Touching on topics I’ve mentioned previously in Software Visualization and IBM Jazz and Location oriented software development, CNN reports that

In its research, the University of California, Irvine is exploring the use of multi-monitor environments to improve project awareness and development practices. To date, software engineering tools are designed under the assumption that they must effectively operate on a single monitor on a developer’s desk. The trend, however, is to equip developer’s desks with multiple, typically larger monitors, and to equip community areas with tiled displays through which vast amounts of information can be shared. This research leverages Jazz technology to explore how software development tools should be (re)designed to take advantage of this extra display space, with a particular focus on project awareness. The Jazz platform provides many hooks and listeners through which the information that the visualizations need can be obtained.

CNN Money

• IDaSS - Interactive Design and Simulation System
• JOP - Java Optimized Processor
• Hardware Objects

… virtualization technologies should be pushed down further into the iron and sold in volume. In short, there should be some way to make these technologies a low-cost part of the system, … it should be made in an on-demand fashion, activated with a key for a nominal fee, complete with physical-to-virtual conversion tools and virtual-to-physical tools to undo the virtualization if customers decide to do that, too.

The Unix Guardian: Virtualization belongs in the system, not in the software

The effect of free, hardware based virtualization which is automatically there would make for very interesting x86 servers. Even more so with a few on-board, fully virtualized, multi-fabric I/O channels. Kind a baby mainframe.

Maybe it’s a crazy idea. Maybe its a vision of the future of computing.

Is this a crazy idea?

Now, in the aftermath of the VMWare IPO, we’re seeing it unfold.

“With virtualization, where you can run any operating system on top, it seems a lot more logical that it would be effectively a layer sitting on top of a server,” said Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff. “Why wouldn’t it be supplied with the server?”

XenSource announced XenExpress OEM Edition last week, and market leader VMware this week is announcing VMware ESX Server 3i at its VMworld conference. The products run from flash memory built into a server instead of being installed on the hard drive.

The embedded versions aren’t just a fantasy. VMware has partnerships with IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Network Appliance. “We expect them to begin integrating ESX Server 3i into their servers later this year or early next,” a VMware representative said.

The move has strategic importance in these relatively early days of virtualization, elevating the profile of virtualization specialists’ products. Getting a foot in the door could help the virtualization specialists get a foot in the doors of customers who might be interested in higher-level products to manage the increasingly sophisticated computing infrastructure that can be built atop virtual machines.

Virtualization has been around for decades, but its inclusion in mainstream computers with x86 chips is bringing it out of the shadows. And the money is following.

Virtualization: A feature of the hardware, not the OS? | CNET News.com

There are a number of trends interrelated to this many of which are growing exponentially. Kansas has left the building.

I’ve long viewed screen real estate as a huge constraint to be worked around. The tasks and ideas in my mind just don’t fit on a single screen. It’s rare for me to use just a single screen or even a single computer unless it’s my laptop outside of my office. Most of the time I’m using 2-3 machines and lately more and more that ratchets up to 4-5. Typically one of the machines has a dual display so at any given time I have 3-6 screens visible.

The volume of information flowing through IBM Jazz or any development environment doesn’t fit on a single screen so it’s a huge productivity drain to constantly search for, then minimize and maximize windows. Virtual desktops help, but then windows are out of sight.

“We have the view that we have to become a software company,”

Cisco CEO John Chambers at the Networkers Conference via PC World

Con Ed said some components of the system are examined about every six weeks, but steam mains underground are generally not inspected because doing so often requires digging up the street.That is something that should change immediately, Agrawal said. Robotic probes can detect corrosion or damage to steam pipes from within, without having to dig them up, he said.

“They have to start looking at the entire system,” he said. “Imagine something like this exploding under Grand Central? Or under Broadway?”
N.Y. blast raises questions about aging infrastructure - CNN.com

Today we have many pressing infrastructure needs some of which have really high stakes:

If we look at today’s global environment we see a relatively high performance system driven by real-time global markets and rapid technological progress. Its performance explains why it is spreading so quickly. However, it is also moderately unstable. In our drive towards higher levels of performance we pursued a path of rampant global interconnectivity that has quickly outpaced our ability to dampen excess. The old dampening functions of borders, distance, government, etc are quickly fading. The result is a system vulnerable to rogue feedback. Even a small amount of it can cause global reverberations. Worse, there are people actively working on ways to introduce this rogue feedback. Iraq is a great demonstration of our inability to dampen excess in the face of active opposition (notice how our goals have drifted from building an allied democracy to stopping civil war).

The long-term solution is to build more stability into the system. The best approach I can think of is a highly interconnected but fundamentally decentralized system (most of the benefits of interconnectivity but with lots of local control). Unfortunately, we are far from realizing that goal, since our current view of the world is based on old models.

Big Bangs

The new paradigm which Rhythmeering represents isn’t anchored in the notion of fixed assets but rather recognizes that

Infrastructures are dynamic. There are flows of information, power, and substances constantly coursing through them.

Cascading System Failure

and expands the notion of the network as computer, to realize that the meshverse is the computer which is in essence software.

“I think it’s time for us as industry leaders really to get our hands around how we’re going to evolve that model, because like it not, the current models of building hundreds or thousands of customized business applications simply aren’t sustainable,” Worrall said. … At Sun, the company currently runs about 1,200 business applications. There is no reason these cannot be provided as online services, Worrall said. In Sun’s vision, the company will buy services, then run them in a browser on a device such as a laptop or a thin client. There will be no need to maintain legions of servers. … The market is already moving to this more efficient paradigm, but Sun internally expects to be largely services-based by 2015, although it could be a few years earlier or later than that, said Worrall. With Sun itself a purveyor of server hardware, a widespread move to services-based computing by users at large would mean a radical change for Sun’s business model. Its customer base will shift to being service providers, who need to maintain large datacenters. With this paradigm, Sun’s server sales volumes potentially could increase, even if the customer list itself shrinks. As Sun moves to a services paradigm, the company will need to focus on an ecosystem to accommodate this, because it is not the same as having a traditional ISV strategy
Sun anticipates move to software services
(the entire podcast)

Rhythmeering supports this kind of ecosystem.

Where is the life in engineering? What will engineering be like if it’s measured only in metrics and graphs?

… we can feel like less than a person and more like a switch waiting to fire in time. But then maybe there is no room for us in the machinery of global economy.

Jazz Thoughts

I’d sum up his thoughts by saying IBM Jazz “ain’t got that swing”. The good news is that by making the association with Jazz, IBM is pointing themselves and the broader market in the right direction.

The answers to Park’s questions about engineering lie in Rhythmeering which shifts the focus from isolated, machine-driven metrics to collaborative people-centered harmonies. The machine metrics are good to the degree they serve human objectives but when people begin to serve the interests of machines, perhaps it’s time to revisit the messages of movies such as The Matrix and The Terminator. Information systems and the human organizations they are intended to support can benefit greatly from jazz paradigm but you can’t really swing unless everybody is participating - not just developers IBM’s Jazz is for. However, in order for that to happen, developers first need to start getting into the collaborative mindset IBM’s Jazz points to. As they do so the programming tools and user interfaces will have to become more flexible and accessible. GVScript will soon show the way for programming and when it can be connected to user interfaces such as those seen in Rhythmeering In Motion and Touching The Meshverse, we’ll see organizations “swingin to the digital times”.

• Ignorance Does Not Mesh
• Duke’s Virtual Forest
• Paint Jam
• Musical Mesh In Second Life