The Agile Executive

Update, October 22, 2010: Watch this excellent demo of Code2Cloud!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ALM.svg

Figure 1: A Representation of the Application Lifecycle Management Concepts

VMware’s Code2Cloud announcement a couple of days ago is intriguing. According to this announcement, the whole development infrastructure is delivered as a service with no setup, no hardware or software to manage. The tedious and time consuming task of setting (and as appropriate modifying) the environment within which coding is carried out is done by Code2Cloud, not by the programming/testing team. As pointed out by colleague and friend Michael Cote, Code2Cloud might have the potential to be quite a disruption in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM):

“The software development tool chain has always been tedious to setup and integrate,” said Red Monk analyst Michael Cote. “While cloud-based development promises to make application delivery, deployment, and use easier, I haven’t seen excellent unified application management approaches that take full advantage of cloud. VMware’s SpringSource Code2Cloud is an ambitious step towards moving much of the development management stack into the cloud and hopefully vacuuming up those tedious application management tasks. It’ll be fun to watch this idea evolve as more and more people and applications start taking advantage of cloud computing.”

Important that such a disruption in the ALM space might be, I believe the main significance of the Code2Cloud announcement is in demonstrating so vividly how powerful the Everything as a Service (EaaS) paradigm could be and probably will be. IMHO Code2Cloud is another proof point to the power of the confluence of Agile, Cloud, Mobile and Social. It is a virtuous cycle of unprecedented impact – in technology delivery, in the structure of markets, in society and in the patterns of living we are accustomed to.

© Copyright 2010 Israel Gat

Figure 2: The Virtuous Cycle of Agile, Cloud, Mobile and Social

The Code2Cloud announcement is primarily about the {Agile –> Cloud} link in Figure 2. The {Cloud –> Mobile}, {Mobile –> Social} and {Social –> Agile} are just as powerful. For example, the {Social –> Agile} link, in conjunction with Cloud and Mobile, opens the door for highly efficient Testing as a Service.

Think of the Code2Cloud as a great example of Everything as a Service. Many other examples of such services are forthcoming. The common denominator of all these examples to come is their transformative power. Not in the tactical sense of “transformative”, but in the deep strategic meaning of the word.

Action item: Start a pilot to evaluate Code2Cloud. Expand rapidly if it meets your development needs. Tie at the earliest point in time to your plans for application delivery, deployment and use in the cloud.

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Wrestling with governing your software from a lifcycle perspective? Let me know if you would like assistance in implementing a simple yet highly effective software governance framework that can be used by both technical and non-technical members of your staff. Click Services for details and contact information.

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