In the past year I wrote frequently about the manner in which enterprises approach Rich Internet Applications (RIA’s) and Cloud Architecture. I’m happy to see now tangible evidence of this. During the last couple of weeks I received several case descriptions of productive systems, and I’d like to share a couple of particularly interesting cases. For some reason, the more interesting stories come from the Netherlands – I did not figure out yet what’s behind this, but the first RIA example that I described in “More about Enterprise RIA in practice” also originated in that country.

The “Flower Shop” solution is an Enterprise RIA coming from a joint venture of Extendas (ISV specialising in eCommerce solutions) and Van Delft International (one of the leading suppliers of cut flowers in the Netherlands and award winning early adopter of mobile software technology). This application spans the entire supply chain from the FloraHolland exchange through the flower trader (such as Van Delft) to the flower shop. This is an Enterprise Class application, requiring a rich user interaction and transactional capability that is beyond browser based applications. Implemented with uniPaaS, the application is available simply via a URL and login credentials. It is presently being rolled out and is expected to be used by some 1500 flower shops, streamlining the short-lived flower trade, accelerating logistics and reducing overhead.

Another amazing customer of Magic Software is the VanDrie Group, the World’s largest veal producer. VanDrie already had a browser based application, VealVision, providing the full historical details about your piece of Schnitzel from the farmer to the supermarket. This has been now replaced by a fully interactive RIA, enabling each party in the supply chain to feed the system directly – streamlining the short-lived veal trade, accelerating logistics and reducing overhead…

As Redmonk analyst Michael Coté commented on these stories, Enterprise RIA’s bring the “boring back-office applications” to the Web era and the usability level which the millennial generation expects from IT. They also remind us the Cloud Computing is not only infrastructure on demand, but has a far reaching business impact and that its adopters already gain a lot from it.

We have seen in my previous post about hydrogen two main factors that can facilitate the supply and competitiveness of Hydrogen – H2 production, and H2 Storage and Transportation.

At present it takes about 1.5 times energy to produce H2 – meaning that we have to invest 1.5kW in order to obtain 1kW worth of H2. I suspect that the energy investment in obtaining 1kW of Coal or other fossil fuel is not less (in particular when you consider the cost of their being non-renwable). I did some research and found an interesting study by Prof Risto Tarjanne – Competitive Comparison of Electricity Production Alternatives – I copy here the relevant graphic.

What this implies is that Nuclear electricity cost is about 2.4€ç/kWh (3.6$ç), and that instead of wasting power during off-peak hours, we can cleanly produce large amounts of hydrogen from water using electrical energy. But given that the boiling point of hydrogen is cryogenic – at about minus 252.87 °C – it is very difficult and expensive to store it as is. One of the main challenges of the hydrogen economy is to find a way to store H2 in a similar density to that of fossil fuel.

Let’s conclude this post by stating that it should be possible to produce hydrogen without CO2 emissions at an energy cost of about 3.6€ç/kWh, or €1.2 per Kg of emission free hydrogen. In the next post, I’ll tackle the storage and transportation issue.

An interesting discussion is developing on ebizQ whether Cloud Computing Too Embryonic to Use for Serious Business Purposes. It shows a consensus that we have to look at the meaning of Cloud Computing in the Enterprise context.

I tend to distinguish between the infrastructure and the software architecture that can support the delivery of enterprise applications in the Cloud (to power users over the web), and the acquisition of such infrastructure and software on a per-use (or other non perpetual) basis.

My personal experience shows that Enterprises are indeed implementing “Cloud Architecture” solutions which are substituting fat Client-Server implementations, but mostly using the traditional business model (perpetual ownership and in-house or hosted location) – when it concerns core and customized solutions. Cloud based infrastructure and applications delivered as a service and on-demand are indeed still limited to “commodity solutions” – collaboration, CRM, etc…

I have described a nice example of these a few months ago (the Segway story and their uniPaaS solution). I’d like to hear more if you have similar or contradictory experiences and observations.

I have been studying recently the hydrogen economy, and I’d like to share the insight I gained.

Taking a different look at energy, we should consider all forms of fuel as energy carriers and all forms of fuel production (whether mining, drilling, via nuclear reaction or solar/wind etc…) as primary energy sources.

Presently, most of our primary energy sources are non renewable, and most of our energy carriers deliver their energy while polluting the environment. What we want for tomorrow is renewable primary energy sources and non-polluting energy carriers, all at a consumer cost similar to the present.

Renewable primary energy sources are usually of a stationary nature – nuclear plants, wind turbines, solar farms or biogas plants. As long as we can directly produce electricity and transport it over wires to stationary consumers (such as households) we’re fine. However, much of the energy we consume is in a mobile setting – automotive and various devices. For these applications, as well as for isolated off-grid location, we need an easily transportable, non-polluting and renewable energy carrier. There is a broad consensus that Hydrogen can be such a carrier, provided we find ways to harness it.

Hydrogen (H2) can be cleanly produced from water with electricity generated by a renewable primary energy source, and when consumed it releases energy while producing clean water. In terms of energy content it is also very attractive: 1Kg of H2 contains the equivalent of 33kWh – compared to about 11kWh contained in the equivalent amount of Diesel fuel – and compared to 0.3kWh in 1Kg of a top battery.

I’ll expand on the practical aspects of hydrogen production, storage and transportation in a subsequent post.

In the meantime, I’m keen to learn about your view on the futur of energy.

I came across one of those “Columbus Egg” postings which I found excellent, motivating enough to add this post. My trigger is a post by Gartner analyst Anthony Bradley about the realities of Social Media, and I would like to expand on this.

There’s a long dated debate about the limit between private and public life, and about media transgression in the lives of public figures. This got a dramatic exposure with the tragic death of Princess Diana. The internet and the new social sites give anyone access to the world, to the point of redefining the meaning of fundamental social terms (what does the word “Friend” mean nowadays?). People use social networking sites, blogging and messaging to gain exposure and develop (consciously or unconsciously) a personal brand. They are not always attentive to the “Pandora Box” effect, that what they publish is out there in the public domain. It reminds me of the venerable arrest warning “anything you say could be used against you”. As Anthony rightly points out, “No matter where you fall on the question of personal privacy, this is the way of the world and it is unlikely to change because there are too many people who feel that if you sell your persona then all your behavior is fair game. And certainly the demand for scandalous information is strong”.

Another related challenge is the impact of social computing on the enterprise. Businesses spend a very significant percentage of their income to carefully manage branding and communications. A press release that is less and a page often incurs more that an entire day of human labor until it hits the wire. In contrast, most of the content published in social media is essentially ad-hoc and often reflects temporal sentiments. We see more and more frequently situations where the personal brand of an employee becomes significant, and when that employee is also a visible figure in an enterprise it might challenge the communication effort of that enterprise and impact its brand.

How do you reconcile then privacy rights and professional limitations? The Internet gives private persons enormous potential power, and with power comes responsibility. If a person wants to play in the branding and exposure Enterprise league, then he/she should also accept the consequences, and realize that just as Facebook changed the meaning of “Friend” so did the social computing phenomena change the meaning and boundaries of “Privacy”.

I take this opportunity to wish you a happy festive season and a prosperous new year.

I asked myself what might be the motivation for a company, of which I have so far never heard of, to engage in a legal battle that it has very probably no chance of winning? And on the ground that they objectively rate a better positioning in the report? Why go through the cost and hassle? Unless, the exposure obtained via this method of communication is much more cost effective than other exposure alternatives…

Indeed, I doubt that they would have gotten this kind of exposure in NetworkWorld and Google as a result of their mere Gartner MQ presence. And what if they would invest in sponsoring one of Gartner’s relevant events? I did that a few times at great expense, but did not rate a Google alert and NetworkWorld coverage. What if  this law suit costs significantly less than alternative ways of achieving Gartner related visibility? In such a case it would pay further dividends to go for another round in the court and get another round of media attention.

Even though the business climate remains challenging, I sincerely hope that this phenomenon remains an exception and that companies focus on bringing more added value with their offerings rather than try to gain advantage by picking upon distortions and weak spots in our system.

Take the airline industry – flying is statistically much safer than other transportation such as automobiles, yet a flight accident gets worldwide attention while most car accidents go unnoticed (except for the victims). The same goes for hosting and Cloud operations, in many aspects – security, outages, performance – to take a few.

Frankly, the typical company’s data centre is significantly less secure and frequently poorly monitored, to a point that users often are not even aware they were hacked. So I would not lose sleep worrying about outages at IBM – much more likely about outages of my own data centre.

The extraction of air humidity as alternative water source is a solution that was primitively used since biblical times . In the last 15 years several attempts were invested using modern technologies for this process, but none was able to operate reliably over an extended period of time at acceptable costs.

The ideal solution is to affordably produce plenty of H2O (pure water). And voila – it should be now possible to get large amounts of drinking-grade water in places where water is limited or unavailable with minimal environmental impacts and at a reasonable price!  This goal is achieved using an innovative technology from the Israeli company EWA Technologies Ltd., to obtain atmospheric water in most climatic conditions, air quality, time and place.

The EWA technology aims to provide humanity with a new water source, which could easily answer necessities almost everywhere on the globe. The EWA technology can be considered as a rain substitute – without its erratic unavailability.

Some facts about water in the air
There is more than enough water in the air. The air volume of a big room (75-100 cubic meters) contains almost two liters of water. In atmospheric terms, a volume of 1 cubic km contains 10,000 to 40,000 cubic meter of water – enough to supply water for thousands of families.

The EWA 3rd generation technology
EWA-III incorporates a novel breakthrough and cost effective processes to supply remarkable quantities of water from the atmosphere. Leaving behind the traditional condensation concepts that were used so far to extract water from air, EWA-III utilizes a multi-stage, dry, chemically based concept that is unaffected by air pollution and suits most climatic conditions. EWA-III also breaks the cost barriers of equivalent technologies thanks to sophisticated heat exchange and energy management, to the point of generating carbon credits.
Practically, only the power consumed by the blowers and some incremental heat is needed, since EWA-III reuses 90% of the energy through heat transfers and innovative optimization. In biomass terms, the basic EWA-III/10 model consumes 5kg of biomass (or 5 litres of diesel fuel) to produce 1,000 litres of fresh water. The energetic efficiency increases upon scaling up to higher capacity models, reducing the cost to $0.50 per 1,000 litres of water at the efficient end.

The environmental impact
Water desalination technologies produce waste that negatively impact the environment, and generate carbon emission debits. The new technology requires moderate heat energy, can use natural and/or residual heat sources, and a little electricity. It does not use chemicals and does not produce any wastes or residues. Moreover, upon consuming heat energy from renewable energy sources, it actually produces carbon credits. Furthermore, this creates new fresh liquid water (transformation process) that is added to the water cycle.

In his paper about the combat against desertification , Professor Marc Bied-Charreton describes the causes and effects of desertification, and highlights the point that modifications of vegetation and land conditions have an impact on the climate; that soil denudation increases evaporation and reduces water storage; and that the increase of barren land areas has also an impact on the production/suspension of aerosols, contributing to climate mechanisms alterations. With enough water to develop vegetation in desert areas, desertification could be reversed and the effects of climate change mitigated.

The Rural Concept developed by EWA addresses the water – vegetation – waste – energy cycle, and makes use of agricultural wastes as an energy source for EWA’s water apparatus. EWA’s water apparatuses are able to utilize all types of energy, but mainly use moderate heat (a small amount of electricity is required to blow the air through the absorption chamber). Agricultural wastes are composed of organic matter that enables to produce heat without causing air pollution.

By using agriculture/municipal organic wastes to produce energy, it is possible to supply water for both domestic and agricultural purposes at a significantly lower cost than alternative water sources.

Today I came across a post by Yoni Barel that I liked very much – The business of cloud computing. Yoni works for ActionBase, and has actually crossed over from the Consumer oriented Internet to the Enterprise side.

Yoni’s assessment of the Enterprise attitude to technology is very relevant in a (virtual) world where the trends are set by attic designs and exploratory stints. Some of these are very cool and attractive, but not always usable and reliable enough for the Enterprise. In this respect, ActionBase walks a fine line, taking the ubiquitous Chat paradigm into the constrained and compliant Enterprise to deliver a cool collaborative experience.

 This pours more water onto the mill of what Enterprise 2.0 is about and Enterprise RIA. Ofer Spiegel published recently a highly recommended paper about Building a User Interface to Deliver Optimal User Experience  - making very useful distinctions between Rich User Interface and Rich User Experience, in particular when it comes to Enterprise Applications.

Yoni also discusses the pertinence of Cloud Computing as the principal computing platform for a business, touching upon the controversy that McKenzie raised a few months ago. The bottom line according to both, is that at present Cloud based infrastructure such as Amazon EC2 is great for temporary and overflow needs, but wholly owned infrastructure (on-premise or hosted) is still more suitable for the basic core infrastructure.

There’s an evolving conversation at ebizQ about BI, questioning if BI is forward or backward looking (is it like driving while looking at the rear-view mirror?).

I’d say that driving without a look at the rear mirror can be quite dangerous. Rather than being holistic, we should consider BI as one technology which contributes to better management, rather than as an isolated panacea.

If you can apply BI to on-going data in order to make near real-time decisions, then you are not just looking backwards. Say that you approach traffic lights, and the green blinks announcing that it would soon turn to red. Should you hit the accelerator or the breaks? If your BI can give this answer, taking into account past behaviour and data as well as present data (speed, location, …) – then you have a good implementation.

We see this kind of implementation more and more. In the context of Process Management, one of the fast growing products (Appian) actually stems from BI and applies this technology to many facets of their product. Other BPM vendors do similar things. BI is also increasingly integrated in the Office environment with add-on products such as Panorama.

To conclude with a broader perspective, let’s not underestimate the relevance of history. History is part of our present and certainly impacts our future, and those who have a good understanding and insight of history usually are able to better interpret the present and make sound decisions about the future. I thing that this is what BI helps us do.