20150527 feed henry_r&d_overview

© 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

1


Agenda

• FeedHenry & Red Hat Overview

• Theories of Knowledge Production

• TSSG Experience

• Software is Eating the World

2


FeedHenry At a Glance

3

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


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.


ABOUT RED HAT

5

Small company speed and innovation backed by large company security and global footprint


FeedHenry: What We Do

6

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


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

7


FeedHenry Platform

8

A next-generation, cloud-based Mobile Application Platform for Enterprises

leveraging the latest open technologies across all major mobile platforms.


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

9


mBaaS Services/Plugins(Pre-configured Integrations)

10


mBaaS Services (Extendable/Re-usable Integrations)

11


UK Rail Authority

12

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


Utility Services

13

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


Theory of Knowledge Production


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.”


(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


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


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


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


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)


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

22


Software is Eating the World

23


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

24


Mobile is Eating the World

25

• 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)

http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/10/28/presentation-mobile-is-eating-the-world




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

26


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

27


Dr Mícheál Ó Foghlú, CTO FeedHenry by Red Hat

[email protected]@mofoghlu

http://blog.ofoghlu.net

May, 2015

1

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20150527 feed henry_r&d_overview

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