Saturday, December 16, 2006

Basic instincts

What an interesting statement issued here after yet another superficial interpretation of the well known and long identified dual model for IT applications distribution.

At present, there is no one company covering these issues comprehensively. Microsoft must build scalable presence, Google must build trust. At Jabber, Inc. we're watching this looming battle with the inherent interest of an arms dealer.

The author is by the way Jabber Inc's public relations person. The actual issues referred to in the post are

  • The inherent need for a high trust level that must come associated with any application service provider.
  • The scalability of the distribution system's architecture to support the service.

I somewhat agree that presence is called to play an increasing role in many upcoming applications, be they used in an ASP or edge model. But this is certainly not the unique constraint that one needs to consider for building a successful ASP infrastructure. Generic reliability, graceful degraded functions, high availability and self healing are just a few of the basic needs for a proper scaling architecture. Real time oriented data services will certainly also play a role. In that respect, Google probably has an edge.
On the other front, I am not certain any of the two contenders can pretend to inspire a sufficient trust level. But, contrary to infrastructure, this is not a technical matter.

To conclude, although I have unfortunately observed several times that many in the PR world often associate “public” with “dummies”, I find rather curious to compare carrots (the illusive trust level of a corporation) and apples (the forbidden fruit of seamless scalability). More interestingly, I am wondering if the author is not falling into that category of people spending 5 months of their year's time in front of a television or a computer. Beyond the natural mental mimetism which results from trying to penetrate DoD contractors defenses and sell them presence, too much exposure to WoW, "GI Jane", [insert here any other B TV series, video game or reality show] is the only rational explanation I could find to why the inherent interests of this company should be those of an "arms dealer" when the context is "live" services…

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