Clearspace Server Syndication Feed

The Benefits of Visualization

richard — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:39:12 GMT

John Sviokla in a recent Harvard Business Review blog post highlights the benefits of good visualization in understanding data. His post is appropriately titled "Swimming in Data? Three Benefits of Visualization" The three benefits he explains are as follows.

Efficiency - good visualizations let you understand the data much more quickly. This is something I have pointed out as a prime ROI benefit
New Insight - By combining different data into a single visualization we can gain additional insight. This is convincingly demonstrated with Curl's EyeDecide demo
Answering Key Questions - Good visualizations let you see answers to complex questions easily and quickly

Enterprise 2.0 Application Security Risks

richard — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:12:00 GMT

Recently PaloAlto Networks published a survey Social Networking Usage Explodes In Businesses Worldwide that found 27 different social networking applications in use across 95% of the participating organizations. The survey findings are based on actual analysis of application traffic, not survey questions. The following chart from the report shows that the most prominent use is Instant Messaging at 50%.

The survey makes the point that applications are not threats ? yet they carry risks.

"The adoption of Enterprise 2.0 applications is being driven by users, not by IT. The ease with which they can be accessed, combined with the fact that newer (younger) employees are accustomed to using them, points toward a continuation of this trend. The somewhat disconcerting fact is that users do not take into account the business and security risks that these applications present. Looking at the 202 Enterprise 2.0 applications found, 70% can transfer files, 28% are known to propagate malware, and 64% have known vulnerabilities."

All this points to increased security risks as more enterprise 2.0 applications see more pervasive adoption. As we have previously pointed out it is important that developers and IT operations both understand best practices with regard to security. Jeffrey Hammond points out in his paper on Securing Rich Internet Applications that is is important to understand the 3 Attack Surfaces: Server-side, Communication-stream and Client-side. In this post I'll focus on the client-side.

RIA frameworks use a Sandbox model the protect clients from malicious code. It is important to realize however that not all sand boxes are created equal. While Ajax, browser based applications use the browser's sandbox, RIA frameworks like AIR, Silverlight and Curl use their own security model and permit access to the local machine. It's natural that developers want to take advantage of the broader capabilities at RIA frameworks offer over the browser based sandbox but they need to be aware of how their decisions effect the vulnerabilities that these frameworks introduce.

To give administrators and application developers the most control over security for creating and deploying Enterprise 2.0 applications Curl supports both un-privileged and privileged modes executing in the browser and on the desktop. This is in contrast to AIR that allows only un-privileged in the browser and only privileged on the desktop. The follow table shows the differences between Curl and AIR privilege options.

Curl Desktop applications use the same security model as Curl applets that run in the browser. Additionally un-privileged applets can access their own area on the local disk to offer improved performance and a better user experience but present a much lower risk profile This also means that application developers can write un-privileged applications that make use of local storage and run both in the browser and standalone on the desktop.

Use Tactical Urgency to Introduce New Technologies

richard — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:19:04 GMT

Recently Kelly Emo, SOA Product Marketing Manager at HP Software wrote in her post "Is your SOA in Action? Four ways to keep it that way.." One element she offers in her "Obvious Insite # 3" is to use your SOA governance to drive adoption of new technologies such as RIA and Cloud Computing.

Much of my work over the last decade in getting new technologies adopted by enterprise IT has been under the proverbial banner of "Herding Cats". I have learned is that it is very hard to introduce new technology as part of the strategic plan and that SOA governance is often more of a roadblock than a driver.

Technologies that help integrate data between silos require the endorsement of too many chiefs and even with executive stakeholder support strategic efforts can fail under the urgency of immediate problems. In my experience with technology adoption of RIAs and EBSs from both the vendor and purchaser point of view I have found that even with a strong business imperative the inevitable urgency of tactical requirements derails the best strategic plans.

A better approach is to use a tactical urgency to demonstrate a real benefit. In this way it is possible to establish a beach head through a small project that demonstrates a believable ROI. From there you can position the technology successfully in the broader strategy.

Visualize Your Facebook Relationships - CurlGraph

richard — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:54:38 GMT

Facebook has seen tremendous growth over the year. The Mary Meeker: Facebook Is Eating Your Lunch And Dinner post at All Facebook singles out the statistic from her presentation at Web2.0 that Facebook is the largest share gainer of online usage over the past 3 years. Indeed at over 300M users, if Facebook were a country it would be the forth largest behind only China, India and the US.

With all the hype on social networking I thought it would be interesting to highlight again our own CurlGraph. The CurlGraph is a fun application that shows how your Facebook friends are related to each other. If you are on Facebook I urge you to give it a try and to suggest it to your friends.

I made a brief demo video you can post to Facebook and you'll find the Curl website has instructions on installation.

Risks In The Cloud

richard — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:26:01 GMT

The Internet is buzzing today with the news that Microsoft subsidiary Danger has lost the server stored data on T-Mobile's Sidekick phones. See Did Microsoft Just Kill the Cloud? and Sidekick outage says more about the future of 'Pink' than Microsoft's cloud and The cloud: no place for amateurs

While there are not a lot of Sidekick users out there this incident has once a gain forced the question: How safe is your data in the cloud?

Have we developed a false sense of security as we depend more and more on data out of our immediate control on servers managed by Google, Salesforce, Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter? I dare say not many of us has thought through a disaster recovery plan if all our emails, contacts, photos and documents were to disappear overnight.

The Power Law of Social Networks

richard — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:58:39 GMT

Yesterday Dion Hinchcliffe lists 22 Power Laws of the Emerging Economy. It's an interesting post worth a read but I think he omitted one of the most important "The Power Law of Social Networks" Social Networks themselves are defined by a power curve. Albert-Laszlo Barabasi illustrates this in his book "Linked, The New Science of Networks." This interconnectivity drives the information age where popular nodes can rise up quickly. Like all social networks the Internet has a few nodes with millions of connections and millions of nodes with very few connections. Increasingly 6 degrees of separation is becoming 3 degrees of separation.

RIA And The Cloud

richard — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:10:41 GMT

There is no doubt that Cloud Computing is getting a lot of attention. I first wrote about RIA and the Cloud back in April and now with real projects in play we're past Larry's rants on "what the hell is it" and onto how is it effecting web application architecture.

Yesterday in a conversation with Forrester's Jeffrey Hammond he told us he is seeing 2 ways in which Cloud computing is being implemented in IT.

As a cost saving measure moving computing to the cloud - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
To scale out applications providing services that can respond on demand.

The second case is prompting a re-thinking of web application architectures. Getting on demand services from the Cloud means the application's state needs to move to the closer to the Cloud's edge. This is where a Desktop RIA is perfect. A Desktop RIA can maintain state, run off-line and manage use of the Cloud's services.

Curl eyeDecide Application Review

richard — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:56:14 GMT

Last week we presented a review of the implementation of the Curl eyeDecide application to Jeffrey Hammond at Forrester. I have posted the presentation here.

Presenting were Doug Mcrae and John Chisholm (Cheese) from Curl and Juhan Sonin from Involution Studios.

As a developer himself, I think Jeffery enjoyed hearing from the people who actually did the work. I'm sure most of his days as an analyst are filled with discussion of trends and features rather actual design and coding techniques.

Curl eyeDecide was a team effort between Curl and Involution Studios, a top application UI design firm. The complete team included Juhan from Involution and Doug and Cheese from Curl. It took 6 months from conception to press release that included 4 months of implementation. That amounted to 30 work weeks and resulted in 20K lines of code.

The development cycle was collaborative and iterative and featured Curl's ability to code and deploy with a total of 50 distinct releases. The development started with connectivity to the data and the UI design was driven by the actual user experience of the testers at each release.

Some key learnings were that design and development should occur over the life of the project in an iterative cycle. Additionally professional graphic and UI design matters and having Juhan involved in developing not only the looks but the user experience from the beginning was paramount. Another important lesson is to clearly understand the data, its values and what people will want to do early in the process.

You can get the complete eyeDecide application in source form here.

Enterprise RIA and Cloud Computing

richard — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:19:01 GMT

Dion Hinchcliffe recently pointed out in his post "Eight Ways Cloud Computing Will Effect Your Business" that we are in a delicate balance between risk and benefit when it comes to cloud computing. There is no doubt that interest in Cloud Computing has risen dramatically in the last year as shown in the Google Trends graph above. With cloud interoperability advancing and more dependable services becoming available, enterprise computing architectures are evolving to take advantage of the improved scale and cost Cloud Computing promises.

The trend to Cloud Computing represents a real opportunity for Enterprise RIA technologies to be the "User Interface" into the cloud based services. With the emergence of the "RIA Fit Client" that installs web-based applications on the desktop and allows off-line operation it is possible to see an "RIA - Cloud Computing" model is a viable alternative to the more expensive client-server. Indeed in our customer engagements we are seeing client-server applications (mostly VB) convert to RIA to get the benefits of web delivery without sacrificing the quality of user experience.

I was surprised to learn in a recent strategy session with Jeffrey Hammond of Forrester that 47% of new development is still client-server. Those efforts should seriously consider an RIA based approach. Today's Enterprise RIA platforms, like Curl meet all the requirements of communicating efficiently and securely with data services in the cloud or the enterprise and should be considered a viable alternative to client-server.

Lets All Help Get The Curl Word Out

richard — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:40:37 GMT

Recently Rajiv pointed to the lack of publicity Curl garners. I responed to that thread but I felt it worth repeating as a blog post.

While Curl is owned by SCS a large ($1.6B) Software and Systems Integrator in Japan it is small compared its main rivals Abobe and Microsoft. With a limited budget we have gained good visibility in the US over the last 2 years. This includes being named RIA technology of the year in 2008 by InfoWorld. We have over 400 customers world wide providing real enterprise solutions in large companies like Toyota, SONY and Panasonic. Over the last year we grew the Curl business and will have more interesting use cases to share in the near future.

We have been working with Jeffrey Hammond at Forester to help us position Curl in the RIA landscape. From Jeffery's inquiry profile Curl is in the mix when enterprises consider RIA technologies. We expect Curl will be part of an RIA Wave report from Forrester later this year.

Unfortunately with the current economic climate the Curl marketing budget does not support expensive advertising and trade show sponsorships.

But let's not let that dampen our enthusiasm. This developer center represents THE Curl community and we should all take it upon ourselves to spread the word about Curl. Curl has a great story to tell with very compelling proof points. We have a wealth of marketing material that each of us can use to spread the word. I have been on hundreds of sales calls and I can tell you that our story is well received and people readily see the benefits of Curl through our demos and case studies.

Lets all work together to get the word out about Curl. Follow the lead of active community members like Friedger Müffke, Robert Shiplett and Utkal R. Pradhan

If you see and opportunity to comment on an article or blog post please do so. If you see an opportunity to present Curl at a regional event please do so. If you need help with putting material together, let me know I can help.

So go forth and spread the word about Curl.

Most Developers Building Web Applications

richard — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:22:42 GMT

Building web applications is where it's at. 65% of new custom applications are Web-apps accoording to Forrester's survery of software decision makers in North America and Europe. It's also interesting to note that there are still a lot (second most at 47%) of Client-server applications in play. Those folks should seriously look at desktop RIA's such as Curl as a better alternative. See the attached chart.

Is it time to dump Adobe's Flash player?

richard — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:18:16 GMT

Interesting question coming from Adrian Kingsley-Hughes at ZDNet.

"With news that 92% of Windows PCs are vulnerable to a zero-day attack that Adobe won?t patch until Thursday, is it time to dump Adobe?s Flash player?

And this from Computer World.

"More than 9 out of every 10 Windows users are vulnerable to the Flash zero-day vulnerability that Adobe won't patch until Thursday, a Danish security company said today.

According to Secunia, 92% of the 900,000 users who have recently run the company's Personal Software Inspector (PSI) utility have Flash Player 10 on their PCs, while 31% have Flash Player 9. (The total exceeds 100% because some users have installed both.)"

Adobe admitted to the vulnerability on July 21st in this short blog entry.

Curl and Silverlight are not suseptible to such security holes as both run in secure sand boxed areas.

From the ensuing discussion there is a growing segment for whom the answer is YES.

Positioning Curl in the RIA Landscape

richard — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:29:36 GMT

Last we we had a good session with Jeffrey Hammond of Forrester Research regarding the Curl product strategy. Jeffery is the most knowledgeable RIA analyst and always has good insights into the trends and key players. While much of the session was company confidential I thought it would be useful to share Jeffrey's taxonomy of the RIA landscape. Jeffrey has long been talking about a spectrum of RIA technologies from Browser based to desktop based. Curl is positioned at the desktop client-based end of the spectrum as shown in this graphic. This puts Curl with JavaFX and AIR as the only platforms that can execute directly on the desktop outside the browser. Silverlight 3 will join this group.

To position the RIA technologies in the application spectrum Jeffrey uses this chart. This correctly positions Curl as used in strategic applications inside the firewall. In fact in line with this we are starting to see customers replacing JSP based portals with RIA clients that integrate multiple data stores and provide a much richer user experience than clunky portals.

Panasonic's VOE - Better Customer Service, Lower Cost

richard — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:07:25 GMT

In a previous article I discussed three areas of business savings to examine when making the Business case for Entperise RIA. This article will examine how Panasonic realized those business savings with their RIA implementation.

Panasonic Voice of the Engineer (VOE)

Aiming to become the number one company worldwide in customer satisfaction, Panasonic is one of the world's most-recognized brand names, largely on the basis of its highly successful Panasonic AVC Networks business segment.

The division manufactures and markets the majority of the company's consumer products, including plasma TVs and LCD monitors, Blu-ray and DVD players, digital cameras, video recorders, home theater systems and many other products. But while Panasonic welcomes strong sales, the reality is that the more diverse and successful its product lines become, the greater the challenge for its service department becomes.

Panasonic AVC's service division has simple objectives: discover and respond to potential quality and safety issues as early as possible in the product lifecycle. And, from the standpoint of safety, ensure absolutely safe operation of all electrical products over the long term. Sounds simple enough, but with an evolving product line that gets ever more complex, Panasonic service technicians have to continually educate themselves on new technologies and new repair techniques. But while it is critical that Panasonic technicians stay up to date with the latest technology improvements and developments, how do you make that happen for a huge global workforce that is responsible for thousands of products and product parts?

Panasonic AVC approaches this challenge through what it calls the Voice Of Engineering (VOE). An enterprise-wide program, VOE encompasses all the initiatives and activities geared toward discovering potential critical issues in product quality by sharing and analyzing information and trends. This includes an ongoing dialog between service technicians in the field and company management to uncover potential quality issues, and nurture and advance repair and servicing capabilities in the field. The company's technological approach to its service challenges was to create an automated system built on the Curl platform to provide its service and support staff with up-to-date repair manuals, parts diagrams, specification sheets, and other kinds of documentation.

Originally launched in 2005, the Service Information Sharing System also allows support technicians and engineers to:

Use forums and comment areas to share their knowledge of new repair techniques, describe repair cases and support a higher level of customer service across the entire organization
Through Curl, view information using a variety of methods: graphs, tables, charts with multi-layout format, etc.
Integrate external document and data formats - Excel, PDF, etc.
Easily operate system functions using drag-and-drop features, data filtering and graph combining

High Performance and Data Visualization

Panasonic AVC Networks chose Curl as the development platform for its Service Information Sharing System because it provides the ideal environment for live documentation and interactive education. Initially Panasonic AVC used a database application as its service support information system.

Another advantage of the Curl-powered Service Information Sharing System is that it enabled Panasonic AVC to retain the comprehensive information storage capabilities of its existing database system, yet enhance the capabilities of that system with a powerful and flexible front end. Curl makes complicated screen controls possible, surpassing ordinary Web browser capabilities, so Panasonic developers built in the kind of advanced features and functions typically found only in client-server type applications. For instance, the Panasonic system enables users to view documents and related information in a single view. To access documents and files, users browse indexes or use keyword search.

In practice, field engineers and service technicians simply type in keywords, and then narrow down their selections out of the returned list screen. This powerful search tool provides Panasonic field engineers with instant access to the vast amount of repair documentation and related information across the company. VOE Search structures information using syntactic analysis, morphologic analysis and a dictionary tool (tautology or synonym), and displays the associated information ranked against the keyword. The application draws on documents, files and associated information from several databases. The interface supports analytic tools that allow the support engineer to drag a device and drop it into a chart to render an instant analysis of part failures over time giving him an immediate view into likely problems. This level of performance and data visualization saves considerable time and contributes to greatly improved productivity.

Main functionality includes search for repair parts or technical documents, as well as bulletin boards to share the information and analysis views of repair processes. These discussion boards enable users to ask questions and get answers from colleagues and associates around the world. All correspondences on the bulletin board are searchable so it can be listed by the search. As engineers use the application, know-how or information are accumulated organically to speed the maintenance of information.

Low Support Costs - Web Delivery

Despite delivering native client performance and visualization the VOE application is delivered over the web. Curl supports client side data store, which allows the application high performance search without costly round trips to the server. Furthermore, through web delivery application support, costs are considerably lower. With Curl's flexible file-handling properties and standard APIs for external applications, documents can be viewed right within the system interface - there's no need to open new applications such as Excel or Acrobat. In addition, Curl's elastic technology allows users to adjust the size of documents as appropriate. Operations for changing chart type, targeting parts on and off, displaying above or below a certain point, were all designed and implemented to make the interface intuitive and convenient. Further, the application provides a "Repair Trend" view, primarily used by management, which enables them to track service activity by product, product category and date (monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc.) to better understand service issues and uncover potential problems.

Curl eyeDecide Data Visualization Demo Now Available

richard — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:10:34 GMT

Today we made available our newest example of an RIA "fit client" application, called Curl eyeDecide. It was designed by Involution Studios and implemented by Cheese and Doug on Version 7. The application features complex visual analysis of global data from Gapminder.org and demonstrates the value of visualization in the analysis of complex data.

We think you'll have a lot of fun playing with the application performing data analysis to see global trends. As always the application is available in source form here. Curl Version 7 Sample Application: Curl eyeDecide

You can see a video of Curl eyeDecide here.

Check it out !