Why the cloud is the next Excel Rhys Jones CloudCamp London #5

supply Demand for IT change exceeds your organisation’s ability to

Budgets are getting smaller

< 10 % Of your workforce are professional developers

Of your workforce are professional developers

< 10 % of them are rock star developers

of them are rock star developers

100 % Of your workforce have MS Office which they can use to build their own applications

Of your workforce have MS Office which they can use to

How many user developed Excel or Access based applications are there in your organisation?

It’s only going to get worse (or better)

Gartner “ Software developed by business users is becoming more prevalent. Also, further exploitation of software skills by power users is inevitable. The smart applications organization won't fight this trend, but will exploit it via a set of governance practices.” Governance and the End-User Application October 2007

“ Software developed by business users is becoming more prevalent. Also, further exploitation of software skills by power users is inevitable. The smart applications organization won't fight this trend, but will exploit it via a set of governance practices.”

No, it’s going to get much worse (or much better)

100 % Of your workforce have internet access which they can use to build their own applications (or access the thousands of free or paid applications delivered as SaaS)

Of your workforce have internet access which they can use to

How are you going to control them?

isn’t it? But building “proper” systems is hard

But building “proper” systems is hard

Why? A disproportionate amount of the risk, complexity and effort is driven by non-functional requirements

A disproportionate amount of the risk, complexity and effort is driven by non-functional requirements

Infrastructure Platforms Software MS Office Google Apps Salesforce.com Technology Focus User Focus Sharepoint SimpleDB, S3 EC2, Cloudfront, Elastic IP Heroku, Engine Yard RAC Google App Engine RPX Now

What if? There was an Excel easy way of building applications in the cloud but which took care of all the non-functional capabilities automatically?

There was an Excel easy way of building applications in the cloud but which took care of all the non-functional capabilities automatically?

How hard can it be? A Reference for the Rest of Us! Building global, distributed, fault-tolerant, secure, high performance applications

12 hours Researching what components are needed, the costs involved and deciding the approach

Researching what components are needed, the costs involved and deciding the approach

15 mins To get authentication up and running using RPX basic (free)

To get authentication up and running using RPX basic (free)

15 mins To set up a scalable database infrastructure (free)

To set up a scalable database infrastructure (free)

8 hours To write the basic application functionality (free) Sinatra, REST Client

To write the basic application functionality (free)

15 mins To set up source code control and backups ($7 pm)

To set up source code control and backups ($7 pm)

30 mins To set up a virtual machine and deploy it to the cloud Amazon EC2 Vs. Roll your own Platforms Elastic Server on Demand

To set up a virtual machine and deploy it to the cloud

Done! < 2 days to a fully functional web application in the cloud with scalable data layer, security and code backup

< 2 days to a fully functional web application in the cloud with scalable data layer, security and code backup

Are we there yet?

Not quite Many options, lots of moving parts, so still requires confidence, knowledge, research and specialist skills Payments integration, auto-scaling, attack resistance (DDoS), load-balancing, monitoring, SEO etc…

Many options, lots of moving parts, so still requires confidence, knowledge, research and specialist skills

But… We are getting closer to a world where building applications for web scale is much easier

We are getting closer to a world where building applications for web scale is much easier

What does this mean for you?

How will your company manage the applications that are critical to your business when many are built outside of IT?

How will you retain your smartest people and their innovations ?

Cloud vendors, what are you doing to make your product attractive to the other 90% of the market ?

When it becomes easy enough will you be launching your own company?

Are the platform companies becoming the biggest early stage VCs?