Doing cloud platforms the right way - with Matt Robinson of Progress
- Summary:
- Cloud platforms are in vogue, but what does it take to build a great one? We turn to recent interviews for insight.
Ever since I did this interview with SAP's Aiaz Kazi on the characteristics of a good enterprise platform, I've been wanting to get another take on why platforms work - and what the misconceptions are.
During our talk, Kazi cautioned about the dangers of platforms that are not connected to a thriving two way marketplace - words that proved prescient in CloudBees' subsequent ending of its independent enterprise PaaS.
For another view on these issues, I caught up with Matt Robinson, VP of Technology at Progress Software. He provided more context on what works with platforms - and what doesn't.
Before I dig into Robinson's views, let's do a quick review of Kazi's take on the characteristics of a great (cloud) platform:
- Excellent technology (though this isn't enough by itself)
- Robust developer community and easy tools/platform ramp-up
- Thriving two-way marketplace between application developers and buyers
For points two and three, Kazi talked about the "great end-to-end experience" needed to give a platform commercial traction - for both developers and consumers. After citing Apple as a classic example on the consumer side, Kazi said:
In enterprise software, whenever you think of any kind of platform, you have to think of that experience. People don't usually think of these as platforms, but take for example Nike+ and what Nike is doing their shoes. You are now able to communicate and manage your runs and your fitness. - that is a platform. Facebook is a platform for managing all of your data. So there's a whole bunch of different aspects of platform and your experience as a user, consumer, and producer.
Robinson agreed with Kazi's points, but had more to say. Here's a few lessons Progress has learned while integrating its development tools (and acquisitions) into their "Pacific" cloud platform.
1. Follow the language adoption trends. Robinson hails from Rollbase, a JavaScript-based "drag and drop" developer platform acquired by Progress in June of 2013. JavaScript adoption has made ramp-up on Progress much easier. Robinson:
Why has JavaScript been growing so fast over the last few years, while languages like Ruby are declining? The primary reason is that JavaScript is the language of the web. Whether you’re building a simple website, or any kind of web application, it’s going to involve some amount of JavaScript.Pretty much every developer these days needs to know JavaScript.
Now with Node.js, you have JavaScript on the server side also. It basically liberates folks who know JavaScript to be able to develop at every level of the stack. All of a sudden, you now have the power to build full stack applications using the language you already know. We’re seeing our platform grow incredibly quickly because so many people already know JavaScript. Plus JavaScript is really easy to learn.
(This also motivated Progress to acquire Modulus, a platform for deploying Node.js applications, in June of 2014).
2. Get actively involved in developer communities. For Progress, another key to Modulus was the degree of community involvement:
One of the most important things for us when we acquired Modulus was, "What role does Modulus and its employees play as evangelists play in this community? Ultimately, if we don’t play a leading role in these communities, it’s going to be very hard for us to drive adoption of our platforms. Someone else is going to capture those developers.
The Modulus team consists of a number of people who are really plugged in to the Node.js community. They know all the core contributors. They have someone on staff who is involved with pieces of the Node, actual Node code. They sponsor events. They’re really a core part of that community. We always viewed this investment as investing in the community as well. When we acquired Telerik for its UI capabilities last October, we had a similar criteria: Telerik plays a strong and important role in the .NET UI community.
3. Platforms should connect developers with the right marketplace. Robinson doubled down on Kazi's point on building the right marketplace for developers. When I argued that future enterprise buyers are going to take platform (and the ecosystem of apps) around that platform strongly into account, Robinson said:
We couldn’t agree more. In fact, this is something that is new to Progress, even though we’ve been around 33, 34 years now. Progress has 1,400 software companies that have built strong businesses on our technology; we're now in the process of building a marketplace where you can go and discover what have people built.
We realize how important it is to expose all of these apps, and to bring every single one of our ISVs into an ecosystem that not only they can leverage, but that the public - and anyone else evaluating our solutions - can access.
4, Make it simple to source data from disparate systems. The Progress Pacific platform, which includes Rollbase, also emphasizes ease of data connectivity, via a solution called DataDirect:
With the DataDirect Cloud, we provide cloud-based integration with many other data sources. We now have over 50 different supported data source types, whether it’s SaaS applications like Salesforce and Marketo or Workday, or on-premise databases. Rollbase becomes not just a platform for building siloed applications, but building applications that leverage data from all the different places that matter to your business application. Then we have a product in the Pacific suite called Easyl which allows you to build aggregated consolidated reporting across all those data sources, with a Tableau/Excel-like interface.
5. If it's not easy to build on multiple mobile devices, go home. Progress has been grappling with the dilemma of building for multiple mobile operating systems without breaking the bank. Robinson:
With Telerik, we have a strong mobile application development platform that’s purely cloud based. You can build hybrid - as well as native - mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. We’re literally a few months away from open sourcing something we call NativeScript. This is all public. NativeScript allows you, as a JavaScript developer, to build fully functional native applications on iOS and Android and Windows Phone devices without having to know a single line of C# or Objective C or .NET.
6. User experience matters. Like most software companies, Progress is vividly aware of the impat of consumer apps on enterprise users. This new UX imperative compelled Progress to build out their UI development assets:
One of the things that Progress has lacked literally since the inception of the company, is user interface and technology to build not just good user interfaces, but user interfaces in general. Historically, we just lack that as any kind of specialization. When we bought Telerik, really leaped beyond where we were in the past. products that will allow you to build beautiful user interfaces. Now, we’re actually one of the leaders in building great user interfaces. Telerik gives our developers a way to create not just beautiful desktop applications, but web and mobile UIs as well.
Final thought
There is more to cover, including the impact of open source, and the role of PaaS in broader cloud platforms. Another theme Robinson hit on: providing the modeling tools to allow non-developers to design apps. Taken together, the views from Kazi and Robinson push platform thinking beyond the stale mantra of "if you build it, they will come." If platforms are approached as marketplaces with easily deployable apps - supported by active communities with open source ties - more customers will warm to the platform story.
Image credit: Photo of Matt Robinson provided by Progress Software.
Disclosure: SAP is a diginomica premier partner as of this writing. Diginomica has no financial ties to Progress Software, though they have funded our air travel and hotel expense at a couple of prior events. I reached out to them for this story because I find them interesting and relevant.