Live web panel: What componentization means for your enterprise SOA

Paul and I will be hosting a Web panel tomorrow (Thursday, April 30th at 9:00am PDT) on the topic of componentization & SOA. We will be discussing why componentization matters and how it plays into your enterprise SOA architecture. Want to give us a grilling? Come on over and join!

See this news article for the registration information etc..

Sri Lanka orders end to combat operations

I just saw on TV and now also on CNN that our government has ordered an end to combat operations in the war against LTTE.

Thank you Ms. Clinton and all the other LTTE-funded terrorist supporters out there for forcing our hand. You have given that bastard terrorist Vellupillai Prabakharan another breadth of life. So much for America being anti-terrorist - I guess that's only if the terrorists are attacking you eh?

Sri Lanka is cursed to have history repeat itself.

LTTE and their supporters - congratulations on running a successful PR campaign and hoodwinking the world.

Looks like the only way to get ahead in the world is to become part of Bush's Axis of Evil and become a terror sponsor ourselves. Or maybe its time for us to build a nuke. Or both.

If Prabhakaran lives and LTTE lives after getting so close to wiping that menace off the face of the earth, then you can bet that we'll start getting more creative with how we deal with our problems.

The world is full of bull shit. But, remember, what goes around, comes around.

Washington Times Editorial: Tigers at bay

This editorial from the Washington Times is another editorial today which shows how ridiculous the treatment we're being given by the US, UK, Australia and others is! Let me paste one sentence from it:

It is unconscionable for the United States to castigate its Sri Lankan ally for prevailing in its war against terrorism.

(Emphasis is mine.)

What the Washington Times may not know is that Ms. Clinton has been speaking on behalf of the LTTE even during her campaign. I guess it could've been worse for us had she won. Phew.

Today's news is that the LTTE is offering a ceasefire! Hahahahahaha :-). Is it April Fool's day again already??

Ceasefire against a bunch of maniacs who are finally cornered and about to be destroyed after 30 years? No, not a chance. Release the people, drop your weapons and wave a white flag - that's the time to ceasefire; not a moment sooner.

The sad thing is, I actually thought that after 9-11 and all that the world finally understood that terrorism is an international disease that needs to eradicated. I guess that's really not the case- the world is indeed doomed; one man's terrorist is still another man's friend.

Jonathan's new site!

Jonathan has decided to take matters into his own hands and set up his own Web site, blog, podcasts etc.! Check it out .. as with all of Jonathan's work is extremely elegant and beautiful!

National Post editorial board: Sympathy for Tamils, but not Tigers

The Canadian (Toronto?) National Post on April 16th had a great editorial condemning the fast organized by LTTE supporting groups to ask Canada to force Sri Lanka to stop the war against LTTE. One line summarizes the view:

Our advice to the Ottawa hunger strikers is: Eat up.

The war in Sri Lanka is about the LTTE, not Tamil people. Tamil people have been in Sri Lanka at least as long as the Sinhalese have - we're all equals. There was a time when governments acted against Tamil people broadly but that is not the case any more.

There was a great comment on that editorial by an American married to a Sri Lankan Tamil. I can't link directly to the comment so I will post it here:

by Bostonian Apr 16 2009 10:48 AM

Well said NP. I am an American married to a sweet and decent Sri Lankan Tamil. What you have said in the article is the truth and the whole truth. I returned from SL two weeks ago and had a good insight in to what was going on. We stayed in Colombo 6 with my wife's cousins, who are upper middle class Tamils who do stocklots business. They live very comfortably and do most of the business with majority Singhalese. According to my relatives, there are over a million Tamils living in Colombo and is the majority in SE Colombo (so much for the genocide!). Only negative sentiment was the hardships they have on numerous Army checkpoints in surrounding area and frequent checks, which we also experienced in our short stay. BUT they also mentioned this can not be avoided in any country that faces such suicide bombings. They were very clearly denouncing LTTE and most notably, were condemning Tamil Diaspora in Canada for their assistance to keep the flames on while living under comforts in Canada. They mentioned Canadian Tamil’s financial support for LTTE is huge and, this assistance really harms Tamils living in SL particularly in the north. They took us to Nilaveli, which I would rank as one of the best beaches in the world. Nilaveli is in recently cleared east, where we were able to witness tremendous development. My relatives mentioned east is a great example of SL GOV approach of clearing from terror and providing assistance for development. We also had a unique experience to dine with an army Major, who was attached to Police STF. He was spending few hours in Nilaveli, and treated us, and my Tamil companions with utmost respect. He was in the battlefield many times and was genuinely expressing his feelings about innocent Tamils suppressed by LTTE. My Tamil relatives had one voice, which is very different from the Tamils who live in Canada. What they say is, Tamils in Sri Lanka will be better off under SL Government than living under LTTE control. We whole heartedly than NP for exposing activities of terror supporting Tamils in Canada. Keep up the good work!

Nothing more to say.

Share the blame

Today's Sunday Times in Sri Lanka has a great editorial on how the blame for the LTTE situation needs to be shared by India, US, UK, Australia, Canada and others. All of these so-called "civilized nations" enabled, supported, ignored and downright cheered the LTTE for many many years. Successive Sri Lankan governments cried and screamed for help but it was ignored. It was only the late Lakshman Kadirgamar (a Tamil himself) who was able to make some headway finally. And then of course finally when 9-11 hit the US woke up to terrorism.

Yet, not really it seems. Yesterday the US asked us to stop the war. Compare that to what Ms. Clinton did at a senate hearing. Quoting from the editorial:

Take the typical case of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This week, giving testimony at a Congressional hearing, she asked that Pakistan take more action against (Islamic) extremists and asked Sri Lanka to 'pause' action against (Tamil) extremists. To cap it, she asked Pakistan to adopt a 'paradigm shift' and called for a 'change in mind-set'. Look who's talking.

Oh but there is a difference - LTTE is killing poor irrelevant Sri Lankans (yes all of them- Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and more) and Al Qaeda is killing precious westerners. Oh of course, that's why on one side you need to destroy but on the other side you need to give in.

She's not alone - right now there's a protest going on in front of the British parliament by LTTE supporters with LTTE flags and more. Um, aren't they banned in UK and isn't it illegal to support a banned terrorist group?! At least the French have been nice- they did not allow LTTE to run amok in Paris recently and arrested a bunch of supporters of the illegal LTTE supporting organizations. And India- well they have internal political problems which they want to solve at our expense. Two of their big guys (Secy of Foreign Ministry and National Security Advisor) were in Colombo yesterday - and "didn't have time" to fly to the IDP camps and see the real situation without believing LTTE propaganda. Now John Homes (UN's humanitarian guy) is in town- hopefully he can make the time to go see without doing what Al Jazeera did on TV last nite showing a "video from Tamil sources" showing injured & dying people. Smart.

Cut the bull lady and everyone else from the international community. We're on our own this time and we're not giving in to the BS. We're (finally) taking our country back. You have no leverage in Sri Lanka - please do keep the aid money if you wish; we'll survive. We are not committing any humanitarian disasters - we're trying to prevent them. If you want to know the truth come and see for yourself.

If the (esp. western) "international community" wants to look for humanitarian disasters, look at Iraq. How many have you killed there in the name-of-what-now? Maybe between 100,000 to 1,000,000 .. in just 6 years. You guys have no moral authority to tell us anything; if at all its your crap is what has killed probably 75,000+ people in Sri Lanka in 30 years.

Upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04 - Jaunty Jackalope

Ubuntu 9.04 came out on Friday .. I upgraded my laptop (Dell D820) to that yesterday and did a total restructuring of the machine. I also put back a (small) Windows partition .. I've been bitten enough times without being able to present that I had to do it!

So far excellent experience with Jaunty Jackalope! I had some issues with Thunderbird and the Lightening plugin (basically, it doesn't work :() but that's ok because we're in the process of moving to Google Apps .. so I took the chance to set up GMail and the Google Calendar to work offline etc..

I have to say the end-user quality of Ubuntu is amazing for a free product, no, for any product really. I think Ubuntu raises the bar that we at WSO2 and other open source manufacturers must meet or beat!

British MP's visit to Sri Lanka

Very interesting video of a UK MP visiting northern Sri Lanka and learning the truth about the LTTE. Thank you Mr. MP for setting the record straight.

4 years since IBM -= me

It was 4 years ago on April 15th, 2005 that I officially left IBM to start WSO2. I spent the next several months fine-tuning the business case along with Paul and of course WSO2 finally came into existence in July/August 2005.

Any regrets? None at all. IBM was a fantastic place for me to work at and she (it?) gave me incredible insight into how the software industry works, how to make it work for you etc. etc.. I also developed a lot of long lasting friendships and many of those are still active and strong.

In fact, before starting WSO2 I actually tried to do something like what WSO2 is doing (create a middleware stack with an interoperability focus in its heart) while in IBM. However, as good as IBM is with technology, IBM is MUCH better at business- and it was the wrong business action for IBM to take at the time .. so I quit :-).

Its been a tremendous ride. Recently I was asked what the most satisfying part of starting WSO2 has been- and to me the answer is dirt simple: the people. Without a doubt the experience of working closely (I was going to say intimately but maybe that's a bit too close ;-)) with everyone starting with Paul to the entire team has been the best and brightest part of it.

Four years is a long time. Yet, its a short time .. what we set out to do in WSO2 is far from being done! I'm thrilled at how things have gone so far but really, we've only just begun.

New Board Member for WSO2

Its my pleasure to announce that Alok Mohan recently joined WSO2's board.

Alok is a long time industry veteran with a lot of experience and success in growing businesses - which is exactly the stage that WSO2 is in. Alok's has an interesting and long career, including a stint at SCO .. no no, not when it was the "bad" SCO but before :-). He's currently on the boards of several other public & private companies as well. Alok's style is to be an active board member .. not a "geriatric" member as he says, which indeed is the common case for most people!

I'm thrilled to have someone with Alok's credentials and background to work with in growing WSO2 beyond the current stage. Every year since we began, we've more than doubled revenue and are on target for that again for 2009. The plan that we're working on is to accelerate that further!

I'm greatly honored to be working side-by-side with someone of Alok's stature. I know it will be a learning experience for me personally as well as for our entire company, especially the leadership team.

Let the games begin!

Talk on SOA & cloud computing at SOA Symposium

I had the pleasure of participating in the 2009 SOA Symposium - Government and Industry Best Practices on Thursday and Friday this past week. This was an event organized the US Department of Defence's Business Transformation Agency as part of its efforts to deploy SOA in the DoD.

Dennis Wisnosky, who was the "patron" of the event, is the Chief Architect and CTO of Business Mission Area of the Office of the Deputy Chief Management Officer, U.S. Department of Defense. He has the uneviable task of trying to get an incredibly large organization (of 3.5m+ people) adopt some type of consistent SOA architecture! That's when you realize how easy we technology providers have it .. its a LOT harder to get real, large organizations to adopt/adapt than to come out with yet another piece of cool technology :-).

I gave a talk titled "Scalable SOA in Your Own Open Source Cloud." Feedback welcome!

Scalable SOA in Your Own Open Source Cloud

View more presentations from Sanjiva Weerawarana.

I also met Thomas Erl again (since the January meeting in Germany) and also finally met JP Morganthal and Mark Little f2f! Very much a pleasure indeed .. I just wish I wasn't so damned jetlagged and out of it most of the time. Arriving into DC without my bag didn't help either.