Nodally recently attended the Cloud 2020 Summit at Switch SuperNAP in Las Vegas. The facilities were state-of-the-art and it proves a new level of thinking about efficiency and performance. We had the pleasure to meet many incredibly smart people who are the thought leaders and forward thinkers in the cloud space.

We are thinking about the cloud in a different way as well. But our focus is not limited to data centers or hardware. We are thinking differently about software. We are thinking about applications in a different light. We are thinking about the “Un-App“.

First of all, we have to admit that explaining an Un-App to people is not a simple task. Not because the Un-App is a hard concept to grasp, but because people are so fixed on a single (and current) concept of what constitutes an application.

What do you think about when someone says the word “application”? That really depends on your experience and perspective. If you are a user of applications, then you might think spreadsheets or word processing or some such. If you are a programmer, you might think more in terms of the code used to create an application. In each of these cases, you almost always think of an application as a single running program that consists of many features.

When we think of an Un-App, we don’t think in terms of code or single programs. We think of data. Not just data in a database, but live, free-flowing data that goes wherever it is needed. We think of events that are context + data. We think of processing that can act on those events to augment, make changes to, subtract from that data, route it, quantify it, aggregate it or split it up, so on.

The root problem we are trying to solve is one that had been around since the beginning of software. That is the monolithic nature of software. The industry has tackled the problem by thinking up better ways to code. To get more re-use and to find ways to make code easier to change and to debug. We have OOP and component-based design and a multitude of patterns and practices that have, each in their own way, contributed to better software. We have tried new techniques to manage the development of software which has given us Agile and the likes. But no one has yet to re-think the basics of what an App is.

Unfortunately, there really is no way to completely escape the monolithic nature of software. Some would argue that we have code libraries and objects that we can re-use. Yes, but you still have to glue them together to make use of them, which creates dependencies between code. And the glue code can get heavy and do not contribute to any functionality. Let’s not forget that there are many techniques to abstract things out in the name of reuse and agility. But it’s still all done at the code level. We need to think bigger, and smaller, at the same time. What do we mean by that? We will expand on these ideas in part 2 of the blog series.

With the advent of cloud computing, the IT industry is set to change forever. The Cloud has created hundreds of new opportunities for companies, but what many fail to see, are the many problems that have also been created. Systems that were functioning fine in-house are now having to either migrate to, or integrate with the cloud. Cloud computing has revolutionized an entire industry, but to truly capture its potential, a company must be able to effectively communicate, deploy and integrate between servers and across processes.

Many software companies have identified this market pain, but they are attempting to solve the problem using the same old techniques. Using old techniques to solve a new problem is going to result in a “band-aid” approach to cloud computing. These solutions are going to last for maybe a couple years, and then they will quickly become out of date.

Cloud computing requires an entirely new approach to how we think about developing and integrating software. Systems need to be flexible and have the ability to move from in-house to the cloud quickly and without errors. Developers don’t want to be stuck working within the confines of a Visual Programming studio. They want freedom to code applications the same way they always have, while having an increased ability to quickly orchestrate, integrate and deploy those applications.

The Hub & Spoke model with point-to-point integrations is a convenient solution to a big problem, but it’s not the right solution. Nodally has taken a brand new approach to this problem, and it’s one that is going to change the way software is created in the future!

Cloud Computing is the catalyst for the paradigm shift towards the need for flexible, distributed systems. It has created an incredible amount of possible solutions, but also a lot of new problems for companies. Many businesses have systems that were never made to be distributable, or to integrate with other applications. They were simply made to serve a specific need at a specific time, in-house. These legacy systems are out-dated, and companies are now realizing that the key to future success is going to be a move from “server-centric” to “service-centric.” The traditional role of IT is no longer to simply maintain the existing systems, and ensure that no errors occur. They are now going to be tasked with becoming competitive-advantage creators, and will need to look to new techniques/technologies (such as cloud computing) to create these solutions.

By nature, people don’t like change, so it is often difficult for an IT team member to come forward with an idea that will change the way their systems are currently run. This fear of change has created a road-block to innovation in many organizations. IT professionals may get away with the status quo for now, but as the new generation of “connected” CEOs arrive in the boardroom and start demanding greater visibility and flexibility, IT will have to either change to adapt or be replaced.

The key is NOT to just use the same old techniques but transfer them to a new platform such as the cloud. This will only result in monolithic systems being stretched beyond their capabilities. IT needs to take a fundamentally new approach to how business systems are developed.

We think it is time for IT professionals to take control and effect change within their organizations from the bottom up by considering brand new ways of creating business systems that will enable their organizations to achieve true agility and productivity in the long run.

Too often, businesses are fettered by their business systems. If business visibility is low, or if small incremental changes can’t be made to systems, how will companies be able to continuously improve their business?

Our vision is the event driven enterprise. Xenodes will be running all throughout the enterprise; extending legacy systems, forming new systems, collecting shop-floor data. It’s common for a person to do valuable work within a company, and then have to turn around and spend significant amount of time to tell a business system what has been done.

We should be able to automate the flow of data and information across the entire enterprise, without having to worry about the compatibility of the input data with the existing monolithic business system. The enterprise should be driven by smaller, specific events, regardless of their format or context.

Each Xenode and each Xenoflow create with Xenograte is an investment in the future. These assets are completely reusable and they will organically build upon one another, and over time the business will be rewarded with a “perfect fit” enterprise system that is agile, easy to customize, and never ages.

Over any integration specialists’ career, he or she will have to deal with integrations between systems on a case by case basis. People have, over the years, sought to come up with standards so that we can “all do it the same way,” or “let’s all use the same business processes.” The idea of these standards is that they will make it easier for software to all work together.

These standards, however, often do not fit particular integration scenarios. Many of these scenarios require custom built, specific-purpose code. If this code was easy to maintain, quick to build and affordable to own, everyone would use it because it is built to match the needs of the user perfectly. However, the traditional way of custom coding these applications is not easy, and definitely not in-expensive to own and maintain.

We have taken a completely different approach to solving the integration problem by looking at the way that software is built and deployed. Traditional software is monolithic by nature, and the more complex it is the more rigid it becomes. Data is sucked into the application, and can quickly become out of reach to un-related systems. You can transfer it via a database, but by this time it no longer has the context needed to get timely value from the data.

We have gone the opposite direction and have realized that smaller is easier to build, maintain, test and has a smaller point of possible failure. All of this creates a way of programming that minimizes the cost of ownership, gives better usability and creates a system that is able to quickly adapt to changing business needs. This agility also give use the ability to deploy any solution across server, networks and clouds. Simply, it allows us to build what we need, when and where we need it. All pieces, or Xenodes, are completely re-useable so our ROI grows with each implementation.

You may be thinking that this sounds similar to components, objects, services etc. This is not the case; you can think of our technology as independent software robots that can run wherever they are needed, and can communicate seamlessly with each other regardless of where they are deployed. The key is to separate the data from the processing. And we are not talking about creating bigger databases. We are talking about keeping data and context together, and then allowing it to flow through and across processes. This is a brand new way to approach and view how enterprise solutions should be created.

Our new mindset coupled with our revolutionary technology has allowed us to flow data across simplified computing processes called Xenodes. These Xenodes can be orchestrated, by user interface based drag & drop, into a unified solution.

Instead of being a slave to your system and spending 80% of your IT budget on maintaining existing systems, take a new approach. Take an innovative stance and start reaping the benefits of a truly custom system without the legacy ball-and-chain that weighs down your budgets and your corporate agility.

Welcome to the Nodally Technologies Company Blog! We at Nodally have come up with an incredible new technology for the creation of enterprise systems. To learn more about who we are and what we do, please visit our website here. The website explains in detail, the revolutionary approach we are taking to the development, extension and integration of systems.

We are blogging to help provide a different perspective to the industry, an alternative view to the status-quo. We are innovators and we want to share our new ideas with you. We will keep you up to date with product changes and improvements, and ask for your input on any ideas we have.

We will be blogging about many different topics. Everything from product updates to industry news. We will be posting our opinion on different issues, and we encourage everyone to comment and participate in the healthy debate. Disagree or agree with us, it doesn’t matter; We want to hear everyones opinion!

So comment on our blog posts, Tweet us, Facebook us, Connect with us or get a hold of us any other way you can think of!