UserBased Innovation

1
User-Based Innovation Communities Drive
Commercial Systems Software

• James Hamilton
• GM SQL Server WebData Development
• SQL Security Architect
• http//research.microsoft.com/JamesRH
• JamesRH_at_Microsoft.com
• 2004.04.15

2
Introduction

• Im an unrepentant commercial software guy -)
• Have done some non-commercial S/W work in spare
  time
• Ported g, gdb, and Taylor UUCP to AIX 1.3
• Ran a UUCP site for years
• System Software Focused
• 11 years at IBM
• Ada C Development Manager
• Lead Architect DB2 UDB Database
• 7 years at Microsoft
• Windows2000 Base Development
• SQL Server development team in various roles
• Relational System Development Manager
• Security Architect
• General Manager WebData Development
• Interested in better understanding harnessing
  user community contribution to S/W systems
• What follows are my observations opinions and
• do not necessarily represent a Microsoft
  position

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Agenda

• Driving innovation users or manufacturer?
• Revolutionary change often not user driven
• Examples from DB TP world with which Im most
  familiar
• Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)
• Relational database
• Users prime drivers of product evolution
• Community drives commercial S/W success
• Commercial S/W has always been community
  dependent
• Why not go open source gain the community
  contribution?
• Parallels between commercial non-commercial s/w
  efforts

4
Revolutionary change often not user driven

• The fundamental changes are often not user driven

Well-managed companies that have their
competitive antennae up, listen astutely to their
customers, invest aggressively in new
technologies, and yet still lose market dominance

• Users do drive incremental evolutionary change
• Some examples from DB world
• Online index create
• Online re-org
• XML datatype
• Automated multi-system administration
• Revolutionary change examples from systems world
• RAID Relational DB

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Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks

• Disks were expensive, IBM dominated, growing at
  sub-Moores law rates
• Commodity disk much less reliable 1/5 to 1/10
  the capacity of enterprise disk
• A Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks
  (RAID) Patterson, Gibson, Katz
• Base observation Commodity disks with redundancy
  can be combined to produce larger more reliable
  storage
• SIGMOD, June 1988

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EMC Symmetrix DMX3000

• 84 TB Storage capacity
• 576 3 ½ commodity Seagate (usually) SCSI Disks
• 256 GB Memory 100 1 Ghz PowerPC CPUs
• 10x to 15x storage cost premium over commodity
  disk
• EMC annual revenue 6.24B (2003 10K filing)
• RAID overall annual revenue 13B (1998
  Disk/Trend Report)

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Relational Database

• A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data
  Banks E. F. Codd CACM 13,6 (June 1970)
• Some industrial motivation and then straight to
  the math Irv Traiger
• Broadly debated CODASYL vs Relational
• SIGFIDET and SIGMOD conferences
• First IBM System R relational DB user
• MIT Sloan School of Management (System R Phase 0
  proto 1975)
• System R code base later became IBM SQL/DS
• later DB2 for VM VSE product still available
• Manufacturer research rather than user community
  pull

Relational DB Theory E.F. Codd
SQL Language Don Chamberlin
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Relational Database Market

• Overall annual Relational DB market 8B
• Gartner expects 86 of DB revenue to be
  Relational by 2005
• Many DB TP industry innovations driven by user
  partnerships
• IBM TPF American Airlines SABER
• Project started 1959
• IBM IMS Rockwell-NASA Apollo Program
• Released 1969
• IBM CICS Partnership with Public Utilities
• PUCICS released 1968
• The innovation required user involvement but they
  didnt drive it

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Agenda

• Driving innovation users or manufacturer?
• Revolutionary change often not user driven
• Examples from DB TP world with which Im most
  familiar
• Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)
• Relational database
• Users prime drivers of product evolution
• Community drives commercial S/W success
• Commercial S/W has always been community
  dependent
• Why not go open source gain the community
  contribution?
• Parallels between commercial non-commercial s/w
  efforts?

10
Communities Drive Commercial S/W

• Product Support
• User community support is the best way to provide
  scalable, available, high quality product support
• Its difficult to invest enough in a dedicated
  support team to replace a community based program
• Examples form engineering team in which I work
• Participation required of all team members
• Newsgroups, customer presentations, feedback
  sessions, service team internships, customer
  requirements DB, work with MVP community, sample
  programs,
• Marketing and Sales also heavily community driven
• ISV reseller sales model common
• Shareware community sales sites

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Community Example www.boatdiesel.com
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Why not use Community Development?

• S/W business driven by important, difficult to
  reproduce S/W aggregations
• Separates lack-luster profit from the truly
  impressive
• S/W business cost of entry is very close to zero
• Profit of most entrants unexciting
• Large S/W systems with critical mass very
  valuable
• SAP, Windows, Oracle, DB2,
• Large S/W aggregations are actively protected
• But they are open in many ways
• Most support interfaces to allow 3rd party
  extension
• Source is typically available in a controlled way
• Open-source S/W systems also actively protected
• However, branches are possible and sometimes
  succeed
• Commercial S/W open at key interfaces but user
  source code mods typically not supported
• Both commercial and non-commercial S/W systems
  dependent upon community for success

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Summary

• Most product innovation is driven by users
• Improvements in speeds, feeds, features
• Applications of existing technology to new
  domains
• Revolutionary changes often not user driven
• Fundamental new approaches to existing problems
• Especially approaches that are
• Not backward compatible
• Dont adequately solve the entire breadth of the
  problem domain
• All products, whether commercial or not, depend
  upon user community for support innovation
• User driven support only affordable effective
  option
• User Community source of most innovation
• User development community typically the driver
  of even non-open source product success

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Microsoft