The return of the ASP
IBM gets serious about the Application Service Provider (ASP) Model.
IBM doubles down on software services
IBM have realized that they have to scale down to SMB (Small to Medium Businesses) and that means hosted services.
ASP must be inevitable - but had almost gone unfashionable due to the early failures of 2000-2002. But really those early attempts were just Facilities Management. I mean email over Citrix, who’d want that.
I think real ASP looks like this …
- True multi-tennanted applications
- All delivered over Port 80
- Trending to zero marginal cost for a new customer
- 100% Web based provisioning and management
Outlook 2003 with RPC over HTTP connectivity to Exchange is, I think, the first real horizontal ASP’able solution. You have all the benefits of a full mail client without caring where the mail server is.
For more vertical applications, building personalization and customization into component object models (as in ASP.Net 2.0) will be key building blocks for a new set of services.
ASP will arrive, and maybe IBM’s announcement will accelerate things. If ASP as a commecial model does arrive in the next 3-5 years then ASP.Net 2.0 and a healthy industry in 3rd party controls will be a key technology for delivery.
Cool service that allows you to be an American for US Postal purposes. They’ll even repack!
They send you an email when anything arrives and can choose what gets forwarded to wherever you are in the world.
Might have to re-subscribe to Wired. 12 issues $US10. Better than $NZ20 a copy here.
Ben Goodger, the Firefox lead that just went went to Google - setting web gossip abuzz, grew up in Auckland.
Michael Brooke sent me this link of showing a custom manufactured console for car mounting an iPod.
Belkin have a product that should allow you to run both a PC and Mac Mini with same Keyboard, Video and Mouse.
On news.com: Google snaps up top Firefox programmer.
Well that makes sense.
The C? language is an interesting attempt to bridge the impending mismatches involved in typical enterprise development efforts when crossing the boundaries of the relational, object oriented, and XML worlds.
Love this …
rows = select ContactName, Phone from DB.Customers;
foreach( row in rows ) {
Console.WriteLine(”{0}”, row.ContactName);
}
or even …
row = new{CustomerID = “ABCDE”, ContactName=”Frank”, CompanyName=”Acme”};
int n = insert row into DB.Customers;
Did anyone think that Whoosh was ever going to work?
So far at 49.8m cost over 5000 customers is almost 10k per signup.
Who do the investors talk to? They’ve poured more in.
Chief executive Bob Smith says Woosh’s finances are on track with the company’s business plan and the accounts need to be read “like you’d think about a company developing a major network, such as Sky TV”.
What!!!!
The AirNet boys got a bit carriered away with my permanent mast.
“It had to clear a tree”, they said.
So no hiding the house with Internet connectivity.
If you want some sun and a 2MB connection you can rent it out at www.waimaramabeach.co.nz
Michael Sampson has some excellent analysis of the Exchange Roadmap announcement.
Shared-spaces: Microsoft Gets a Roadmap for Exchange
The big news is the Jet based Exchange Store continues, which is of course great news for AfterMail.
Spotted on Tim’s site, this excellent graphic on Apples Tipping Point.
Check out the concept sketches of an idea in motion.
Microsoft have released another version of Avalon that runs over XP. Avalon is the new Windows graphics module and was one of the key Longhorn pillars. So it was a big deal last year when MS announced Avalon would be unbundled from Longhorn.
I was surprised on unbundling as I would have thought that making companies roll out a new OS is a hard call and therefore the more candy in there the better.
But I’ve also been wondering what the Office (which generates the bulk of the cash) strategy would be. Would the next version of Office be tied to Avalon and therefore be used to to pull through Longhorn OS upgrades.
MS has said that Office would support all versions of Windows. This strategy requires dual graphics library support - so much more bloat. (And As I’ve said before Word needs a rewrite!)
This doesn’t make sense to me. Surely you would want your flagship applications to use the new graphics features of a new OS.
So maybe (and this is a total guess) a subsequent version of Office actually does require Avalon and that’s why Avalon was unbundled so that the Office cash flows aren’t compromized through the Longhorn adoption phase.
Well the facts fit the theory anyway.
Just replaced my iMate Pocket PC phone with the new iMate Jam.
I wasn’t going to but the Vodafone shop had one in stock and it was small enough to be worth it.
I went for the Jam over the PDA2K because of
- Size
- I don’t really use wifi on my PDA
- I didn’t need the keyboard
Screen rotation utility is so far the best new feature though I’ve noticed that some of the phone features have been tweaked a bit.
Also they have changed the stupid charging socket plug for standard small USB. Yay!
PPC phones are evolving but I think we’re still a step away from the perfect device.
Forrester Research hit the nail on the head regarding the MacMini …
The Mini could do even better as an iLife appliance. Just as consumers have one large TV and several smaller ones in the kitchen, bedroom or den, we believe that consumers would buy a well-designed computer appliance tailored for their digital activities: music playing, music composition, photos or video.
That’s what I’m going to do.
Around 2 hours but you can skip through it. Steve Job’s product launches are the slickest thing in IT.
Well worth a watch.
The iPod stat’s are mindblowing.
Vintage IBM Type M ‘Clicky’ keyboards …
http://www.clickykeyboards.com
As everyone predicted a flash based MP3 player …
http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/
and new cheap mini-mac …
With the MacMini you can plug it into your existing PC kit, so I think I’ll pick one up for Website testing and playing.
Radio New Zealand’s first online series.
blog