Happy Halloween, Architecture Pumpkins

Yup, my blog is a big stale. No matter. I won't bore you with some weak excuse. Rather, I'll jump right into a question that's been needling at me for a couple weeks.

So I occasionally check the site analytics for the blog. Recently, something caught my attention. One of the primary sources of traffic to my blog in the past couple weeks has been hits from Google searches for "architecture pumpkin" (or several obvious variations).

Architecture pumpkins? Pardon me?

Several Google searches later, and I still don't get it. What the heck is an architecture pumpkin?

Are you here as a result of a search hit on architecture pumpkins? Happen to know why I might be getting a notable number of visitors from this search term? Feel free to comment. I'd love to hear from you.

Who knows, the conversation might just get me back in the habit of blogging on a regular basis.

For you Enterprise/IT Architecture types - perhaps we've been completely wrong in our framing of PaaS. Perhaps I should do some analysis, and publish the results in a pie chart. Perhaps we've found some new ammunition for the trebuchet we have aimed at the Ivory Tower.

p.s. Happy Halloween

Pay no attention to the lamps behind the curtain

Bob Warfield has a pair of articles that touch on ideas I've been pondering recently.

Virtualization vs Multitenancy at Workstream: SaaS Quandry?

Lack of Good Platforms is Stunting SaaS and Business Web 2.0

The two articles provide interesting analysis of key issues in SaaS and PaaS.

The connection between these topics and a recent conversations about Lamps (also here) with Mark Masterson seems particularly interesting.

For example, it is possible to implement the logical equivalent of a multitenant environment using a pile of lamps. It would require a level of design not normally found in cluster and virtualization environments, but it's possible. At the very least, it could provide useful fodder for other people interested in the topic.

Whether it makes sense is another topic, but what the hey - it's all part of a conversation...