The Dream Stack For Developing And Deploying Web Applications

I want to develop a Web application - a really good Web app. The kind of Web app that will make me so rich that I can buy an $9.4 million co-op over looking Central Park, a Yacht registered in Monaco, and hire an architect to build my dream-house west of Boston that is a combo of Buckminster Fuller, FLW, and MTV cribs. Throw in a vintage sweet ride like Don Draper's Cadillac and lifetime membership to the Boston Sports Club. I'm set.

The problem: What technology am I going to use to develop and and deploy a pwn-some Web app that will scale forever and never go down. (I need a great idea too!)

The solution: Enlist your illustrious help to come up with the perfect Dream Stack to help make all my dreams come true.

Dream Stack: What Are The Requirements?

The Dream Stack is a perfect combination of tools, technologies, and platforms that meet both development and deployment requirements. But, deciding what combinations of technologies to use is no simple task because there are choices and combinations galore. Here are my requirements for the Dream Stack:

Development

• Low-cost tools (because this is a startup).
• Maximize developer productivity.
• Faster development and faster change.
• Can develop great user experiences.
• Availability of talented developers (we plan to grow fast).
• Will support a scale-out deployment architecture of both data and computing.

Deployment

• Low-cost, linear-cost deployment  (because this is a startup).
• Support scale-out architecture of both data and computing.
• Architected to never go down.
• Employs security features
• Easy to manage and monitor

Your Thoughts? What Is The Dream Stack?

Your Dream Stack should consist of tools, technologies, and platforms that are currently available either as open source, commercialy available products or a combination of both. Your stack will probably, but not necessarily, include programming languages, databases, app servers and/or cloud, IDEs, libraries, and other platform technologies. Any combination is fine as long as it meets the requirements of the Dream Stack.

1. What other requirements should the Dream Stack have?

2. What is your recommended Dream Stack?

Mike Gualtieri, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research

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Cross-posted at Dr. Dobbs Code Talk

Two Stage Rocket

I just spent the day at Progress Software's annual analyst day. The highlight of the event is, always, to hear from their customers about how they are getting real things done. This year we heard from: EMC, Sallie Mae, TD Securities, Royal Dikzwager, BT Global Services, Lincoln Financial Group, Sabre Holdings, and Fiserv.

The theme: High velocity business demands high velocity technologies such as complex event processing, enterprise infrastructure, data infrastrcuture, and others.

But, this post is about Kenneth Rugg, VP and GM of Integration Infrastrcuture for Progress  Software, comments on open source software.

"I think about our use of open source software as a two-stage rocket"

Mr. Rugg explained that the open source version of software is the first stage that lifts the technology off the ground. The second-stage is when a vendor, such as Progress Software, adds secret technology sauce, support, and integration with other technology. His example was about what Progress has done with FUSE ESB.

I thought this was a useful way for customers to think about acquiring open source from vendors. Is the vendor moving the rocket to the next stage or instead weighing it down for an unhappy ending.

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B

William Band
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Customer relationship management applications, customer experience management, stakeholder alignment, enterprise CRM
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Matthew Brown
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Marketing and advertising, enterprise portals, intranets and extranets, information and knowledge management
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Peter Burris
Research coverage for Technology Product Management & Marketing professionals
Enterprise marketing platforms, marketing automation, high-tech, application development
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C

Bobby Cameron
Research coverage for CIOs
IT governance, risk, and compliance; the marketing of IT; serving the business; security and risk
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Marc Cecere
Research coverage for CIOs
Designing IT organizations, changing the culture of an IT organization, IT strategic planning
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Patrick M. Connaughton
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Supply chain management services, supply chain management applications, enterprise mobility, RFID
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Alex Cullen
Research coverage for CIOs
IT organization; IT strategy, planning, and governance; organizational design and change management, IT management
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E

Boris Evelson
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Information and knowledge management, business intelligence, OLAP, data warehousing
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G

Chip Gliedman
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Customer relationship management, help desk/service desk, customer service and support, packaged applications
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H

Paul D. Hamerman
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
ERP, human capital management, financial management, business performance solutions
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Brian W. Hill
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
eDiscovery, archiving, records and retention management, enterprise content management (ECM)
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Bradford J. Holmes
Research coverage for Vendor Strategy professionals
Tech marketing tools and best practices; government, high-tech, tech marketing strategies
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K

Rob Karel
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Information and knowledge management, integration technologies, metadata management, extract
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Rob Koplowitz
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Information Workplace, collaboration strategy, collaborative platforms, SharePoint
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George Lawrie
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Retail information technology; consumer goods supply chain; pricing, promotions, and revenue optimization; collaborative processes such as trade promotions management and sales; and operations planning
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Sharyn Leaver
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Packaged applications, business process management, ERP, application strategy and selection
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Craig Le Clair
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
ECM, BPM, output management, document processing services
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Pete Marston
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Customer relationship management, sales force management, software-as-a-service, outsourcing
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Kyle McNabb
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Information and knowledge management, document imaging, eForms and information capture, enterprise content management
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Thomas Mendel, Ph.D.
Research coverage for Vendor Strategy professionals
Product portfolio strategies, mobile services, business service management, data center management
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Connie Moore
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Information and knowledge management, business process optimization, IT organization, enterprise content management
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O

Leslie Owens
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Information and knowledge management, taxonomy and classification, enterprise search platforms, text mining and analytics
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P

Natalie L. Petouhoff, Ph.D.
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Customer service and support, customer experience, customer experience management, business strategy for customer experience
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Lisa Pierce
Research coverage for IT Infrastructure & Operations professionals
Voice services, telecommunications services by region, remote access infrastructure, networking
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Tom Pohlmann
Research coverage for CIOs
Business models, high-tech, corporate strategy, tech sector economics, product and solutions strategies
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Stephen Powers
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Information and knowledge management, digital asset management, enterprise content management, Web content management
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Stefan Ried, Ph.D.
Research coverage for Vendor Strategy professionals
Enterprise architecture, Service-oriented architecture, application platforms and programming strategy; application development
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Ted Schadler
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Real-time collaboration tools (instant messaging, presence, document sharing, etc.), cloud-based collaboration and email, mobile collaboration tools and applications, virtual worlds for the enterprise
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Claire Schooley
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
eLearning, information and knowledge management, videoconferencing, Web conferencing, enterprise collaboration, new workforce, retiring workforce
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Scott Tiazkun
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Financial management; governance, risk, and compliance; financial management applications; security and risk
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Zach Thomas
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Human resources management applications, compensation, recruitment strategies, packaged applications
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Tim Walters, Ph.D.
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Web content management, enterprise content management, digital asset management, information and knowledge management
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R "Ray" Wang
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Enterprise apps and ERP, software contract negotiations, software partnerships and ecosystems, customer data integration
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Doug Washburn
Research coverage for IT Infrastructure & Operations professionals
Green IT, IT organization, IT infrastructure and operations, IT management
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Gil Yehuda
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Enterprise Web 2.0 and Social Computing; collaboration strategy, tools, and culture; virtual communities of practice; virtual team collaboration
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The Joker On Open Source Software: "If you're good at something, never do it for free"

The Dark Knight is chock full of memorable quotes and, dare I say, advice from none other than the Joker, a role played eerily, crazily, and fabulously by the late Heath Ledger. One of the many quotes that stuck with me is "If you are good at something, never do it for free." This is pretty good advice, especially when you are proposing to "Kill the Batman" in exchange for half of the mob's money. It worked for the Joker. He got the job.

But, is this advice good for software developers?

On the surface it seems silly to even ask the question. Why would anyone want to work for free? But plenty of people donate their time and talent to causes great and small in an effort to help people and to benefit humanity. That is a good thing. But, is this in fact good advice for open source software developers? To answer this question we need to know what motivates them and what they hope to gain.

Software developers contribute to open source projects for many different reasons.

Flying in the face of The Joker's advice, millions of software developers contribute their ideas, keystrokes, and late nights to hundreds of thousands of open source software projects. So, why do they do it? Whether it is for one reason or many, they do it because:

• Coding is a passion. For many, programming is more than a career. It is a passion. Problem solving, creating, and coding is fun. Open source projects provide an outlet for developers to develop purposeful code along with others.
• They will become famous like Linus. Develop the next lightweight framework for web applications or the next mobile operating system and you could become famous like Linus Torvalds.
• It looks great on a resume. Making contributions to an open source project looks great on a resume especially if you are just out of college, looking for a job, or have no other experience.
• They are a shill for GCC (Giant Computer Corporation). Many open source software projects have been hijacked by GCC. This is not necessarily a bad thing because GCC can make contributions and bring resources to bare that are not otherwise available from the open source software community. Some developers are in fact paid by GCC to work on open source projects.
• They will start a company and get rich. There is no law against turning your passion into a wealth generator. If you are good, maybe GCC will buy your company for millions. It has already worked for many open source companies such as JBoss, MySQL, SleepyCat, Zimbra, and many others.

If you are good at developing software, then don't do it for free.

Everyone needs to eat. So open source developers need to get paid somehow. And, what better way to eat than to get paid doing something that you are good at and that you enjoy - writing code. But, not doing something for free doesn't always mean getting paid in currency. Enjoyment, satisfaction, recognition, and the quiet knowledge that you are helping make the world a better place are all forms of payment.

Alfred was right that "some men just want to watch the world burn". In the end, the Joker burned his share of the money because all he really wanted was to watch the world burn.