Virtualization is one of the today’s  key words of modern .IT. Today hardware and software vendors do offer virtualization solutions for nearly everything and all.

Regardless it is a CPU, your memory or hosting package, the disk access or finally an middleware or application runtime layer it needs to share and virtualize, the ready to use managing framework for it is already developed and offered on the market.

Even Apple, this so far manufacturer of nice and trendy hardware for geeks - "Show me one person not being aware about this brand new  iPhone 3G!" -  is now part of the game. Finally since opening their world, no longer using own hardware for their MACs and porting OSX to Intel CPUs things like Parallels and VMware are part of the big game and the world has changed.

But …. What does this mean for customers and application owner. Do we have to forget about all? Or perhaps to throw away all our nice but old applications and sites?  …. What kind of world we developers have to work in tomorrow?

Good Question!

Following actual market researches, lower costs for application development, system integration and application maintenance,
accelerated integration of applications, more flexible adaptation of existing applications to future changes in technology and, not least, the ability to develop and market new products and services more quickly – are just some of the many benefits that
companies are expecting from a new approach to application design resulting from the introduction of service-oriented architectures (SOA).

Will this influence the work of small business owners? Such one or two man shows designing special and individual tailored customer solutions?

For me the answer is YES. Perhaps not today and with a bit of luck not right tomorrow (the reprieve to learn about!). But certainly in a predictable time frame we all will have to deal with it …… Why?

Experts are in agreement that an infrastructure that is not flexible quickly comes up against its limits, resulting in logistical, as also performance problems. Today only a service-oriented software design (using web service technology, for example) involves the development of modular, reusable software units that can be distributed across different systems. And therefore is able to deal with common hassles and business impacts like software upgrade, maintenance, server crashes and downtimes in a reasonable and appropriate way.

Early this year I changed my hosting provider because of feeling more and more disappointed about their leak of professionalism. For years my former hosting partner offered a solid hosting at a fair and reasonable price to me - At the end and shortly before I left they just and basically had ignored and /or missed to do their homework!

Two years ago I was able and willing to wait a few hours until my mail host was up and running again. Today I’m no longer and I really  insist in receiving all my sms, emails and micro blog postings instantly without any service interruptions.

 I basically expect - as for my feeling all customer do - my site and services up and running all time! There is no way for me to think about missing inquiries and business I might loose out of some service disruption.

The new provider I decided for does now offer grid-Services to me. Oh!! … How exciting you may now throw into our discussion.

Sure there are still issues and hassle to deal with, but since then my pages were never down for more than a few minutes and my emails came always through - Not to speak about the plenty of more resources I do now get at a similar rate like before!

You see?! There are impacts on our daily business. And virtualization and a service orientated application design does for sure have a serious impact and direct impact on our all business.

Thats my opinion and my 5ct on the topic! You have another one?

I had a big weekend socializing with friends which I enjoyed very much. Even the weather was a bit changing with a clouds and rain on saturday, sunday was fine and sunny and we use it to hike with our friends and their lovely puppy dog.

Carsten who has originally made me feeling interested in video cutting did tell me about a few new ideas he has and also showed me a few exceptional stuff he created while trying to get familiar with HDTV and producing in 16:9 format.

Since a few years he has found out about diving as of his interest. Last year as for his very first time, he recorded underwater and was happy to show me his final clip about some catch up he had with a bunch of dolphins at that time.

It is that relaxed talking about technique, spiced up with personal experiences and the one or other adventure, I really do enjoy and therefore talking with him and Martina always is a great pleasure for me.

Then yesterday we catched up with Frank and Ute early, going for some relaxed walk through the Palatinate Forest. Enjoying the sunny conditions we had a nice time being out in nature and as for Frank is some old classmate of me there is always something to exchange and talk about.

As for we both recently discovered about push bike riding we had a long and interesting chat about bike buys and equipment and commited to catch up again soon again going for some ride.

A few days ago I wrote about my different rates, which I have with intention. For Sure!!

Now today I had an interesting discussion with a customer again. He came with some application installation manual showing me a few pages coming directly behind the "Chapter Overview" and the "Pre-Installation Requisites" telling me about that all would be stuff, I would have to do for him …..

Sure I have a contract with him about database administration, but I smiled and said: Following the service agreement we both have agreed about earlier, this here is not included within the ongoing business of your database.

Just because the manual is telling you that you need an administrative access to the dbms system, it does not necessarily means every little sql script and it’s execution is automatically a "DBA" task for me.

Somewhat baffled, he asked me what then would be included into the contract we both have?! And I said that I’m pretty happy about doing all those things mentioned within our service agreement …. (perhaps he just has to read it again )

Anyway! Later on we agreed about it’s all additional effort I will charge based on time and material when it’s done and world seemed to be save and found again!

Nevertheless, Guess  I will never understand why people automatically assume it’s "all" included within the dba’s work - just because the 4 or 5 lines instruction about what to do for setting up a proggy is beyond their horizon. (Should I be more carefully with my postings here? Gulp )

I couldn’t say that Wordpress is my most favorite CMS system at all. For my feeling it is a stable and reliable, but also flat and basic entry CMS system. Showing you what is possible when doing websites and working with a database in the back. But not really challenging at the end.

Ok?!  Perhaps I should be more carefully with writing my opinion here as for not everyone is used to work with databases like me. But honestly! Often I’m just not able to understand about the issues other people do report about … 3 days more of that RTFM and they would feel ashamed about having asked first.

But more important - While others do actually fail with, the Wordpress folks really do a great job with their product updates.

Yesterday I got told by my newsreader, as also by the running Wordpress itself, that there is a new Wordpress version 2.6 available. Today now I used exactly 10 minutes to update one of my own sites with it and everything (really everything!!) did work smooth again instantly.

That is what I call "ensuring" quality and a real carefully spreading out of versions and product updates. Keep up the good work boys! You’re doing a great job others could learn from.

Nontheless it needs me to decide about another more reliable and stable CMS able to support more complex sites soon.

I always thought that I’m not really bad in finding  information on the net. Reading through FAQs, Boards or just individual pages can become somewhat tiring, especially when you are trying to find information about some newer topic or technology which is not really of everyone’s interest already.

But anyway, normally I’m very good in that discipline. Just sometimes I start to value my time I have to spend for it, compared with the return value I Have to expect in case I should get the issue solved and getting it up and running with the found information …. Not so my brother as it looks!!

Ok, it might be the  aspiration of the younger brother showing the older guy that we both are working on equal level, but nevertheless … when being interested in the same topics, I’m always impressed about the speed and endurance with what my brother is pushing our "common" projects. Even at a time, I might from time to time have already given up, already looking for some new idea or plan!