Lego Style Software Design

My company recently got the chance to work on a very interesting project (which unfortunately I can't divulge at the moment).  What made the project fun to work on, aside from the product level challenges, was the fact that we were given much more architectural flexibility than usual.

Amongst the work emerged the following:

My life in the Cloud

I am pretty much 100% in the Cloud now. Here's how I do it.

Services

• Email:  Google GMAIL (with "Tasks")
• Calendar:  Google Calendar
• Documents:  Google Docs (with a sprinkle of DropBox, going away soon enough)
• Music: combination of Rdio and Grooveshark
• Movies: Netflix  (on my Android devices, Apple TV and MacBook Pro)
• Code: Github
• Project Issue Tracker:  Lighthouse

What I gain:

• Mobility
• Availability
• Persistence
• Version Control

I don't need to worry about loosing / forgetting my laptop for work:  I just grab a spare one at work. Hence, business continuity is greatly improved over the traditional Microsoft "stack".

So, on my Linux/OSX PCs, I only need the following installed software:

• Google Chrome  (the auto-sync feature for bookmarks, extensions etc. is way cool :)
• Eclipse (with PyDev, Google Plugin, Egit)
• git

When it comes time to setting-up a complete working environment, I can turnaround one in under 1/2 hour! 

Security

The first reaction I get when I expose my workflow:  is this Cloud stuff secure?  To which I respond with a combination of the following:

• I would rather trust Google and their army of sysadmins than me when it comes to external security threats
• I never write down passwords nor credit card numbers in documents. Period.
• Doing business comes down to trust - being part of society requires trust
• My data is more secure located in the Cloud than on my laptop / desktop : those are too easy to lift

Availability

Another common reaction is about availability. I don't know about you guys, but Internet Access is pretty available nowadays and certainly Google is. For those of you worried about this dimension, consider:

• I have access through my Android mobile devices (carrier #1)
• I have access through my 3G dongle (carrier #2)
• I have access through my Cable Modem (carrier #3)

Yes I subscribe to 3 different carriers - I don't remember the last time I lost connectivity and was out of commission, business wise.

First contact with Microsoft Azure

I got my LiveID invitation code 2days ago so I decided to invest 15minutes evaluating Azure. I am already pretty familiar with Google AppEngine having developed my own Web site on it but since I am striving to be "technology agnostic", I needed to investigate Microsoft Azure PaaS.

Revision Control

My first shock was to learn that SVN integration does not exist with Microsoft Visual Studio. I wonder how Microsoft developers handle this critical activity. This process must be addressed but I do not know how, being a Microsoft .NET newbie.

Deployment

It appears as though the VS environment automates the creation of the CS file ( akin to a Java WAR file it seems ). But the kicker: one must go through the web portal to upload the file to the Azure fabric... a tedious process to say the least compared to the "one click" AppEngine deployment made possible through some simple scripting in Eclipse.

I'll surely follow the "Hello World" tutorial and hopefully get a better feel for Azure in the coming weeks.

Cloud Computing Mind Map

I invite anybody wishing to share their knowledge of the Cloud Computing market to edit (click the MindMeister image on the bottom righthand side of the map or here) the following wikimap:

Update: I'd like to thank Jim Dowson ( linkedin profile ) for his extended contribution!

Update 2: I would suggest collaborators complete their Skype profile when registering with MindMeister: this facilitates group discussion. Thanks!

Amazon Cloudfront CDN map

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Cloud VPN service

With the advent of Microsoft's Azure service, I can see network operators have yet another good reason to ponder a Cloud VPN service. 

Example: Operator X offers Customer Y a service to connect all the customer's locations (with Ethernet Access and E-LAN for example) to Data-Centre(s) from Google/Amazon/Microsoft etc.

Why? The Internet is a great transport vehicule but still lacks QOS. As companies are migrating their applications to Web based ones, QOS might be a concern in some cases. 

Cloud Computing Classification

The term Cloud Computing appeared to me too vague and thus I set out to investigate a bit further the question. As always, I resorted to my penchant for diagramming: