But as Kasabi CTO Leigh Dodds is keen to stress, you don’t need to be a Semantic Web developer or enthusiast to derive value from what Kasabi has to offer.

Like many others in the nascent data market space, Kasabi’s commercial models are still emerging, and Leigh shares some of the thinking that lies behind their current proposition.

There is some background noise on this recording, which will hopefully not affect your enjoyment of the conversation.

Kasabi is an initiative of Talis. I am a former employee of and current shareholder in Talis.

Following up on a blog post that I wrote at the start of 2012, this is the ninth in an ongoing series of podcasts with key stakeholders in the emerging category of Data Markets.

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Almost exactly two years ago, I announced my intention to leave Talis and strike out on my own. A year ago, the final piece of that transition concluded when we published the last episode of the Semantic Web Gang; a round table podcast that I began inside Talis and subsequently produced with their sponsorship.

Fast forward to the end of 2010, and it’s time to revisit the value that a monthly round table conversation offered to the community. Talking with friends, customers and contacts, many of them pointed to the useful role that something like the round table discussion format plays in cutting through marketing hype, community groupthink and competitor obfuscation. The old Semantic Web Gang did that, and it did it because it comprised a great group of contributors who knew their stuff.

Working with Eric Franzon at semanticweb.com we are about to recreate some of that value by launching The Semantic Link, and I am really pleased with the panel of regulars that Eric and I have signed up; a completely new group of contributors who also know their stuff.

Our first episode will be recorded in early December, and should be pushed out via semanticweb.com (and iTunes, no doubt) before Christmas. We’ll then settle down to a regular cycle, recording and publishing each month, dissecting whichever trends, stories, initiatives and companies happen to be topical. I’m also keen to get guests on the show from time to time, especially where they’re involved in something truly interesting and newsworthy.

If you have ideas for topics you would like to hear us dissect, please do let me know.

This podcast was recorded on Friday 16 July, 2010.

I spoke with John Sheridan of the Government’s Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) back in July of 2009, when this programme was just taking shape. More recently, Talis‘ Richard Wallis recorded a podcast with Richard as data.gov.uk formally launched earlier this year, and his colleague Zach Beauvais followed up with a videocast to explore some uses for the data.

During our conversation, we referred to the following resources;

• ASBOrometer
• Tim Berners-Lee (and my podcast with him)
• Combined Online INformation System (COINS)
• Creative Commons
• Crown Copyright
• data.gov.uk Applications Gallery
• Government Open Data Licence
• The Guardian‘s COINS interface
• IDeA
• JSON
• Linked Data
• Local Government Association (LGA)
• Local Data Panel
• Francis Maude
• mySociety
• National Archives
• Office of National Statistics
• Open Data Commons
• The Open Knowledge Foundation‘s COINS interface
• Ordnance Survey
• OS Open Data
• Public Data Principles (Draft)
• REST
• Rufus Pollock
• Nigel Shadbolt (and my podcast with him)
• SOCITM
• SPARQL
• Jeni Tennison’s recent data.gov.uk blog post
• Tom Steinberg (and my podcast with him)
• Transparency Board
• Treasury
• Where Does My Money Go?

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Have a listen to hear about some of mySociety’s projects, and to learn Tom’s views on the current rush toward greater access to data.

As usual, links to the resources we discuss are available in show notes on the Talis site.

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One of the podcasts I’ve been doing for a while is the monthly Semantic Web Gang. It began whilst I was with Talis, and the company continues to support production and hosting of the show.

Unlike most of my podcasts (all listed over there on the right, for those of you reading on the cloudofdata.com site), the Gang is a (virtual) round table rather than an interview. Each month, regular Gang members (and the occasional guest) get together to discuss the latest moves in the semantic technology arena.

June’s Semantic Web Gang is going to be a little different, as it will be recorded – live – on the stage at this year’s Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose, California.

Almost all of the Gang will be there, and I’m delighted to say that Richard MacManus, Founder and Editor of Read/Write Web will be joining us on stage, along with Tony Shaw of conference organisers Semantic Universe.

We also intend to get the audience involved in our look back at some of the conference’s highlights, so if you’re in San Jose for Semantic Technology do come along to take part in our session at 11am on 18 June.

It looks like being a busy few days, with meetings before and after, three panels to moderate on 16 June, one on 17 June, and this on 18 June. I’m also in the middle of lining up a few more Semantic Web, Cloud Computing, Enterprise 2.0, Social Media-type meetings in San Jose, San Francisco and points between for 15, 19, 20 and 21 June… so if you’re in the area and interested please do get in touch.

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I spoke with Armando Fox and Dave Patterson, both of Berkeley’s RAD Lab, this morning and the resulting 40 minute podcast is now available.

For the show notes and other podcasts in the series, see the Talis site.

Those podcasts have tended to focus specifically on the Semantic Web, but we’re keen to broaden that scope a bit to tackle a wider set of the issues facing those seeking to run data-powered businesses out on the Web. SaaS, PaaS, Cloud Computing and the rest are clearly vital pieces in that particular jigsaw.

So watch out for a broader set of topics in those podcasts, and thanks to Duane for his time in getting things kicked off yesterday. Do have a listen, and let us know what you think…

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I will be taking a bigger step in 2009, when I move from full time employment with Talis to see what else I am capable of as an independent consultant.

A lot has happened since 2005. I joined a provider of software to UK libraries that had aspirations to be something bigger, and played my part in the team that made sure we got there. Operating entirely on money the company earned through its existing product lines, with no debt and no external investors, we set about refreshing those existing products and challenging many of the sector’s long-held presumptions about engagement, participation, openness, innovation, and control. From Library 2.0 to Open Data, we were visible on a global stage, we were active, and with white papers, public speaking, blogging, podcasting, facilitation, cajoling, challenging and networking Talis played a significant part in shaping perceptions that are now widely viewed as norms.

The company had bigger fish to fry, though, having embarked upon an ambitious development programme to deliver a technology Platform upon which the next generation of Semantic Web applications could be built. Talis set about assembling the talent required to build that Platform, and I set about building brand recognition in markets and territories where Talis was previously unknown.

In November last year, Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb listed Talis as one of 10 Semantic Apps to Watch;

“Talis is a 40-year old UK software company which has created a semantic web application platform. They are a bit different from the other 9 companies profiled here, as Talis has released a platform and not a single product. The Talis platform is kind of a mix between Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web, in that it enables developers to create apps that allow for sharing, remixing and re-using data. Talis believes that Open Data is a crucial component of the Web, yet there is also a need to license data in order to ensure its openness. Talis has developed its own content license, called the Talis Community License, and recently they funded some legal work around the Open Data Commons License.

According to Dr Paul Miller, Technology Evangelist at Talis, the company’s platform emphasizes ‘the importance of context, role, intention and attention in meaningfully tracking behaviour across the web.’”
(my links)

Last month, he revisited the ten and concluded;

“Over the past year, Talis has continued to make a name for itself as an evangelist for the Semantic Web, most notably through the blogging and podcasting [1, 2] activities of Paul Miller. Talis also produces a great magazine for Semantic Web, called Nodalities, and has an active company blog under the same name. As for the company’s products, the platform seems to be iterating nicely and is being used in niche library and government applications.

RWW verdict one year later: Talis has successfully positioned itself as an authority on Semantic Web in the blogosphere, which we love because it’s a great way to keep track of Semantic Web trends!”
(my links)

Through our blogs, our podcasts, our magazine, our presentations and our support for the community, Talis has played a key role in raising awareness and credibility for the Semantic Web as something more than an academic exercise. Talis, and others, have set about demonstrating that it offers a viable set of technologies that reach to the heart of business processes in a wide range of areas. Through activities such as the monthly Semantic Web Gang and ZDNet’s Semantic Web blog, I have played my part in bringing together some of the key players and giving them a Platform on which to share their ideas and experiences.

We have been concerned with more than just technology, though, and have devoted as much time to understanding and illustrating the economic, strategic and organisational disruptions that face businesses now and moving forward. Our early and ongoing support for the Open Data cause is a case in point, underpinning our shared belief that value is shifting at many points throughout the enterprise; previously hoarded data is no less valuable than it was, necessarily, but the opportunities to benefit when the value proposition is reconsidered from the perspective of the open Web are enormous.

I have played a significant part in all of this, and have learned much from the differing perspectives, backgrounds and experiences of my colleagues inside Talis… and all of the people I’ve met outside the company.

As Talis moves into 2009, ready to focus far more on showing how its products and solutions will solve customers’ problems, the time has come for me to look for new challenges. I’ve been careful not to gratuitously push Talis products over the years, and I believe that I have been successful in explaining complex issues in an accessible fashion along the way. I hope that I have demonstrated neutrality, authority, and perspective, even whilst in the full time employ of a single company. There’s a lot to build upon there, and a real opportunity to extend that reach even further. So I’m going to be setting out on my own and taking on work with clients that can benefit from that track record. Analysis, consulting, advice, speaking engagements and more.

I’ve started talking to a lot of people recently, and am already noticing some very interesting prospects which I will be firming up now that this news has entered the public domain. I’m always open to additional offers, of course!

And the first customer for the newly independent me? Talis. My current employer will be contracting part of my time to continue working on some of the broader external activities I was already doing for them. The Semantic Web Gang, for example, will continue to be underwritten by Talis, and I remain its host.

So interesting times lie ahead. I’m excited by the opportunity and daunted by the challenge in almost equal parts. I look forward to seeing where this leads next, and I am sure that I shall see many of you along the way.

Paul.

It began, as so many things do these days, with an idle tweet.

On 21 November, Amazon Web Services‘ Deepak Singh pointed to a new page describing the company’s ‘Public Data Sets on Amazon Web Services.’

Lidija Davis covered the news for ReadWriteWeb two days later and on 4 December Amazon issued its formal press release, prompting a flurry of coverage from Mike Arrington at TechCrunch, Larry Dignan at ZDNet, Krishnan Subramanian at CloudAve, and many others.

Alongside broader discussion of this move, members of the W3C-backed Linking Open Data project delved into the synergies via their public mailing list and Linking Open Data enthusiast Kingsley Idehen‘s company issued a Press Release suggesting ways in which their products might fit within this shifting data landscape.

So what have Amazon done, what does it mean, and how does it ‘bring the Cloud of Data closer’ as the title of this post suggests?

Amazon’s web page describes their offer quite succinctly;

“Public Data Sets on AWS provides a centralized repository of public data sets that can be seamlessly integrated into AWS cloud-based applications. AWS is hosting the public data sets at no charge for the community, and like all AWS services, users pay only for the compute and storage they use for their own applications.”

As Krishnan noted in his post,

“By doing this, Amazon is helping research community save money on storage and bandwidth costs associated with assessing these public data from any EC2 instances they use in their research. When the data in question is in hundreds of terabytes or petabytes, we are talking about huge cost savings here.”

In addition, OpenLink’s press release gives an indication of the efficient manner in which services and data already hosted by Amazon can be plugged together as needed;

“As a vital contribution to the momentum behind the burgeoning Web of Linked Data, [OpenLink's product] Virtuoso provides a simple deployment mechanism for highly integrated knowledge bases emerging from the Linking Open Data community. For example, it is now possible to deploy personal or service-specific renditions of DBpedia within 1.5 hours, compared to an 8 – 22 hour effort when performed from scratch.”
(my links)

By offering free hosting for public data, then, Amazon are doing the wider community a huge service. Much of the data there today is reasonably readily available from other sources, so the biggest immediate benefits are those of speed and cost outlined above by Krishnan and OpenLink. For existing or potential users of Amazon’s Web Services to power their applications, this is yet another reason to consider Amazon.

Harvard Medical School‘s Dr. Peter Tonellato was quoted in Amazon’s release, and he is unlikely to be alone;

“Public Data Sets on AWS will enable me and many of my colleagues to collaborate with each other by sharing our commonly used data sets, research environments and tools. We can set up a controlled environment in minutes, run our computational analysis for a couple of hours, and shut down the environment. Our results are completely repeatable. I only pay for the compute time I use, and more importantly I can spend more time focusing on research, not downloading and setting up computational infrastructure.“

The bigger long-term contribution of this Amazon initiative may actually lie with data that are difficult or impossible to find online today. In a previous existence at the Archaeology Data Service (ADS), for example, my colleagues and I were always being contacted by individuals and organisations with data that they wanted to see online; individuals and organisations that lacked the skills, resources or mandate to mount and maintain the data themselves. How many of those organisations will beat a path to Amazon’s door now… and what sort of resource might we see emerge as a result?

However…

Krishnan concludes his post with a reality-check, commenting;

“this data stored on AWS servers are useful only if the researchers use Amazon EC2 for their computing needs… even if they could tap into it from external platforms, it doesn’t mean much if these public datasets are accessible using some kind of API from their original source itself.”

In other words, much (most? all?) of the advantage Amazon is offering evaporates if developers then have to pull the hosted data off Amazon’s servers and into their own applications running locally or via a competing Cloud provider such as Google.

Although the way in which it is recognised and monetised is finally shifting, data is still valuable, and Amazon (and others) clearly recognise the benefits of enticing users to entrust data to their offering, whilst (almost) imperceptibly making it that little bit more painful to use the data somewhere else.

Kingsley Idehen is quoted as saying,

“The Web’s potential as a globally distributed information space that plugs into disparate databases has never been in question. What has remained unclear is how a federated Web of linked databases would be delivered in a manner consistent with the Web’s core architecture, without compromising its simplicity.”

It is in moving us toward this open vision that Amazon’s offering (although undoubtedly an important step along the way) is ultimately lacking. For that, we may well require the open and linked approach of Semantic Web offerings from companies such as Talis and Kingsley’s OpenLink. These recognise the futility of expecting all data to migrate to a single service provider, whilst still ensuring that those on the ‘inside’ may gain the benefits of proximity on the network, pre-computation of certain indices, etc. Amazon and its services clearly have a place within that emerging ecosystem, but it is a place that they will need to share with others.

The worthwhile philanthropic aspects of Amazon’s announcement apart, the company is certainly doing its part to evangelise the benefits of moving data to the Cloud, and this is to be wholeheartedly welcomed.

CIOs are recognising the benefits of Cloud-based computation, and their resistance to the loss of control implied by individual cost centres’ embracing of SaaS solutions such as Salesforce is diminishing. The proposition of accessing data in the Cloud, at will, is even more profound, and the benefits to be gained require careful and compelling explanation in the face of inevitable fears regarding issues such as data integrity.

Showing everyone the benefits to be gained in sharing disparate public data sets is one more step along the way to widespread acceptance of the value in easing restrictions over access to more sensitive resources.

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The formal release is perhaps deliberately ironic;

“In an industry flooded with buzzwords and numerous companies jumping on the platform bandwagon, Apprenda cuts through the SaaS platform clutter and draws a bold line with SaaSGrid. SaaSGrid is a powerful cloud operating system that abstract SaaS intricacies into the SaaSGrid software layer and provides ISVs with the necessary online tools to manage their SaaS business and application offerings. SaaSGrid drastically slashes time to market for ISVs by automatically weaving a SaaS architecture into their non-SaaS web applications while providing significant long term value via web-based application management capabilities.”

Sinclair’s blog post is more straight-talking;

“For anyone unfamiliar with SaaSGrid, it’s a cloud operating system (literally) that makes writing and commercializing SaaS offerings with Microsoft .NET very easy. It removes quite a few headaches from the architecture and engineering perspective, and provides a tightly woven business services layer for managing operational and customer facing aspects of your business. So, if you’re building a SaaS offering and are planning (or looking for a reason to) to use a .NET based language and stack, look no further!”

Bob Warfield is also amongst those covering the news, over on SmoothSpan. Bob gets right down to it, commenting that;

“Apprenda calls SaaSGrid a ‘Cloud Operating System.’  I don’t know if I would call it that or not, but at the very least it is a SaaS platform that offers a lot of benefits not unlike Force.com from Salesforce, but with some key differences.  First and foremost in my mind, is that there isn’t much of anything proprietary about SaaSGrid.  It’s a framework that makes it easy for .NET developers to move their applications to a SaaS Cloud-based delivery vehicle.  Looking at the services provided by the framework, it isn’t hard to see that Schuller & Co. have had experience building SaaS applications before (in fact quite a few of them), because it solves many of the SaaS-specific problems I’ve seen in my career as well.”

He continues, echoing my own initial impression that the most important piece of this might not be the technical infrastructure at all;

“SaaSGrid covers two bases.  First, it offers plumbing and delivery infrastructure services.  In my mind that’s the “Cloud Operating System” piece.  But, at least as interesting is their Business Engine, that helps simplify a lot of the operational aspects of SaaS.”
(my emphasis)

Talking to Sinclair, it is clear that the rationale behind SaaSGrid comes from experience. He talks about work in the financial sector, higher education and elsewhere, in which the same basic pieces were necessarily duplicated. Each project, each deployment, required his team to almost start from scratch and to concern themselves with a plethora of background operations before they were able to concentrate on the actual task at hand.

As in other industries, the framework – the Platform – that Apprenda have developed is intended to remove some of that background complexity and to enable developers working on a given project to get on and develop the actual applications that need to be written. Sinclair said that SaaSGrid

“provides a new layer of abstraction that takes the burden of creating SaaS specific technology, architecture and business components off of ISVs shoulders”

Back in his blog post, Sinclair describes the proposition for a developer;

“Apprenda does not host applications for software companies. Instead, we enable existing hosters to offer independent cloud instances of SaaSGrid. This means that you can write an app and leverage SaaSGrid, but get to choose which Cloud Provider to publish your application to. You basically write code in Visual Studio in a single-tenant fashion, use our API for certain SaaS related duties, upload your app (UI, web services, database schema) to a SaaSGrid cloud of your choice, click a couple of buttons through a control panel and you’re up and running with a true multi-tenant, ready to accept money SaaS offering!”

A community portal provides documentation, support, and access to the basic building blocks such as an SDK that developers can download in order to develop their own applications.

Online tools that Sinclair walked through with me do a good job of tracking multiple versions of an evolving product, managing customers, etc. The Business Engine that interested Bob Warfield comes into play here, offering a remarkably straightforward process by which application developers can manage availability and pricing of ‘features’ and ‘securables’ within each application they release.

SaaSGrid has been in beta for the past six months, with around 30 companies involved in building network monitoring, CRM, HR and other applications. As might be expected, around 40% of beta customers originated in the US… but the beta programme extended as far as Namibia!

The first of these applications are expected to go live early in 2009, and Sinclair was also open to the idea of Apprenda-branded applications appearing as well in order to showcase SaaSGrid and (presumably) secure other revenue streams for the company.

The SaaSGrid user interface is currently only available in English, although currency information for pricing within applications is fully customisable.

Given Apprenda’s reliance upon Microsoft components such as .Net, Azure might be considered a threat. Sinclair appeared unconcerned, though, arguing that Microsoft’s Cloud offering is more concerned with technology even further down the stack. Azure, he said

“could be a resource to use, rather than competition.”

We shall see!

SaaSGrid, though, represents an interesting step forward for those application developers already comfortable with developing atop the Microsoft stack. Just as Talis has recognised with their Platform in the Semantic Web space, there is clear value in ‘doing the heavy lifting’ and enabling developers to get on with building their applications as quickly and painlessly as possible.

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