6. It’s all about the community http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelsgalpert/4558309000/ 4
7. 5 Decentralize control Centralize information Provide opportunities for participation Works transparently Encourage structured deliberation and decision making Provide access to raw materials Allow for redistribution Permit forking
NASA's recent history with open source2001-2005: fear of open source for IT Security reasonsNASA was comfortable with massive enterprise agreements and support contracts. Was very aware that open source was in its futureOnly when open source business models (such as Red Hat) found their footing within the industry did NASA begin to comfortable true adoption of open source productsOpen source processes began to infiltrate within the organizationscontributinglicensing - this became a problem. NASA wanted to utilize its own license. not comfortable with the use of existing open source licenses
Cloud computingUnlike open source, NASA did its best to put itself in front of this. NASA Nebula importance of NASA nebula wasn't so much about NASA playing a part in creating an open source cloud computing product (and now a growing ecosystem and industry around; repeating what has happened with things like Linux, PHP, even Drupal), but being a shepherd of such a product. Allowing the public to participate in NASA software code.It's taken just as long to get developers to start leveraging Nebula as it was to build the infrastructure itself.
So NASA has a fair amount of history with use and implementation of open souce, cloud computing, and even joining those two concepts together at the hip. What has NASA learned from its successes and failures that might be of benefit to your thinking and forming of cloud strategy.The most important core element is community. Community states has always been one of the key variables when evaluating open source products, solutions, and projects
Ive previously presented these as the attributes of well functioning open source community. And do believe that some, if not all, of these can be utilzed when forming up a cloud strategy
But how?So how do we take what we’ve learned in the open source transition years and apply that to the cloud computing transition years
First off…understand this…If you are embarkling on big change…and cloud computing is definitely a significant shift that should …it couldeasily feel like its you vs. everybody else. Especially if you exist in an enterprise where IT Security is highly empoweredThis is another reason why forming up your own community or connecting with already established ones is important.IT Security does not like change. They like to maintain the status quo. Innovation is not flowing through their veins. Cloud computing is rich in innovation. From how we thinking about implementation to the actual end user use cases.
Then…Makesure you are reaching out to the right peopleIf you are embarking on forming a cloud computing plan, I’m sure you become versed in these terms. The different layers do different things and they impact differenadueinces.So…Depending on the depth and reach of your cloud initiative, you’re going to have to message to different groups. The message is not the same for all of these groups.
First baby steps. Start a mailing list.Marketers know the value of the mailing list. That’s where the money is. For you, it will become where the knowledge is.The rule of 6 – if you can create a mailing list where there are 6 people actively and contributing, then you’re close to stricking gold. At 6 people, the number of lurkers you have on your list becomes less significant. At 6 people you can spend less time converting lurkers and activating them into contributing and more time just brainstorming and sharing.Tools like posterous will let you have a private group where interaction is primarily via email, but there are also web interfaces and archives that have archived search tools
Another thing I like to think about with big innovative approaches is what the tipping point. Whats the thing that going to make my plan explode beyond my early adopeter mavens to impact my entire organization. Think ahead about your cloud initiative. Whats the one thing you could achieve that will make adoption take off?
Look at exising developer programs and see what makes them tick. With I.T. shifts you need to get the builders on board. Learn how to work with them. Amazon, Twitter, Apple and more all have robust developer programs. What are the attributes of them that you could easily adopt to attrack the builders
One thing NASA has learned over the years…especially from our experiences with supercomputing is that new concepts involve new apporoachesResources to help guide folks through those approaches can greatly benefit your community.