BriefingsDirect SOA Insights analysts examine 'Microsoft-Oriented Architecture' and evaluate SOA's role in 'Green IT'

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The latest BriefingsDirect SOA Insights Edition, Vol. 27, provides a roundtable discussion and dissection of Services Oriented Architecture (SOA)-related news and events with a panel of IT analysts and experts.

Please join noted IT industry analysts and experts Jim Kobielus, principal analyst at Current Analysis; Neil Macehiter, principal analyst at Macehiter Ward-Dutton; and Joe McKendrick, an independent analyst and blogger, for our most recent discussion, which is hosted and moderated by myself, Dana Gardner.

In this episode, recorded Oct. 26, our group examines the recent Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference. The debate centers on whether the news around the pending Oslo approach amounts to support for SOA or Microsoft-Oriented Architecture (MOA) instead.

[UPDATE: Todd Biske weighs in on the topic.]

Is this yet another elevation of the COM/DCOM wars, or is Microsoft moving to a federated modeling of business process value, one that may leapfrogs other SOA vendors products and methods? Or, perhaps Microsoft is seeking to both steer SOA adopters to its platforms while also offering an inclusive business process modeling approach? Look for the answers in this discussion.

What's more, the analysts also evaluate SOA's role in Green IT. Does SOA beget better energy and resources use, or does better energy conservation in IT inevitably grease the skids toward greater SOA adoption -- or both? Learn more about how ROI and Green IT align with SOA patterns and adoption.

Here are some highlights and excerpts:

On SOA and Microsoft's Oslo ...

The SOA universe is heading toward a model-driven paradigm for distributed service development in orchestration, and that’s been clear for a several years now. What Microsoft has discussed this week at its SOA and BPM conference was nothing radically new for the industry or for Microsoft. Over time, with Visual Studio and the .NET environment, they've been increasingly moving toward a more purely visual paradigm.

Looking at the news this week from Microsoft on the so-called Oslo initiative, they are going to be enhancing a variety of their Visual Studio, BizTalk Server, BizTalk Services, and Microsoft System Center, bringing together the various metadata repositories underlying those products to enable a greater model-driven approach to distributed development.

I was thinking, okay, that’s great, Microsoft, I have no problem with your model-driven approach. You're two, three, or four years behind the curve in terms of getting religion. That’s okay. It’s still taking a while for the industry to completely mobilize around this.

In order words, rather than developing applications, they develop business models and technology models to varying degrees of depth and then use those models to automatically generate the appropriate code and build the appropriate sources. That’s a given. One thing that confuses me, puzzles me, or maybe just dismays me about Microsoft’s announcement is that there isn't any footprint here for the actual standards that have been developed like OMG’s unified modeling language (UML), for example.

... So, it really is a Microsoft Oriented Architecture. They're building proprietary interfaces. I thought they were pretty much behind open standards. Now, unless it’s actually 2003, I have to go and check my calendar.

I don’t see this as exclusively Microsoft-oriented, by any stretch. ... There are a couple of elements to the strategy that Microsoft’s outlined that differentiate it from the model-driven approaches of the past. The first is that they are actually encompassing management into this modeling framework, and they're planning to support some standards around things like the Service Modeling Language (SML), which will allow the transition from development through to operations. So, this is actually about the model-driven life cycle.

The second element where I see some difference is that Microsoft is trying to extend this common model across software that resides on premises and software that resides in the cloud somewhere with services. So, it has a common framework for delivering, as Microsoft refers to it, software plus services. In terms of the standard support with respect to UML, Microsoft has always been lukewarm about UML.

A few years ago, they were talking about using domain specific language (DSL), which underpin elements of Visual Studio that currently exist, as a way of supporting different modeling paradigms. What we will see is the resurgence of DSL as a means of enabling different modeling approaches to be applied here. ... Microsoft is really trying to drive this is around a repository for models, for an SML model or for the models developed in Visual Studio.

This smacks of being a very ambitious strategy from Microsoft, which is trying to pull together threads from different elements of the overall IT environment. You've got elements of infrastructure as a service, with things like the BizTalk Services, which has been the domain of large Web platforms. You've got this notion of computer applications in BPM which is something people like IBM, BEA, Software AG, etc. have been promoting.

Microsoft has got a broad vision. We also mustn’t forget that what underpins this is the vision to have this execution framework for models. The models will actually be executed within the .NET framework in the future iteration. That will be based on the Window’s Communication Foundation, which itself sits on top of the WS-* standards ... .

So that ambitious vision it still some way off, as you mentioned -- beta in 2008, production in 2009. Microsoft is going to have to bring its ISVs and systems integrator community along to really turn this from being an architecture that's oriented toward Microsoft to something broader.

Clearly, they had to go beyond UML in terms of a modeling language, as you said, because UML doesn’t have the constructs to do deployment and management of distributed services and so forth. I understand that. What disturbs me right now about what Microsoft is doing is that if you look at the last few years, Microsoft has gotten a lot better when they are ahead of standards. When they're innovating in advance of any standards, they have done a better job of catalyzing a community of partners to build public specs. ... I'd like to see it do the same thing now in the realm of modeling.


On Green IT and SOA's Impact on Energy Use in IT ...

Green IT was named number one in a top-ten strategic technology areas for 2008 by Gartner Group. How does SOA impact this?

The whole notion of SOA is based on abstraction, service contracts, and decoupling of the external calling interfaces from the internal implementations of various services. Green smashes through that entire paradigm, because Green is about as concrete as you get.

SOA is the whole notion of consolidation -- consolidation of application logic, consolidation of servers, and consolidation of datacenters. In other words, it essentially reduces the physical footprint of the services and applications that we deploy out to the mesh or the fabric.

SOA focuses on maximizing the sharing, reuse, and interoperability of distributed services or resources, application logic, or data across distributed fabrics. When they're designing SOA applications, developers aren't necessarily incentivized, or even have the inclination, to think in terms of the ramifications at the physical layer of these services they're designing and deploying, but Green is all about the physical layer.

In other words, Green is all about how do human beings, as a species, make wise use and stewardship of the earth’s nonrenewable, irreplaceable resources, energy or energy supplies, fossil fuels, and so forth. But also it’s larger than that, obviously. How do we maintain a sustainable culture and existence on this planet in terms of wise use of the other material resources like minerals and the soil etc.?

Over time, if SOA is successful other centers of development or other deployed instances of code that do similar things will be decommissioned to enable maximum reuse of the best-of-breed order-processing technology that’s out there. As enterprises realize the ROI, the reuse and sharing should naturally lead to greater consolidation at all levels, including in the datacenter. Basically, reducing the footprint of SOA on the physical environment is what consolidation is all about.

Another trend in the market is the SaaS approach, where we might acquire more types of services, perhaps on a granular level or wholesale level from Google, Salesforce, Amazon, or Microsoft, in which case they are running their datacenters. We have to assume, because they're on a subscription basis for their economics, that they are going to be highly motivated toward high-utilization, high-efficiency, low-footprint, low-energy consumption. That will ultimately help the planet, as well, because we wouldn’t have umpteen datacenters in every single company of more than a 150 people.

Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way. Maybe we’ve got it backwards. Maybe SOA, in some way, aids and abets Green activities. Maybe it's Green activities, as they consolidate, unify, seek high utilization, and storage that aid and abet SOA. ... Green initiatives are going to direct companies in the way that they deploy and use technology toward a situation where they can better avail themselves of SOA principles.

The issue is not so much reducing IT’s footprint on the environment. It’s reducing our species' overall footprint on the resources. One thing to consider is whether we have more energy-efficient datacenters. Another thing to consider is that, as more functionality gets pushed out to the periphery in terms of PCs and departmental servers, the vast majority of the IT is completely outside the [enterprise] datacenter.

I'm going to be a cynic and am just going to guess that large, Global 2000 corporations are going to be motivated more by economics than altruism when it comes to the environment. ... As we discussed earlier, the Green approach to IT might actually augment SOA, because I don’t think SOA leads to Green, but many of the things you do for Green will help people recognize higher value from SOA types of activities.

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IBM scoops up BI leader Cognos in $5B cash bid

The thought on the street was that Cognos had to get bought soon, given the business intelligence (BI) consolidation land-grab of late -- punctuated by Oracle's acquisition of Hyperion and SAP's buy of Business Objects.

So now Big Blue steps up to the plate, and for $5 billion in cash, buys Cognos. This quite large acquisition for IBM quickly adds more BI-oomph to the IBM "Information" portfolio, but also importantly takes Cognos off the market from anyone else. Other suitors would probably have been Microsoft and perhaps HP. This BI value could have burnished HP's total managment drive and complemented the Opsware purchase.

Publicly held Cognos, of Ottawa, Canada will become part of IBM’s Information Management software and should well augment IBM's aggressive Information on Demand initiatives through new BI and Performance Management capabilities. The Cognos assimilation will be led by managed by Information Management General Manager Ambuj Goyal.

It will be interesting to see how IBM will support all the Cognos partnership deals with many vendors, ISVs, channel players, SIs, and users. For example, Cognos just joined a partnership with Software AG, which competes with IBM on several levels.

Despite the complications of how to best merge the Cognos ecology into the IBM arsenal/universe, the purchase shows the importance of insight into and improved management of business activities to the global enterprise leadership. IBM has put a premium on ramping up its Information on Demand values through rapid acquisitions and business development.

Just this year, IBM has bought (or is in the process of buying) Watchfire, Telelogic, DataMirror, WebDialogs, and Princeton Softech.

Helping huge and complex corporations to get a handle on their data, content, metadata, and digital assets -- as well as to refine, consolidate and automate access to said assets -- forms a needed foundation for IBM's strategies around services oriented archirecture (SOA) and business process managment (BPM). Providing end-to-end, top-to-bottom value in the data lifecycle also buttresses IBM's goal of easing the customization of and ongoing agility of business applications and processes, even into granular vertical business niches. And all of these values further empower IBM's professional services offerings and depth.

Indeed, IBM has wasted no time nor expense in cobbling together perhaps the global leadership position in data management in the most comprehensive sense. IT vendor competition has long centered on entrenchment via platform, development framework, proprietary technologies, and price-performance persuasion. Long-term advantage via best solutions for complete data lifecycle management and mastery has additional relevance in a market where virtualization, SaaS, SOA, and open source are dislodging the old-school vendor lock-in options.

Software AG and Cognos bring BI and BPM into common orbit

The much-discussed marriage of business intelligence (BI) and business process management (BPM) may be a step closer to the altar with last week's announcement by Software AG that it will embed Cognos 8 BI with the webMethods product suite.

Software AG, which made the announcement at Integration World 2007 in Orlando, Fla., says the strategic partnership and OEM licensing agreement will allow companies to combine BI with BPM and business activity monitoring, providing real-time and historical data on a single dashboard for actionable insight. The new out-of-the-box component will let users:

• Streamline change management, because requirements and implications of proposed changes will be illustrated before implementation.
  
  
• Accelerate process improvements by drilling down on operational data.
  
  
• Enhance business agility through more rapid implementation of operational changes.
  
  
• Achieve closer alignment with line-of-business objectives due to using the same platform for business planning and performance monitoring.
  
  
• Improve accountability through the embedded use of scorecarding and analytics.

Pundits and analysts have been talking about the merger of BI and BPM for a long time, and the talk heated up with TIBCO's acquisition of Spotfire last May, but all that talk has led to a lot of dating, but no commitment.

Peter Kürpick, president and chief product officer for the webMethods division of Software AG referred to the all the talk in making the announcement. "Many talk about delivering an integrated product suite and a seamless user experience, but few actually deliver. The inclusion of best-in-class BI and reporting is one key element. Others include a shared metadata model and lifecycle governance for all assets, real-time monitoring, and process-based collaboration."

Tony Baer at CBR Online sees this as a pre-emptive strike by Software AG in a market where the big players are lining up their BI assets:

"With rivals such as IBM and Oracle also having collected BI assets as part of their greater software platforms, which also include BPM and BAM, Software AG's tie-in with Cognos (for now, the last major independent BI vendor, unless you're counting Information Builders) was an important pre-emptive move."

Current customers can add Cognos BI as a supported feature immediately.

In other news from Integration World, Software AG has opened the door for bringing rich Internet applications (RIAs) to enterprise transaction systems with the introduction of Natural for Ajax, an enhanced version of the company's Natural 2006 application development and deployment environment.

Natural 2006 allows developers to create highly scalable enterprise transactional systems running on either mainframe or open source platforms. Natural for Ajax follows close on the heels of Software AG's release of Natural for Eclipse. Key benefits of RIAs include the streamlined ability to create composite views of application and data, as well as the availability of more dynamic, high-performance and interactive reporting.

According to Software AG, Natural for Ajax can be used to create browser-based, rich user interfaces for enterprise applications and mainframe systems that rival the look, feel and performance of the latest Web 2.0 applications. Developers can implement rich-client functionality using a library of more than 50 pre-defined Web graphical user interface (GUI) controls. Other interactive features -- such as “drag and drop,” context menus and advanced grid processing -- can be used within a standard Web browser to streamline development and boost productivity.

Among the other announcements:

• Software AG will offer and support Layer 7's SecureSpan SOA security and policy enforcement solutions on a global basis. Layer 7 provides gateway software and appliances for securing, scaling, and simplifying production SOAs. The Layer 7 product will also serve as a fully interoperable policy enforcement point (PEP) for services government by CentraSite, a SOA governance solution developed jointly by Software AG and Fujitsu.
  
  
• The CentraSite community, which brings together partners who are developing solutions that interoperate with CentraSite, has grown to over 50 members. A standards-based organization, the CentraSite Community now includes such members as Progress Software, MID, BAP Solutions, JustSystems, Composite Software, Intalio, IONA, iTKO, Solstice Software, SOA Software, and SymphonySoft.
  
  
• Software AG and Satyam Computer Systems Ltd., announced they will expand their global partnership for developing vertical solutions using WebMethods. This partnership focuses on industry-specific process frameworks for such key sectors as insurance, manufacturing, and telecom.

Looks like the The Gang, rounded up by Steve Gillmor, is back in the saddle

Jason Calacanis is blogging about the latest debut of The Gang, aka Gillmor Group, aka Bad Sinatra, aka Gillmor Gang. The first episode is on Facebook, in four parts. I was happy to be a part of this, nearly a year since the last real Gang recording.

It actually came out quite good, just like the olden days. And a critical mass of the original gang is on the call: Steve Gillmor, Nick Carr, Mike Arrington, Doc Searls, Robert Anderson, Jason Calacanis, Mike Vizard, and yours truly. Expect more.

At least this first weekly and lively discourse on the really important things in life is not in 18 revolting segmentations, as was the norm in some past iterations. I can only surmise that Steve is out hustling up some underwriters for the podcast. Why else break it up at all?

Anyone care to cut a check on this? Six figures? Jonathan? I'm sure Steve's voice-overs on your introductions will be inspiring. ... ("He'd never be in blogging if it weren't for me!") Actually, I'd probably not be in blogging if not for Steve either. Thanks, pal.

True to his attention-deficit marketing mentality, there is virtually no promotion of the new The Gang. Links are dead after all. It's all about negative gestures, don't ya know. Ya, and I buried Paul, you expert textpert.

I'm very glad to see that Steve is producing this independently. No more Pod.*. And Facebook will make a fascinating viral platform. It's good to experiment. Just open enough. He might even be able to measure the audience; might even be able to define the audience members, might even be able to invite the audience individually. Ah, the good old days of controlled circulation ... much better rates that way. And the list -- My God, he could sell the list! Elitism has its advantages.

And I'm glad it's not video either, leave that to the infomercials. See Gate, et al. Voice is plenty. Just repurpose it on iTunes and monetize on the Facebook picket-fence garden. Screw the rest of 'em.

And so, how do you post "music" to Facebook? Is that an application, or a feature?

Red Hat partners with Amazon for Enterprise Linux fabric in Elastic Compute Cloud

Seeking to make ISVs an offer they can't refuse, Red Hat has teamed with Amazon to provide Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.x instances in the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) infrastructure as a service offering.

The beta Amazon-hosted monthly payment subscription service will allow developers -- be they in ISVs or enterprises -- to develop to RHEL and then deploy the applications as a service. The applications owners will then only pay for the hosting of those applications and services based on their use and support infrastructure demand -- known as pay as you drink.

Red Hat also announced Wednesday the release of RHEL 5.1, which follows from RHEL 5.0's arrival last March. The newer point release provides an even deeper and aggressive reach into virtualization benefits, including significant performance boosts.

Additionally, Red Hat plans in mid-2008 to debut a series of software appliances, beginning with Red Hat Appliance OS and an associated development kit. This will allow entire packages of platform, middleware and applications to be crafted into an easily deployed functionally targeted and optimized appliance.

The goal is to allow developers and ISVs myriad choices on how to deliver their applications and services, as long as they deploy to the RHEL stack of open source infrastructure. Red Hat then charges for maintenance and support, or via on-demand subscriptions. By targeting just RHEL, developers can then deploy directly to dedicated servers, to virtualized instances of Linux, via optimized software appliances (apps plus OS plus required stacks), as well as via several choices for on-demand hosting (including Amazon).

Red Hat calls this plethora of deployment models and approaches as its new Linux Automation strategy. Red Hat is also interestingly getting chummy with Sun Microsystems on enterprise Java support, now that Java is open source.

What's more, through its burgeoning embrace of virtualization options, Red Hat plans to aggressively support Windows instances on Red Hat, so that any Windows 32-bit applications (from across many versions of Windows) can be supported virtually on RHEL. The leading Linux supplier also plans to work inside of Microsoft's pending Viridian hypervisor, which is based on the Linux-based Xen hypervisor (at least for now).

On a large business level, Red Hat is seeking to bring more open source deployment options to global developers of nearly every ilk. For operators, Red Hat hopes to simplify their infrastructures while offering strong performance and lower total costs through higher utilization and capacity management on top of lower licensing and hardware costs. Red Hat says that RHEL is gaining ground quickly on mainframes, including IBM's System Z.

My take on these announcements is that Red Hat wants to take its Linux distribution clout far beyond the market for dedicated servers and blades at individual enterprises, and become the de facto industry standard for how hosting organizations, telecommunications providers, entertainment providers, and on-demand ISVs deploy all their applications over the next 10 years.

Red Hat is banking on the trends around virtualization, clustering and utility computing, multi-core hardware/parallelism, and the increasingly advantageous on-demand subscription economic models to become the low-cost, high-performance enough foundational supplier.

With virtualization performance gaining ground, and allowing many types and kind of server applications to run on instances of many OSes, then more (and nearly) all things become equal such that a pure price-performance comparison can be made for providing applications and services. Whether you are building, hosting, providing, or monetizing around those services -- you will eventually move to the best price-performance deal.

The race is on then: Windows, Solaris/Open Solaris, Red Hat Linux -- on various types of platform iterations -- for the best story when it comes to hosting price-performance and deployment ease experience. Red Hat is aiming high on this one. And it has a pretty good shot at it doing very well.

Red Hat is boldly predicting it can, by 2015, double its market share and support more than half the worlds server instances. And they didn't even use the "grid" or "utility" words, not once.

Enterprise mobile remains up for grabs despite Google, Android and OHA

What do the major players missing from the Google Android and Open Handset Alliance (OHA) have in common? An abiding interest in enterprise mobile, and effectively integrating IT back-end resources for delivery to mobile B2E, B2B and B2C endpoints.

So-far, the non-OHA-committed players include Apple, Microsoft, Sybase, Adobe, Oracle, BEA Systems, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, SAP, and HP. When viewed through this prominent global crowd, the OHA roster seems a bit flimsy for satisfying the major business activities/corporate opportunity.

Many questions arise on what will happen in an OHA world on the business side of the aisle. For example, should Google and the OHA members be satisfied with the B2C play? Will the current B2C OHA, if successful, play a coalescing role for B2B and B2E architectures? Could a separate business-oriented OHA or equivalent be in the offing?

For mobile especially, why have separate architectures for B2C and B2B? Why should enterprise mobile SaaS be constructed any differently from mobile Web SaaS? Fragmentation is the problem, not the solution.

If Android is to progress as an open environment into PC-like devices, then the architectural approach should be common. Respondents to my ZDNet blog poll say 58% to 42% that open mobile devices threaten closed PC models.

Well, of course, many things need to happen for an "open" business-ready mobile architecture: security, control, management, governance and mission critical reliability come to mind. The level for such risk-avoidance measures would be lower for a B2C and mobile commerce approach, at least at the outset.

So perhaps what is needed is a two-tiered approach to Android/OHA. One level, for Web-facing and consumer-type activities (supported increasingly by ad and mobile commerce revenues), will arrive Nov. 12. But how about a second level for a more enterprise-calibre stack, one with the concerns of CIOs addressed (supported more by a licensed, royalty, maintenance/support or subscription revenue model). Come on, guys, let's see the business version!

In fact, this could well mirror what has happened with free open source and so-called commercial open source. You take the same code base, the same adherence to openness, standards and interoperability -- yet take it to market on two levels. Android may very well need an more mature brother: Robot.

Android can be the mobile consumer-facing approach. Robot can be the workhorse for the business-class needs. This makes a great deal of sense and would allow for the common community of development while satisfying two quite different architectural integrity needs. It also allows for more traditional business monetization for Robot, one that would jibe with enterprise licensed and commercial open source selling. The Apache license could work for both, another essential commonality.

I think that Sybase, IBM, Oracle, Apple, Sun, Red Hat and the business revenue-hungry networks might go for it. Only Microsoft might be left trying to figure what in heaven's name to do about this whole thing. (What? Windows Mobile Open Live Software and Services .NET?)

Make no mistake. There is growing demand for enterprises to get mobile to their employees, partners, and customers. Sybase is betting the company on it. Based on a poll I presented in a recent ZDNet blog here, a whopping 78% of respondents think that IBM and Apple should work together to bring a Lotus Notes client to the iPhone.

I say three cheers for Notes on iPhone! It would be a great solution and drive Apple deeper into enterprises, while extending the shelf life of Notes/Domino. But why not build it via a Robot architecture, with Android at the core, and allow these mobile devices to be common endpoints for corporate and consumer activities, such as Notes/Domino, based on a common -- yet two-tired -- open/commercial middleware stack?

Windows Mobile didn't get the job done. Java ME did not get the job done. Embedded Linux did not get the job done. How about a Robot brother to Android?

Google's Android approach threatens no less than the personal computer itself

Google's announcement of mobile software platform Android pretty much disrupts and disintermediates a large swath of the edge of the Internet that connects via closed, non-PC devices to ... well, a fairly limited amount of content, apps, and data.

Google with Android and the Open Handset Alliance, however, may blow open a marketplace through a common open platform that can then provide a lot more content, apps, data, media, and services. And that will feed the demand by developers, users, and ultimately advertisers that open platforms be provided on mobile devices.

At the same time, the boundaries between laptop, PC, converged device, entertainment device are eroding and blurring. What will determine what the use will be for the content and apps, the services and the media? Not the location. Not the network. As the device user goes, so goes the options for its use. As long as there is broadband, a critical mass of apps and open services -- the device can be the size of an iPhone and do it all.

And that gives it serious advantages over a PC. The PC is locked down, and not nearly as versatile as a fully open, full-function mobile converged device. What's more, the services and content will begin to matter more, and drive the user behavior -- not the device itself, once it's made open (and maybe even free). The business model that favors the media over the closed platform will usually win. The business model that favors the platform over the limited and choked content will not.

Google through the Open Handset Alliance plans on Nov. 12 to unveil an operating system, middleware and mobile applications (and early look at the Android SDK). The goal is to foster ease and volume in binding together content providers and devices aka users. It's write once-run anywhere all over again. Not all the carriers are in, as TechCrunch points out, and most that are come from outside the U.S. where handset choice has been greater.

The crowd of members to the alliance is impressive. It will also be curious to see how Apple groks Android, and if its open API plans will marry or mesh with Open Handset Alliance plans. My guess is that Apple will need to adopt this, but may take its sweet time.

The energy and potential here with Android and community reminds me a lot of Java in the early days, and that's not a surprise given where Google honcho Eric Schmidt spent considerable time in the 1990s: inventing and promoting Java. Eric must love the very notion of "disrupts and disintermediates." Only this time its not to ward off just Microsoft, but to ward off the possibilities of future Microsofts.

No one provider, handset maker, or carrier is a kingmaker in the mobile market, not even Microsoft. The Win-Tel monopoly never made it to the handheld. The mobile market in many regions is unformed enough that Google and its partners can have a chance at keeping it open enough so that the loosely coupled content model may ultimately outshine the current dominant PC model as defined by Microsoft for some 20-plus years.

And the Java connection is more fitting than Eric's dual roles: Android and the Open Handset Alliance may very well presage -- if successful -- the disruption and disintermediation of the PC itself. It also explains why readers think that Java SE (and not ME) on converged devices makes sense.

So over the next couple of years, Android-supported mobile devices will spawn the applications ecology that creates all the hens to lay all the eggs that will best hatch into the chickens that come home to roost. The Google Trojan Horse Android could make it a lot easier for developers to thrive in the mobile space. An open iPhone or similar type of device can grow in its category to encroach on the PC. PCs will become notebook PCs that begin to act a lot more like an Android, or ... lose developer and media outlet (and ad dollars) allegiance.

If my vision is nearly correct (timing is always a tough one to call), more of the content designed for an Android and Open Handset Alliance-type device will also be used on a PC, the UI can be really all about Web services. And Microsoft will, as with the Web, Java, and SaaS, have to capitulate and adopt or support Android.

We're already seeing encroachment of what's known as the converged mobile device -- personified best so far by the Apple iPhone -- into the domain of the PC. If you were to hook up an iPhone to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard ... well, you have a PC. As long as it connects via wireless broadband, uses a browser to reach all the rest of the Google-navigated web content, and Google apps, and Apple's content (per per click) too.

Desktop PCs will be for large enterprises and the un-imaginative. A successful Android approach means that Windows Mobile will face daunting and probably insurmountable odds. It means the Windows PC will face new competition, and not just like Mac OS X -- the Windows franchise will face competition of a categorical nature, a game changer: The open mobile device ecology. And it's because Microsoft was not able to capture enough of the mobile market and lock it into Windows and its Visual Studio developers in time.

As Linux is at the core of Android, there's already an open source approach. That should be extended up and down the Android stack, and also account for a share of the applications. Google should make sure that money can be made by content producers, and that Google's ad revenues are shared, just as with AdSense on the web. Carriers will need to move to these Android devices and find a model based on content subscription and use. In effect, the mobile platform goes to the Internet model, and not just for limited browsers use.

The Google Android platform and the Apple iPhone have a lot in common. In effect, the two global innovators of Apple and Google are placing different bets on diverging paths to a similar end point. As such, they probably are complementary in the long run. And that spells trouble for Microsoft, the mobile carriers, and the closed handset makers.

It's also possible that Apple's best interests and Google's will diverge at some later point. How open will they go? If it threatens the PC, it could also mean Apple's platform model comes under pressure.

Meanwhile, however, an Android-supporting iPhone may be about the best mobile experience on the planet for a long time in the not too distant future. Hook it up to a dock and its the best PC experience too. Write once, run anywhere, do anything, anywhere -- that's the potential we're looking at. It's hard to see how a closed Microsoft Windows Everywhere approach -- while still hugely successful on the PC for now -- can lock in at the required level on the mobile device. It's easier to see open mobile devices usurping the PC.

UPS debuts customs clearance and international returns solutions for small businesses

Listen to the podcast. Read a full transcript of the discussion. Sponsor: UPS.

As the world becomes "flatter" and globalization drives new opportunities for international commerce, how do small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) jump on the bandwagon?

The Internet allows any business to gather orders and process them across borders very easily at low cost. For SMBs in the U.S., currency fluctuation are working in their favor for overseas commerce. And such free-trade drivers as the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and World Trade Organization (WTO) measures are making it easier for goods to flow around the globe -- at least in theory.

The reality is that small business operators need to jump through complex hoops -- especially in a post-9/11 world -- to actually move their goods across borders, and back again the event of returns. Recognizing the opportunity and the challenge, UPS in early 2008 is debuting several new services to help SMBs join the Fortune 500 when it comes to expanded markets and international commerce.

I had the opportunity to moderate a sponsored podcast discussion on the global trade landscape for SMBs, and to learn more about the latest UPS solutions for expanding trade while reducing complexity and risk. Listen as global trade experts and UPS executives explore how (SMBs) can better market their goods internationally, deal with customs and border rules at increasing scale and with reusable automation, while further leveraging the Web for added efficiency.

UPS is helping to change the face of global shipping by being a market innovator with a solution called UPS Paperless Invoice. It uses UPS applications and the Internet to define commercial shipment invoice data for border clearance, eliminating the customer's chore of manually applying three paper invoice copies to each shipment. UPS will also soon deliver UPS Returns in 98 countries so shippers can use digital technology and UPS solutions to prepare the proper return labels so goods can be easily returned back across borders when necessary.

Join Laurel Delaney, founder and president of GlobeTrade.com, and Stu Marcus and Scott Aubuchon, both directors of new product development at UPS, for this SMB globalization opportunity podcast.

Here are some excerpts:

If you’re an American tourist and you're vacationing in Paris, your dollar buys fewer Euros right now. So you’d probably end up spending $7 for a cup of coffee, or even $50 for a taxi ride. A weak dollar can be good for the U.S. economy, though, because it makes American exports cheaper.

International shipping is at an all-time high. The Internet is making it easier for SMBs to trade internationally. Many of the free-trade agreements have helped, as well. But there’s still a lot of complexity involved in shipping across borders, and that’s something that we at UPS are very interested in helping our customers deal with and overcome.

For anything that’s not a document or a letter moving internationally, a commercial invoice is required to go with that shipment, in order to define what is contained in the shipment. So, for example, if you were shipping a cotton shirt, you’d need to document what type of shirt it is, where it was made, and what the fabric is. That process can be fairly complex and somewhat daunting, especially to folks who don’t do a lot of international shipping.

The U.S. Customs Bureau used to be part of the Treasury Department. It’s now called U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and it’s part of the homeland security function. So even though there’s freer trade, the documentation required for trade security purposes is still very important, and may be more important than ever.

UPS Paperless Invoice ... enables our customers to provide us with electronic data defining what’s in the international shipment -- that would be the commercial invoice data -- and provide that seamlessly and electronically, so that we can transmit it and use it for clearance on the other end. ... From the customer's perspective it really is completely paperless. They can take the data regarding the commodities they're shipping and either apply it within, or connected to, their shipping system.

Then, when they prepare the shipment, they simply designate the commodities that are in the shipment, transmit that information with the shipment upload, and we will use that information at the destination to clear the shipment. The customer doesn’t need to print and apply any paper at all in that process. This helps by saving them time, money, and paper.

One of the keys to dealing with duties, taxes, and a proper treatment of shipments is, in fact, the documentation. So getting that commercial invoice data correct, and consistently applied to each shipment, will be a big help with that. ... Because the data is moving electronically to its destination, it's not susceptible to being marred or lost in transit, as a piece of paper might. It’s also helped them to get their shipments cleared more seamlessly. We've seen that for a couple of our customers -- and we expect that the same will be the case for our customers who start using UPS Paperless Invoice in January.

How do we deal with returns? We hear that for some 70 percent of international returns, there is no standard operating procedure. They’re just done on an ad hoc, exception-by-exception basis.

... The research that we have done with our customers indicates that the most important reason customers want to have an efficient return process is for their own customer service. Exporting goods and shipping items globally is only one part of building your business. Offering customer service when things are wrong or customers need to replace items is really key to building customer loyalty and gaining additional business.

Customers know that, in the past, having items returned internationally was really a time-consuming and burdensome process. You have receivers who need to return items internationally, and they may not be familiar with shipping internationally. The shipper who sent it out really has a knowledge base in doing global commerce. Now, the receiver has these items and no way to efficiently get them back.

With UPS Returns, which we are expanding to 98 countries, UPS is going to be the first carrier to offer this type of solution to shippers. Now shippers can use the same UPS technology with which they export goods to prepare the return label and get it to their receiver to initiate the return process. A shipper can now prepare a label and a commercial invoice and have it e-mailed directly to the receiver. Where in the past you would only be able to fill out a manual label and put in the mail, now the receiver can get it immediately, and then use the label and the invoice to initiate the return process. ... This is going to begin in January 2008.

Listen to the podcast. Read a full transcript of the discussion. Sponsor: UPS.