Reality Check

Cisco's Annual Tech Trends & Predictions Event: Looking Ahead to 2014

It's been awhile since I blogged, but (early) New Year's Resolution is to do more of this and *much* more frequently.

I recently moved roles over at Cisco to the Chief Technology & Architecture Office, working for Dave Ward (Cisco's CTO & Chief Architect for Engineering) and with lots of great other folks who you'll hear about soon. I'm focused on driving new software solutions and offerings to market - from concept and initial architecture to delivery. We have some amazing things coming down the pipeline and more on that soon, I promise. I'll also be traveling a bit more speaking at events and discussing some of our roadmaps and what we see happening in the industry as a whole as we move increasingly into a virtualized world where new network architectures need to connect to and drive business outcomes via new technologies (and yes, lots of software in there). 

Tomorrow we're hosting the Annual Technology Trends & Predictions Event, which will go into what we expect to see in 2014 for not just Cisco but the industry as a whole. It's my first public gig in my new role, and it will be a live broadcast event (via Cisco IPTV & WebEx). You can register here.

Dave & I will be speaking on the Future of Internet Architectures, including how open and programmable interfaces are not just a necessity but a must for today's infrastructure, and how services and APIs essentially *are* the new platform. We'll go into a few hints of what is coming down the pipeline, discuss Open Source, of course SDN & NfV and more, and what all of this means for customers, partners, developers - and even business users. That's all I'll disclose... for now. You'll have to attend in order to get the full scoop. :)

There's a great roster of speakers including Susie Wee (VP & CTO, Networked Experiences), Guido Jouret (VP & GM, Internet of Things) and Maciej Kranz (VP of the Corporate Technology Group) who will be walking through different aspects of multiple technologies, solutions and shifts we across the entire market as we move into 2014. Please use the Twitter hashtag #CiscoTechRadar when tweeting during the event as well - we'll have people responding and also ensure we answer questions post-event via that hashtag. 

It will be a great event, I promise you that. Typically this is just an analyst, press and investor event but this year we're opening it up for the public to attend too - make sure you register to attend, and get ready with some good questions - we want to talk about what's coming in 2014 and I expect you guys to step up with some great questions to ask us. Post event I'll be sure to recap it here and happy to answer any Q&A that didn't get a chance to be answered as well. 

Cheers, and look forward to seeing you all tomorrow!/LC

 

 

 

My Last Day at Microsoft - On to New Adventures in SF!

Today is my last day at Microsoft.

It's truly been an amazing ride. I joined Microsoft in 2008 to lead the Web Platform & Standards team...  and what an experience it has been. Looking back at what we accomplished, we really built a strong foundation for so many things at Microsoft. We built the Microsoft Web Platform, our first web platform that allowed for a one-click installation of all the web development products at Microsoft. We created and launched the Windows Web Application Gallery which included community applications such as DotNetNuke, Drupal, and more for developers wanting to jump-start their web experience. We furthered the relationship and got more internal support for PHP (huge win!). I got to work with the Open Source team on building Microsoft's first open source foundation, CodePlex (now Outercurve). I worked with brilliant teams to help launch BizSpark and WebsiteSpark. I got to lead efforts around the web keynotes at MIX. Oh - and I spent my first of many all-nighters driving launches with amazing engineering teams. You don't know how to truly launch a product until you're taking calls until 3 and 4am in the morning in order to go out the door with a new product at 6am that same day :)

But all rides must come to an end.

I received and accepted an offer last week to work at Juniper Networks as their Director of Community Evangelism. It was a role that was too good to pass up. Looking back at what I truly have passion for, it's really forging that new road - doing things that are brand new, creating that path, pushing the norm, and getting companies on board to move in new directions. Not only is Juniper a stellar and very impressive company, but the role is something I had only dreamed about. After ten years working in the developer community space, I now have the opportunity to really craft and build the vision, the infrastructure, and deliver on building out a brand new space for developers to connect, develop, and learn more about the products and solutions that we offer. Oh, and there's much more coming that I can talk about later in January after I start.

In addition, I get to work with a super smart team to drive this. During the interview process I was just blown away by the folks I met - so much passion, drive, and vision for the solutions and the product. I looked at a variety of roles in different industries, but this job really impressed me. I thought I'd be lucky to get the job. Then I got it - and accepted that day :)

Oh - and there's more! After almost 3 years in Seattle, I made the decision that it's time for me to be home - or what I now consider home - back in the San Francisco Bay Area. My boyfriend and I will be moving back down at the end of December and residing in Marin. Before I moved, I really took the Bay Area for granted. This opportunity at Juniper has allowed me to head back there. It will be GREAT seeing the old crew again and hitting up all the new tech and networking events. I've really missed them!

But back to Microsoft...

Microsoft has a stellar team and I have no doubt in my mind that they'll continue to move in the right direction around their web strategy. I'd like to thank so many people there for inspiring and educating me - those people who are still there, and a few of those that have recently left - - Brian Goldfarb, Guillaume Roques, Brad Becker, Zubair Murtaza, Steven Sklepowich, Michael Bach, Mark Brown, Laurence Moroney, Sheila Gulati (who hired me!), Janie Schwark, Adam Seligman, Eddie Amos, Dan'l Lewin, Matt Thompson, Neil Leslie, Turi Windsteen, Sam Ramji, Robert Duffner, Peter Galli, Grace Francisco, Eric King, James Senior, Daryll McDade, Brandon Watson, Michael Joffe, David Lowe, Scott Guthrie, Bill Staples, Mai-lan Tomsen-Bukovic, Cyra Richardson, Crystal Hoyer, Emilio-Salvador Prieto, Mitra Azizirad, Walid Abu-Hadba, Anil Reddy, Julia Tubino, Karl Noakes, Chris Wilson, Bradley Millington, and many, many more.

What a ride it's been - and I can't wait to start my next adventure!

In the meantime, you can reach me at [email protected] or follow me on Twitter @lcooney (I'm sure you'll be hearing plenty about that 14 hour drive we're embarking on shortly!).

Happy Holidays!

/LC

 

**Update: for some reason hyperlinks aren't working on Typepad, please see www.microsoft.com/web and www.juniper.net for correct links**

 

Fighting the Good Fight (for the Community)

I love this term. Yes, it tends to be overused and sometimes misused, but essentially for me, it means one thing: doing what’s best for developer communities. I’m not talking just about the Microsoft developer community, but the community as a whole – all developers with lots of different programming backgrounds – from HTML and CCS to PHP, ASP.NET to Java – and more. And usually I find that if we can do what’s right for the community, it’s a win-win for both organizations and communities out there.

At Microsoft I find it’s sometimes a mixed bag. The terminology that I use is that we’re a huge ship – and it takes awhile to get people in line to move that ship in the right direction. Cal Evans outlined this beautifully in a blog entry recently – and I think he gives a fair assessment of where we’re at and some of the things we could do to improve. 

That said, our teams that are driving the Microsoft Web Platform are really working to nail this. We started out with a vision – a very simple statement with lots of work that goes on behind the scenes.

 

 

It’s been 10 months since we kicked off this effort, but we have seen some amazing results to date, including:

- The introduction of the Web Platform Installer (WebPI), which streamlines the download/install process of our web stack (no more 10 websites to visit – only one!)

- The delivery of the Windows Web Application Gallery with the most popular open source applications out there – for installation on top of the Microsoft Web Platform (no more configuration pain!) – and, if you have an application you’d like to showcase – we’ll do it – marketing & distribution included :)

- The inclusion of PHP into the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (we do listen, I promise)

And the community is responding – we’ve had over 1.5 million downloads of our products through the WebPI since January of this year (!!) and almost 150,000 applications from the Windows Web Application Gallery downloaded since March 17th.

But let me get to the point that I’m trying to make here about the success of what we’ve done:

With greater success comes greater responsibility. And we want to deliver to you a better, more interoperable community-driven platform going forward.

What does this mean? Well, for starters it means that we’re going to be looking into the broader community to create guidance around certain things – such as OpenID (yes Chris Messina, we’re getting there) and other standards-based efforts. We’re also going to be continuing to work closely with the PHP community on different things we could do better for PHP developers working on Windows. We also want to include various tooling options that help developers build web projects faster and better – even if these don’t come from our own engineering teams.

That said though, as my team embarks on planning out our next steps – we need your help. What do you want to see? How would you like to participate?

Some of the things we’re looking for specifically are:

- Feedback on the WebPI: What’s missing? What would you like to see included?

- Feedback on the Windows Web App Gallery: What apps would you like to see? Could we improve this experience?

- On the Microsoft Web Platform as a whole: how can we make this better? What products do you want to see better integrated? We’re planning on integrating more with Azure, but are there other products out there we could provide guidance for and/or include?

- Guidance: What tutorials would you like to see?

So the action item here? Let us know what you want to see. We’ve been pushing hard to make this happen internally at Microsoft, but the community feedback is absolutely critical for us to take the next steps to make this a true community platform.

So on that note – you know how to get a hold of me – [email protected] or www.twitter.com/lcooney – or even better, let’s discuss here on my blog. We’re open for business. /LC

 

(photo credit: Jim Grisanzio, Sun Microsystems) http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimgris/542408040/

Long Live Closed-Source Software?

My friend Nils Gilman posted a link to my FB page today from Discover Magazine, titled, "Long Live Closed-Source Software!" In the article, Jaron Lanier compares the the techniques and process of science to that of open source software. Lanier's argument is that because of the vast amounts of information that groups provide to an open source product, that often schedules and features get pushed to the wayside, and he feels that closed-source software projects tend to produce better results in the long run, as described here:

The open-source software community is simply too turbulent to focus its tests and maintain its criteria over an extended duration, and that is a prerequisite to evolving highly original things. There is only one iPhone, but there are hundreds of Linux releases. A closed-software team is a human construction that can tie down enough variables so that software becomes just a little more like a hardware chip—and note that chips, the most encapsulated objects made by humans, get better and better following an exponential pattern of improvement known as Moore’s law.

I do agree with some of this article and his statement to a certain extent, but what Lanier fails to discuss are the organizations around Open Source software that help to provide the infrastructure and the needs to actually deliver the software, such as the ASF. Eclipse is another example; although I find that Eclipse tends to be more vendor driven than Apache, which is the best example (IMHO) of a true community organization dedicated to delivering quality OSS.

Moreover, as the software products (and projects) become more popular, the demand for new releases and features increases, as does the requirement for better software (developed at a faster rate) from the open source development teams. That said, the projects that tend to be less popular will fall to the wayside - and that's where Lanier's point is clear - if a product/project isn't being accepted and used by the masses, then of course development won't be as structured or delivered on a timely basis as folks lose interest and developers decide to leave the project.

That's just my 2 cents. Bottom line, an interesting read. Check it out. /LC