Highlights of OSBC 2009 - Day 2

The second day of the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco again had many thought provoking presentations. The day started with a trio of keynote presentations from executives from Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and IBM. In my opinion, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz's keynote address on Clouds was the best presentation of the Conference. (Disclosure: I work for Sun.) As a result, instead of summarizing the entire day, this post focuses on clouds.

As the hot new technology trend, Cloud computing attracts a good bit of interest and was mentioned in virtually all of the keynotes to some degree. I have been caught in the cloud hoopla too, but have had difficulty identifying what makes it different from software as a service. Until this morning, I have not been able to find an answer, but Jonathan Schwartz's presentation pulled together many of the missing pieces.

Schwartz explained Sun's vision for clouds, which includes 3 types of clouds each of which can be deployed in public and private environments. The three clouds are:

1. Infrastructure as a Service - This is a packaged operating system for use in a data center. Amazon's EC2 is a good example.

2. Platform as a Service - These types of clouds go a step beyond infrastructure while trading high switching costs for enhanced value. Google's docs and related services are an example.

3. Application as a Service - This is the type of cloud many enterprises have already experienced. It extends from a platform to implement a fully functioning application over a network in a manner similar to what we already experience on our computers. SugarCRM's offering is a common example.

The public/private distinction is important. While many enterprises will be able to utilize a public cloud and avoid the IT overhead, some enterprises will require private clouds behind their firewall to address security concerns and regulatory requirements (such as HIPPA and GLB in the health care and financial industries). Schwartz sees each enterprise utilizing a "network of clouds" that are mixed and matched to meet its needs.

While this taxonomy of Sun's vision of clouds made them relatively easy to understand, my moment of gestalt came as Schwartz explained that the cloud is not only the ultimate embodiment of super computing, but it is the next logical step beyond open source. As open source becomes a mainstream business strategy, I have struggled with the question of "what happens next?"

I now understand how the benefits of the open source in the application space can be amplified when applied to clouds. (On the point of open source as mainstream, Matt Asay, GM and VP at Alfresco, and co-founder of the OSBC, described the state of open source as reaching the end of the "cancer" phase and beginning the "pragmatism" phase, with a continued need to emphasize evangalism.) I also understand that the vision of clouds (not just Sun's vision) goes well beyond traditional SaaS offerings to encompass a much larger, interconnected infrastructure with much greater potential for a qualitative leap in how business is conducted and problems are solved. No doubt, cloud computing will keep the legal community busy for years trying to understand how to adapt our old methodologies to this new environment.

Matt Asay has his own post that emphasizes other elements of Schwartz's presentation that is worth reading.

For more details on Sun's cloud computing solutions, check out their web site.

[Updated to fix some typos.]