Brian McCallion

I've been working on Enterprise Cloud Strategy and in the course of this work identified some interesting and non-obvious opportunities in the Cloud. One solution I’ve examined is the well-crafted solution that is enStratus. enStratus has built a SaaS Cloud Management / Governance product focused on providing critical management, monitoring, governance capabilities tailored to the needs of the Global 2000 market, rather than the startup market. As I have worked with a current Fortune 500 client to identify Cloud solution components, my assessment is that enStratus is uncannily well designed for the enterprise market. Yet as a result of working with the enStratus team and product I found not just a management tool, but also a deeply insightful perspective as to the how and what of the Cloud. To put this another way, as a result of using enStratus, teams will learn fr... (more)

What Motivates Open Standards in the Cloud?

Open standards are a nice idea. And democracy is a great idea too, all citizens can vote, yet we only have two real parties representing us. Similarly, I think that standards start out as a good idea, yet over time may start to become ineffective. For the most part standards committees never actually complete a standard, and the industry starts working from a "draft." In the Cloud I think standards should be less important to the subscriber than the actual capabilities. I recognize that nobody choosing a Cloud platform "wants" lock-in, or a proprietary system, yet at the same time... (more)

Are APIs Covered by Copyright or Copyleft or Neither?

Although I favor Google in this litigation, I (as a layman) consider Oracle assertion that intellectual property copyright protection applies to APIs worth considering in the context of Cloud applications, SaaS, and the mobile application build-out that is reshaping the software and (as we seen with HP) hardware industry. Side Show In Oracle, Google Patent Fight: Are API's Covered By Copyright? | Techdirt My curiosity regarding the evolution of Cloud Computing and the rapidly adoption of Service Oriented Architecture has caused me to wonder about the APIs firms develop as inter... (more)

The Difference Between Public and Private Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has essentially been private from the beginning. Google, for one, demonstrates that the world's most successful search engine runs not on an IBM Power, Sun Enterprise, or other massively powerful machine engineered for business by the go-to-vendors for computer solutions. More in keeping with its democratic, spare, and ubiquitous, engineering ethos Google created a "cloud" of white box computer - throw-away hardware servers running Linux. Rather than purchase software box-software or hire a large consulting firm to design and build the infrastructure, Google enginee... (more)

Apple in the Post-Jobs Post-Modern World

While Steve Jobs deserves full credit for incredible achievements not only at NEXT and Pixar, I believe what enabled him to succeed at Apple was his application of the "Apple Brand" to the iPod. Apple Computer always had a cult-like group of followers who were willing to pay a remarkable premium for Apple's Macintosh line of PCs. Moreover, such people (and I was one of them) would not hesitate to vehemently evangelize the Apple vision and brand to any poor soul foolish enough to approach or befriend. For example, when I moved to New York City in or around 1993, I told a friend th... (more)