Nick Gall's Weblog

Saturday, August 28, 2004

Please use my new RSS feed. For those of you reading my blog via a feedreader (aka RSS aggregator), please take a moment to redirect to my new and improved RSS feed provided by Feedburner. Feedburner is a cool RSS "intermediary" that will translate my basic RSS feed into multiple RSS formats and other cool things. To get the URL for my latest feed, simply use this chicklet ( ), or the one in my "masthead" on the right side of my blog under the Radio Mug. Thanks. 7:10:07 AM

Yet more network vs. edge debate. Cross posting my comment to Radovan here: Radovan: I am talking about *THE SAME ISSUES* being dealt with on different levels. For the SAME REASONS that transparent intermediaries exist at BOTH the Internet IP level, AND exist at the HTTP level (think WebSSO, Akamai, and web load balancers), they WILL exist at the SOAP and BUSINESS LEVEL. Let me give you an example roughly based on a composite of several client discussions I've recently had. Global bank needs to comply with the illegal money laundering (ILM) provisions of the Patriot Act. So it needs to match every "open account" message going over its global network against a DB of "bad guys", because the ILM forbids banks from doing business (offering bank accounts) with bad guys. So, its plan is to transparently route all "account open" messages past this new "bad guy matching service" without having to touch any of the dozens of account management services this bank has built around the globe. (To be more accurate, this bank didn't build these account management apps, they acquired them via M&A.) So here's a perfect example of a service provider having its messages rerouted without its knowledge in order to add new functionality to the overall system without having to make changes to the provider. This is exactly how a Web Services Network should be designed. Does this reduce the autonomy of the account management "service providers"? You bet. They no longer unilaterally decide who can open an account, because this matching intermediary now imposes its decisions on them. Big deal. As for your FedEx/DHL example, the way this should work at a business document level is that I, as the provider, should indicate that a business report must be delivered to the recipient the next day. (Note that I have the authority, ie autonomy, to make this timing decision.) I put the document in my outbox on my desk with a routing slip attached and my corporation's mail room decides what overnight carrier we use for which destinations, given the discounting deals we've arranged. Does this reduce my absolute autonomy? You bet. I've lost the precious right to decide which overnight delivery service I prefer. Big deal. As for your blog "service" example, check out Feedburner . This intermediate service is exactly the kind of ["intelligence" in the Web Services Network] I am talking about. Rather than having my blog rss feed provider have to know all the different feed formats or having the ability to track feed pings, etc., I let this rss feed service intermediary, feedburner, do it for me. I tell feedburner my simple rss feed address for my blog, I put feedburner's rss feed icons on my blog home page and suddenly, every new rss subscriber is getting MY rss feed VIA feedburner. What I get (and what I really want that Radio Userland does not supply) is the ability to see who's reading my blog via rss. Pretty slick. This is exactly the kind of management in the middle you seem to be arguing against. Why? Does this reduce the autonomy of my blog service? You bet. Now its dependent on feedburner being up and running. Big deal. The autonomy of web service providers with regard to the web services network will be more like the "relative autonomy" of state governments with regard to the US federal government, not the "absolute autonomy" of a sovereign nation (which these days isn't really so sovereign itself, what with UN, WTO, etc.). Some decision making rights will be in the hands of the service providers (the states) and some decision rights will in the hands of the "network" (the federation). The network is the federation. Autonomy will be federated autonomy. That's why I've been writing about SOA as a federated architecture for the past several years. (For publicly available material see http://radio.weblogs.com/0126951/2004/02/18.html#a98 and http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/Service_Oriented_Architecture_Enables_Global_ITO_print.html and http://www3.ca.com/Files/IndustryAnalystReports/SOA.pdf) Autonomy and interdependency (or conformity) are very relative and very intertwined concepts. This subtle interplay has been endlessly discussed in various fields from philosophy to economics to sociology to physics (see the book "Six Degrees"). In sociology, this discussion goes under the title "Structure and Agency" (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_agency and http://human.ntu.ac.uk/pgcert/structureandagency.html). In the IT realm, the structure/agency discussion often goes under the title "network vs. endpoint" or "network vs. edge". Given how subtle the thinking and passionate the debate has been in other disciplines over the duality of structure and agency, I expect no less in SOA discussions. But lets at least learn something from these prior debates in these other disciplines and quickly move beyond the shallow debate of absolute autonomy vs. its absolute interdependency, into a deeper discussion of what aspects of autonomy should a service provider have and not have under what circumstances. Or even better, how I can dynamically shift responsibility from the edge into the network and back again based on various collaborative policy decisions. 6:16:44 AM

Sunday, August 22, 2004

Dissolving the paradox of decades long disruptions. [This is an excerpt of an email discussion we are having regarding the pace and effect on incumbent carriers of the migration to VOIP. In a previous post I had stated that, "While I agree that the disruption of and eventual replacement of ALL forms of wired communications with wireless digital communications, as all good disruptians know, "disruptive technology" can sometimes take place over decades." Of course, this generated the standard objection: how can a technology evolution that takes decades be called "disruptive." Since this happens so frequently, I'm posting this answer to this FAQ on my blog so I can just link to it in the future.] Both "disruptive innovation" and "sustaining innovation" (Christensen's terms) are kinds of evolution. And both may happen relatively quickly or relatively slowly. What distinguishes disruptive innovation from sustaining innovation is clearly laid out in Christensen's book. I highly recommend EVERYONE read it. There are many aspects that distinguish the two; most of which I highlight in my Disruptive SOA Trends pitch--an homage to Christensen, which I'd be happy to send to anyone. But the easiest way to tell if an innovation is disruptive (and hence the reason Christensen calls it by that name) is to examine its impact on the market, i.e., whether the dominant companies in a market remain the dominant companies after the transition to the new technology. If they are, then it was "sustaining" technology because it "sustained" the common business model of the dominant incumbents. But if most of the dominant companies are wiped out by the new technology, then it was disruptive technology because it disrupted the common business model of the dominant incumbents. That is why Christensen's research on the excavator market is much more interesting than his research on the hard drive market. In the excavator market, the dominant incumbent cable-driven excavator manufacturers had thirty years to adapt to the new hydraulic excavator technology and they still failed to do so. Thus virtually all of them disappeared when the cable excavator disappeared from the market. Christensen's fundamental question was to understand why seemingly well run companies that dominated a technology market would often be unable to adapt to new market conditions and as a result, cease to exist, or at least lose their dominance. His theory of the two different types of technical innovation and their differing impact on dominant business models was his answer. And one of his fundamental insights, often overlooked, is that adaptiveness, is NOT about being able to change quickly; it's about being able to change at all. Some companies have plenty of time--decades--to see a new technology growing in the market, and yet they fail so do what is necessary to adapt their business model to it! Thus, the adjective "disruptive" is not being applied to the technological innovation itself, but to the impact it has on the business models of the dominant firms in a market. When you hear "disruptive technology" think "disruptive-to-the-business-models-of-market-leaders technology". If you look at it this way then the answer to your question ("If a change in technology occur [sic] over a period of say 30 years can it really be called disruptive") is a definite yes. And vice versa: a technology change occurring in five years can be sustaining. So as to Telstra, the question is whether or not after the decades it takes to migrate the market to VOIP, Telstra will end up dominating that market, or cease to exist because of it. 4:36:22 AM