chris horn's blog

Cloudsmith

An upgrade to the web site at www.cloudsmith.com – more features, particularly so that you can easily map your own repository, better documentation. The site is generating considerable interest in both the open source community, and some commercial firms seeking interesting new ways to distribute and support their software.

Note that the next major release of the Eclipse development environment – the Ganymede release - will be built using Buckminster: the team behind Buckminster also have built Cloudsmith, as I discussed in some earlier posts..

Science Gallery

Opening in Feburary next, with the LIGHTWAVE festival and showcase, and getting some good coverage eg in Nature and the Irish Times recently. Watch the blog at www.sciencegallery.org for further news and announcements.

UNICEF

A great new video at http://www.youtube.com/user/UNICEFIreland - featuring Irish children with Irish celebrities Andrea Corr, Colin Farrell, Marian Finucane, Stephen Rea and Ryan Tubridy. Our UNICEF colleagues in the US Fund produced a similar (US centric) video last year, and the Irish National Committee have borrowed their idea, with permission.

“Every single child deserves to live”.

Like some other teenagers of my generation in the seventies, one of my hobbies at the time was faithfully constructing scale models from plastic kits from Airfix, Revell, Historex etc. As I developed my skills and interest, I took great pride in adding extra levels of detail – particularly for ship kits. Eventually I converted particular kits so as to model an aircraft, ship or vehicle not directly available as a standard kit, by moulding balsa, crafting acetate sheet and so on – for example building a twin engine, triple tail fin Avro Manchester from the Airfix kit of the successor four engine Lancaster. The monthly Airfix Magazine was a great source of designs and examples, and I still have a shelf full of back copies here in my office at home.

When I was an engineering student, I took a similar interest in building my own, albeit fairly simple, analogue electronic circuits – the usual things such as oscillators, radios, fire/smoke detectors, etc. Of course, as with converting plastic kits, having a good stock of spare parts - scavenged from broken electronic circuits – was useful. I used to keep them sorted into empty margarine tubs on my shelves.

In more recent years, I became more and more involved in computers, from the digital gates and circuits up to microcode, assembler, compiler/interpreter systems and finally full systems and applications. I was fascinated when they became affordable as home systems, and played around adding extension cards and interfaces to my first PC. I was initially really impressed by Dell when I saw their range of alternative pre-configured systems for direct order across the internet. Dell used to have a plant in Bray just a few miles away from my home, and I have bought many systems over the years from them for home, school and charitable use.

But I’ve often thought there must be quite a few people out there like me who aren’t quite happy with a specific system they buy from Dell (or indeed any other supplier). Although I carefully chose a configuration before buying, still afterwards I frequently tailor my purchase further with additional cards, expansions and options. I also wonder whether somebody out there has already built the perfect system for creative digital photography, or multi-screen home media management, or whatever. Or whether anyone would be interested if I could publish my own designs and configurations. Or whether any configurations would be commercially interesting, for example for specialist systems such as creative digital media design.

Reflecting on my fads above, the common aspects are a desire to build interesting variations of basic designs; from additional parts either built myself, or stock-piled somewhere (not necessarily in margarine tubs!), or purchased elsewhere; to look at designs published by others, and perhaps even to publish my own.

Well, that’s what Cloudsmith is doing for the world of software. One way to think of Cloudsmith is as a derivation of Dell’s world, for software. You can browse an online catalogue at Cloudsmith and see what “distros” – configurations - of software components are available. If you want to chose any particular one, you click it and it “materializes” – ie downloads its parts, and then automatically assembles them together – onto your machine. And like getting a system from Dell, the different components of your configuration will usually come from different “repos” (repositories - think Dell sub-suppliers) around the world. So rather than just a single download of a binary file, a materialization will usually automatically fetch multiple files, from multiple places, and assemble them automatically for you on your machine as a complete system. The distro is thus “virtual”: it is not monolithic (like an old download) and its parts are not hosted at Cloudsmith (any internet repo can contribute).

If you like what you find, you can send others the “Cloudlink” you used. When they click it, the same components will materialize from the cloud of components available in multiple repos across the internet, and assemble and install on their machine too. So, you can materialize something specific without having to yourself connect to the Cloudsmith site and without having to search the online catalogue for it – just get the Cloudlink for it from someone else via an email or blog or whatever, and the magic will happen when you click.

Whats kinda nice about the Redhats of this world is that they pre-assemble a large collection of software components for you as a full Linux system. Whats nice about Cloudsmith is that if you build your own interesting set of software components, then you can publish that configuration at Cloudsmith, and reliably make it available for other people to use. It need not of course be as complex as a full operating system: just a nice application or tool or subsystem for a particular use which you have put together, using your own design or as an interesting derivation from somebody else's published distro. You can publish novel and interesting things that you’ve done, for others to take a look at and possibly use – no longer are you or they tied just to the pre-assembled varieties which the software equivalents of Dell provide. And if you have components from a new repo which Cloudsmith does not yet know about, you yourself can simply add that repo to Cloudsmith’s map of the world – it is the Cloudsmith software equivalent to introducing Dell to a new sub-supplier.

Why hasn’t a service like Cloudsmith existed up to now ? One reason is that although there has been a proliferation of useful re-useable software components developed and published around the world in many online repos, there has equally been a proliferation of software version control, make and build systems. It is difficult to justify re-engineering everything globally to use the same version control and build technology. IMHO it is impossible to impose one build or version control technology, or one IDE, on everyone: and it is short-sighted to expect everyone else to use the one that you happen to think is best. However, with some thought and help, it is possible for systems like Cloudsmith to automatically, on the fly, interpret the meta-information in all these version control and build system technologies, and thus automatically derive a global perspective and capability across many different repos.

But how do you know that somebody else’s published configuration is any good, and trustworthy? Well how does a plastic modeler or an electronics hobbyist know that somebody else’s design is any good ? Part of the answer is the popularity of the design – how many others are using it, and what do they say about it – and part of it is the reputation of the designer. Social community sites on the internet in general work because most people are ethical, and many people can watch, observe, comment and mend where necessary information which is incorrect.

Assembling and publishing new configurations of components is fun. Is it however just for hobbyists and software hot-rodding ? I believe that many commercial organizations will find interest in discovering and contributing to software configurations and assemblies that add real value in their business domains. I think enterprise managers will find reassurance not only in the popularity of certain distros, but also because they can be reassured that precisely the same distro (and bill of materials) is reliably installed on every machine under their control, and because component updates can be notified and controlled. I think vendor product managers and technology strategists will find interest in the concept of being able to build their own private “cloudspaces” for their licensed customer communities, to manage and distribute software in a controllable way.

Now, let me put my hand up and confess that all of this isn’t yet as smooth as we would like at Cloudsmith just right at the moment: it is an alpha version for the community to experiment with and give us feedback on. The materialization wizard, the wizard to build a cloudlink are IMHO both pretty good and straightforward to use. Private and public cloudspaces are ready to use. But today, the publishing wizard and the wizard to register a new repo are IMHO a bit clunky: we’re improving them right now and we expect better versions within a couple of weeks. Our online documentation is being improved. However, if you’re interested, contact us and we’ll talk you through online and get you involved in the Cloudsmith community.

As some of you may know, I regularly holiday just outside Roundstone in Connemara. I’ve just come back to Dublin yesterday after some time there again.

If you haven’t yet been to the west of Ireland, I think one of the most striking things is the web of small stone walls that embrace the fields, pastures, meadows, boglands and tracts. Each is made by hand, and almost always as dry stone walls without mortar. They usually are as a result of clearing granite stones and rubble from the fields, and are economic: not requiring mortar, they do not suffer from frost attack, and so little maintenance is needed. At first sight, they all appear similar, but in fact there are different construction styles, with single, double and combination walls as the basic classification. They are malleable: walls can be easily moved and re-configured – gates are not strictly necessary since a few stones can easily be removed and put back again to, for example, let cattle through. Patrick McAfee’s book and website are a very readable commentary.

From ground level, the profusion of little stone walls can appear as a complex pattern, perhaps even fractal-like. But viewed from a high point, perspective reveals the logic of the landscape and the paths – the boreens – lined with walls either side, gently meandering to distant places.

I came back to Dublin last night, and this morning read Martin Banks’, of Reg Developer, excellent overview of Buckminster. Since I first wrote about Buckminster, the team has considerably improved the tool, including the documentation kit. Martin’s article makes use of a bricklaying analogy, and I guess I hinted in my own blog entry that if you are to build structures from re-usable bricks, then it might be useful to have a web site somewhere at which various designs could be published found and compared…

Well, also while I was away in Connemara, www.cloudsmith.com went live. Many of those on the Buckminster team have collaborated to put the site together, and the initial incarnation of the site certainly turned out to have richer functionality than I myself expected in a first iteration. There is a fairly detailed overview on the About Cloudsmith page, but in summary:

• Cloudsmith keeps meta-data about assemblies of software components.

• Software components can be sourced from any number of public and private repositories worldwide. Of course, components from private repositories are only available to those duly authorized to use them.

• Cloudsmith does not store the components themselves: but it knows where they are worldwide and how it can access them in the appropriate repository formats.

• A software publisher – an individual, project, or company – can register one or more specific software component assemblies with Cloudsmith.

• A software consumer – an individual, project, or company – can search and browse for available assemblies; and can readily download and install any particular one – “materialize” in Cloudsmith-speak – onto his local machine (or indeed another machine if appropriately authorized).

In effect, Cloudsmith is building a global map of software components (in various forms: source, binary, versioned, and optionally with test suites, documentation and license agreements). Professional software developers - individually or in a community project or working on a commercial offering – can publish interesting new assemblies of components, sourced across one or more repositories.

One of the neatest capabilities of Cloudsmith is a Cloudlink. A Cloudlink is simply a URL: it can be sent in an email, or given in a blog or whatever. When a Cloudlink is clicked, the software assembly which it denotes is then materialized without further intervention, onto the local machine. This gives a very simple download mechanism: publish a Cloudlink, and anyone clicking on it within a recent-vintage web browser can download your software. In practice, when a Cloudlink is clicked, behind the scenes the Cloudsmith site is contacted, and it resolves the differences between the assembly of software components identified by the Cloudlink, and those already available on the local machine, and then fetches (as appropriate from various repositories worldwide) and downloads the missing components.

Cloudlinking in turn enables “virtual distributions”. A software publisher can create a virtual distro, whose components reside across multiple (eg open source) projects and repositories: materializing a virtual distro requires nothing more than a web browser.

If your project is looking for a simple way to make its software available to the worldwide community; if your project is itself using software from multiple sources and multiple projects; if you want to keep your community regularly updated with patches and extensions; if you want to manage installation and distribution processes; then Cloudsmith should be worth taking a look.

Software components, and configurations and assemblies of them, are very malleable. It is relatively easy to define new interesting configurations, as well as new components. Looking at the world wide activity, and the multitude of repositories and projects, it is easy to become overwhelmed. It is possible to detect patterns, and different styles of construction, but sometimes it can be very confusing to see overall themes, to understand how other people are using configurations, and what changes have occurred.

I’m reminded of Connemara’s dry stone walls. They are numerous, wonderful, simple, easily changed, easily re-built, easily maintained, and as a result have lasted for decades. But in the landscape and up close, they are confusing to absorb and see the overall picture. The perspective of height gives clarity.

Cloudsmith is giving clarity to the construction of assemblies of software components.

It is an interesting time for the world of “Software As A Service”.

At some sort of cerebral level, Dell has been an inspiration for those contemplating a SaaS go-to-market strategy. Dell was renowned in the PC industry for largely avoiding the cost of enterprise sales and retail distribution channels, by instead connecting directly to end purchasers – whether domestic, small/medium business, or enterprise – as much as possible. It is very interesting thus that last week Dell announced, for the first time in 15 years, a retail deal: this time, with Wal-Mart to put some of its low end products directly onto the retailer’s shelves, as its “first step” into a retail channel. Dell apparently needs a distribution platform – and a retailer which 90% of American shoppers use is more attractive than most other retailers – through which to advertise some of its products.

Also this week, Ray Ozzie of Microsoft has stated that it is no longer about “Software As A Service” but “Software And A Service”! He was speaking at the Mix07 developers conference, and primarily promoting the Silverlight technology for Rich Internet Applications. Silverlight will be a runtime for .NET in various browsers – IE, Firefox and Safari – and compete with Flash, AJAX and Javascript to – in Microsoft’s view – provide a much richer video and interactive graphics experience for end users. Ozzie noted that (“fat”) client software not only supports offline usage, but also offers “privacy, empowerment, anonymity and freedom” compared to the “monitoring, auditing and creepy behaviour” of some online services. I guess this was a swipe in particular at Eric Schmidt at Google who is currently promoting substantially enhanced search experiences for end-users, albeit with the consequence of maintaining (private) information about each user.

An interesting part of Ozzie’s presentation was his announcement that Microsoft Live is offering a Silverlight Streaming service providing 4Gbytes of free storage per Silverlight developer, so as to encourage the development and hosting of Silverlight applications. So, if you are a S(as/and)aS developer or independent software vendor (ISV), Microsoft is potentially offering you a rapid way to scale up to address a massive online audience, based on MSN and now not just IE but other browsers as well: up to 1 million unique end users can access your application for free (above that, its 25c per unique user). It will be interesting to see how Google responds..

IMHO we will continue to see a mix of pure software-as-a-service applications (with thin clients); online services with companion client applications (including rich internet access), and fat clients accessing remote services from time to time. There will continue to be a spectrum of configurations.

Regardless, I believe that a critical aspect of S(as/and)aS applications is the ability to scale self-service. Whether you use Silverlight Streaming, Google, Salesforce.com’s Apex or even Wal-Mart (as Dell is doing) to reach a potential audience of millions, I believe that a S(as/and)aS application will be unsuccessful if scaling of its adoption requires manual intervention for every transaction.

Self-service is key to S(as/and)aS – whilst at the same time ensuring that the customer’s experience is happy and helpful. Dell’s appearance in Wal-Mart may in part be due to reports of poor customer service with a purely online self-service store.

One example of online software self-service is of course the open source community. What could be more self-service than downloading source code, and playing and building it yourself ? A common open source business model is to extend self-service with technical support and training. But in turn, this customer support will best be implemented by at least some degree of self-service: witness IONA’s various support offerings for its Celtix family of open source products, including a self-service knowledge base alongside telephone and email support.

LeCayla’s self-service philosophy goes further. In providing SaaS metering and billing, LeCayla’s technology has to address two audiences. The first is end-users of SaaS offerings: LeCayla measures usage, and generates bills and invoices according to actual usage, and in accordance with specific business rules defined by a particular SaaS ISV or application software provider. Naturally, it is desirable that each end-user may use a self-service interface: eg to check her usage, or to change billing information such as a credit card number.

The second audience for LeCayla is the ISVs who want to use LeCayla to meter and bill for use of their software products. Each such ISV registers business rules (eg pricing information, usage tiers, etc) into LeCayla. Furthermore, each such ISV may wish to subsequently change its own business rules at any time – for example for a pricing promotion of a particular product within a particular geography. Naturally it is desirable that not only should end-users have self service to their own usage and billing information; but also that each ISV should also likewise have self-service to its own business rules, as well as to its market adoption metrics and usage information.

For Cloudsmith – the third software company in which I am involved – self-service is also key. As I noted in a previous posting, “sometimes creative developers have different configurations that they seek, or want to define, share and publish to the world. Can interesting new virtual distributions be rapidly defined, communicated and materialized ?”. Cloudsmith will enable developers to self-service find and use interesting software configurations, each frequently materialised from different software repositories (and sometimes using widely different repository technologies and build/make systems). Equally, publishing a new configuration, either to the entire world or to a private community of collaborating developers, will be a self-service activity.

Self-service seems to be intrinsic to scaling software services offered over the internet. Self-serviced services must naturally be scaleable: poor customer support and dissatisfaction will otherwise result. In a self-service, service oriented world, multiple business models are IMHO possible: for example, free access with optional paid-for support and consultancy (IONA’s approach with Celtix as per above); metered usage (LeCayla’s approach); or community based (Cloudsmith’s). I believe that scalable self-service underpins any viable service oriented business model.

Not all S(and/as)aS transactions should be self-service. But unless your S(and/as)aS business model facilitates self-service, then you may be scaleably challenged!

Part of the dilemma with the global software community today is that there are so so many open source repositories and projects. I guess amongst the best known community owned initiatives are Apache, eclipse and SourceForge. But there are very many others, as a quick Google will reveal: for example HotScripts, NetLib, RubyForge, and CodeHaus. Most of course are primarily specific to a particular technology but, nevertheless, large scale projects frequently span several technologies.

How can you easily and quickly put together your own project which relies on software components from several different source code repositories ? If your project works out to be cool, how can you easily and quickly share it with other people who may be interested in it ? Now, Linux distribution vendors such as redhat and ubuntu do a great job packaging together a large set of Linux based components – in ubuntu’s case, over 16,000 according to their web site. Great. But what if I myself want to package together some components which I found useful, in a configuration which those Linux distro-vendors don’t currently offer ?

The problem is generally exacerbated if the components which you want to select come from different repositories and projects, having different repository and dependency technologies – CVS, Maven, Subversion, Ant&Ivy, whatever. The problem is also made more difficult because of version dependencies on your installation environment and other components.

In an earlier blog entry, I wrote how assembling software today is reminiscent of childhood experiences with toy building kits, such as Lego. However, there is some danger that in assembling software components from different sources, you end up with a large pile of individual Lego bricks on the floor! There should be a better way of defining and tracking component assemblies across technologies and repositories.

I was excited to see that last week at eclipsecon, AOL’s Lucas McGregor announced the Eclipse Spaces technology project. I guess the essential concept is simple: just in the same way that MySpace provides online storage for friends to share videos and photos and news and events, there is now an opportunity for developers to informally and easily share online interesting component assemblies with one another. The eclipse project process of course offers a formal, process driven approach to collaboratively developing new software between companies, and I guess Apache has something similarly formal between individuals. But Eclipse Spaces suggests something less rigid, in which components which do not necessarily conform to the precise terms of the eclipse.org license, can be informally assembled as personal and individual projects, especially if they come from other repositories outside of eclipse. And since Xdrive is free, this would be a wonderful added service for AOL to provide to the global software community.

I was also delighted to see that Eclipse Spaces is one application of Buckminister’s publishing and materialisation technology for software component assemblies. Henrik Lindberg, Thomas Hallgren and Filip Hrbek are included as the initial set of committers to Eclipse Spaces, all three from Cloudsmith. I’m also delighted to see Malcolm Sparks on the list too, an old IONAian who joined IONA when Ejbhome was acquired in 1999. And Bjorn Freeman-Benson and Ward Cunningham, both from the eclipse foundation. And finally Dennis O’Flynn, the eclipse Corona project lead from Compuware. Looks like a very solid team.

When I was a kid, my sister and I loved sharing our toys and playing together. She had a farm, with farm buildings and fenced fields; a hospital, complete with a helicopter landing pad for emergency cases; and a dolls house, whose front swung open to reveal a hidden world for miniature furniture and figures. I myself had a garage, which had an inspection bay and an elevator for the cars; docks, with piers and cranes and ships; and an airport, with runways and a passenger terminal, and tiny fuel trucks and baggage carts. We would sprawl ourselves across the play room and build our town, playing as gods as we moved people and animals and freight in our virtual world, from the farm to dock to the airport to the hospital. Of course, we had to try and ignore the differences in scale of our toys – her dolls house dwarfed everything – as well as the bumps and crevasses in our roads, where the edges of the bases of the toys butted up against each other.

In those “black and white days”, as my now 10 year old daughter calls them – the days before colour TV and lcd flat panels – there wasn’t a lot of plastic, and wonderful kits like Lego™ had only just begun appearing. Now my own kids can build towns from Lego kits, with consistent scale across all the buildings, unless of course they choose to make one building much bigger than the others. The roads all smoothly meet up at the junctions, and Lego people and animals and freight all appear wonderfully realistic as scenarios are enthusiastically played out for Dad’s benefit.

What is even more wonderful about toys such as Lego is that children’s fantasies can be cultivated, as they themselves design and construct their own buildings and vehicles and systems, using their imagination to mimic and extend their worlds. They are not limited to the pre-designed model described by each Lego instruction sheet or booklet. Indeed, my teenage son shares designs with his friends, sketching out their own instructions, and photo-copying them for each other. I googled to see whether there is a web site somewhere where people can share their designs and instructions with each other – I could find a few (such as http://staff.science.uva.nl/~leo/lego/ and http://www.telepresence.strath.ac.uk/jen/lego/ and Lego’s own http://factory.lego.com) but no single aggregation: now, there’s an idea if someone hasn’t already done it.

In 1992, when I started building Orbix v1.0 - our CORBA implementation - with John Moreau and Bridget Walsh, the software community was talking about the novel concept of object oriented programming, and some proponents certainly drew parallels with construction kits such as Lego. If civil engineers build using pre-fabricated components, and kids build complex buildings and systems from re-usable Lego bricks, then why can’t the software industry build using a portfolio of re-usable objects and components ? A decade plus later, I guess today we pretty much have learnt this lesson, and much of our complex software artefacts are constructed using re-usable components and common design patterns.

In the “black and white” days, toys were complete. A dolls house was a dolls house. A toy garage was a toy garage. You couldn’t re-assemble it to build something closer to your imaginary perfect garage. A decade ago, software applications and indeed operating systems were likewise monolithic. Sure, you could configure products like SAP R/3 and SVR4, but you couldn’t delve inside them, learn from them, and build systems which were closer to the perfection you craved for your organisation. Today, open source, and software componentisation, has changed the industry, and so you can now assemble and build tailored – and even generally useful – software yourself.

However, now the interesting thing, I think anyway, is where is our – I mean the software world’s – equivalent of those Lego instruction sheets and booklets, those photo-copied personally designed instructions for new models ? Software design patterns are not really the same thing: a software design pattern gives a “how-to” elegantly solve a commonly occurring scenario, regardless of what you are actually building; a Lego instruction sheet, whether direct from Lego or invented by one of your friends, tells you how to build a complete and finished model.

That’s why I got very enthusiastic when Mitch Sonies and Henrik Lindberg approached me last year to talk about Buckminster and Cloudsmith. Buckminster is open source technology which they have donated to the Eclipse foundation -- although Buckminster is not dependent on Eclipse, a “headless” version also exists. A specific software configuration is captured in an RMAP and CQUERY. I like to think of a CQUERY as akin to a Lego instruction sheet, with the RMAP saying which Lego blocks are in which containers and bags. An CQUERY captures, both explicitly but also implicitly by transitive closure, all the necessary software components – other completed models and even individual bricks – needed to build a fully complete system, or component. Given a CQUERY and RMAP, Buckminster then can actually go ahead and build – or “materialize” in Buckminster parlance – the artefact so described, for you on your machine.

Now, you might say, gee Chris, ‘make’ systems have been doing that even since before you were a developer back in the 90s. Well, Buckminster is a bit more than that. What if you want to build something that depends on components from different software repositories: some repositories inhouse in your company or on your own private computer, and some remote across the internet. What if these repositories use different formats – CVS, maven, clearcase ? What if there are version dependencies between the components ? What if there are alternative repositories for the same component ?

Some of the Eclipse projects are looking very hard at Buckminster, and I understand that some have already adopted it. I think there will be quite a bit of discussion about Buckminster at the forthcoming eclipsecon conference. But I don’t want you to think of Buckminster as an Eclipse-based Java-centric tool. Because it isn’t. Back to the Lego analogy – as well as Lego, not only is there Duplo from the same company, but also construction kits from Young Architects and Brio and Imagibrick and others. In our software industry, we’re similarly plagued by different core technologies, leading to bumps and cravesses as you try to butt together one completed system with another. Buckminster at least solves the problem of defining and materializing useful configurations of software – regardless of the technologies – Java, PHP, C# or whatever - used.

One of the most frustrating things about the software industry today, I think, is that although it is much easier now to build interesting new artefacts and systems from re-usable components, it is quite difficult to communicate these configurations and fit them together with other peoples’. Linux distribution vendors, such as RedHat and Ubuntu, do a fine job selecting a specific configuration of several thousand software components, and warranting to a greater or lesser degree that they should all work together. But, sometimes creative developers have different configurations that they seek, or want to define, share and publish to the world. Can interesting new virtual distributions be rapidly defined, communicated and materialized ?

Gee, welcome to my blog, thanks for stopping by.

A little about me: electronics engineer, then got into software. Co-founded IONA back in Feb. 1991, along with Annrai O'Toole and Sean Baker. Was CEO from then until 2000, including taking the company public in 1997. Came back again as CEO in 2003 and stepped down for the second time in 2005.

Today I’m Vice Chair of the Board, and have no executive role. In practice, I attend our board meetings – typically twice a quarter, one physical and one by concall. I take part in strategy discussions, including our merger and acquisition plans. From time to time I’m asked to meet customers, and always enjoy doing so.

Since stepping down from an operational role in IONA, I’ve got myself involved in a fair few other activities. I have an interest in China, and founded the Ireland China business organisation back in 2000, although today I have no longer have any committee involvement. Together with Nicole Bernard I co-founded, and chair, Slisiar which provides business services to companies entering the Chinese market. We have a small team in Beijing – Nicole is resident there – and have clients not just in the IT sector, but also for example in wind farms, the building materials industry, and agrifoods. Pretty much regardless of a sector, the challenges of trading with China, or establishing a business in China – hiring, legal authorisations, channel and partner development, etc – remain similar. I visit China a few times each year.

I also co-founded and am non-executive chair of Cloudsmith, along Mitch Sonies as CEO and Henrik Lindberg as CTO. Cloudsmith is very virtual – Mitch is in Manhattan, Henrik is in Stockholm, I’m in Dublin and we also have a small team in Prague: but skype and our internal wikis and blogs keep us together. We raised private finance for Cloudsmith over the summer of 2006, and started operations just in October 2006, and will launch its initial – free - service to the world wide developer community round about Eclipsecon 2007. The Cloudsmith guys have already donated open source technology to eclipse.org in the form of Buckminster and Cloudsmith will add some interesting services later this year.

Last November, I agreed to become non-executive chair of LeCayla. LeCayla was founded a few years ago by Conor Halpin, who created and managed our CORBA mainframe business in the late 90s. LeCayla is private, and venture capital backed by Trinity VC. It is a very interesting play in the “software as a service (SaaS)” space, and offers billing, rating and metering technology for software ISVs who want to build a new business model using SaaS. LeCayla’s technology can be bundled with an ISV’s software package, and then when installed inhouse on end customers machines, can monitor actual usage (driven by whatever business rules the ISV wishes) and securely report this for billing purposes. SaaS is typically positioned – eg by salesforce.com – as the combination of remotely hosted software and pay-as-you-go. LeCayla’s technology enables pay-as-you-go but the actual software can either be remotely hosted or inhouse.

In 2006, I became involved in a couple of projects for Trinity, from where we founded IONA back in 1991. The bigger of these is one of the seven national centres for science and technology (CSETs) in Ireland. I’m chair of the woefully named – I didn’t chose the name! – centre for telecommunications value chain research (CTVR). Participants in CTVR are seven universities led by TCD, together with Bell Labs Ireland and Lucent-Alcatel, and some smaller participation by Xilinx and EADS. It’s a big project and working in areas as diverse as photonics systems for terabit ethernet, cooling technologies, corrosion and failure research, ultra wide band antennas, and software and cognitive radio. The key theme underlying and guiding the research is identifying leverage points in the global telecommunications industry – in its value chain – for which successful new research could have a highly disruptive impact and create entirely new business opportunities. Donal O’Mahony is centre director – the CEO – of the project and is doing a fine job co-ordinating such an ambitious inter-disciplinary, inter-institutional nationwide academic-industry initiative. One of the very exciting aspects of the project is the license granted to it by COMREG, the Irish telecommunications regulator, to allow experimentation of ultrawide dynamic frequency techniques for cognitive radio on the national electromagnetic spectrum: the only such license granted anywhere in the world.

A second project at TCD which I chair is the Science Gallery. This is the ground and first floors of the new ship-shaped building at the corner of Pearse street and Westland Row. The Gallery will open later this year, and will be free to the public. It will be a venue for discussion and debate on scientific issues of interest to society: for example, global warming, the MRSA super-bug, avian bird flu, radiation from mobile phone masts, and so on. It includes exhibition space and a theatre. We have just appointed Michael John Gorman as the first CEO, and Michael John is putting his team together for the official launch and opening later this year.

I have been the chair of UNICEF Ireland for several years, which fund raises from the Irish public and commercial sector on behalf of UNICEF world wide. We also actively advocate on childrens’ issues to Irish Government, and have been successful in for example getting the Government to allocate a considerable proportion of its investment in HIV/AIDS work for children. Maura Quinn has been the CEO since 1996, and is stepping down next April having rescued the organisation from near bankruptcy in 1996 to the multi-million euro business it is today. We have just concluded our search process for her replacement but we have not yet announced who is the new CEO, who will start her work in April.

I’m also currently acting as a business coach to six CEOs of Irish software companies. They were allocated to me by Enterprise Ireland under its inaugural one year mentoring programme for 30 CEOs, together with Stanford Graduate Business School and with CLG Executive Coaching. In practice, we meet together monthly for peer discussion, and I naturally keep in touch with each of them on their strategic issues.

I guess that’s about it. I do also have occasional meetings of the IBEC ICT management committee; and with Vinny Cahill and David Abrahamson as an advisor to the Dept. of Computer Science at TCD on the research and teaching programmes.

Every day, and every week, is different. Sometimes I have a lot going on. Sometimes not. I work from home a lot, and avoid going into the city if I can. I’m usually travelling once a month or so, although from October to December last I don’t think I had a single trip. Right now, I’m just back from Beijing and Shanghai last week, in Dublin and Cork this week, and heading for Stanford next week.