Don't be afraid of SaaS, but Diligence is Required

I was disappointed with last weeks eWeek articles covering SaaS reliability. They covered KITE for measuring reliability, but did not cover similar offerings such as Gomez or Siteseer. Their top 10 things you should know now about SaaS read like a bunch of scare tactics; is it really cost effective, can they maintain SLAs, is the vendor viable - all real, legitimate concerns, but somewhat an imbalanced article without much mention on the possible benefits of SaaS. In contrast, CIO Magazine (through the Cutter Consortium) is reporting a poll showing that SaaS adoption is surging and that 63% are now using SaaS vs. only 32% in 2007. In addition IDC has increased its SaaS growth projection for 2009 from 36% growth to 42% growth over 2008.

SaaS is attractive to buyers because a software solution can be deployed rapidly and with low upfront cost. The better SaaS vendors will allow you to sign up for trials online and pay for small installments with a credit card. They'll openly publish SLA's and uptime performance. The best SaaS vendors publish their APIs and even sport developer networks or application libraries to help you build and integrate solutions. So what's not to like about SaaS?

For one thing, there are many vendors now selling their software as services. The enterprise and even small business sales cycle and success for software is challenging even in good times. SaaS gives the software vendor the possibility of selling at a faster sales cycle. The problem is that the SaaS vendor has to solve two fundamental technology problems: (a) writing and supporting really good software and (b) hosting many customers at competitive service levels and required security. Solving the hosting problem can be challenging, especially for young SaaS vendors or ones that are experiencing rapid growth. As the buyer, it can be very difficult to evaluate hosting and customer service levels without signing up and experiencing it. It doesn't get any easier for large SaaS vendors who have to figure out larger scale software rollouts, performance and scalability issues.

These potential risks can become real issues if business managers choose to sign up SaaS vendors without consultation or due diligence provided by the IT and legal departments. My advice - have a game plan on evaluating these vendors. I'll share some secrets in an upcoming post.
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Call 4th Down Audibles in Agile Development, But Don't Pull The Goalie

In agile development, it's ok to derisk and audible 4th down at iteration's end. But you still have to score and never pull the goalie (QA)
I got some questions about my tweet from last week on 4th down audibles and pulling goalies. Here's what I meant in more detail...

When you start an iteration, the team makes some best estimates on what can be accomplished in an iteration. The estimates are partially based on effort, but also based on risk. When a story's implementation requires familiar technologies, developers will often rate it low even if it requires significant effort. Developers tend to rate stories high when there is technical risk.

Halfway into an iteration and the team should be thinking about closing. When the iteration is going well, the team should be considering picking up new stories from the backlog. So what happens when the team hits a story (or stories) that has hit blocks or is just harder than anticipated? The product owner can help in these situations. The team has to hit the top theme and stories for the iteration and finish the iteration on time. You still have to score before the clock reads 0:00... But you can review the play call at 4th down by adjusting stories and even dropping a story if necessary.

At the same time, you have to stick with your values. For me, that means giving the QA team the time and input to validate the stories and release candidate. QA is the last line of defense, the "goalie", before customers get access to your product. If you're at a point where you need to compromise QA (e.g., "pull the goalie), my advice would be to write off the iteration and regroup.

The concept of closing reminds me of one of my favorite movie lines from Glengarry Glen Ross, "Always be closing". Seems appropriate for agile iterations...

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NAS Network Storage for the Home and Advice for Device Manufacturers

I expect that there will be a boom in storage device and services for the home market over the next couple of years. People are already consuming larger amounts of disk for audio, video, and images. With larger storage needs, backing up onto CD's or DVD's becomes more cumbersome. At the same time trends show that people are upgrading their PC's less frequently. The result is that they are stretching the lifetime of their PC hard drives increasing the likelihood of experiencing a hard drive failure.

In my case, I just needed more storage. I already use Amazon S3 and Jungledisk for backups. What I needed now was a large NAS to centralize and house all my digital photos and videos and wanted something with RAID capability for higher reliability.

I expect other consumers will be looking for similar capabilities, yet most of them will not have a technical background to understand these products and technical terminology. Sadly, I also think that the manufacturers of these devices will be missing an opportunity if they don't simplify their marketing language and their products.

In my search, I chose the D-Link DNS323 because I wanted something basic and low cost. In the end, my 1TB RAID 1 NAS cost under $400. I also looked at Netgear's ReadyNAS which seems to have more features, but is more expensive. Drobo also looked interesting, but purchasing the DroboShare also pushed up its price point.

Now I got the DNS323 to work, but not without some frustration and missed opportunities. Some specifics:

  • My device shipped with version 1.4 of the firmware yet the current version is 1.6. The average consumer won't realize that they should upgrade their firmware. Manufacturers should really build in a step in the initial configuration of a home device to validate the firmware version and offer to upgrade as part of the initialization.
  • On upgrading the firmware, there were warnings that I may need to reinitialize the drives after some firmware upgrades. Whaaat? So when D-Link puts out version 1.7+ I'll have to find a way to backup the RAID before upgrading? That policy may be best practice in a data center, but in the home, the average user won't have a backup device nor the time to backup before upgrading.
  • The drive needs a reboot after initialization, but the reboot process fails and gives no error messages. I thought my system failed but got it working after doing a hard reset. I'm guessing the average user would either give up or call the support line for help.
  • There is minimal online help as part of the quick 'wizard' setup.
  • I still don't have streaming working and have almost no help from the manual or online help on how to configure this function.
In my case, I'm still evaluating this product. It could be the perfect device for me, but sadly this device needs some better marketing, help functions, and operational functions if they want to be successful selling it to non-techies.

I'm reporting on this in my software blog because most of the issues I see in the DNS-323 are bad execution in implementing a software product. Poor documentation. Overuse of technical terminology. Complex, non-user friendly operations. Buginess.
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My Views on Twitter

I have to admit, but when I first heard about Twitter I thought it was a tool for the young and well connected. Instead of text'ing friends individually, a college student could Tweet her thoughts and let her friends know what clubs and parties to attend that evening.

Boy, was I wrong.

Then the bloggers and social media enthusiasts picked it up. PR picked it up. And today I saw to what extent newspapers participate on Twitter.

So why does Twitter Interest me?

The 140 character format has created a new DNA for messaging. It's the enforced elevator pitch. You can get on the soap box for 140 characters including the link to the full story.

A new media format. The message DNA, along with following other Twitters (the most basic social connection) has created a new media format. I'll read my favorite blogs on Google Reader, follow business topics on Business Exchange - but now have a new stream of interesting content from Twitter based on users I follow. It's easy to scroll through and find interesting stories to read, especially on my blackberry as I commute to the office.

Very democratic. I'll Follow people who have interesting Tweets . I can always Leave people who don't fit my interests.

Openness. Their APIs are open allowing developers the opportunity to build core and derivative applications.

Gives users control on professional and personal contributions. The most interesting Twitters strike a good balance and provide a "real life" view of themselves.

So despite being a late adopter of this site and still have ways to go in building a following, I'm sold on participation. I now tweet as a compliment to this blog, I'll post links to articles I find interesting, and occasionally will provide a view of my personal life. I'll provide small technology insights or just a thought of the day. I'm @nyike.
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Agile in 2008 to Twitter, Cloud Computing and Publishing in 2009

Looking back to 2008, I shifted this blog from covering startups and issues for CTOs (re: Startup CTO) and covered a lot about the agile software development life cycle. Having moved from a small company, to a startup, and then to an enterprise, much of what I wrote covered agile in the enterprise. Some titles included big questions enterprises should consider before going agile, ingredients on starting an agile practice, and getting enterprise executives to buy into agile. I also covered some practical matters on when to use (and not use) pair programming, a bit on the Scrum Master role, and on story writing vs requirements docs. I wrote a bit on organizational change, content agility, product planning, and agile load testing. My most popular post was on the Top 5 Attributes of Talented Agile Developers.

In 2009, I will continue writing on agile but will largely focus on roles, responsibilities, and processes on the periphery. This will include more on enterprise issues, product management, QA, and on offshore delivery models.

I will also cover a bit more on social networking, content agility, cloud computing/SAAS, and the publishing industry. In particular, I've become very interested in Twitter (I am @nyike) and how its created a new mechanism to contribute but also a very interesting media to consume. The evolution of hosting models; hosting, shared hosting, dedicated servers, application service providers, SAAS, PAAS, and cloud computing - all options for building and hosting proprietary applications but also options for buying and renting applications. Finally, I do believe it's an interesting time for traditional publishers (newspapers, magazines, television) who probably have one last chance (maybe) to appeal to digital audiences and transform their business models.

So on to 2009....
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About Isaac Sacolick

Isaac Sacolick is President of StarCIO, a technology leadership company that guides organizations on building digital transformation core competencies. He is the author of Digital Trailblazer and the Amazon bestseller Driving Digital and speaks about agile planning, devops, data science, product management, and other digital transformation best practices. Sacolick is a recognized top social CIO, a digital transformation influencer, and has over 900 articles published at InfoWorld, CIO.com, his blog Social, Agile, and Transformation, and other sites. You can find him sharing new insights @NYIke on Twitter, his Driving Digital Standup YouTube channel, or during the Coffee with Digital Trailblazers.