Agile Development Blog

This Friday, February 27th, I will be speaking on a panel at the New Jersey Technology Council’s 2009 CIO Conference called “Moving to a Virtual World” ( www.njtc.org). The panel is on Cloud Computing and it is a mixed collection of vendors and CIO’s talking about the rapid arrival, the clear benefits and struggles of adopting Cloud Computing.

At Rally, we have gained some firsthand knowledge of these technologies, platforms and applications as we try to find the most energy efficient, stable and cost effective solutions for us and our customers.  As a small fast growing technology company, we are an ideal customer for Cloud Computing and I am sitting on this panel as a user, supplier and leader on software development for the cloud.  (We use Amazon EC2, VMWare ESX, Salesforce and seven App-Exchange Apps, Google Apps Premier to run our business and manage our own multi-tenant SaaS/PaaS application in the cloud.)

In preparation for the panel, I was brushing up on some of the latest news and views on this topic.

Here are the worthwhile Cloud Computing links that I used to prepare my talking points:

• Cloud Computing – you have to start on Wikipedia to make sure your definition is grounded
• What is Cloud Computing - a wonderful video of a variety of folks from the Web 2.0 Expo
• Above the Clouds – is a new blog site, whitepaper and video from Cal Berkley Professors on Cloud Computing
• Cloud an Outsourcing Option in Troubled Times – CIO Insight article on using cloud services instead of more traditional IT outsourcing options (both development and operations)
• “What the hell is Cloud Computing?” - Larry Ellison rails on the whole idea as over-blown (see many YouTube videos)

I have always been interested in SaaS and Cloud Computing as huge improvements in energy efficiency and steps toward a more sustainable IT value chain, I like to call the Software Value Cycle.  Cloud Computing is the result of innovations in commodity hardware, open-source, fast virtualization and internet advancements.

According to the team at Berkley, large data centers like Amazon that have 10,000 machines can be 5 to 7 times cheaper to operate than mid-sized data centers.  As a result, they argue this is next wave of computing that will transform IT, in the next 5 to 10 years, into a place where there will be only one computer – the network of networks with its connected devices.

With 5 to 7 times better operational efficiency, this innovation in IT infrastructure will pull us all into the cloud just as we had been pulled into the Internet 1.0 infrastructure starting 14 years ago.

So what does this mean for software development and Agile?

• Developers have to worry less about plumbing and more about value
• Developers will have to design for running in parallel, not just in serial
• Developers will be coding, testing, staging and working with services

This looks like some change, but nothing that Agile IT teams working with SOA have not been wrestling with for the last four years.  And we know that Agile and SOA development fit together like a hand and a glove.  So, I am going to go out on a limb and predict more growth in Agile as teams will be in a better place to more quickly leverage cloud infrastructure advances. The end result will be a leaner and greener IT infrastructure for all.

What do you think about developing software for the cloud? Is it any different?

Could you imagine doing it without and agile software development approach? Or, is this just all a bunch of hot air?

Further Reading

• Will “The Cloud” Save or Swallow the Earth?