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What the next iPad will look like
2010-10-23 23:24:00 I have been playing with my new MacBook Air 11? for a few hours now. I love every part of it, and there is not much I would like to change. Maybe shrinking the screen's bezel and make it a 12? laptop without changing its outer dimensions. Or adding an SC Card port. And what about powering it with the A4 CPU so that it could use a diminutive 5V power adapter? All cosmetic changes of course. But there is a more radical change I would like to see in the future. In fact, it is so radical that it would create a brand new form factor altogether. To do so, one would have to really fuse an iPad with the new MacBook Air. Here is how it could be done. Early tablet computers used a laptop design with a swivel hinge. The problem with such a design is that it is quite cumbersome. It's heavy, has too many moving parts, and ends up being quite fragile. One could add multi-touch capabilities to a regular laptop's screen, but as Steve Jobs pointed out, a vertical touch screen isn't very effectiv...
Staying Connected While Traveling
2010-07-27 16:55:00 As my TripIt page can attest, I travel for business quite a bit. On average, I'm on the road more than 150 days a year, with monthly trips to Tokyo, and quarterly trips to Singapore and Europe. And being Intalio's front-line sales representative, I am called to make product demonstrations to customers on a regular basis. Unfortunately, most of our customers and prospects are (very) large organizations, which tend to be fairly sensitive when it comes to the security of their private networks. As a result, public Internet access from any of their meeting rooms is usually unavailable. And because Intalio is all about Cloud Computing, it creates some interesting challenges. Since we launched our Private Cloud product a year ago, I have been experimenting with different ways of staying connected while traveling around the World. Here is what I learned along the way. My primary phone is an iPhone 4, with a regular AT&T account enabled for international roaming. This gives me worldwide a...
Love Respect
2010-06-30 10:13:00 New iPhone released It is a massive success Yet many complain For all its presumed flaws, the new iPhone is an absolutely amazing experiment in industrial design and ecosystem reshaping. It's bold, slick, gorgeous. It makes me wonder what the world would be like if all surrounding objects had been designed with the same level of attention. The iPhone 4 is an acquired taste. At first touch, it feels angular. But as the relationship develops, a unique blend of round shapes and square corners emerges, making for a truly enthralling haptic experience. It's so square, you want to flip it in circular motions between your thumb and index. It feels heavy on the lift, so you want to flip it some more, upside down, left and right. You're getting acquainted. As you're fooling around, an idée force emerges: you're dealing with something quite exceptional. By now, you're fully aware that the aluminum trimming is actually an antenna, and its asymmetric black interruptions serve a real purpo... More About: Love , Respect
Farewell Sawada-San
2010-06-18 20:22:00 Today, I am attending the funeral of Tomoaki Sawada, also known as Sawada-san. To me, he was a colleague, a mentor, and a friend. We met four years ago. Back then, I had visited Japan three times, in 1991, 1999, and 2006. Now, I live in Tokyo one week a month, and owe this lifestyle to him. I had an early interest in Japan, and Sawada-san turned it into a love affair. I would fly over the Pacific, and he would take me over the bridge that brings two cultures together. Sawada-san and I met over this blog. His comments were followed by an invitation to meet in Tokyo, during which I realized the full extent of his technical expertise and his exceptional business acumen, both honed over many years working for IBM. We joined forces, and he helped launch Intalio in Japan, making all the introductions that later on turned into business relationships. Most importantly, he was instrumental in helping Intalio make the move to Cloud Computing, which is driving most of our growth today. Japan i...
New Intalio Website
2010-06-08 11:37:00 Intalio just released its new website. Check it out! More About: Website
Ultimate Mobile Setup
2010-02-01 02:18:00 If you find yourself on the road as often as I do (every other week) and most of your traveling is done abroad (Japan, Korea, Philippines last week), you will want to optimize your mobile setup for portability, connectivity, and affordability. I tried quite a few combinations of countless devices, and I learned a few things along the way. Here is the setup that I am quickly converging toward. First, as described earlier, I am planning to replace my MacBook Air with a Sony VAIO X complemented by an iPad. Same total weight, same total cost, three times the battery life, and a lot more fun? Second, in order to reduce weight and bulk, I banned any electronic devices that could not be charged over USB. That way, I only have to carry my laptop charger, Apple's ultracompact USB Power Adapter, Belkin's USB 2.0 4-Port Ultra Mini Hub, and a few ReTrak cables to make it all look like a cute little octopus. Third, I replaced all my cables with retractable ones. There are two reasons for that... More About: Mobile , Setup , Ultimate
VAIO X + iPad > MacBook Air
2010-02-01 01:18:00 As a frequent traveler (300,000 miles last year), I am always looking for ways to shave some pounds off the gear I am carrying, without sacrificing convenience or performance. That's the reason why I recently switched from a MacBook Pro 13? (4.5 pounds) to a MacBook Air (3.0 pounds). But with the iPad (1.5 pounds) around the corner, I am starting to reconsider my options. Granted, the iPad cannot replace a laptop, but what about pairing it with a super lightweight netbook like the Sony VAIO X (1.6 pounds)? At just 3.1 pounds, the combination would only be 0.1 pounds heavier than a MacBook Air, would roughly cost the same amount of money, and would give me a lot more bang for the bucks. Let's take a closer look? First, let me state that most of the applications I am using are in the cloud, hence the operating system I run does not really matter. In fact, the only offline application I allowed myself to use following my pure Office 2.0 experiment is Apple's iWork, mainly for Keynot... More About: Vaio
The Tablet I Want
2010-01-27 12:39:00 Apple is set to release its much anticipated tablet in half an hour. While I am waiting for it like everybody else, here are my thoughts for what this device should be. A couple of years ago, I described its form in much details. Today, I am much more interested by its function. In a nutshell, I want this tablet to give me access to any media ever created, anytime, anywhere. I want access to every movie ever shot, every music ever recorded, every book ever published, every paper ever written. I want it now, in bright colors, animated, in stereo, and eventually in 3D. I want it at home and on the go. I want it in my pocket with a small screen (iPhone), in my jacket with a midsize display, and in my briefcase with as big a screen as I can carry. Yesterday, on my way from Incheon to Seoul, the cab driver was listening to Queen's I want it all. Here is what Freddie Mercury could have said about Apple's Tablet: ?I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now.?
What I Love About Intalio|Cloud, Part 2
2009-11-18 08:01:00 Today, let's start with the beginning: Intalio|Cloud 's home page. As with any web-based application, the home page is where most users spend the majority of their time, therefore making it user friendly is absolutely critical. While I learned over the years how to customize Salesforce.com's home page, I always found its customization tools difficult to use. I also found myself wishing that it made more extensive use of AJAX technologies in order to improve the overall user experience. Fortunately, Intalio|Cloud goes a long way toward fulfilling those wishes. As can be seen on the screenshot above, Intalio|Cloud's user interface is closer to the one sported by Microsoft Dynamics CRM rather than Salesforce.com, and this choice was deliberate. Salesforce.com's user interface did not evolve much since the application was first released ten years ago, and is starting to feel a bit Web 1.0. For Intalio|Cloud, we decided to take full advantage of now-mature AJAX technologies in ord... More About: Love , Part
What I Love About Intalio|Cloud, Part 1
2009-11-17 20:23:00 With this post, I am starting a new series of articles on Intalio|Cloud , focusing on practical use cases. As I am in the process of migrating my personal Salesforce.com instance to Intalio|CRM (powered by Intalio|Cloud), I am discovering lots of features that I did not know about. Along the way, I am literally falling in love with this platform. Today, we'll take a closer look at Intalio|Mashup. One of the most useful mashups I ever developed is my Free/Busy calendar, which is available at freebusy.ghalimi.name. I introduced this project on this previous article. Since its release a year and a half ago, this little gadget saved me countless hours trying to get meetings scheduled with people. This mashup is pretty simple. All it does is looking up events from my Salesforce.com account, producing an ICAL feed from them, and subscribing a public Google calendar to this feed. Nevertheless, this simple mashup could not be developed directly from Salesforce.com, and required the wri... More About: Love , Part
Defining Cloud Computing for Business Users
2009-10-11 23:06:00 Like any new IT trend, Cloud Computing gets its fair share of hype, and with it comes a multitude of vendors that use the terms in ways it was never intended for, therefore making it devoid of any sense. When pushed to the extreme, a simple server connected to a network seems to qualify as a cloud, thereby allowing pundits such as Larry Ellison to deride the concept to no end. Yet Cloud Computing is much more than a passing fad. It is a major step forward in the development of distributed computing, and one that will reshape the IT industry for years to come. But for it to happen, we must agree on a clear definition of the concept, and the less technical it is, the better. Let us introduce one that focuses exclusively on the business benefits of cloud computing. Wikipedia defines cloud computing in the following fashion: ?Cloud computing is the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertis... More About: Business
I think there is a world market for maybe five clouds
2009-10-11 15:23:00 In 1943, Thomas J. Watson, then President of International Business Machines (IBM), allegedly said ?I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.? Today, industry pundits make similar flawed predictions, claiming that all the market needs is maybe five clouds: Amazon Web Services, Force.com, Google AppEngine, Microsoft Azure, and whatever IBM comes up with. However you define Cloud Computing, this revolutionary step in the 50 year-long evolution of distributed computing (kudos to Darryl Plummer) goes far beyond the few public clouds available today. And while simple principles of economy of scales will most likely limit the number of general purpose public clouds, most of the action will take place on private and virtual private clouds, served from private and virtual private networks. The need for private and virtual private clouds is driven by a combination of factors, many of which were clearly outlined by Gartner's Bruce Robertson in his recent article titled Top Fi... More About: World , Market , Clouds
Meet Me There
2009-10-11 11:06:00 If you want to learn more about Intalio's private cloud offering, meet me there: Oct 26-27: Singapore, SG Oct 28-30: Tokyo, JP Nov 6: Seoul, KR Nov 17-19: Portland, OR Nov 22-24: Montreux, CH Nov 25: Paris, FR Nov 26: Frankfurt, DE Dec 7-8: Singapore, SG Dec 9-11: Tokyo, JP Dec 14: Frankfurt, DE Dec 15: London, UK Dec 16: Paris, FR Dec 17: Geneva, CH Dec 18: Frankfurt, DE Additional stops in the U.S. might be added soon. More About: Meet
Elastic Cloud? Not so Fast…
2009-08-21 15:04:00 Earlier this week, I attended a very interesting CEO roundtable organized by VMware. Around 40 VMware customers and partners (including Intalio) sat down with Paul Maritz (VMware's CEO) for an hour of discussions about virtualization and cloud computing. Listening to customers, I developed a better understanding of the challenges lying ahead for Private Cloud Computing, and the critical role to be played by Open Source software in this radical transformation of the IT landscape. In a nutshell, the hypervisor (VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, etc.) is the next operating system, and it brings elasticity to corporate IT from a technical infrastructure standpoint. Thanks to such elasticity, corporate customers can build private clouds on top of the virtualization infrastructure, leveraging hardware virtualization for multi-tenancy. The challenge in doing so is not so much a technical one, but a business one: licensing elasticity ? or the lack of it. Let me further expla... More About: Fast
Looking for Data on Corporate IT
2009-08-13 19:31:00 Intalio recently sold Intalio|Cloud (the Managed On-Premises version) to two major customers in Japan, and we're expecting a first deal in Singapore sometime in Q4 this year. We're now working on our go-to-market strategy for the U.S. and EMEA, and are developing various marketing materials to support it, using this presentation as baseline. As part of this effort, we need some third-party validated data on corporate IT. Some of it might be found in analyst reports, some in white papers published by vendors, and some could be derived from verifiable anecdotal evidence. Wherever it comes from, we're looking for it and have decided to crowd-source its gathering. If you know the answers to the following questions, or have some time available to look for them, please share your insight with us. Each answer backed-up by proper references will get you a $25 Apple Gift Card or our infinite gratitude (you pick one). Please send answers to Michael Morel, our new Vice President of Marketin... More About: Corporate , Data
When Technology Works
2009-06-30 00:33:00 The problem with being an early adopter of new technologies is that leading edge can quickly turn into bleeding edge. In other words, brand new products are often buggy, and early adopters aren't much different form guinea pigs. Technology enthusiasts like to fancy themselves as explorers of new frontiers, not disposable lab animals. So when new technologies actually work, it's hard not to be excited about them. Tonight, I'd like to share some of this excitement. Since I got my first iPhone on the first day of its release two years ago, I have been trying to use it as a universal remote control, either for my home theater (just because I could), or for my corporate presentations (I give a lot of those these days). I tried various applications, but none of them really worked, until now? Yesterday, I managed to make Keynote Remote work between my new MacBook Pro 13? (the best laptop ever for frequent travelers) and my iPhone 3GS. Here is how it works: you get both your MacBook and ... More About: Works
Mashups and Single Points of Failure
2009-06-25 01:05:00 Mashups are great, but the more components are integrated into a single mashup, the more single points of failure are created along the way. I experienced this recently with the piping of my blog feeds to Twitter. Blogs were written using WordPress, syndicated through FeedBurner (now owned by Google), harvested by TwitterFeed, and re-syndicated to Twitter. Somewhere in the process, delays would be created, one day long for posts on IT|Redux, and over a week long for posts on ghalimi.name. Since I control both the source (my WordPress account) and the target (my Twitter account), there wasn't much need for FeedBurner in the middle, so I recently got rid of it. Let's see if this fixes the problem. More About: Failure , Single , Points , Mashups
Adopting Twitter
2009-06-20 19:45:00 Over the past couple of weeks, I have started to use Twitter to push some updates on Intalio, my traveling, and some elements of my personal life. My Twitter feed is available at @ghalimi, and syndicates feeds for both IT|Redux (professional blog) and ghalimi.name (personal blog). This feed is also displayed on IT|Redux's right column. Moving forward, I will use IT|Redux for longer articles, mainly focused on Cloud Computing.
Tips for the Modern Traveler in Japan
2009-06-15 07:43:00 It's 8pm local time, I just came back from a delicious teppanyaki dinner in Ebisu, and I am sitting on my hotel room's balcony, on the 11th floor of the Sheraton Miyako Hotel Tokyo. From my MacBook Pro's speakers, Gábor Szabó is playing The Sorcerer, and I am enjoying the cool breeze of an early rainy season. It's my 16th trip to Japan , and over the years, I have learned a few things that might be useful to people traveling there for the first time, especially when traveling for business purposes. Best affordable hotel in Tokyo One of the best places to stay in Tokyo is the Sheraton Miyako Hotel Tokyo. At $150 a night, it offers amenities that places twice as expensive cannot match. The hotel greets visitors with a stunning view on an exquisite zen garden, and features one of the best Chinese restaurants in town. It's also very conveniently located for easy access to most of Tokyo's business distrists, and just ¥980 away from Shinagawa station, which is served by the Narita Ex... More About: Tips , Modern
Who Is This Cloud For?
2009-06-09 09:10:00 Following Intalio's presentation in London yesterday, Aditya Tuli wrote a critical yet constructive post commenting on the announcements we made recently. I have to agree with most of Aditya's points, and would like to take advantage of this opportunity to clarify a couple of items. First, Intalio|Cloud is indeed targetted at larger organizations, especially the Managed On-Premises option, mainly because this product was designed in partnership with our larger customers. That being said, Intalio|Cloud is also available to much smaller teams, with the On Demand option. Second, we said very little about Intalio|BPM Community Edition indeed, and I will make sure to cover it in more details today in Helsinki, tomorrow in Brussels, and later this week in Paris and Frankfurt. Furthermore, we remain fully committed to our community, and have just put the final touches on Intalio|BPM Developer Edition, which will be formally released on June 16. Aditya, many thanks for your feedback and s...
First Cloud Customers
2009-06-08 23:41:00 We just signed our first two Intalio|Cloud Managed On-Premises customers. More soon? More About: Customers
Process Table
2009-06-01 02:30:00 We just released a screencast showing how to model and execute a process from a spreadsheet! This is what we call a Process Table , and it's part of the new release of Intalio|CRM to be available on June 2nd. Congratulations to Antoine and his team for this amazing piece of work, direct result of our Dogfood Project, and first creation of what will soon be called Intalio Labs.
Intalio|Cloud Appliance Model C1 Mark I
2009-05-28 10:07:00 As many of my readers know, I love computers. At any given point in time I use a couple of desktops and three or four laptops. But I have a real fascination for larger systems, which is why I studied parallel computing in graduate school. Today, I fulfilled one my dreams: building a really large machine. We just published some more details about the Intalio|Cloud Appliance Model C1 Mark I, including a full list of components, and detailed specifications. This is a superlative computer in every possible way, with the most cutting edge hardware and software money can buy. Serial Number 00000001 is standing proud in our new data-center (the same as Facebook's), waiting for us to put some serious load onto it (our on-demand offering is currently hosted on Amazon EC2). Here is what the Mark I gives you: Standard 19? Rack 16 Compute Blades 16 Storage Blades 32 Quad Core Intel Xeon X5570 2.93GHz CPUs 128 CPU Cores 2.3TB 1333MHz PC3-10600 DDR3 Memory 24.5TB Solid Stage Drive Database Sto...
You Got It!
2009-05-27 23:53:00 When announcing a new product or a new strategy, some things usually get lost in translation, either because you did not get a chance to personally brief the journalist or analyst who wrote a piece on your announcement, or because the story just wasn't solid enough. To my surprise, none of that happened with the launch of Intalio|BPM, Intalio|CRM, and Intalio|Cloud last week. While we released four new products (including a hardware appliance) and laid out a fairly complex story, everybody got it, down to the most subtle details of our business model (managed on-premises). Some of the best articles came from Brenon Daly, James Taylor, and Phil Wainewright. It looks like we hit a chord?
Frequently Asked Questions
2009-05-26 20:17:00 Everything you've ever wanted to know about Intalio and never dared to ask. More About: Questions
Intalio|Cloud Press Conference Webcast
2009-05-23 10:44:00 The webcast of last Tuesday's event is now online. More About: Press , Press Conference , Cloud , Conference , Webcast
Intalio Foundation
More articles from this author:2009-05-21 09:40:00 Over the years, Intalio has made numerous contributions to the developers community, through the creation of many Open Source projects, and the donation of code bases worth millions of dollars. After ten years, we feel that time has come for us to support other communities as well, and we are creating the Intalio Foundation to support this effort. As a first project, the Intalio Foundation will make our business applications available to communities of non-profit organizers, artists, and solo entrepreneurs. The Foundation's initial endowment will be one free user account for every ten accounts of Intalio|BPM and Intalio|CRM On-Demand sold between June 1st 2009 and May 30th 2010, with an initial grant of 100 seats worth over $100,000. If your organization qualifies for such a grant, or you know an organization that does, please send your application to foundation@intalio.com. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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