Random Thoughts

Tony Asaro is back in the blogosphere. I particularly like his comment that Citrix (Xen) doesn't have a fully functional product. Say what you will about Mr. A, he ain't shy about tossing a bomb or two.

Bear Stearns is gone (and what a deal that was, the government insured the debt and the building alone is worth 4X what the company sold for). What's interesting is that Wall St. IT has always been considered the king of all that is IT – they have the most dough, the best people, etc. Guess what? It ain't true anymore. They still have the most dough, but the crown of IT gods lies now firmly in those who have mastered the wacky world of Web 2.0. Google and Amazon do way more interesting stuff with way less money and "talent" to drive value out of their IT operations. Why? Because instead of retrofitting legacy architectures and processes to work in the world of unknown value, totally unpredictable growth, and "make it work right now, not in 4 months" demands, they did they opposite. They started with those requirements (adding on "I want it free") and retrofitted those principals onto their business and distributed systems. People think Google runs its billing operations on loose components they pick up at Radio Shack, but they don't. They run the same transaction systems as you do. Their marketing and engineering folk don't use systems with wires sticking out of them; they use the same stuff you do. They just do it from a different perspective.

Speaking of Amazon, S3 is getting way more traction and attention than I would have thought possible. Since it's so non-core to their real business, I figured it was just a way for them to try to monetize their IT development efforts, but trends are pointing positively for them. They should split that business out, however, if they want to compete long term.

It's spring in New England. You can tell by the frozen flower buds, and that Manny Ramirez already spent 35 minutes watching his Japanese homerun that didn't exactly make it out of the park instead of running around the bases.