Presentation on the Application Development Landscape given as a keynote to the MassTLC CTO, developer and architect audience on December 15th in Cambridge, MA. Covers the key challenges and architectural decisions faced by developers. Topics include: Mobile, Cloud, SaaS, PaaS, Big Data, Analytics, etc.

1. APPLICATION
DEVELOPMENT - 2011
A World of Change

2. Broad Macro Changes
• Mobile • Consumerization of IT
• Social • HTML5
• Local • Component reuse
• Cloud • Open Source
• PaaS • Security challenges
• Big Data • Agile SCRUM

3. The Dawn of the Post-PC Era
Thanks to Mary Meeker and Matt Murphy

4. Mobile Internet - 10x bigger
Thanks to Mary Meeker and Matt Murphy

5. Mobile Computing changes
• Always with you. Always on. Always connected.
• Social: Leverage Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Local: GPS = amazing new apps
• New Device capabilities
• Touch interaction
• Camera & Camcorder
• Voice input
• Gyro + Accelerometer
• Easy Integration with key apps
• Maps, Phone, Contacts, Calendar, SMS messaging, etc.

6. Mobile + Cloud = Exceptional Power
• Access pretty much anything
• Maps, music, photos, social, etc.
• Apps can be made far more powerful
• Social connections
• Big data
• Huge compute power
• The cloud becomes your single storage point for stuff
• Documents, music, photos, etc.

7. Leads to a Wave of Innovation
Unmet Need
New Technology
Entertainment
Just passed 1 Million Mobile Apps
(Doubled in the last year)

8. Cross Platform Development
Smartphone & Tablet screen size

9. HTML5 versus Native Apps
Or Hybrid to get at Device Functionality such as Camera, GPS…

10. AppStores
• New distribution model
• Built in Billing and in-app commerce
• Open up new opportunities: Free to Paid

11. AppStore Revenue Projections
$’s Billions 40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
2011 2012 2015
Source: Canalys

12. CLOUD COMPUTING
A Major Revolution

13. Three Flavors of Cloud
SaaS Software
(Applications)
PaaS Platform
IaaS Infrastructure
(e.g. Amazon Web Services)

14. Before PaaS
Unit
Test
Functional
Test
Source Jenkins
Code Continuous Load
Managemnt Integration
Test
Developer IT
• “Please provision the following servers”
Integration
• “Please install the following software” Test
• “Please maintain and update the software”
• “Please create copies of my test databases”
• Etc.

15. With PaaS: Automated Provisioning
Unit
Test
Functional
Test
Source Jenkins
Code Continuous Load
Managemnt Integration
Test
Developer
PaaS Portal
• “Please provision the following servers”
Integration
• “Please install the following software” Test
• “Please maintain and update the software”
• “Please create copies of my test databases”

16. PaaS
• No Waiting
• No Errors

17. PaaS: Continuous Integration
Integrate,
Build
& Test

18. PaaS: Continuous Integration
Fail!

19. Continuous Integration
Unit
Test
Functional
Test
Source Jenkins
Code Continuous Load
Management Integration Test
Integration
Test

20. Test Workload: very spikey
Perfect for the public cloud

21. DevOps
Development Operations
•
•
?
“What’s the configuration?”
“Wait while I get that set up”
• “That didn’t work. Are you
sure you gave me the right
config?”

22. Continuous Deployment
PaaS
Automatically configures each environment
Development Staging Production

23. Continuous Deployment
PaaS
Automatically configures each environment
Development Staging Production
One Button Press

24. PaaS

25. Other Benefits of PaaS
• Automatic Scale-out
• New machines added and removed to handle varying load
• Fault tolerant: Session-level Failover
• Customer sessions/transactions are not lost when servers fail
• Not in all PaaS offerings

26. PaaS
Focus on the App, not the Plumbing
PaaS becomes the new
Operating System for
Applications

27. PaaS
Focus on the App, not the Plumbing
Impact: Much Faster Time-to-Market

28. How Enterprises move to the Cloud
SaaS
Private
Cloud
(IaaS & PaaS)
Private Cloud
• Secure
• Easy access to Data
Drawbacks
• Expensive to Manage
• Not flexible

29. Hybrid Cloud
SaaS
Private Public
Cloud Cloud
(IaaS & PaaS) (IaaS & PaaS)

30. SAAS DEVELOPMENT

31. SaaS versus Licensed
Licensed Software Software as a Service
• 9-18 months for a new version • New version every month
• Support multiple old versions • Only one version to support
• Hard to get usage feedback • Instant feedback on usage
• Expensive to ship bug fixes • Fix bugs instantly

32. SaaS versus Licensed
Licensed Software Software as a Service
• 9-18 months for a new version • New version every month
• Support multiple old versions • Only one version to support
• Hard to get usage feedback • Instant feedback on usage
A Major Transition underway
• Expensive to ship bug fixes • Fix bugs instantly

33. SaaS: New Challenges
• Multi-tenancy
• Usage tracking, Billing
• Big Data
• Scaling and Fault Tolerance
• Etc.
Note: PaaS can help solve many of the above

34. BIG DATA

35. Big Data: Structured
NoSQL
NewSQL
Cassandra
MySQL MongoDB
Sharded Etc.
MySQL

36. Big Data: Unstructured

37. Silo Problem
Structured Unstructured
SQL
NoSQL
NewSQL

38. Analytics
• What happened?
• What is likely to happen going forward?

39. Problem:
• Limited SQL
• Extremely Slow
• Incompatible with today’s
BI tools

40. Analytics
“Give Me Actionable Insights”

41. COMPONENTS
A huge gain in Productivity

42. Component Assembly and Mash-up
• Web Services
• Google Maps, Twilio, Facebook, etc.
• Open Source
• Databases, algorithms, reporting, etc.
• SaaS application APIs
• Salesforce.com, Dropbox, Google Apps, etc.

43. SOCIAL &
GAMIFICATION

44. Social Features add Power
• Many applications benefit from Social features
• Consumer
• Photo sharing
• Dating
• Hiring
• Finding new music, restaurants, etc.
• Enterprise
• Sales
• HR
• Marketing
• Consumerization of the enterprise

45. Gamification
• Use to encourage engagement and usage

46. SUMMARY
A World of new Challenges

47. Many Choices
• Languages
• Architecture
• Components
• Data Storage
• Features
• Security

48. With Power comes Responsibility
• A key part of the job of an Architect / Developer:
Making architectural choices
• Above all else: meet the business needs
• Time to market
• Flexibility
• Scalability
• Reliability
• Security
• Etc.