Creating the cumulus

From The Economist print edition, Oct 23rd 2008
Online version

"Software will be transformed into a combination of services"
This article focuse on IT services and explain in a way what an IT service is and how it can be imagined. It also shows a new software paradigm, expanding the idea about subroutines into the idea of services which can be viewed as these subroutines but also offered on the remote basis across the web. Article has revealed the need for better broadband connectivity as a prerequisite for services to be broadly accepted.

The concept of SOA (Service oriented architecture) is also presented and it is correctly stated that despite millions of dollars spent on advertising and promoting SOA, it really hasn't taken off yet. Another parts of the article are focused on web-based applications and web services and a question, whether these applications can ever replace desktop clients (laptots, netbooks, etc.) fully, or not. I agree with the point made in the article that instead of replacement, web services and web hosted applications will contribute to the software and won't really replace it. At least not in the next decade according to my opinion.

Highs and lows

From The Economist print edition, Oct 23rd 2008
Online version

The article focuses on the emerging market of "cloud computing" and 3 main sides of this business - providers, who develop and market services, customers consuming services and suppliers, providing hardware infrastructure for service providers.

It is unclear whether providers or suppliers will have better position to make a higher profit but in the long run the suppliers tends to be winners.

I think that the main contribution of this article is the point of view it presents. One can be familiar with the problematic of cloud computing and service providing, yet it is always beneficial to be reminded about the basics, i.e. what sides there are and how the recent development was.

Also some graphics from this article clearly illustrate the major shift in economics paradigm that is being experienced all over the developed countries.

Introduction

Who am I? My name is Tomas Rehak, a graduate student of SSME (Service science, management and engineering) at  Masaryk University, Faculty of Informatics, Czech Republic.
I am interested in services generally, but since I've obtained my bachelor degree at applied informatics, my primary concern should be IT services.
Currently I am an exchange student at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA. My exchange major is business because I feel that I need to work more on this part of SSME (and on my English as well).
In this blog I am going to present papers on SSME which I find interesting and accompany them with my comments and insights. Later on I hope to present some parts of my diploma thesis I am working on.
I would appreciate any comments on my posts as well as any ideas on what should I focus, recommendations on interesting papers and articles, any kind of feedback at all.
Have fun :)