enjoy.

Download the episode directly here, subscribe to the RedMonk Radio podcast feed to have it automatically downloaded to iTunes or other podcatcher, or just click play below to listen to it right here:

Rise of Community Marketing

In the fifth episode of Profiles in Courage, barcampAustin edition, Zane and I talk with Sara Dornsife, self-professed Community Marketing Geek.

With a title like that, I ask Sara to tell us about a recent blog entry of hers describing the bloating of the marketing role as represented by job postings: doing traditional marketing and comms, community management, open source, events, and everything else. Sara says this is probably due to consolidation in jobs, companies cutting back and combining jobs together.

What Community Marketing Does

Blindly feeling out the elephant more, I ask Sara to tell us about the day-to-day activities of Community Marketing. It centers around "scaling up" community interactions; that is, figuring out moving beyond one-on-one interactions in the community of users for a product, service, etc. We compare these efforts to traditional marketing and advertising tacticts, where broadcast mediums seem to be of lessoning effectiveness.

Open Source Lessons Learned

Earlier that morning, Sara and I had both been on the SXSW panel, "Lessons Learned from Open Source." We discuss what we discussed in that panel: namely, that open source a business model, on it's own, isn't too whiz-bang beyond acquisition exists. Zane asks if and how open source is used for marketing value.

We further discuss open source as a business model: my quip that you make money off open source by selling closed source; the troubling paradox of software quality and selling support; open source driving down costs & commodifying "over-priced" markets.

Doing a barcamp

Switching to conferences and events, since Sara was one of the main organizers for barcampAustin, I ask her what goes into unconferences like barcampAustin. "Not a lot of sleep," she says. To hear Sara tell it, most of the work was done in the 8 days prior to the event, including booking Paradox ("18 and up welcome!"), rounding up sponsors, and more.

Picking the venue drives much of the format: the number of rooms you have in your venue determines how many sessions you can have at once, which, of course, determines how many sessions you have. The costs are low because people volunteer and sponsors donate all sorts of drinks and burritos. Sara estimates that barcampAustin was at about $25,000 for a 24 hour event.

Why do a barcamp?

The question, then, is why do this? For Sara, this is the kind of event she would be arranging in her role as Community Marketer, not to mention that she likes the local barcamp guy, whurley, and simply enjoys putting together and attending the event.

I ask her how she'd sell barcamps to corporations. The pay-back, for the cheap price, is a bucket of whuffie (good will and social capital) and an audience that's more passionate than passive. The lack of "the corporate smell," Sara says, brings higher quality attendees.

While at barcampAustin this year, my pal Zane Rockenbaugh (Dog Food Software) and I recorded a series of interviews with barcampAustin and SXSW attendees and friends. We dubbed it Profiles in Courage, and now they're yours to enjoy.

Download the episode directly here, subscribe to the RedMonk Radio podcast feed to have it automatically downloaded to iTunes or other podcatcher, or just click play below to listen to it right here:

Building a SaaS

In the fifth episode of Profiles in Courage, barcampAustin edition, Zane and I talk with Scott Diedrick, Director of Development at Mumboe which provides a SaaS for contract and agreement management.

Being the head of development for a Software-as-a-Service business, I start out asking Scott to walk us through how you build a development team and plan to deliver a SaaS. First, we talk about picking a technology stack: whether it's rails, Flex, Ajax, or whatever front-end. Picking a stack is an important first, of course, because that drives the sorts of developers you hire. As a SaaS, you have to get your data-center lined up; while Mumboe has it's own somewhere, Scott would recommend Amazon EC2 for new startups.

SaaS Development Teams

Next, we move onto the developer profiles. Scott puts a lot of emphasis on developers with user interaction skills. SaaS's are often updated and refreshed much more quickly than packaged software, driving the importance of usability. Out of a team of 6 developers, Scott has two people focusing on usability and UI. Since Mumboe has a try-before-you-buy plan, a good interface is key to Mumboe's marketing and sales process.

Thinking about the tense relationship between developers and UI folks in my past, I ask Scott to tell us how the day-to-day goes between the UI guys and developers: the designer/developer workflow/collaboration, if you will.

SaaS Project Management

Next, I ask Scott to tell us how the development methodology and project planning is driven by SaaS's ability to deliver early, and deliver often. After launching, they were on a cadence of two week iterations to work out bugs and get feature refinements in quickly. But as they moved into adding "big features," they'd need more than two weeks. Also, Scott points out, that a monthly update to the software drives a lot of new work for marketing, docs, and sales, all of which have to update their own material and knowledge for the new releases. With more frequent releases, comes more churn.

Is the hassle worth it? It sounds like so: customers see fixes and new features every two weeks, instead of six months or more. Customers, of course, enjoy this rapid feedback loop.

The Austin Condo Scene

Closing out, since Scott lives in a fancy condo over in East Austin, I ask Scott to comment on the condo scene in Austin. Scott divides it into two parts: the low-rise condos (usually a half or a mile away from downtown) and the high-rise condos (in downtown).

While at barcampAustin this year, my pal Zane Rockenbaugh (Dog Food Software) and I recorded a series of interviews with barcampAustin and SXSW attendees and friends. We dubbed it Profiles in Courage, and now they're yours to enjoy.

Download the episode directly here, subscribe to the RedMonk Radio podcast feed to have it automatically downloaded to iTunes or other podcatcher, or just click play below to listen to it right here:

The Unfollow Quandry

In the fourth episode of Profiles in Courage, barcampAustin edition, Zane and I talk with Alex Muse of Big in Japan.

We start out talking about the new online etiquette quandary: is it polite to unfollow someone in Twitter? How do you sort out this gift economy stuff when the gift is your attention?

The Dallas Tech Scene

Being based up in Dallas, I ask Alex to profile the tech scene in the Dallas area. Alex says that he's sort of frustrated with the tech scene in Dallas, jealous of Austin's and, of course, the bar area. From this, Alex and some bar-bound friends started up bi-weekly happy hour events up in his parts. This kicked of Spring Stage, where the drink-together idea is spread to different tech scenes nationally. There's some impressive outcomes from Spring Stage: Alex knows of 6 startups that have grown from it.

Here, I ask Alex to profile the technology tribes up in Dallas. He says there's some rails guys and increasing mobile interest. Pulling back from the hotness technologies, I ask what the other, more traditional tech silos are like: for example, Sabre/Travelocity is up there, along with Match.com and about 4 other online dating sites. In the past, there was QueCat, which we all fondly remember

Dallas vs. Forth Worth

Wrapping up, I ask Alex to tell us what Dallas folks think of Fort Worth folks. From an outsider's perspective, "DFW," seems like one big metroplex. But, from within, Dallas is "totally different" than Fort Worth.

While at barcampAustin this year, my pal Zane Rockenbaugh (Dog Food Software) and I recorded a series of interviews with barcampAustin and SXSW attendees and friends. We dubbed it Profiles in Courage, and now they're yours to enjoy.

Download the episode directly here, subscribe to the RedMonk Radio podcast feed to have it automatically downloaded to iTunes or other podcatcher, or just click play below to listen to it right here:

The Austin Tech Scene

In the third episode of Profiles in Courage, barcampAustin edition, Zane and I talk with Mando Escamilla of Symbiot.

Him being a local, I ask him what he thinks of the Austin tech-scene. He says it seems "obsequies," more specifically, that it's highly fragmented and not too well connected. It seems, he goes on, that tech people are not too social with each other. Why? Perhaps because of the city is spread out, maybe because there's no big name employers, maybe it's another reason.

Rails Update

I then ask Mando to give us an update on the rails community. To hear him tell it, the old school rails folks have made up with the merb folks and are successfully preventing community forking.

Desktop Ajax?

From here, we get into a discussion of RIA's, specifically about desktop RIAs. While he's been skeptical, Mando recently started using a new Twitter app, Spaz. This gets us into a discussion of using desktop RIAs to develop Ajax applications, as opposed to using Flex or another non-HTML language. Here, I dig deeper to get Mando to tell us if he'd move to desktop application development using this model. We brain storm about what'd this look-like and how you might transition to it.

He's still reluctant to move from web applications, but he's starting to creek open the door a bit on the possibility. Still, he likes that Spaz is all HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but on the desktop. (See more commentary on this in a recent post of mine about RIA's at SXSW).

Disclosure: Adobe is a client, as are Microsoft and Appceletor.

While at barcampAustin this year, my pal Zane Rockenbaugh (Dog Food Software) and I recorded a series of interviews with barcampAustin and SXSW attendees and friends. We dubbed it Profiles in Courage, and now they're yours to enjoy.

Download the episode directly here, subscribe to the RedMonk Radio podcast feed to have it automatically downloaded to iTunes or other podcatcher, or just click play below to listen to it right here:

The Human Relational Database

In the second episode of Profiles in Courage, barcampAustin edition, Zane and I talk with Mark Cathcart, Director of Systems Engineering at Dell. I start out asking Mark about his life in the IT world, starting off, as he put, as a relational database where he shuffled punch cards to look up demographics and other info through the punch card hatch.

After this, we dip into Mark's time at IBM working on systems, in particular a little stint he had in the hospital making "scribbly diagrams" and working on one of the earliest IBM laptops.

Chips, man

Pulling ourselves from the IBM days, Mark tells us what he's up to at Dell. This gets us into a discussion of laptop chips, ARM processors and the trick the power button plays on you.

Getting to one of my favorite boondoggle ideas, I ask Mark what he thinks about the looming problem of multi-core programming. The core issue is getting developers to start doing multi-threaded coding as the normal course. When you cross the difficulty of caches, locks, and all that with the ease of virtualization, Mark says that there's "no point" in worrying about it too much for the average application developer.

Mainframe Heated Curries

Next, I ask Mark to tell us about his thoughts on cloud computing. While it's not in his current wheelhouse at Dell, he points to Dell's Jimmy Pike. Here, Zane's server room scotch tasting fantasies elicits a story from Mark about warming his curries in cruise-line IBM mainframes.

Pulling out another pet-topic, we discuss netbooks, which Mark doesn't have much of an opinion of, liking larger machines. Somehow, this gets us to talking about the Office ribbon.

The Singles Car

Finally, we close out with a non-tech topic. What with the Austin commuter rail coming in, eventually, I ask Mark to tell us about the idea of "The Singles Car" in New York and if that'd work here in Austin. As Mark says, "I don't think it needs it here in Austin. there's enough cool places to go that you don't need to hang out on a train to meet someone."

Disclosure: IBM and Dell are clients.

While at barcampAustin this year, my pal Zane Rockenbaugh (Dog Food Software) and I recorded a series of interviews with barcampAustin and SXSW attendees and friends. We dubbed it Profiles in Courage, and now they're yours to enjoy.

Download the episode directly here, subscribe to the RedMonk Radio podcast feed to have it automatically downloaded to iTunes or other podcatcher, or just click play below to listen to it right here:

Cloud Boy

Zane and I kicked off Profiles in Courage, barcampAustin edition, talking with Jesse Silver, co-founder CloudCamp and the CCIF. We jump right in and start talking about "large, New York banks" are using cloud computing. From there, we get Jesse to tell us about the history of CloudCamp. We go over the unconference format and the sponsorship options. Part of the idea of CloudCamp - as with all "camps" - is that local folks take over organizing camps regionally: so there's CloudCamps in San Francisco, London, Atlanta, and one coming up April 24th and 25th in Austin.

Selling Cloud Standards

Tacking back to cloud computing in general, I ask Jesse how he'd reply to a common reply I get about cloud standards: I'm a (cloud) startup, and I don't have time to worry about standards bodies. This gets us into a discussion of the current cloud standards efforts.

Get Into Software

Finally, I ask Jesse what he thinks of the software industry now, is it a good field for "The Kids" to get into, or is it tapped out? Jesse's answer - painfully summarized - is that software is in and helps drive everything, so of course it's good to be in.

Download the episode directly right here, subscribe to the feed in iTunes or other podcatcher to have episodes downloaded automatically, or just click play below to listen to it right here:

I was catching up with one of my analyst colleagues recently and thought our conversation would do well as a podcast. Indeed, in the course of the resulting RedMonk Radio episode, we end up talking about some of the more interesting findings Vishwanath "Vishy" Venugopalan (@midtownninja in Twitter) has come across after taking a survey of virtualization use out in the wild.

Here're some of the highlights of the discussion:

• Vishy's time on Wall Street as a developer. The development is all about getting advantage with data & information.
• Virtualization talk - what's it looking like out there in the data centers? Talking with small and medium businesses about their virtualization efforts: a lot more virtualization out there than expected.
• The first wave of virtualization management problems. Charge-backs, managing pools of resources.
• How do people really think about applying charge-backs in companies? It's a pretty foreign concept for most x86 based companies.
• Dividing up the virtualization world into tribes - but still, the basics are needed, no matter which tribe you're part of
• Finally, I ask Vishy about my current pet topic: What's up with Netbooks?

Download the episode directly here, subscribe to the RedMonk Radio podcast feed to have it automatically downloaded to iTunes or other podcatcher, or just click play below to listen to it right here:

In this sponsored episode of RedMonk Radio, I talk with Karl Pietri of Slideshare, along with Luke Kanies and Andrew Shafer of Reductive Labs. We discuss how Slideshare uses Puppet to manage all of it's data-centers, spread across geographies, their own on-premise servers, and the cloud via Amazon EC2.

First, we go over the Slideshare architecture (a Ruby on Rails shop) and how that drives the layout of the data-center. Karl then tells us how Puppet is used to manage the different servers, highlighting how they use it for private/public cloud mixing. On this point, I ask Andrew to compare Slideshare's use with others in the Puppet community.

Getting down the to the day-to-day operations, we spend the last part of the show talking about how Puppet fits into Slideshare's release management (via SVN) and how it's effected the relationship between development and operations.

Finally, we wrap up with a semantic-check on the word "pager": are sys admins still running around with beepers still?

Disclosure: Reductive Labs is a client and sponsored this podcast.

Download the episode directly here, or subscribe to the podcast feed to have it automatically downloaded.

When I was in his neck of the woods last, I got the chance to talk with Sun's Danny Coward, the Chief Architect of Sun's Client Software (that is, Java SE, Java ME, JavaFX and JavaCard), about Java 6 Update 10. That seems like kind of a narrow topic to speak to, but as Danny and I discuss, it's a big release for Sun's RIA and client-side (re-)push.

Along those lines, we spend a lot of time detailing the re-written plugin that's used for Java applets and JavaFX, the improved installer and update experience, and other client side features like one of the new GUI look-n-feels, Nimbus.

Update 10 is available now. Also, check out Danny's The Planetarium, his daily, but fantastically concise news-link blog.

Disclosure: Sun is a client and sponsored this podcast.

Download the episode directly here, or subscribe to the RedMonk Radio podcast feed to have it automatically downloaded to iTunes or other podcatcher.

Over the past few months, I've seen an up-tick in announcements and mentions around Austin-based Surgient. I visited with them a little over a year ago to hear about their virtual lab management and hosting services. In the mean time, as we learn in the podcast, they've extended their product line to on-premise installs to help IT departments deliver self-service developer, QA, and other virtual labs.

Their motto, "Self-Service Virtualization Automation and Lab Management" is pretty damn descriptive.

If you're interested in the overall virtualization market, it's worth listening to Dave Malcolm, their CTO and Senior VP of Product Development.

Disclosure: While Surgient is a client, we talk about several companies who are, like IBM and Microsoft. See the RedMonk client list for others mentioned.

This episode is in two parts: part 1 and part 2. Also, you can just subscribe to the RedMonk podcast feed to have them automatically downloaded to iTunes or other podcatcher.

Recently, I recorded a podcast with Luke Kanies and Abe Ingresoll (of Shopzilla) about Shopzilla's use of Puppet for server configuration management. Abe walks us through the decision to start using Puppet and then the roll outs the initial did as they added new data-centers.

Also, in part two of this episode, Abe asks Luke for about upcoming features and gives Luke a wish-list of features: top among them integrating with asset management systems. Luke, of course, tells Abe (and us) about what we can expect to see along those lines in upcoming Puppet releases.

Disclosure: Reductive Labs is a client and sponsored this podcast.

This episode is in two parts: part 1 and part 2. Also, you can just subscribe to the RedMonk podcast feed to have them automatically downloaded to iTunes or other podcatcher.

Recently, I recorded a podcast with Luke Kanies and Abe Ingresoll (of Shopzilla) about Shopzilla's use of Puppet for server configuration management. Abe walks us through the decision to start using Puppet and then the roll outs the initial did as they added new data-centers.

Also, in part two of this episode, Abe asks Luke for about upcoming features and gives Luke a wish-list of features: top among them integrating with asset management systems. Luke, of course, tells Abe (and us) about what we can expect to see along those lines in upcoming Puppet releases.

Disclosure: Reductive Labs is a client and sponsored this podcast.

Download the episode directly here, or subscribe to the RedMonk Radio podcast feed to have this and other episodes downloaded automatically for you.

I recently talked with Reductive Lab's Luke Kaines and Google's Nigel Kersten on the topic of Puppet. First, we go through a quick overview of what Puppet does - establishing the desired configuration of machines by modeling services and then enforcing that model.

As I note in introducing Nigel, while Puppet is well known for managing servers, I haven't heard about it being used too much to manage desktops, making his expierience that much more interesting. On this note, later in the conversation, Luke paints out the many different scenarios that Puppet is used in: from servers, desktops, to new situations like virtualized installs, even on Amazon EC2.

Using Puppet at Google

Nigel has been using Puppet to manage "many, many thousands" of Mac desktops used at Google by developers and others. He tells us how he got involved in using Puppet last year during WWDC last year and quickly applied its use to managing Google Mac desktops.

How Puppet Works

I then ask Luke and Nigel to tell us how people usually get started with Puppet. Both recommend starting with a very small service to get started quickly, for example, managing sudo or SSH. As Luke explains, sudo is the command that allows users to execute other commands with administrative privileges, and managing it means ensuring that sudo itself is permissioned and configured correctly for use. Nigel says that, indeed, this is exactly the service they started with.

We then dip into the details of Puppet by talking about the modeling language that it uses. While Puppet is written in Ruby, the modeling language isn't, being more like "the psuedo-code you write down when you're planning what a program should look like," as Nigel says. On the topic of the modeling language, Nigel comments on new user's common reaction to the language, namely looking for something more script-ish. The point of the language is to simply model resources rather than describing in detail how to go about configuring those resources. As such, there's more giving up control on how configuration desires are fulfilled - focusing on the what and ignoring the how, as Luke says.

Deploying Puppet and Ongoing Use

At this point, I get curious about how Puppet itself is configured and deployed. Each machine to be managed needs the Puppet agent installed that works with the main Puppet server. Nigel also tells us how his team tracked down the unmanaged desktops in Google.

Here, we get into the ongoing use of Puppet once the initial setup is done. Luke talks about his ideas that admins and operations people would benefit from thinking more like developers - using the term "infrastructure developer." For example, Nigel talks about using a version control system to keep track of the configuration models used by Puppet and Luke talks about work that he and Andrew Shafer (at Reductive Labs as well) are doing around brining unit testing to operations.

Expanding Puppets Use in Google

Finally, while wrapping up, Nigel tells us that his group has convinced the people using CF Engine to manage Linux work-stations to start switching over to Puppet. More than just cause for Luke to do a little dance, this is interesting because, as Nigel says, it's encouraging the Mac and Linux operations groups to collaborate more which, one would hope, would increase their overall effectiveness both in human terms (reducing repetitive work across the two groups) and work-product quality (making sure both actually have the exact same effect when desired across both platforms).

Disclaimer: Reductive Labs is a client and sponsored this podcast.

Download the episode directly here, or subscribe to the feed in iTunes or other podcatchers to have RedMonk podcasts downloaded automatically, including this one.

During RedMonk's Unconference at JavaOne this year, I had the change pull aside Mik Kersten and Ian Skerrett for a little conversation about what it's like to be a commercial company (TaskTop) operating in the Eclipse ecosystem. A large part of Eclipse's mission is to build out the open source foundation for a commercial ecosystem and I'm always curios how that works out - for example, I ask how projects draw the line between what's part of Eclipse proper and what's commercial. Also, I ask Ian how the Eclipse Equinox stuff has been going (though it's only 6 weeks since announcing, as he points out): check out his post on p2 as well. Finally, we talk about OSGi in Glassfish.

Disclaimer: Eclipse is a client, as is Sun.

In this episode of RedMonk Radio, Stephen O'Grady and I talk with SnapLogic's Chris Marino and John Bennett.

Really Simple Integration

We start out with an overview of what SnapLogic is and does. As Chris says, "SnapLogic is an open source data integration framework that allows people to very quickly build data integrations that replaces the hand-coded, point to point integrations they're using today." The idea that SnapLogic bills itself under is "Really Simple Integration," which drives the choice to be a highly web-influenced architecture. Put simply, SnapLogic lets you pull data from various sources, transform them, and then provide them as a simple URL with RESTful features.

We discuss SnapLogic's choice of python as the base language which I found interesting when I first heard about it. Chris comments that the language is keyed in nicely to enabling data integrations and transformations.

Using SnapLogic

I then ask Chris to walk us through a scenario of using SnapLogic to combine two data streams together - to make a mash-up, as it were. Building on the idea that SnapLogic is very web architecture centric, Chris explains how you would define "resources," for example, reading out of a database, a file, or another source of data. If needed, there are transformation resources if needed. The two are combined together into pipe-lines that eventually spit out in the RESTful interface. As I note and then we discuss each of these components are then available to be re-used and re-combined if that makes sense.

Though SnapLogic Chris and John don't cover it in depth here - this being an audio only podcast - the Flex-based SnapLogic IDE is worth checking out a screencast of SnapLogic in action.

Getting Started with SnapLogic

Stephen then asks how developers can get started with SnapLogic. As Chris notes, SnapLogic is GPLv2'ed so you're free to go download it and start using it. He gives us another scenario for pulling data from a database and then using the SnapLogic tool to assign the results of the query to a URL, something like http://theurl/cote/database_query. Again, the idea being that your end-goal is get a URL that returns the desired data in formats like XML, CSV, plain-text, or other representations.

John adds to this the idea of building up a library of these resources to re-use with different people who're interested in consuming the data. This segways into a discussion of the meta-data features that SnapLogic has. They expose meta-data about services in a web page, describing the data service, listing related services, and then allowing you to cross-launch into the web-based design tool.

Enterprise Features

I then ask about SnapLogic's enterprise-grade features. Ostensibly, you can compare what SnapLogic does to Yahoo! Pipes, but, being targeted at businesses and on-premise use, there are, no doubt, additional management and security options. Chris notes that part of the benefit of using a web-based architecture is that SnapLogic can use the same security and access management as other web-based applications.

After discussing some cross-organizational scenarios they've seen people using SnapLogic for, I ask Chris and John to compare the way SnapLogic does data integration with the traditional methods. We then get into a mini-discussion of FTP, EDI, CSV, and other exciting data formats and data extract scheduling.

SnapLogic and WaveMaker

Pulling back to more modern times, Chris talks about working with WaveMaker at Web 2.0 Expo last week - also, some brief video here. As I'm always painting out the need for RIA layer people to get a back-end - that is content and data - this topic is interesting.

Cloud Computing

Stephen then brings up the topic of cloud computing, asking how developers who're doing cloud work could use SnapLogic. This gets to an interesting discussion about using SnapLogic not only for data integration, but also as a sort of URL-accessible "stateless compute resource": that is, submitting asynchronous or synchronous jobs to a SnapLogic layer for processing.

John adds in that the web-centric nature of SnapLogic makes it a good fit for the cross-platform nature of most cloud architectures: since everything is accessible by a URL, there aren't exactly the same cross-platform problems and re-combing two different parts of a system together is, hopefully, easier to do with URLs than direct connections over traditional APIs.

SnapLogic 2.0

Rounding up the general overview of what SnapLogic does, I ask Chris and John to go over the SnapLogic 2.0 release. John starts by saying they "completely re-engineered the product" with an eye towards performance and delivering on the really simple integration idea, for example, with the meta-data directories. Also, while being in python, they've now added a Java library and are targeted to add more languages. They've also improved the designer tool. Finally, in addition to the community edition, they've introduced different commercial packaging options: developer and enterprise editions. Chris adds that they've added several different representations that data can find itself in as well as new sources of data, such as screen-scraping web pages.

When then talk about how SnapLogic fits in as a sort of data-access middleware layer for ISVs who'd want to bundle SnapLogic into their own product. The idea here being that SnapLogic can sort out the data access issues, allowing the ISV to focus on the use of that data, for example for dashboards, business intelligence, and other ways of looking through and using data.

Since Chris was at Web 2.0 Expo last week, before wrapping up, he gives us a brief overview of his thoughts. He was suprised at the amount of enterprise people there, though he heard some carping that there was perhaps too much enterprise. As I say, it sounds like there was plenty of "2.0" there, but a mix of "Web" and "Enterprise" in front of it.

Disclaimer: SnapLogic is a client and sponsored this podcast.

In this episode I talk again (see episode #42) with ESM blogger John Willis. We talk about open source in IT management, but more than that, we talk about possible ways the data center landscape could change ("Infrastructure 2.0," if you will): namely, Hardware-as-a-Service, which essentially means hosting your stuff behind a URL instead of on-premise (you, know, more or less). Whatever it may actually mean, it seems all this *aaS stuff is a big change waiting to happen when it comes to the way IT management is done.

For example, if a new business opened up and ran completely off URLs, what role would existing IT management thinking and vendors have? Not much, it seems.

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of talking with Erich Gamma about his current work on Rational's Jazz project. Erich first gives us a general overview of Jazz, and then we discuss the motivations for Jazz, highlighting ways it aims to help geo-distributed teams and better document desires and explanations in code. We also talk about Jazz's architecture: how it can be deployed as a whole, or taken part-by-part.

Next we get into a discussion of how to manage the "openness" of a project like Jazz, where-in Erich makes some interesting comparisons to the way Eclipse was developed early on. Tied up with this is a brief discussion of how thinking about commercializing the architecture enters general design thinking.

Rounding out the Jazz portion of the podcast, I ask Erich about the use of REST over SOAP (or other WS-* stuff) in Jazz.

Since Erich was up at OOPSLA '07 this week, we end the podcast talking about the keynotes and other goings on at OOPSLA. In particular, we talk about the difference between the Fred Brooks model for software development teams and the more team-lead method of Agile development teams. Check out the OOPSLA '07 podcast for the keynotes Erich mentions.

Thanks to Bill Higgins for helping get Erich and I together ;>

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

Disclaimer: IBM and Eclipse are clients.

A few weeks ago, I talked with John Willis about enterprise systems management. I found the conversation quite fun and interesting. John Willis is an independent, Tivoli consultant, so he's got all sorts of good, frank content.

We talk about his "What Does Bob Want?" story which discusses getting the ESM software to tell the CIO what he actually want to know: that the IT is working, end-to-end. Also, we talk about SOA and ESM, and then open source in the IT management space. As ever, John is particularly into Puppet.

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode of RedMonk radio, I talk with Ryan Stewart, newly of Adobe, and RIA blogger at ZDNet. We swap notes on what Adobe evangelists do vs. what RedMonk does, talk about this year's foocamp, talk about the RIA road-testing we expect to see in the next year, and then end up talking about the never ending quest for UI frameworks that don't suck and can remain useful over many different releases.

Disclaimer: Adobe is a client.

Talk early, and talk often.

In this episode, Coté talks with Scott Mark about Agile QA, starting with a discussion of a book he recently wrote a chapter for, Agile Software Development Quality Assurance. Also, see Scott's commentary on the book. We talk about the chapter, but expand out to his experience with Agile QA and Agile development in general.

I like this episode because Scott tells us what's been working for him and his group, esp. when it comes to cultural practices and changes.

Thanks again to Scott Mark for "calling in," and putting up with some hijinks to get the call going ;>

(Fun drinking game: take a shot every time Coté says he won't ramble-on or "editorialize" and then does, ad nauseum. Advanced players: include dog barking as well.)

In this episode, James and Coté talk with Archie Roboostoff of NetManage about their general offerings and idea of "Incremental SOA." The idea there being that it's better to slowly, but in short release cycles, roll out an SOA-based systems, esp. in the world of "legacy" integration and updated that NetManage operates in.

In this episode, Steve and Coté talk with Andy Astor of EnterpiseDB.

We discuss what EnterpiseDB does, what it's like to provide support for open source, and then tackle the question of "what is an open source company?"

All in all, I think it was a nice episode, if I don't say so myself. Thanks to Andy and his silent buddy Christian ;>

Disclaimer: EntepriseDB is a client.

In this episode, James and Coté talk with Thomas Otter and Jeremiah Stone, both of SAP.

This episode is long, but we talk of many things:

• "A Passion for Boring"
• Broccoli and Ice Cream
• Blaming ERP
• SAP's Design Services Team
• Working With Your UI
• The Sloppy Space of Master Data Management

Enjoy!

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, Anne and Coté talk about: Nexaweb, AJAX and middleware, The Culture of Interrupting, When Work Has No End, Mute Buttons, and Personal Agile.

Happy holidays, everyone, and have a good new year!

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this IBM sponsored episode, we talk with several folks from IBM and Belgium based KBC about KBC's use of EGL on System z. We start out going over how KBC came to use EGL and it's benefits, and then wrap-up with some mainframe culture talk.

Thanks to all of our participants for this episode:

• Lieven Gouwy, KBC, ICT Architect Development Infrastructure
• Johan Gebels, KBC, ICT Architect Development Infrastructure
• Dirk Doyen, KBC, ICT Architect Development Infrastructure
• Ray Jones, IBM Vice-President zSeries Software Sales
• Stefano Sergi, IBM Market Manager, EGL
• Todd Britton, IBM Rational System z & i Strategy

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

Disclaimer: IBM is a client and we consulted with them around this podcast.

In this episode, I talk with the newest RedMonk member, Anne Zelenka.

As Steve and James both said, I'm thrilled to have Anne joining us. I've been looking forward to it. As they say, "we're expecting great things" ;>

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, James and Coté talk with Zend's Andi Gutmans about PHP, PHP on System i, the recent Zend/Microsoft partnership around IIS, recent database optimizations, how people are using PHP behind-the-firewall, and PHP development in general.

Thanks again, Andi ;>

Disclaimer: Zend and IBM are clients, as is Sun who we mention by way of Java.

Steve, James, and Cot&eaucte; talk about VMWare World, the virtualization/operating system cage-match, and the idea of "applications."

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, Coté talks with André Charland, Dave Johnson, and Alexei White all of Nitobi. We discuss Nitobi's RIA components, the world of AJAX and RIA, evolving the web, and the general state of the AJAX/RIA space at the moment.

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, Coté follows-up with Chip Holden and Mike Lunt, his former co-workers at BMC on their use of Agile in the large.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, James and Coté begin by talking about Oracle OpenWorld and Adobe Max (which were both this week), and then Steve O'Grady joins the discussion, bringing in thoughts on Oracle's Linux announcement this week and questions around the "forking the web" train of through.

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, recorded at ApacheCon US 2006, Coté talks with Alex Karasulu, Apache Member and, among other things, VP and PMC Chair for ApacheDS.

We talk about LDAP in general, the history and state of ApacheDS, and some future fun for the directory world.

Thanks to Alex and our intro man, whurley.

In this episode, James and Coté talk with Tarquinio Teles, CEO of Hoplon, about their decision to run their MMP game on System z mainframes with Linux.

The details of how Hoplon are using IBM's On Demand mainframes as a grid are interesting and slightly different than the mainframe story we're used to hearing. In fact, it seems quite similar to the coolness of Amazon's recent E2 launch.

So, check it out.

IBM has some additional material up on Hoplon as well.

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

Disclaimer: IBM is a client, though this is not a "sponsored" podcast.

In this episode, all three of us talk with Microsoft's Jason Matusow and Amy Marasco about the recently announced Microsoft Open Specification Promise. In addition to the OSP and standard in general, we spend quite a bit of time talking out loud about where a "free to use" standard starts and where a busineses core money-makers begin.

The quality of this recording is not too good. We were unable to use Skype, so I recorded the audio out of my phone. The results are fuzzy and "round," but listenable. Apologies to listeners, as well as Jason and Amy.

Disclaimer: Microsoft has been a client in the past.

In this episode Steve O'Grady and Coté talk about Apple's recent open source efforts, FileNet and IBM, IBM getting closer to the end user, and the frustration with Linux drivers.

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

Disclaimer: IBM is a client.

In this episode, Steve O'Grady (fresh back from vacation) and Coté talk about LinuxWorld, HP's announcement that they'll offer Debian support, and the Linux Standard Base.

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, Steve, James, and Coté talk about the idea of open data and the privacy and commercial concerns wrapped up in that discussion.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, Steve, James, and Coté talk about OSCON 2006, the changing working definition, if any, of open source, and other questions which Coté confuses himself by asking.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, Steve, James, and Coté talk about the tedious task of open sourcing a previously closed source code base. The narrower topic of discussion, of course, is open sourcing Java.

About half-way through, Steve breaks up a little bit. Please pardon the VoIP snafu.

...and we finally pick back up the thread of OSCON in the next, upcoming episode ;>

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, James and I talk about, among other things, open and free access to data public data, Jame's initial thoughts on The Long Tail, and how Stormhoek should clearly open WiFi wine bars in every town...at least the ones we live in ;>

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, Coté and James talk about systems management with a touch of Rails.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, Steve O'Grady and Coté talk with guest Simon Phipps about Microsoft's ODF plugin announcement.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

Disclaimer: Sun and IBM are clients.

In this episode, Steve, James, and Coté talk about:

• The difference between "SOA" and "mashup"
• SourceLabs Collaborative Systems Management
• The Dope of the Crowds
• WinFS

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

 

In this episode, Steve, James, and Coté talk about:

• SAP opening up
• Switching to Ubuntu
• Cisco's Infrastructure Landgrab, Reactivity
• Appliance Dreams

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, we talk with Sanjiva Weerawarana of WSO2. In part one, we talk about WSO2's web services products and way in which working on an open source code base effects the rest of your organization.

This is the first part of our discussion with Sanjiva. The second part will be out shortly.

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, we talk with Sanjiva Weerawarana of WSO2. In part one, we talk about WSO2's web services products and way in which working on an open source code base effects the rest of your organization.

This is the first part of our discussion with Sanjiva. The second part will be out shortly.

You can download the episode by clicking here.

Or subscribe to the podcast feed (in iTunes, for example): http://feeds.feedburner.com/RedmonkRadio.

As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

For those about to webhost, we salute you!

In this episode, James Governor and Coté talk with René Wienholtz of STRATO, a quite large hosting provider in Europe.

But first, we start with a preview of RedMonk travel and some commentary on Crocs.

Links of interest:

• Ed Brill Doesn't Like Crocs
• Crocs Shoes
• STRATO AG
• STRATO UK
• Strato-Monitor.de

You can download the episode by clicking here.

Or subscribe to the podcast feed (in iTunes, for example): podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

This is part two of a special edition of RedMonk Radio shared with my other podcast, The DrunkAndRetired.com Podcast. You can check out more details from the first part.

In this part, we talk about:

• More on JavaScript runtime cooperation
• Doing business in the the de facto world of JavaScript
• The slow death of IE6
• Java Webstart
• Enterprise AJAX
• Browserless JavaScript unit testing
• Selling and marketing AJAX
• MDA, or Magazine Driven Architecture
• The wide open, ready-made AJAX market

You can download the episode by clicking here.

Or subscribe to the podcast feed (in iTunes, for example): http://feeds.feedburner.com/RedmonkRadio.

As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

This is part one of a special edition of RedMonk Radio shared with my other podcast, The DrunkAndRetired.com Podcast.

My podcasting buddy, Charles Lowell, is the founder of The Front Side, a company he's starting around an AJAX framework, Freestyle, that he and his people have worked on for the past year. So it made sense to get him and André Charland, of eBusinessApplications, together to talk about the technology and business of AJAX. Or "making money with AJAX" as I like to call it.

That's a topic both podcast audiences will enjoy, so here we are sharing an episode between both podcasts ;> So enjoy the episode!

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, James Governor and Coté talk about more JavaOne 2006, innovating at large companies, and the synchronized web.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, Steve O'Grady, James Governor, and Coté talk about Adobe Live, DRM, JavaOne, and the danger of making predictions.

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, Steve O'Grady, James Governor, and Coté talk about Debian, Web Service Kool-aid, toads driving cars, and other exciting topics.

There's a weird echo effect at times, so please pardon our mess ;>

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

In this episode, guest host Scott Mark interviews James and Coté about being an industry analyst. As we find out, it's not all wads of cash, fast cars, and jet-set travel. In fact, it's none of those at all ;>

 

This is the first installment of what we hope will be an ongoing series on RedMonk Radio with Scott interviewing analysts.

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

The music behind Scott's intro comes from Breakestra's "Family Rap".

In this episode, Steve returns and we talk about LinuxWorld and package management. The other voices are, of course, James and Coté.

For some nasty reason, this recording also has the same occasional cutting in and out as in episode 06.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

Disclaimer: I didn't note down all of the clients, but I believe we disclaimed them in the recording. If you have any questions about RedMonk's client, by all means email us and we'll gladly answer.

James and Cote' talk about testing SOA and old SOA in new bottles.

The upcoming episode 07 will have the exciting conclusion!

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

Disclaimer: I didn't note down all of the clients, but I believe we disclaimed them in the recording. If you have any questions about RedMonk's client, by all means email us and we'll gladly answer.

Cote' brainstorms about making software fun, we learn of Jame's and Chris's secret website, and we get a brief take on BEA.

You can download the episode by clicking here.

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As always, you can send comments to podcast@redmonk.com: MP3's or text would be great. Or, just leave comments below or on your own blog.

Disclaimer: BEA and Microsoft are clients. I may have missed others, please email me if you have questions about which companies, organizations, or people mentioned are clients or not. Also, James received no funding from Backup Your Data International for his comments on backing up your data.

In this episode, we talk with Chris Dalby about The 16 Hour Support Call.

Disclaimer: Microsoft is a client.

We continue last week's discusion, spinning up to even more abstract topics and somehow getting back to enterprise software.

James and I review what's been going on in the past week. The title says it all.