We're now at a point where all things "cloud" are sure to be the darlings of the dance in technology circles.  The nice folks over at ReadWriteWeb reference the Gartner 2010 Hype Cycle report  and concisely sum up what many of us already knew.  Cloud based computing is dancing right up there at the peak of inflated expectations. 

(image courtesy of Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle)

Based on what you read online, cloud computing will solve all of your IT woes, cure cancer, stop global warming, and iron your favorite dress shirt (light starch please!).  But how long until the cloud rolls over that peak and starts its downward slide?  Let's give it a little nudge shall we?

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Dave Bouwman and myself are honored to have been asked by the folks at Directions Magazine to participate in a webinar on how to successfully leverage ArcGIS Server in the Amazon Cloud.  We'll be collaborating with ESRI and Amazon to deliver a webinar on October 28, 2010.  ESRI and Amazon will provide the tech background while Dave and I will walk through the business case and a start-to-finish implementation we did for a client. 

Webinar info is posted here. (You'll need to scroll down the page a bit)

Register for the webinar over here.

Please consider joining us.

ESRI has been doing some neat developer outreach things lately to keep the community coming together outside of our once a year geekfest in Palm Springs.  A series of developer meetup events are being held across the country and October 20, 2010 the ESRI travelling medicine show comes to Fort Collins, CO.  This will be a great opportunity to rub elbows with other local devs and hear a few presentations by your peers. The best part is....Jack buys the beer.  This event will be hosted by Andy Gup of the ESRI EDN Team.

The Fort Collins event will be held from 5-8 pm at the Rustic Oven, 123 N. College Ave in old town.  Dave Bouwman will be giving the opening presentation on ArcGIS Server in the Amazon Cloud and then there will be a series of lightning talks. 

Additional details and tickets can be had by shooting over to the eventbrite site.

 

Just before the 2010 ESRI UC got cooking this year, this press release from ESRI hit the street. In short, ESRI is announcing that they'll be going beyond the ELA-only licensing of ArcGIS Server for the Amazon Web Services cloud.  What is apparent that there is a two-pronged licensing arrangement here where you still bring your own license to the cloud but if you're not an ELA customer, you can "lease" a license on 1, 3, or 12 month terms.

In my mind this is a very good thing because without this option, ESRI was cutting off a potentially large business segment of non-ELA customers as well as short circuiting the scalability and flexibility options of the cloud.  How do I ramp up capacity if I can't do a short term software lease?

Clearly there will be some "glass half empty" folks who want to buy ArcGIS Server on an hourly basis but the flexible short term options are a start and very big step in the right direction.

Some outstanding questions and issues that will likely come to light over the next few weeks:

1. No word yet on pricing. 
2. I assume short term lease options will roll in the cost of the AMI, but no final word on that yet
3. If I'm a company hosting client sites and am using the cloud as my hosting platform, am I subject to ASP licensing costs or can I just pay the normal server license fee?
4. Is the 12 month lease done at the traditional server license costs annually (no maintenance option) or will it be the traditional license model of up front cost plus maintenance?

I've got questions on these and other issues into the ESRI folks presently.  More to follow as the story evolves.

Awhile back, Dave and I had the privelege of delivering the keynote at the TNGIC annual conference in Gatlinburg, TN.  While we were preparing our slide deck and honing our message for that event, we happened upon a post by the folks at Carsonified declaring that "mobile is the new black".  Clearly applications in the mobile space are important...but let's have a look at why.

All about the numbers
According to the Internet World Stats website, the total market penetration of internet service via notebooks and PCs in the US in 2009 was 74.1%.  Personally I find this number appalling but that's an economics and equity issue for another post.  At the same time, mobile subscriptions were at 88% penetration in 2008 and the projected penetration of by 2014 is 104%.  In 2009, that market penetration figure stood at 91%.  What does that 104% figure mean?  It means that many individuals will be carrying multiple plans.  A Blackberry for work, supplemented by an iPhone, Android, iPad, or other device for personal use. 

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Just in time for the 2010 ESRI User Conference, our team has been doing some investigation and testing of several apps running against ArcGIS Server 10 in the Amazon cloud.  What follows is a summary of our experience building and deploying a couple of apps against ESRI’s cloud-based solution.

Background and Business Case

In several presentations, blog posts, and articles of the recent past, Dave and I have detailed some of the Flex API work we have been doing for the USDA Forest Service Forest Health Technology Enterprise Team (FHTET). Historically, the FHTET team has collected and analyzed data describing the effects of major forest pests on the landscape. To this point in time, information has been disseminated by means of an annual pest report in hard copy format. While GIS and hard copy maps play a role in the preparation of this report, as a static report it does not fully leverage the data exploration and analysis tools available within today’s geoweb applications.

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Since we managed to stay out of trouble last year, and since two years in a row starts to make things look like a tradition, we're throwing another "swa-ray" at our rental in Palm Springs to get the 2010 ESRI Developer Summit off on the right foot.  We'll combine ESRI staff, developers, and miscellaneous members of the GeoGeek community with food and Fat Tire from New Belgium Brewing.  The result last year was a resounding success and we're looking forward to seeing our old friends, making new ones, and enjoying an evening bbq around the pool.

If you stumbled across this post and are planning on attending the 2010 Developer Summit in Palm Springs, please consider joining us for an evening of socializing, networking, and good company. You can view the details and RSVP here.  Be sure to provide us a valid email address so we can send you directions as the date approaches.

Well abstract submissions for the ESRI 2010 Developer Summit in Palm Springs, CA are now closed and community voting for what user presentations will appear on the program has begun.  Dave has already thrown up a blog post here, discussing what we're all planning on chatting about but I thought I'd reinforce that information with a quick note here.

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It's taken me awhile to get to it due to a variety of work and family obligations but we've finally reached what will be my final post on usability and the geoweb...for now at least.  I haven't covered all possible usability issues and scenarios, but have hit the high points and "big win" factors over the course of this series of posts.  To this point we've dealt with hiding complexity from our users, providing users with consistent, meaningful feedback within an application, and protecting users from themselves.  The lesson plan for this last installment will focus on application performance and its criticality in the overall user experience. Fact: One of the most critical components of a highly usable software system is that it be highly performant...in other words, fast.  In the realm of the GeoWeb, this means that applications should load fast initially, and that responses to user activity within the application should be as quick as possible.  We now live in a world of instant gratification when it comes to our news, our hobbies, our finances, and above all our interactions with computers. Users don't like to be kept waiting for 5 seconds every time they use your app to request information, input data, or perform other common processing tasks.  Gone are the days when watching the blue bar move in a web app, or watching the cursor spin on a wireless app were the status quo.  And frankly with the amount that we, as consultants, get paid to build custom software, the user shouldn't have to wait. Headlong into the breach then for our fourth and final lesson...

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As I write this post, I'm attending the GeoWeb 2009 Conference in Vancouver, BC.  This is then a pretty appropriate time to drop part 3 in the Usability and the GeoWeb series.  Part 1 in the series discussed the importance of hiding unnecessary complexity from the user, while Part 2 focused on the importance of never leaving your users guessing and providing them with consistent, meaningful feedback.  In an effort to encourage the incorporation of key usability features into emerging web mapping applications, the lesson plan this time focuses on key application elements designed to protect the users from themselves. While that statement may sound a little rough (nobody should be out insulting their customers and clients after all) it is not meant as such.  I most certainly am not saying your users are foolish, stupid, or otherwise deficient in any way.  Recall Scott Karp's assertion that in the age of Google,

"...there are no stupid users, only inadequate designs"

On the contrary, I simply mean that otherwise well-meaning users frequently do things within an application that the application does not expect or that create coding/logic challenges for the developer.  Our task then in building next generation systems to support/integrate with the GeoWeb requires that we anticipate as many corner cases or unexpected results as possible, and architect and code solutions to prevent the user from becoming frustrated at best, and destroying critical information at worst.  Keep the user focused on the application, and put out fires before they arise With that intro, here's lesson 3...

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