© Copyright FeedHenry Ltd. 2014 Born Mobile, Born Cloud Red Hat Mobile Application Platform And personal musings on R&D, Innovation in ICT Dr Mícheál Ó Foghlú, CTO FeedHenry by Red Hat May, 2015 1
Aug 04, 2015
© Copyright FeedHenry Ltd. 2014
Born Mobile, Born Cloud Red Hat Mobile Application Platform
And personal musings on R&D, Innovation in ICT
Dr Mícheál Ó Foghlú, CTO FeedHenry by Red HatMay, 2015
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© Copyright FeedHenry Ltd. 2014
Agenda
• FeedHenry & Red Hat Overview
• Theories of Knowledge Production
• TSSG Experience
• Software is Eating the World
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© Copyright FeedHenry Ltd. 2014
FeedHenry At a Glance
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Spin Out
2010 from Irish research institute TSSG
Funding
2013 - $9m led by Intel Capital (series
A)
Staff & Locations
65 staff
Ireland, UK & USA
Growth
300% year on year
Customers
Global 1000 customers,
50+ enterprise customers, >3,000 developers,
Enterprise Customers VMware,
Telefonica/O2,
Orange,
PwC,
Aer Lingus,
DAA,
Diageo,
Network Rail,
Kier Group
Industry Focus
Healthcare,
Business Services, Utilities,
Transportation, Telecommunications,
Government,
Education
Cloud Deployments
HP Cloud Services, Rackspace, AWS, Joyent,
TEF Instant Servers & FeedHenry HIPAA Cloud
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FeedHenry Experience
TSSG’s history of linking software services to telecoms industry
Series of R&D projects targeting “service delivery platforms” pre-iPhone
Recast as smartphone in 2010, W3C widgets
Linked to experienced CEO driving business
WIT IPR assigned Q4 2010, seed funding won (Kernel Capital)
First Year 2011 – VMware & Telefónica IE
Second Year 2012 – Telefónica UK, TEF Digital
Third Year 2013 –Intel Capital led $9M investment
70 staff in Waterford, Dublin, London & US MA
© Copyright 2013, FeedHenry. All rights reserved.
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ABOUT RED HAT
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Small company speed and innovation backed by large company security and global footprint
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FeedHenry: What We Do
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More Open, Agile, SaaS Solution
vs.
Traditional on-premise MEAP solutions
Many apps
Many toolkits
Many devices
Operations Finance Marketing Execs
Control & secure how apps
connect to the enterprise
Deploy MBaaS
in any cloud
or on-premise
Bringing order to the frenzy and chaos of
app development
Enabling CIOs to support a Mobile
First organization
Flexible deployment
=
Zero Lock-In
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Positioning and Marketplace
Proprietary
On-premise
Consumer Focus
- partial/point solution
Enterprise Focus
-end-to-end
Open & Agile
Cloud
Legacy
MEAP
mBaaS
• Enterprise-Grade
• Cloud
• Open, Flexible & Agile
• Includes API Management
• Database centric
• Proprietary
• On-Premise
• High Price
• Lightweight
• Developer focus
• Consumer focus
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FeedHenry Platform
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A next-generation, cloud-based Mobile Application Platform for Enterprises
leveraging the latest open technologies across all major mobile platforms.
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Mobile Backend-as-a-Service mBaaS Development
• Node.js Execution Environment• Fastest growing dev environment for mobile backend
• mBaaS APIs ready to use• Auth, Caching, Encryption, User Management, Data Sync, Storage
• Cloud Plugins / mBaaS Services• Circa 100k node modules -- >50 common plugins/mBaaS Services
supported
• Any 3rd party server-side JS library
• Websocket Support
• FHC-local
• Command Line Interface / API access to cloud
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mBaaS Services/Plugins(Pre-configured Integrations)
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mBaaS Services (Extendable/Re-usable Integrations)
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UK Rail Authority
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A strategic solution for workforce mobility across the business
Mobilising the work of 15,000-20,000
mobile employees
Integrating with 200+
backend systems
Securely distributing 300-400 mobile applications
and solutions to support:
• Process automation
• Field force automation
• Emergency response
• Health and safety
• Real time reporting and analytics
• Asset management
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Utility Services
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A forms-based workflow solution for
field service workers in the UK
• Rolling out to 10,000+
• Work order management
• Video, photo, location& signature capture
• Auto integration with backend systems
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Theory of Knowledge Production
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Vannevar Bush
Co-ordinated US scientific R&D in WWII
1945 “Science the Endless Frontier” This led to setting up of National Science Foundation (NSF), he subsequently chaired
(May not have espoused linear model)
Promoted a post-war model of the state funding “basic” research, and industry dealing
with “applied” research (though the latter was spurred on by lucrative arms contracts)
“The most important ways in which the Government can promote industrial research
are to increase the flow of new scientific knowledge through support of basic research,
and to aid in the development of scientific talent.”
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(Simplistically) Bush = Linear
So, although Bush did not invent the linear model, he promoted it as the model for US R&D funding:Basic Research
Leads to
Applied ResearchLeads to
Experimental DevelopmentLeads to
Commercialisation
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Modern Research Policy Rejects Linear Model
Generally it now believed that R&D is a much more complex interactive system
Economists (Nelson et al) have posited a “National System of Innovation” where these complexities interplay
Educationalists (Gibbons et al) have posited “Mode-2” science, where flexible domains that are trans-disciplinary are too malleable to conform to traditional scientific domain norms
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A detailed Analysis of Vannevar
Bush, NSF, OECD Frascati and
other ways in which basic and
applied research have been
split by funding mechanisms,
to the detriment of
technological innovation.Stokes, Donald E. [1997] Pasteur's Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation. Washington D.C., USA: Brookings Institution
Press.
Stokes’ Pasteur’s Quadrant
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Pure Basic Research
(Bohr)
Use-Inspired Basic Research
(Pasteur)
Taxonomies and ToolsResearchers are the users
Pure Applied Research
(Edison)
Quest for
Fundamental
understanding?
Considerations for Use ?
No Yes
No
Yes
(Adapted from Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation,
Stokes 1997, p. 73).
Stokes’ Pasteur’s Quadrant
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WIT/TSSG Experience
© Copyright 2013, FeedHenry. All rights reserved.
© Copyright FeedHenry Ltd. 2014
WIT/TSSG Experience
HEA PRTLI Cycles 2, 3, 4 and 5 (success in latter 3)Importance of Institutional Strategy documents
SFI CSET, Joint-PI, SRC, new centre (success in latter 3)Importance of pure basic academic criteria
Industrial impact in earlier proposals nominal, now less so
Enterprise Ireland CF-TDNever had the same level of funding as HEA/SFI
EU FP4, FP5, FP6, FP7, H2020Always open, fewer biases (being an IoT is fine)
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Software is Eating the World
Marc Andreessen, Wall Street Journal, Aug 20th 2011
- world’s biggest seller of books
- world’s biggest seller of music
- world’s biggest video service
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Software is Eating the World
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Software: Low Barriers to Entry• Internet 1970s &
Web 1990s & Virtualisation 2000s = Cloud
• Hosting is cheap
• Software is getting better
• We now know how to scale from 100s to billions users/transactions
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Mobile is Eating the World
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• Benedict Evans (also at Andreessen
Horowitz)
• Update to Andreessen's article with
more recent mobile stats
• http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/10/28/p
resentation-mobile-is-eating-the-
world (Oct’14)
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Example tool chainDocker & DigitalOcean
• Register a domain ($10 per year)
• Setup SSL Certificate (Self-signed free, certified <$100 per year) for domain, wildcard domain
• Spin up a VM (DigitalOcean $5 per month, entry)
• Setup DNS (Amazon AWS Route 53 <$1 per month initially)
• Use Node.js (free, >90k modules), git, Atom.io, …
• Deploy a Docker container
• Test locally in VM on own laptop m/c
• Deploy exact same stack to remote production VM
• Register a company, and start selling
• MVP in months, A/B testing iterate
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Summary
• Universities and IoTs can generate innovation
• Spinouts are all about funding (angel, round a/b/c, exit) and revenue – execution of the idea
• ICT lowers barriers to innovation, but making many parts of execution easier
• The world is your oyster, but most modern innovation needs software expertise to execute
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© Copyright FeedHenry Ltd. 2014
Dr Mícheál Ó Foghlú, CTO FeedHenry by Red Hat
[email protected]@mofoghlu
http://blog.ofoghlu.net
May, 2015
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