text:
Arguably since the dawn of business, companies have been operating in the age of the seller, where they control the product, marketing, and customer experience. However, the proliferation of digital, along with the plethora of channels and platforms that have come to the marketplace, are shifting control from businesses to customers. It is the customer who now controls access to information and the customer experience.
The "age of the customer" is in full swing.
"The 'age of the customer' is a term coined by Forrester, but it is the same concept as what is referred to as the 'era of smart customers,'" said Michael Hinshaw, CEO of McorpCX and author of CMO.com's weekly "Get Customer-Centric" blog. "Smart customers are customers that leverage digital devices to access information, anywhere and anytime. What that means is the power in the relationship between companies and customers is in the process of shifting."
Hinshaw gave an example of what smarter customers are capable of. A few weeks ago, Hinshaw was on the phone with a local business to find out whether a specific chair he was interested in came in different colors. The rep told him the chair was only made in one color--just as Hinshaw's office manager tapped him on the shoulder, phone in hand, and showed him that the chair did, in fact, come in four colors and was available at a different store just two blocks from the office. Hinshaw thanked the rep, hung up, and purchased from the nearby store.
This new, smarter customer Hinshaw described demands that companies be more customer-centric. The term "customer centric" means focusing on the needs and expectations of customers at every single touch point with the target market. And customer centricity is no longer just a loaded buzzword used by marketers preaching tactics such as personalization and customer experience. Customer centricity is a mind-set that companies need to adopt throughout the entire organization—not just marketing—to thrive in the digital world.
"To be truly customer-centric is to have every employee on every level of a company committed to the customer experience," said Ty McMahan, senior director of marketing and content at StellaService, a company that measures and rates the customer-service performance of online retailers. "It's weaving a culture of service into the ethos of a business or brand and empowering an entire organization to have the ability to anticipate and react to customer needs."
Customer-Centricity Hurdles
The need for more customer-centric organizational practices isn't news to most companies. And while many preach the need for a bigger focus on the customer, the vast majority are still not executing. A number of hurdles are holding companies back from attaining true customer centricity.
The first major hurdle, according to Yvonne Genovese, an analyst at Gartner, is that there isn't an owner within organizations who steps up and takes the reigns for building customer centricity throughout the business. Instead, a handful of people usually own various parts of the customer experience, and they typically don't work together.
"Customer service owns one part of communicating with customers," Genovese told CMO.com in an exclusive interview. "Marketing owns another part. The CEO owns a part. Virtually everyone owns it, but nobody owns it."
Genovese said she's not advocating that organizations need to have one single owner of the customer experience. She does, however, preach the need to have a single way to measure and manage customer centricity across all touch points.
Another major hurdle is the way organizations are structured, said Christine Cutten, a principal at Deloitte Consulting.
"Customer centricity requires coordination across traditional silos," Cutten explained. "This includes bridging operations with marketing, sales, and customer service. This is not easy to do, given traditional incentives and leadership."
But operating in silos negatively affects the experiences that potential and existing customers have with brands.
"Think about when you call your cable company or phone company," Hinshaw said. "The first thing you are prompted to do is enter some sort of personal identifiable information in order to get to the next step in the IVR system or to be connected with customer service. Then once you are connected, that customer-service rep tells you they need that same information you just entered for your own security and safety. That's BS. Their systems don't connect."
Hinshaw explained that today's smart customers understand that companies are collecting data based on interactions with them, and they understand this data can be used to make their lives easier. That's why Amazon is held up as an exemple for customer centricity. "Amazon uses data about your interactions to make your life better," Hinshaw said.
While data is key to customer centricity, it is also proving to contribute to the list of challenges that organizations face, Deloitte's Cutten said. While virtually every organization now has analytics initiatives, the problem is a shortage of talent to conduct data integration and derive customer insights, she said.
"Good experiences are typically shaped by identified known or unmet needs and providing service around those," Cutten said. "Channel proliferations leads to data proliferation, making identification of these needs really difficult. Companies are finding challenges in identifying the meaningful starting points."
According to StellaService's McMahan, miscommunication also holds companies back from true customer centricity. Inconsistency across organizations is common. For example, while marketing may be promoting a luxury product or experience, a customer-service agent or operator may be keeping a customer with questions about the product on hold for too long or providing inaccurate information.
"Internally communicating a company's core message and mission so it is reflected across the entire organization is key to mitigating this disconnect and the first step in becoming a customer-centric organization," McMahan said.
Jen Gray, VP of marketing at HelloWorld, said what holds back a lot of organizations from being truly customer-centric is their thinking they know what's best for the customer. Companies often build their businesses in a vacuum, she added.
"Don't be the ostrich with your head in the sand," Gray told CMO.com. "While you want to push the envelope, don't be afraid of gathering honest feedback–and using it–no matter how big or small the pivot. This will foster a thirst for learning and a culture of constant improvement."
A Road Map To Customer Centricity
So how does a brand get from where they are now to where they need to be? The first step, Cutten said, and Gartner's Genovese echoed, is defining ownership. In some organizations, appointing a chief customer officer or chief customer experience officer is the answer. At other organizations, Genovese said, the answer is putting together a steering committee, of sorts, with constituents from various parts of the organization aligning on what it means for their particular business unit to be customer-centric.
"It must be a steering committee that has measures," Genovese said. "It can't be a steering committee that sits there and talks about things. They have to have measures of what it means to be customer-centric that impacts all touch points with a customer, and they also know where to stop and start based on the business strategy or business model of the company."
Other more tactical starting steps, according to Cutten, include customer-journey mapping, triaging existing customer data to identify customer needs at a few touch points, embarking on a customer focus training program, and looking at realigning metrics.
"In the longer term, an optimized customer insights organization can drive the customer agenda," Cutten said. "Reorganization is often a component to shift from silos to more end-to-end experiences."
Gartner's Genovese said that companies also need to understand what customer centricity means to their business strategy.
"You have to know what your customers want from you and then know where to draw the line," Genovese said. "That business strategy will help you to guide where you draw the line of customer centricity."
Companies must establish a baseline for customer-centricity measures, and they must continuously measure and hold people accountable, she said.
Once the entire company is aligned on a core message and commitment to the customer experience, organizations need to focus on refining and coordinating every aspect of its business that affects the customer. Standardization and a commitment to maintaining or exceeding those standards should be ingrained in each employee's day-to-day, McMahan told CMO.com.
"Those companies that truly are customer-centric listen to customers and put them at center of what they do," MCorpCX's Hinshaw said. "They use information about customers to make the customer's life better and easier. Those are the companies that will be most successful, and not the ones just pushing products and features."
HelloWorld's Gray suggested that companies institute a true, formal feedback loop in all parts of the organization that deal directly with customers.
"Whether you think you're good or maybe even a mind-reader, you're not," she said. "Don't be afraid to ask for feedback. What's the worst that can happen? A customer will tell you an area where they think you may be falling down, in turn creating an opportunity for you to improve. It may sting for a bit, but collect the feedback, review, look for trends, be transparent about the learnings, and act on them. You will also learn what you are doing right–so you and your team can do more of it. Remember, perception is reality. You have to understand it to change it. Feedback is a gift."
Marketing's Role
Typically the CMO owns the customer insights and analytics organization and can provide the first steps in helping to identify customer needs, Deloitte's Cutten told CMO.com. CMOs can also build the insights team to focus on customer journeys, segmentation, and building out personas.
"In essence, CMOs can become the headlights to a customer-centric organization," Cutten said.
Marketing is also in a unique role in its ability to measure customer centricity once the KPIs have been laid out, Genovese said.
"Marketing has the best, 360-degree view of the customer, the target market, how the product or service is performing, and what things you need to do to make sure you're meeting customer service, customer demand, as well as making money with that customer demand," Genovese said.
Mark Asher, director of corporate strategy at Adobe, told CMO.com, that the marketing organization plays a key role in nurturing a customer-centric organization since it shapes the attributes of the company's brand and creates the environment for engaging new customers.
"The marketing organization can and should influence all the other areas of the company where there are customer touch points–sales, support, upgrades, renewals, etc.–since the journey doesn't end when a customer makes a purchase," he said.
Here's what the Twitterverse is saying about customer centricity:


text:
Psychedelic Echoes of German New Left Negative Utopianism.
In tracing the historical context of German psychedelic music (also known as «Krautrock» or «Kosmische Musik»), a convenient musical/political narrative arises as a result of the events of 1968. [1] In this year, the Zodiak Free Arts Lab (founded by Conrad Schnitzler and Hans-Joachim Roedelius) began its earliest concerts, exposing West Berlin to new forms of experimental and electronic music. The Internationale Essener Songtage brought some of the stranger sounds of British and American rock music to Germany (e.g. Frank Zappa, the Fugs, Family) as well as early concerts by German psychedelic bands Amon Düül, Guru Guru, Xhol Caravan, and Tangerine Dream. In Cologne, two former students of Karlheinz Stockhausen founded a new rock group named Can. 1968 was also the year of intense leftist revolutionary political action amongst students in Germany and across continental Europe. The student protests during May of 1968 were particularly violent in Germany, primarily as a result of the death of Benno Ohnesorg during student protests the previous year and the assassination attempt of Rudi Dutschke in April of 1968. [2]
Video is not available aynmore.
However, this narrative that aligns West German music post-'68 and West German politics post-'68 presents a serious historical problem. Namely, how directly engaged with politics was West German rock music? In addressing this general question, this essay contains two specific purposes. First, I will attempt a broad understanding of the impact of utopianism on German psychedelia. Second, by analyzing Can's song «Mother Sky», and how it fits within the Jerzy Skolimowski film Deep End, I hope to exemplify some specific ways that these political and theoretical influences materialized within the formal aesthetic features of German psychedelia. In particular, Deep End demonstrates a dialectic between material (or «realist») themes and the psychedelic aesthetic of imagination that reflects the negative utopianism of Ernst Bloch and Herbert Marcuse.
One thing I do not argue is that Can and their music have a direct link to the radical politics of '68. Instead, I argue that if there is a political element to their music, it is in an indirect reflection of social changes in West Germany at the time. Can keyboardist Irmin Schmidt described this relationship as «symptomatic» of the events of '68:
We're musicians. To make that clear: our music had no political implications and there was no political message in its content – nothing like the '68ers. But something of the feeling of the times shows in that each of us at some point left what we were doing to join the band Can. If I talk about myself now: someone who had a career as a conductor before him, but then suddenly formed a rock band – well, that doesn't happen every day and is therefore symptomatic for the sixties…We agreed to change something, to start something new. (Schmidt and Kampmann 1999: 399)
Thus, Schmidt, despite his objection to the idea that Can were a political band, recognizes that their music reflects some of the principles of the youth movement. Can saw themselves as constituting a different kind of social formulation that did not engage in «politics» in the sense of explicit interaction with the actions of parties, protests, or platforms. Instead, Can's music was a trace of the political imagination of cultural possibilities in 1960s West Germany. As Schmidt makes clear, the desire «to start something new» recognized a different conception of the functions of popular music than mere entertainment. While his quote evades the concept of politics, clearly what is «symptomatic» about his description of the group's social stance is its reflection of certain historical political ideals.
The idea of symptomatic or even «reflective» relationships between music and politics implies a direct correlation between text and context that may seem to evade agency. Despite my historical argument's reliance on the political contexts of the music and film, much of my primary evidence relies on the individual subjective accounts from the members of Can. As composers and performers, Can did not merely «reflect» by representing the contexts of their surroundings, but «reflect» in an interpretive sense that involves critique and creativity. Moreover, the reimagination of cultural forces like music and politics were not entirely unique to Germany, and indeed my argument does not contain any sense of an essential German national identity. One could make the same arguments about psychedelic musicians in any part of the world that experienced the symbiotic creation of psychedelic music and New Left politics (and indeed, both were global occurences). [3] I have chosen to focus on Can and the German New Left because of personal interest, but also because of the richness of scholarship available on German politics during this era.
While there are definite overlaps between the German psychedelic scene and the radical leftist politics that both carried over into the 1970s, the interactions are not entirely clear. Arne Koch and Sei Harris (2009) identified a stance that they referred to as the «politics of the unpolitical». Borrowed from Gordon Craig's analysis of Goethe's artistic context, Koch and Harris read a political potential into the band Faust's unwillingness to attach their music to specific worldly contexts. [4] By maintaining a notion of musical autonomy «in seeking to create a music all their own… Faust without a question strove to create a world that was all their own» (2009: 581). For Koch and Harris, this idea of new musical worlds allowed for an escape from the criminal politics of twentieth century Germany and into a realm that simply provided something different. Lloyd Isaac Vayo (2009) saw the German psychedelic band Neu! as a part of a musical attempt to create a new German identity in the post-war era. Michael T. Putnam (2009) portrays German rock music from the 1970s as a musical response to the radical politics of the Red Army Faction. Instead of arguing a correlation between music and national identity, Putnam sees German rock (particularly the band Ton Steine Scherben) as reacting against German identity and the «Auschwitz generation» in order to establish an international position that is isomorphic with the RAF's ideal of «proletarian internationalism» (2009: 596-597). While many rock journalists have associated German psychedelia with Baader-Meinhof and the RAF, Putnam is careful not to overreach the boundaries of his claims. [5] Indeed, there is little evidence that bands from this era supported the radical left-wing beyond their relationships with communes and squatters, but Putnam limits the scope of his argument to the rare examples of «Krautrock-affiliated» groups that did support political violence – Ton Steine Scherben and Einstürzende Neubauten (2009: 600). Similarly, Ulrich Adelt (2012b) interprets this period of rock music as attempting to cope with the Stunde Null («Hour Zero«) era of German history. Adelt (2012a) saw Can as eliding their identity as a «German band« in favor of a more «global» musical identity. While all of these scholars provide useful models for understanding psychedelic music in this era, for this particular essay, dealing with the concept of utopia, Koch and Harris's model of musical escapism provides an excellent starting point. In order to comprehend the context of the utopian ideals at this time, an explication of the social/historical use of utopianism is necessary.
The German New Left and Utopian Theory
One major distinction between the German New Left (of the 1960s and early 70s) and previous generations of post-war leftists was their rejection of Theodor Adorno. While Adorno held extreme intellectual capital amongst the German left wing during the post-war era, his work fell out of fashion during the New Left movement of the 1960s, partially due to his outright dismissal of popular culture. Famously, Adorno's final course at Frankfurt University in the summer of 1969, «An Introduction to Dialectical Thinking», was interrupted by student protestors angered by Adorno's condemnation of the New Leftist student movement. [6] Leftist student groups like the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (or Socialist German Student Association) heavily criticized Adorno's view on art as lacking praxis and encouraging an artistic «intellectual domination» that was a «precondition for domination in all other areas» (Von Dirke 1997: 52). In 1967, the young philosopher Helmut Lethen critiqued Adorno during a public debate on the merits of Walter Benjamin's theories of mechanical reproduction by claiming Adorno «feared the eruption of aesthetic barbarism if all privileged aesthetic education were to be abandoned» (Von Dirke 1997: 56). While some Adornians theorized from within the student movement (such as Michael Scharang), they still largely rejected Adorno's valorization of high art while favoring Adorno's critiques of aesthetic autonomy. [7]
Instead, the younger generation of leftists looked toward utopian thinkers like Benjamin, Bloch, and Marcuse as theorists that radically rejected authoritarian politics and capitalism while maintaining an anti-elitist view that blurred the capabilities of «high» and «low» art. Marcuse, in particular, was one of the most popular theorists amongst student movements around the world. Authoritarian society, for Marcuse (1968), no longer functioned through overt dominance and control, but rather through the draining of consciousness that made resistance nearly impossible. Equally informed by Freud and Marx, Marcuse established a number of guiding principles that influenced the student movements: radical political action, a focus on selfhood (and the metaphysical concepts of Mind, Consciousness, Will, and Soul), and creative imagination. While Marcuse explicitly argued revolution as an active, subjective process, his views on utopia argued not for the ideological installation of free society, but rather the forceful elimination of unfree society (or «Great Refusal»). Fredric Jameson articulated this stance under the term «negative utopianism»:
If you know already what your longed-for exercise in a not-yet-existence looks like, then the suspicion arises that it may not really express freedom after all but only repetition; while the fear of projection, of sullying an open future with our own deformed and repressed social habits in the present, is a perpetual threat to the indulgence of fantasies of the future collectivity. (2000: 385)
For Jameson, Marcuse's utopian thought does not convey a specific narrative account of the future (evading the conventional understanding of utopia as a «perfect world»), but instead describes a «mechanism» or «machine» which allows for a free social narrative. [8] And for Marcuse, this mechanism resides largely in the aesthetic realm: «Like technology, art creates another universe of thought against and within the existing one. But in contrast to the technical universe, the artistic universe is one of illusion, semblance, Schein» (1968: 238). These new ideals greatly influenced the German leftists of the 1960s and 70s, particularly the notion of creative imagination. The phrase «Phantasie an die Macht!» («All Power to the Imagination!») became the rallying cry of much of the protests around '68, and the link between utopian imagination and material political change placed art into a privileged position. In the Maoist influenced political environment of '68, the idea of cultural power over political situations was an attractive feature of Marcuse. [9]
Prefiguring Marcuse, Bloch's particular brand of negative utopianism not only influenced the theoretical ideals of the German New Left, but also provides a useful lens for music history. Two of Bloch's major texts, The Spirit of Utopia (2000, originally published 1918) and The Principle of Hope (1986, originally published 1938-1947) established the nature of the undefined «not-yet» in negative utopia. As opposed to Marcuse, who argued for direct utopian political action, utopianism for Bloch lies latent in society as a «spirit» waiting to be realized. What most clearly realizes this utopian spirit for Bloch is, in fact, music. [10] Yet, this spirit does not remain solely in the realm of the imagined, the unreal, or the abstract. [11] The utopian function of art is to build a surplus of anticipatory imagination, which materializes beyond the realm of culture and into politics and society. [12] In other words, art, through the power of imagination, fosters utopia by blurring the borders between the present and the not-yet. Music is the pure expression of spirit because of the special stance of the «tone» in Bloch's philosophy. The tone largely opposes the «word», and while music is not entirely outside the realm of the word, the two are in conflict and can never fully resolve. This theory seems to be modeled after traditional notions of musical autonomy, and while Bloch does argue an ineffability of the tone that is «unencumbered by the world», his focus is on the tone as a «phenomenal» (i.e. listened to) entity (2000: 120). Thus, music is both a phenomenal object and something that points outside normal existence. This dialectic is more than just allegorical, it is the essential core of Bloch's utopianism. Dialectical music of the tone is the highest order of music for Bloch: «absolute music», a somewhat idiosyncratic term for Bloch. Instead of its usual nineteenth century associations, Bloch uses the term «absolute» to mean that which is most closely related to the «pure» utopian tone and specifies that this music should be «spontaneous, speculative» (2000: 93).
While all of Bloch's musical examples are from either Western art music or speculative interpretations of ancient songs, his musical-utopian writings make an explicit point not to reduce the political potential of music to one specific type. Bloch is clear to point out that the absolute in music is not only confined to the nineteenth century German Romantic examples he uses and that the theoretical focus on specific musical properties «only conflicts with music as a utopian existence-sound when the world of laws… become a kind of auditory formal fetish» (1986: 1074). Yet, there is no doubt that Bloch favors Western art music. He refers to Wagner's transcendent operas, Beethoven, and Bruckner as the most genuinely utopian (Bloch 2000: 15). But more importantly, in order to exceed the mere «laws» that conflict with the not-yet, the absolute tone (regardless of style) is what holds the spirit of utopia. While both Bloch and Marcuse were important thinkers with connections to the undeniably elite Frankfurt School, both were influential thinkers amongst young New Leftists.
Can, «Mother Sky», and Deep End
How then, can we understand the historical context of psychedelic music amongst the utopian ideals supported by the New Left in Germany? Certainly, Marcuse and Bloch could not prefigure psychedelic music in their writings and were not referring to anything near what we understand as a «psychedelic experience». And as mentioned, most bands, including Can, did not see themselves as overtly political in the sense of the student movement or the RAF. Thus, the connection between utopian theory and psychedelic music is an indirect one. In this particular case, Can functioned as a cultural actualization of many of the New Left ideals. Specifically, the band reflected three politicized notions of aesthetics from the era: (1) a blurring of the boundaries between high and low art, (2) a conviction regarding the possibilities of creative imagination, (3) a conception of communal, anti-hierarchical creation. As an example, I will focus on their song «Mother Sky», composed and performed for the soundtrack to the 1970 Jerzy Skolimowski film Deep End.
From the onset, the group formed around a mixture of musicians experienced in separate avant-garde and popular musical cultures. The group was dedicated to crossing between supposedly high and low realms of art that echoed the rhetoric of the student movements in the late 1960s. As mentioned, keyboardist Irmin Schmidt was in school at the Rheinische Musikschule to be a conductor and studied, along with bassist Holger Czukay, under the famous avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.[13] Can originally comprised Czukay, Schmidt, Germans Michael Karoli (guitar) and Jaki Liebezeit (drums), and American Malcolm Mooney (vocals), though the band replaced Mooney with Japanese Damo Suzuki (vocals) when Mooney returned to America in 1970. Schmidt and Czukay claim to have decided to start a rock group in 1968 after hearing the Beatles' «I Am the Walrus» (from Magical Mystery Tour) for the first time, and many of the popular Anglo-American records that influenced German psychedelia showed an interest in avant-garde music (including the Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, the Pink Floyd, and Captain Beefheart) (Stubbs 2010: 7-8). Schmidt noted, «I saw that in the States there was not that difference being made between high and low culture, between the classical music and entertainment and pop…That was a turning point. Jazz and rock and pop was a new phenomenon, and for me became as necessary as theory. So I wanted to bring it all together» (Schmidt 2012a). While most of their music is in a clear tradition of rock music from the 1960s, the extended improvisations not only demonstrate the influence of jazz and fusion groups, but also experiments with chromatic extended, and occasionally atonal, harmonies. For example, in «Mother Sky», the blues-based guitar solo (an extremely rare occurrence in Can's music) frequently diverges from the traditional blues scale and utilizes extended noise and feedback techniques.[14]
Moreover, the extreme repetition in the drums and bass display the influence of the trance-like ideals associated with minimalism. [15] During his tutelage with Stockhausen, Schmidt befriended and collaborated with famous minimalists like Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and LaMonte Young (Czukay and Schmidt 1998). Often referred to as the «motorik» drum style, Liebezeit considered his role to be a formal one, providing emptiness: «I can only work with space when I let go of something. Contrastingly, if I play a lot of fill, there's no more space in the music. I've always aimed to play space… That creates room for the imagination, something I've always strived to do» (Schmidt and Kampmann 1999: 301). Interestingly, Liebezeit's use of the term «imagination» accords extremely well with Marcuse and Bloch's notions of negative utopia. In his repetitive beats, Liebezeit created an empty form that allowed for the imagination of others, rather than providing a specific content. Schmidt affirmed this idea when he claimed, «Jaki wanted to make music in which anything could happen» (Schmidt and Kampmann 1999: 60).
This use of the word «imagination» is not at all incidental. In particular, Can valued the creative potentials of composing for film. Karoli recognized the freedom accorded by the «background» nature of film music: «The film scores were not judged on musical criteria, but dramaturgical; so you could play any kind of shit and have lots of freedom to experiment… The individual musical ideas and aspirations were unimportant… Film music was very important for Can because it helped us to continue breaking musical taboos» (Schmidt and Kampmann 1999: 213-214). Indeed, the band's method of composing for film was highly unusual. First, the filmmaker would show Schmidt (and only Schmidt) a rough cut of the scene that needed to be scored. Then, Schmidt would relay the details of the scene to the rest of the group in what they referred to as his «tales». From there, the group would work to create a structured improvisation around their particular memory and imagination of what the scene was like. In order to foster a sense of imagination, Can used Czukay as an intermediary: «There is a difference if someone is telling you a scene or you are seeing it on a screen. When somebody tells me a story, your fantasy is so unlimited because you're not limited from what you see on a screen» (Czukay 1997). This peculiar method of composition is not only reminiscent of the Marcusian aesthetic theory of eliminating unfreedom, but also Bloch's idiosyncratic conception of the musical absolute. The object that this music aspires to accompany (the film) is both a tangible thing, and yet outside the known existence of the musicians' world. Yet, the music is still programmatic, and was intended to be so. [16]
The idea of selfless creation abounds in interviews with every member of Can. Schmidt commented, «When I started to make music, I wrote. But for a concept like Can, you can't write. This is obvious, because the author is Can. It is creating on the spot» (Czukay and Schmidt 1998). Czukay claimed, «We never came off as particularly German. We focused more on international music scenes. You could even say that we behaved autonomously. Behind all of that was the idea that we were a collective» (Quoted in Schmidt and Kampmann 1999: 132). Moreover, Karoli professed, «I can't imagine music any other way. Musicians in a group should resonate together in the same way that strings on an instrument do», (Quoted in Schmidt and Kampmann 1999: 213). [17] Journalists later termed this idea of collective musical creation as the «Can Virus» because of its widespread impact on other groups (Schmidt and Kampmann 1999). The idea of the commune was extremely important to the German New Left. Rural communes like Kommune 1 offered active alternatives to mainstream German society. In the case of the psychedelic band Amon Düül, the group started as an arts commune that eventually developed into a core ensemble of recording and touring musicians. In urban areas, the residential Wohngemeinschaften became popular amongst student activists. While Can's communal ethos is indicative of this historical context, the group was careful to distance themselves from explicit politics:
We weren't considered political. And we didn't take sides, so I guess you could call the band non-political. But in a wider Beuys-like sense, coming together the way we did and forming and working as the collective that we were was a political action. For example, as a collective, we rejected the role of the author, as well as every form of hierarchy. We even split the royalties when one of us hadn't even played on a song. Jaki once famously said: «Not to play is a musical decision, too!» … We were totally aware of the importance of owning our means of production, and we were in full control of all the processes that led to musical results. Of course, this is very political. But we refused to comment on daily politics. (Schmidt 2012b)
Deep End presents a style that relates directly to many 1960s aesthetic ideals, and indirectly to the specific ideals of psychedelic art. The film functions as a much more phenomenally «objective» (in Bloch's words) portrayal of realism. Ewa Mazierska (2010) describes Skolimowski's films as an oscillation between realism and non-realism, via related concepts like poeticism, surrealism, romanticism, and expressionism. Formally, Skolimowski is often compared to the documentary styles of the French New Wave, as well as his close friend Roman Polanski. Skolimowski's films reflect a renewed interest in literary realism amongst German leftists of the era. Ingo Cornils identifies a number of persistent themes across literature from the German student movement, many of which correspond to Deep End, including a focus on difficult sexual experiences, the impact of popular music, and «inability to communicate with one another» (2003: 298-301). While made by a Polish filmmaker, the cast and crew of Deep End were largely British and German.
The film tells the story of a young teenaged boy, Mike (John Moulder Brown), and his infatuation with an older coworker, Susan (Jane Asher). Throughout the film, Mike physically pursues Susan while she goes on dates with other men, often while Susan intentionally taunts Mike to arouse his jealousy. The scene using «Mother Sky» shows Mike confusedly searching the streets of the red light district for Susan or for anyone that might have any information about her. Mazierska describes the scene as such:
In Deep End, the music of Can appears when Mike loses touch with reality and either cannot control his emotions or starts dreaming. An example is the episode of Mike searching for Susan in a night club and on the streets of Soho, accompanied by Can's «Mother Sky». On this occasion Mike appears to be as frantic and uncontrollable as the song we are hearing. (2010: 159)
The most crucial point that Mazierska calls attention to is the idea that this song accompanies a break from the reality of the narrative. While the film maintains many of the formal long-shot documentary features during this scene, a number of absurdities begin to pile up, including Mike's continuous purchase of hot dogs from a street vendor, his theft of a nude cardboard cutout from a strip club, and his encounter with an out-of-work prostitute with a broken leg.
While Mazierska's description accurately frames the thematic content of the scene, it lacks a description of some of its most crucial musical-visual traits. The scene cuts directly from Mike receiving his first weekly pay from the bathhouse. In this preceding scene, Mike displays many of his usual sex-frightened qualities as the older, female administrator enters his small changing room, removes her glasses, and playfully chews on them as she stares at him. Mike tenses up, avoids eye contact, and remains silent, until the administrator commands him, «Just sign», as she hands him a clipboard with his pay. Immediately after the scene cut, Mike coolly struts into a dining club, wearing a suit and accompanied by the opening guitar solo of «Mother Sky». Karoli described this solo as the only guitar solo he had ever played in his career and that he only played it because «that's what was wanted» (Schmidt and Kampmann 1999: 211). Thus, the solo seems to signify an ironic sense of masculine bravado as the coy child makes his best attempt at manhood. As Mike enters the dining club to find Susan, Skolimowski shoots the scene primarily with long circling shots around Mike and the hostess. As the shots continue, and the solo becomes increasingly chromatic, Mike's plan to find Susan unravels; his attempt to assert masculine adulthood fails to convince the hostess that he is a member of the club and his meager paycheck is not enough to buy even a single drink. This solo ends just as Mike exits to the street and begins wandering. After Mike completes his embarrassing attempt by bumping into the doorman and a group of well dressed club members, Suzuki's vocals begin. From this point on, Suzuki's vocals are timed perfectly to end during sections with dialog and begin during sections without dialog. The semiotic significance of the guitar solo, as well as its timing and the vocals' timing, provide empirical evidence that Can composed the song with a programmatic objective in mind.
An excerpt of the scene from Skolimowsky's Deep End featuring Can's «Mother Sky»
Mike's character is constantly performing a type of imagining, yet having this imagination squelched by the harsh realities of his existence, usually regarding capital. His failure to pay into the dining club is only the beginning of a series of rejections in the delirious scene featuring «Mother Sky». When he spots a nude cardboard cutout of what he thinks is Susan in front of a strip club, Mike asks the doorman where he got it from and the doorman responds, by calling her «Angelica» and saying, «Why do you ask her yourself, if you can afford her. Very expensive girl». His fervent defense of this cardboard cutout as he wanders the streets provides an appropriate allegory. Mike is not even entirely sure this woman is Susan, or why there is a cutout of her. Yet, he clutches an objectified, topless version of her – quite literally a two-dimensional version of Susan upon which he can project his own imagination. As he stumbles into the room of a prostitute with a broken leg, the woman incessantly questions him about money: how much he makes, how many tips he got, how much money he gives his parents, how much she was worth, how much she's worth with a broken leg, and «the things we could do for 3 quid». As she steals the cardboard cutout and runs her own leg across it, Mike expresses his usual sexual ambivalence, trapped between the intimidating advances of the older woman, and his own sexual imagination. The only way Mike can assert control over his own situation is by continuously purchasing hot dogs from a street vendor, an expense within his means.
Importantly, the music cuts completely when Mike stumbles into the room of the injured prostitute. While the song was completely non-diegetic up until this point, the prostitute puts the needle on a record, resuming the song where it had left off. This use of music elicits a number of possible interpretations. By shifting the song from non-diegetic to diegetic (and eventually back), Skolimowski blurs the boundaries between interior and exterior space. As Mazierski theorizes, one of the primary functions of music in Deep End is to act as the «voice of the soul of the main character, Mike» (2010: 159). [18] In this regard, «Mother Sky» functions well within Bloch's dialectic of the phenomenal contextualization of music with its emancipatory ineffability. In other words, the diegetic border that the song crosses alludes strongly to a border between a material exterior (as «real» existence), and some kind of subjective phenomenal expression of Mike's interiority. From the viewer/listener's perspective, the music feels like something that is curiously both an object of Mike's world and an imagined result of Mike's affect.
In the relationship between music and politics, the imagination of utopia acted as a suture. Can's unwillingness to participate in politics as such resulted in a «symptomatic» trace of the utopian in their musical creation, particularly their work on Deep End. It is the dialectical nature of negative utopian theory that provides a space for music of imagination to work within such a starkly realistic film. While it is difficult to think of utopianism as having a fruitful relationship with realism (as a genre), the utopian artistic imagination, as conceived by Bloch and Marcuse, is much closer to realism than fantasy. This idea is most easily grasped when considering Can's film compositional aims. Can were not trying to create some type of total musical abstraction, or send listeners to a distant dream world, but instead had their musical imagination oriented toward a material objective. Their open improvisations were still structured – their film imaginings were still based on an idea of the scene. As the New Left proposed, art, regardless of its status as high or low, is something capable of pointing outside of the everyday. Yet, this imagining is not pure escapism. The function of music, in Can's case, is to reflect a material form of imagination (that is, imagining an actual set of characters) without the taint of forcibly projected content. The interaction between Can's psychedelic imagination and Skolimowski's stark realism is more than just an allegory of utopian theory, it comprises the actual material of these ideals. For the artists of this era, imagination was not an empty wondering, nor was it ideological projection, but rather it was an unmarked hope. Bloch's idea of the «not-yet» perhaps best summarized this idea; the importance was not in what was not yet, but rather that there was something yet to come.
[1] The term «Krautrock» was developed initially by the British press and is an (understandably) unfavorable term to some German musicians. Kosmische Musik sometimes refers to artists released by the record label of the same name. Thus, I prefer the term «German psychedelic» because it provides the most general understanding of diverse German musical scenes.
[2] Andreas Baader's first act of revolutionary destruction occurred in April, 1968 when his group destroyed a Frankfurt department store with explosives. West Germany passed emergency anti-terrorism laws shortly after (Passmore 2011: x-xi).
[3] By «New Left», I mean the largely student-based leftist movement that grew around the globe during the 1960s. This movement rejected many of the class-based teachings of orthodox Marxism in favor of a more socially and culturally based form of leftism.
[4] Martin Scherzinger has explored the political potentials of formalism in his dissertation, «Musical formalism as radical political critique: From European modernism to African spirit possession», (2001). Moreover, other scholars recognize the influence of Romanticism on this era of German art (Cornils: 2000; Peucker: 1984).
[5] One notable example is David Stubbs's introduction to Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and Its Legacy (2010: 4-18).
[6] Jillian Becker describes this event and other examples of student «abuse» of Adorno, while implying that these protests inadvertently caused Adorno's death, in her controversial book Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang(1989: 44-45).
[7] While the Red Army Faction criticized many leftist intellectuals including Adorno, Ulrike Meinhof was personally interested in his writings, particularly his theory of «broken communication», (Passmore 2011: 20). For a full history of Adorno's place in the German student movement, see Von Dirke 1997: 49-60.
[8] Despite the anti-ideological core of Marcuse's beliefs, critics of utopianism maintain that all utopian Marxists are necessarily «totalitarian» (see Kolakowski 1978). For a neo-liberal critique of utopianism within musicology, see Taruskin 2008.
[9] «Marcuse follows Freud, maintaining that only art has been able to resist capitalism's reality principle – instrumental rationality. He views aesthetic form as the essential category that prevents art from falling prey to this dominant reality principle, since 'behind the sublimated aesthetic form, the unsublimated content shows forth: the commitment of art to the pleasure principle», (Von Dirke 1997: 41).
[10] For one in-depth musicological account of Bloch, see Korstvedt 2010.
[11] «The imagination of the utopian function that in this [artistic] way differs from mere fantasy in that only the former possesses an expectable not-yet-existence; i.e., it does not play around in an unoccupied potentiality and does not go astray but anticipates a real potentiality in a psychical way», (Bloch 1988: 105).
[12] Attractively for the New Left (but perhaps problematically for the postmodern academy), Bloch ascribes the actualization of this political process in a vitalist sense of Will, and refers to the spirit of utopia as «the ultimate material of the soul», (2000: 92).
[13] Before Can, Schmidt and Czukay were inspired upon meeting a number of famous American experimentalists in 1966 including John Cage, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, La Monte Young, and many of the Fluxists in 1966 (Schmidt and Kampmann 1999: 56).
[14] While the specific influence in this song is not clear, all of the members of Can had training in non-Western music. Suzuki and Schmidt had studied Japanese music (including Noh and Bugaku music), Liebezeit was interested in Arabian music, and Schmidt and Karoli both researched Balinese music (Czukay and Schmidt 1998; Adelt 2012a).
[15] Vayo (2009) theorizes about repetition in regards to the German psychedelic band Neu! that it reflects Benjamin's concepts of reproduction.
[16] Schmidt confirmed that «Mother Sky» was especially composed for the film and that certain formal decisions were made to accommodate the scene (Schmidt and Kampmann 1999: 75-76).
[17] This statement comes extremely close to Bloch's ideas in the essay «Magic rattle, human harp»: «The singer really still is a beating drum, or rather, a harp that plays its own music», (1985: 143).
[18] Diegesis refers to sounds assumed to be within the filmic world of the narrative, and thus able to be heard by the characters. In contrast, non-diegetic sound is sound outside of the filmic world, often heard as part of the film score (see Chion 1994).
Adelt, Ulrich. 2012a. «Machines with a Heart: German Identity in the Music of Can and Kraftwerk». Popular Music and Society 35:3: 359-374.
Adelt, Ulrich. 2012b. «Stande Null: Postwar German Identity in the Music of Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger». Journal of Popular Music Studies 24:1: 39-56.
Becker, Jillian. 1989. Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang. London: Pickwick Books.
Bloch, Ernst. 1985. Essays on the philosophy of music. Translated by Peter Palmer. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Bloch, Ernst. 1986. The Principle of Hope. Translated by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
Bloch, Ernst. 2000. The Spirit of Utopia. Translated by Anthony A. Nassar. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bloch, Ernst. 1988. The utopian function of art and literature : selected essays. Translated by Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklenburg. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Chion, Michel. 1994. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. Translated by Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press.
Cornils, Ingo. 2000. «‹Romantic Relapse?› The Literary Representation of the German Student Movement.» In German Studies Towards the Millennium, edited by Christopher Hall and David Rock, 107-123. Bern: Peter Lang.
Cornils, Ingo. 2003. «Writing the Revolution: the Literary Representation of the German Student Movement as Counter-Culture». In Counter-Cultures in Germany and Central Europe: From Sturm Und Drang to Baader-Meinhof, edited Steve Giles and Maike Oergel. Bern Peter Lang.
Jameson, Fredric. 2000. The Jameson Reader. Edited by Michael Hardt and Kathi Weeks. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers.
Koch, Arne and Sei Harris. 2009. «The Sound of Yourself Listening: Faust and the Politics of the Unpolitical». Popular Music and Society 32:5: 579-594.
Kolakowski, Leszek. 1978. Currents of Marxism: Its Origin, Growth and Dissolution. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Korstvedt, Benjamin M. 2010. Listening for Utopia in Ernst Bloch's Musical Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Marcuse, Herbert. 1968. One-Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press.
Mazierska, Ewa. 2010. Jerzy Skolimowski: The cinema of a nonconformist. New York: Bergahn Books.
Passmore, Leith. 2011. Ulrike Meinhof and the Red Army Faction: Performing Terrorism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Peucker, Brigitte. 1984. «Werner Herzog: In Quest of the Sublime». In New German filmmakers: from Oberhausen through the 1970s, edited by Klaus Phillips, 168-194. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Putnam, Michael T. 2009. «Music as a Weapon: Reactions and Responses to RAF Terrorism in the Music of Ton Steine Scherben and their Successors in Post-9/11 Music». Popular Music and Society 32: 5: 595-606.
Scherzinger, Martin. 2001. «Musical formalism as radical political critique: From European modernism to African spirit possession». PhD diss., Columbia.
Stubbs, David. 2010. «Introduction». In Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and Its Legacy, edited by Nikos Kotsopoulos. London: Black Dog Publishing.
Taruskin, Richard. 2008. The Dangers of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Vayo, Lloyd Isaac. 2009. «What's Old is NEU! Benjamin Meets Rother and Dinger». Popular Music and Society 32:5: 617-634.
Von Dirke, Sabine. 1997. «All Power to the Imagination!»: The West German Counterculture from the Student Movement to the Greens. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
The Beatles. 1967. Magical Mystery Tour. Capitol SMAL 2835. LP.
Can. 1970. Soundtracks. Liberty LBS 83 437 I. LP.
Deep End. 1970. Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski. London: British Film Institute, 2011. DVD.
Czukay, Holger. 1997. Interview with Jason Gross. Perfect Sound Forever, accessed February 6, 2013, http://www.furious.com/perfect/holger.html.
Czukay, Holger and Irmin Schmidt. 1998. Interview with Damon Krukowsi. Terrasound, accessed February 6, 2013, http://www.terrascope.co.uk/MyBackPages/Can.htm.
Schmidt, Hildegard and Wolf Kampmann, ed. 1999. Can Box: Book. Münster: Medium Music Books.
Schmidt, Irmin. 2012a. "Irmin Schmidt: The Lost Tapes," interview with Robbin Murray. Clash Music, accessed February 6, 2012, http://www.clashmusic.com/feature/the-lost-tapes-irmin-schmidt.
Schmidt, Irmin. 2012b. Interview with Max Dax. Electronic Beats, accessed February 6,2012, http://www.electronicbeats.net/2012/10/04/max-dax-interviews-irmin-schmidt.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
A variety of liquid, frozen and dried egg products are available to provide functionality at the appropriate price point depending on production capabilities.
For more information about the pasteurization methods used by the U.S. egg products industry, click here.
Egg Yolk Types
Egg White Types
Whole Egg Types
Value-Added Convenience Products


text: In the course of one excruciating day, with Donald Trump's recent executive order on immigration, Dania Albaba's family found themselves torn apart and indefinitely isolated from one another across five countries. Albaba's parents moved to the United States more than two decades ago to complete their studies and find work as doctors. After the war broke out in Syria in 2011, her grandparents left their cement factory in Damascus to join their children in Houston. Albaba, 22, is a first-year medical student at the University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston. She and her siblings were the first generation born in the US with American citizenship. Following Trump's recent executive order on immigration, she now stands at the centre of a family thrown into turmoil. Her aunt was stopped on Friday in Dubai, en route to visit her family in the US. Albaba's grandparents, who are green card-holding residents, now have no recourse to visit their 11 children living overseas. Her cousin, who was granted American asylum after being tortured in Syria, had his family barred from visiting him on the day they received their visas. Unable to return to war-torn Syria, the US is the only home Albaba's family knows. She reflects on the wrenching changes of this week, and the new reality of being a Muslim in Trump's America. Albaba, 22, is a first-year medical student at the University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston [Courtesy of Dania Albaba] On Wednesday, I was at my parents' house, and everyone was talking about my Aunt Saana's trip. We are renovating the house right now, in preparation for her arrival, and they wanted to finish everything on time. I went upstairs on Facebook, where I saw a posting about Trump's executive order blocking access to citizens of several countries, including Syria. I ran downstairs to tell my mom that nobody could enter the country any more. They all started freaking out, my grandmother started crying. It would be my aunt's first time in the United States, and since she just got married, it was meant as a sort of honeymoon, as well. We were shocked, but I wasn't as surprised as my family was. They had a lot more faith in the system, thinking that this could never happen in America. Trump would never block refugees from coming, they thought. I told them he has been saying these things from day one. Albaba now stands at the centre of a family thrown into turmoil [Courtesy of Dania Albaba] My aunt was travelling from Saudi Arabia and had to transit through Dubai. She arrived and got on to her plane to the United States. Five minutes before her flight was about to take off, people from the airport walked on and told her: "You have to get off. You're not allowed in the United States any more." They sent all her luggage back to Saudi Arabia, and then she had to return, too. She was distraught. Even though she knew about the planned executive order, nobody thought it would all come into effect this quickly. Now, she and her husband just need to wait and see what happens. They don't really know what to do. My grandparents used to live in Syria. They owned a cement factory and had 11 kids. Their children live around the world now, in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, London, the Emirates, Jordan, Syria, and three of them are here in the United States. After the war in Syria, they got their green cards and moved to the US to be with my parents. They spend most of the year in the US, but a few months a year, they fly back to Saudi Arabia to visit my aunt and my uncle who lives in Jordan. Now, they are really in limbo. They can't go back to Syria. They can't really live in Jordan. The US has been their home for four years. READ MORE: Trump's first week - Executive overdrive I also have a few family members who moved here since the war broke out in Syria. My uncle's wife is an American citizen, so they were able to come here with their two children. I have an aunt, as well, who just got refugee status and moved here in December, after two years of "extreme vetting". She made it just before the ban. Another cousin, who was imprisoned and tortured in Syria, sought asylum here after his brother was killed. My cousin's family still lives in Jordan, and just received a visa to visit the US on the day the ban was declared. WATCH: Protests across US against Trump's immigration ban (1:58) Yesterday, my grandmother was on the phone all day, in tears. She doesn't want to be split up from her family, and she doesn't want to be trapped here for two or three years until she can apply for citizenship.That would be the only way she can visit any one of her other children. The area I live in voted overwhelmingly for Trump. People have felt emboldened to express their hatred against me, too. Sometimes while driving, I've come to a stop next to another car and looked over to see someone glaring at me, glaring like they want to kill me. I've had others stop their cars right in front of mine, and get out to just stare at me. It's a threat. So, it's been a little tougher since the election. While I don't want to have blind faith in any system, I do have some faith in the American system. I am an American citizen, there's only so much that can happen to me. I'm just hoping for the best. I was listening to the radio right before Trump was elected. A man whose grandparents survived the Holocaust was saying: "If people tell you that they hate you, you better believe them. If they don't want you in their country, you should take them at their word. They are telling you how they genuinely feel." With Trump's statements on Muslims, Mexicans, and his actions against women, I took him for his word. I think a lot of Muslims, many who even supported him, did not. They thought he would never actually do the things he said. But look what has happened now, all of this enacted in just the first week? It's so disappointing, and I have no words left. I'm done trying to convince people. As told to Barret Limoges SOURCE: Al Jazeera News ABOUT THE AUTHOR Barrett Limoges Islamophobia US & Canada Donald Trump Politics


text:
fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) Frequently Asked Questions
What versions of FileMaker Pro/Pro Advanced does fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) require?
fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) currently works with FileMaker Pro/Pro Advanced v12 or later. We continue to develop fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) and will ensure it works with future releases of FileMaker Pro.
Is FileMaker Pro Advanced required?
FileMaker Pro Advanced is only required to copy/paste the Custom Functions that fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) uses when you are integrating this into your own FileMaker solution files. Otherwise you can use both FileMaker Pro and Pro Advanced when using the fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) functionality.
Does fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) use a plug-in?
Yes – FileMaker Pro currently does not have the required functions to integrate with the Xero API, so a FileMaker plug-in is required.
Is FileMaker Go supported?
FileMaker Pro currently does not have the required functions to integrate with the Xero API, so a FileMaker plug-in is currently required. This means that you cannot natively use FileMaker Go to communicate with the Xero API as FileMaker plug-ins aren't supported under FileMaker Go, however there is a solution. If the fmAccounting Link file (or your FileMaker database that you integrate it with) is hosted by FileMaker Server you can use the server side features of FileMaker Server to communicate with the Xero API (server side scheduled scripts or Perform Script on Server) as FileMaker Server can use plugins.
We have examples of this in the fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) file – for example you could use a FileMaker Go client to:
- enter a Contact and push that Contact to Xero
- enter a new Invoice and push that Invoice to Xero
all by using Perform Script on Server or a server side script schedule.
The fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) doesn't include any FileMaker Go specific layouts, but the Contacts Form and Invoices Form layouts do include examples of buttons that can be used to push a Contact and an Invoice from a FileMaker Go client.
Is FileMaker WebDirect supported?
Yes – FileMaker WebDirect runs under FileMaker Server which can use plugins.
We have examples of this in the fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) file – for example you could use a FileMaker WebDirect client to:
- enter a Contact and push that Contact to Xero
- enter a new Invoice and push that Invoice to Xero
all by using Perform Script on Server or a server side script schedule.
The fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) doesn't include any FileMaker WebDirect specific layouts, but the Contacts Form and Invoices Form layouts do include examples of buttons that can be used to push a Contact and an Invoice from a FileMaker Go client.
Is FileMaker Cloud for AWS supported?
There are no issues when using a FileMaker Cloud for AWS hosted version of fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) when using the FileMaker Pro client application as all communication with the Xero API is handled by FileMaker Pro.
v1.964 of fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) included support for running scripts server side with FileMaker Cloud for AWS, e.g. via Perform Script on Server.
Is FileMaker Cloud supported?
There are no issues when using a FileMaker Cloud hosted version of fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) when using the FileMaker Pro client application as all communication with the Xero API is handled by FileMaker Pro.
FileMaker Cloud does not support server installed plug-ins so you will not be able to perform or schedule any server side scripts or use Perform Script on Server with v1 of fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition).
Is there any documentation to help us integrate fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) into our own FileMaker solution?
Yes – we have a dedicated Integration page. We also plan to add some additional videos to illustrate particular aspects of the integration.
I don't see an example for all Xero API endpoints?
We've tried to include all the common Xero integration requirements for a typical small business that uses FileMaker (Contacts, Invoices, Bills, Payments, Employees, Timesheets etc). We're happy to add additional examples to the fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) solution file – as long as it is supported by the Xero API we can create an example.
Can I upload a Payment with an Invoice to mark the Invoice as Paid?
The Xero API does not currently support creating a Paid Invoice with a single API call. You will need to upload the Invoice and the Payment separately. They plan to support creating a Paid Invoice in a single API call in a future update to the API.
What's the best way to integrate this into my existing FileMaker solution?
How you go about integrating the functionality from the fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) file is entirely up to you – as the file is completely unlocked you get to go behind the scenes to learn how to handle the authentication, uploading, downloading etc and then recreate that in your existing FileMaker solution. Based on feedback from customers all around the world there have been three main ways they have approached the integration:
Linking – this involves using the fmAccounting Link file as a 'interface' or front-end file to your existing FileMaker file. This is a relatively quick way to get up and running – you relink the table occurrences to reference the matching tables in your existing FileMaker file and then update the layouts and add any new fields (such as the 'Xero ID' fields and the POST data calculation fields). You also need to update any field references in scripts and create any new value lists.
Use the fmAccounting Link file as a Controller File – this involves pushing data to the fmAccounting Link file from your existing FileMaker file and use that to handle the uploading/downloading of data with Xero. This is also a relatively quick way to get up and running – you simply write scripts in your FileMaker solution to push Contacts, Invoices etc across from your file to the fmAccounting Link file and use that to handle all the uploading of FileMaker data to Xero. To prevent duplicate Contacts from being created you would create a 'Xero Contact ID' field to store the Xero Contact ID value, otherwise everything else happens in the fmAccounting Link file. You could then do an upload once a day of all Invoices generated that day etc.
Embedding – this is the most complex and time consuming type of integration as it involves recreating the required functionality from the fmAccounting Link file in your existing FileMaker solution. Our integration guide covers the high level steps that you need to take and the order in which to complete them. Most of the code can be copied and pasted, however you will need to manually create some relationships, table occurrences and valuelists. You can typically be up and running with authentication and uploading a Contact/Invoice in around 4 – 8 hours depending on the complexity of your existing FileMaker solution.
If you do decide to use the fmAccounting Link file you will have to create and manage any required FileMaker Accounts and Privilege Sets.
We are already using Xero and have existing Contacts, Invoices etc. Is there a way to prevent duplicate Contacts from being created?
Yes – the Xero API exposes the Xero Contact ID field which is their unique identifier for a Contact record. We store this in a field in the fmAccounting Link file in the Contacts table (same for Invoices, Payments etc – they all have their own unique Xero ID). You can use the fmAccounting Link file to download all existing Contacts from Xero to get access to the Xero Contact ID values and then create a field in your FileMaker solution to store this, then populate this from the fmAccounting Link file via a relationship based on Company Name etc.
Once this is populated any future uploads to Xero will not create a duplicate Contact in Xero but use this for uploading to an existing Xero Contact.
What is the Contact Code that appears in Xero and how does this get populated?
The Contact Code field that appears in Xero can only be updated via the Xero API – it appears as a read only field within Xero. The Contact Code field represents the value of the ContactNumber XML element that is pushed to Xero. In the fmAccounting Link Xero file we map this to the ContactNumber field in the Contacts table when downloading from Xero, but when uploading we populate this with the ContactNumber field if it is not empty, otherwise we use thee _kp_ContactID field (Contacts primary key field). This allows you to easily map/identify the same Contact record in Xero and FileMaker.
N.B. when uploading a Contact the Xero API will match on either their Xero Contact ID (e.g. 64eedbc9-1fa0-485a-837f-705f23188162) or the ContactNumber/Contact Code. If you archive a Contact that has a Contact Code value (e.g. CT1523) and then attempt to upload another Contact with the same Contact Code you will get this error:
The contact number CT1523 is already assigned to another contact. The contact number must be unique across all contacts
The Xero CRM Integration guide has more information – remember that for Contacts in Xero the ContactID, ContactNumber and Name elements are unique identifiers, and both ContactNumber and ContactID are uniform resource identifiers.
How does the Xero Invoice Number get populated?
The Invoices API endpoint has a InvoiceNumber element which is a unique alpha numeric code to identify an Invoice. You have 2 options when uploading Invoices to Xero:
- leave this blank and Xero will will auto-generate this from your Organisation Invoice Settings
- populate this with a value from a FileMaker field
In the fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) file we are using the 2nd option to populate this with the value from the _kp_InvoiceID field (the primary key field for the Invoice in FileMaker). If you wish to change this to have Xero auto-generate the number for you simply disable/delete this line from the XeroInvoicePOSTCalc calculation formula:
We have a field in the Invoices table named XeroInvoiceNumber which we populate with the Xero Invoice Number value, regardless of the above settings.
How do I delete an Invoice in Xero from fmAccounting Link?
You don't actually delete an invoice by calling a script to run a delete command on the Xero API for an Invoice (you do for Payments and other items though).
You delete an Invoice by changing the Status of the Invoice to 'DELETED' and uploading the Invoice to Xero. There are some rules around this (same ones that apply in the Xero web app):
- you can delete a DRAFT or SUBMITTED invoice by updating the Status to DELETED
- If an invoice has been AUTHORISED it cannot be deleted but you can set it's status to VOIDED.
I don't see any Archived Contacts when I download all my Xero Contacts?
Archived Contacts are excluded by default when you perform a GET request to download a group of Xero Contacts. To include archived contacts in your request simply append the following to your URL:
Does fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) support Unit Price Rounding to 4 decimal places?
Yes – v1.94 of fmAccounting Link includes support for rounding unit prices on line items to 4 decimal places for:
- Invoices
- Bills
- Credit Notes
- Receipts
- Bank Transactions
See this article for more information and details for updating your existing copy of fmAccounting Link to support unit prices on line items to 4 decimal places.
I just tried to upload a Contact that was archived and got an error?
The Xero API currently does not allow edits to be made to an archived contact. You will get the following validation error:
The specified contact details matched an archived contact. Archived contacts cannot currently be edited via the API
To make edits to this Contact you will need to Restore (unarchive) the Contact within Xero first.
I'm getting the following error when uploading a Contact/Invoice etc:
This is a problem with the Authentication with the Xero API – you can just reauthenticate to fix this. When you authenticate with Xero some tokens are stored which are automatically included with each request to Xero – you usually encounter this error when these tokens have been cleared out, for example by opening another copy of fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) and then closing it which will clear out the Xero tokens.
I"m creating a new Tax Rate but do not see any drop down lists for the Tax Type and the Report Tax Type?
The Tax Type values are different for each Xero Organisation region, and include some values that can be updated and other (system values) that cannot be updated. You can get the full list of Tax Types here:
Report Tax Types are also region specific and include a mix of values which can be used when creating and updating Tax Rates and others which are used for system tax rates and only returned on GET requests. You can get the full list of Region Tax Types here:
You can use these values to create your own custom drop down lists specific to your Xero organisation's region.
Can I upload a Credit Note and allocate it in a single request?
The Xero API does not currently support creating and allocating a credit note in a single call – the create and allocation must be done in two separate calls. The fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) file shows how to perform these in a single FileMaker script so you can have one button that creates and allocates at the same time.
How do Overpayments work with the Xero API?
The process of creating and allocating Overpayments works a bit differently to other Xero API endpoints. To create an Overpayment you use the BankTransactions endpoint and to allocate outstanding invoices to an Overpayment you use the Overpayments endpoint. It's also worth noting that Overpayments can only have a single line item. The line item will be automatically coded to either the Accounts Receivable (receive) or Accounts Payable (spend) control account when uploading to Xero. Overpayments also do not have any taxable component to the line item – this is always set to no tax.
The Xero API does not currently support creating and allocating a Overpayments in a single call – the create and allocation must be done in two separate calls. The fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) file shows how to perform these in a single FileMaker script so you can have one button that creates and allocates at the same time.
The Xero API does not currently support updates to an existing Overpayment – once you have pushed the Overpayment from FileMaker to Xero you cannot make any changes to the Overpayment, but you can upload allocations against the Overpayment.
There is also a bug with the Xero Overpayments endpoint that incorrectly shows the TaxType as 'NONE' in the API but displays as 'BASEXCLUDED' in the Xero website/UI. This is scheduled to be fixed in a future update to the Xero API.
Can I upload the Bill Reference?
The Reference field is only available for Accounts Receivable invoices. For Accounts Payable invoices – Bills in the fmAccounting Link file – the Xero InvoiceNumber value is displayed as the Reference in the Xero interface. The _kp_BillID field from the Bills table is populating the InvoiceNumber in Xero which then appears as the Bill Reference (e.g. BL1305).
What kind of attachments can be uploaded to an Invoice?
You can upload up to 10 attachments (each up to 3mb in size) per invoice, once the invoice has been created in Xero. We've successfully uploaded the following file types:
- PDF files
- JPEG images
- PNG images
- Word documents
- Excel spreadsheets
- Text file
A full list of file types that you can upload is available on the Xero website. You cannot currently delete an attachment in Xero from FileMaker – you will need to login to Xero to delete any attachments that have been uploaded to an Invoice.
Are Xero Tracking Categories supported?
Yes – you can use the fmAccounting Link file to download Tracking Categories from Xero, as well as create new Tracking Categories and Tracking Category Options. The fmAccounting Link file also has examples for deleting a Tracking Category or Tracking Category Option. You can also add up to 2 Tracking Categories to the following items in the fmAccounting Link file:
- Invoices
- Bills
- Purchase Orders
- Overpayments
- Prepayments
- Receipts
- Timesheets
As Tracking Categories are optional in Xero and not used by all Xero users we haven't added them to the standard form view layouts, but you can find the Tracking Category examples on these layouts:
- Invoices Form Tracking
- Bills Form Tracking
- Overpayments Form Tracking
- PurchaseOrders Form Tracking
- Prepayments Form
- Receipts Form Tracking
- Timesheets Form Tracking
I'm getting a 503 response code error when doing a bulk upload from FileMaker to Xero.
An HTTP 503 response usually means "Rate Limit Exceeded".
An application can make up to 5000 API calls against a particular Xero organisation in a rolling 24 hour period and 60 calls against a particular Xero organisation in a rolling 60 second period. The following will be returned in the body if you exceed a rate limit:
(unencoded this is "oauth_problem=rate limit exceeded&oauth_problem_advice=please wait before retrying the xero api")
The most common issue encountered is the 60 requests/min rate limit. If you're encountering this limit simply add a pause of a few seconds to your looping script to keep the upload within the allowed limits
You can get more information about Xero API Rate Limits here:
I'm not familiar with the technique that you're using to create records when downloading data from Xero – can you explain how this works?
When downloading data from Xero if we need to create records in another table (e.g. Contacts, Invoices etc) rather than constantly changing layouts to create new records in the correct table we're using a technique that allows you to create related records via a relationship that has the "Allow creation of records in this table via this relationship" enabled for the relationship.
This technique is also known as the "Magic Key" technique and is also used when implementing support for database transactions in FileMaker. You can read more about this technique at these websites:
What version of TLS (Transport Layer Security) does fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) use?
fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) uses TLS 1.2. Xero will be deprecating support for TLS 1.0 from from 30 June 2018 – we have tested fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) and have been able to authenticate, upload and download data using the Xero API successfully using their test URL that requires TLS 1.1.
Is there a list of changes in each version of fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition)?
Yes – to see what's new with each update check out the fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) version history log


text:
Columns & Blogs
NASCAR's flexibility makes Kyle Busch relevant, and that's good
Tiger Woods had back surgery, took time off and scrambled in his attempt to make the 2014 FedEx Cup playoffs. Woods no longer was the best player in his sport, but because of his popularity he was the most important. If he made the playoffs, interest jumps. He failed.
But wait. Couldn't golf have twisted the rules to grant Tiger a waiver?
This is golf, and a waiver was never considered.
The day before the Sprint Cup season began, Kyle Busch ran the Xfinity Series race at Daytona International Speedway. On the 112th lap Busch was knocked off the track, across the grass and into a hard wall. He broke his right leg and left foot.
Busch missed the season's first Sprint Cup 11 races. NASCAR's championship has long been predicated on the theory that there is no next-best thing to being there. Fail to run every race and you can't compete for the title.
But, you know, things happen. NASCAR has granted Busch a medical waiver and an opportunity to compete for the championship. He'll return to the track Saturday to run the Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Fifteen points races remain before the Chase begins, and Busch plans to run each of them. The first is the Coca-Cola 600 on May 24.
With NASCAR and the PGA Tour sharing Charlotte this week, we could manufacture contrived connections between the sports.
Or we could make it simple. Both sports have cultures, traditions and rules. Despite Tiger's popularity, golf was not going to contrive changes to make Tiger eligible. NASCAR never considered doing anything but making Busch eligible.
Every sport has rules, but they don't use the same devices to record them. In golf, rules are written in ink and on computer screens. NASCAR rules are written in sand and on Etch A Sketches
I was once at NASCAR headquarters and asked if the organization had a rulebook. I was told it did. With numbers and words and everything? I asked. With numbers and words and everything, I was told. I asked if I could see it and was told I could.
I thought the rulebook would be tucked under thick glass and surrounded by big snakes or, at the very least, thick guards. It was not.
That was one surprise. The other is that the rulebook had only one page. Nah, I can't remember how many pages the rulebook had. There might have been two.
Some NASCAR rules are sacrosanct; drivers risk their lives when they get in those cars; there has to be order and there should be soft walls.
There's also beautiful flexibility. Why allow rules to impede the show?
Busch's waiver is the fourth NASCAR has granted in less than two years.
A sport requires an identity, and flexibility is NASCAR's. Can you imagine NASCAR lore without the wondrous Junior Johnson? He starts to talk and my tape recorder comes out even if he's talking about groceries.
To make the Chase, Busch will have to finish in the top 30 in points, and he'll have to win a race. His talent is unquestioned, and he believes he should be at the front of the pack. He has dedicated his career to proving it.
Busch, who turned 30 two weeks ago, is not as important to his sport as Tiger is to golf. But he is important. Despite those blasting engines, NASCAR is far quieter without him. Fans need somebody to boo and, among others, they choose him.
This could change. Busch has been hurt and he worked hard to return before anybody anticipated, and he's about to be a father. You have to admit you missed him and, yeah, he's going to get booed.
But thanks, NASCAR. And Kyle, welcome back.
Sorensen: 704-358-5119; firstname.lastname@example.com; Twitter: @tomsorensen


text: Accountable care organizations: The new provider model? Print Connect Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Google+ By Kathryn V. Fitch, Robert Parke | 13 October 2009 Both Medicare and the state of Massachusetts are reviewing alternatives to healthcare's fee-for-service models with an eye toward greater integration and coordination in the delivery system. These population-based payment models, or accountable care organizations (ACOs), provide a possible foundation for controlling healthcare costs by rewarding providers for efficiently coordinating services and achieving measurable quality outcomes. We spoke with Milliman principals Rob Parke and Kate Fitch for the early outlook on this new strategy. Q: What is an accountable care organization?A: While an ACO can take many forms, essentially it is a group of healthcare providers—primary care physicians, specialists, and hospitals—that have been incentivized with a system of rewards (or penalties) to join forces to more efficiently and effectively deliver their services. The much-discussed "medical home" model is a primary care delivery approach that can be used by ACOs to help accomplish these goals. The ACO is "accountable" for specific population spending targets and clinical outcome improvements. When the ACO meets, or exceeds, these targets, it is rewarded with a share of the overall savings. In some of the proposed ACO arrangements there are also penalties for failing to meet the targets. This provider accountability approach has been implemented in programs like Medicare's Physician Group Practice (PGP) demonstration, which measures and rewards cost savings and quality improvements for large group practices. Q: What problems are ACOs intended to address? A: There has been a growing recognition and, recently, more widespread agreement that the current fee-for-service payment system in healthcare creates perverse incentives. This problem is highlighted by the presence of widespread regional cost disparities in healthcare. These disparities, first identified by the Dartmouth Atlas 20 years ago, were recently highlighted in a New Yorker article by Atul Gawande. Milliman's own research indicates wide swings in cost from one location to another. In 2009, the cost of healthcare for a typical family of four in Miami exceeds $20,000, while the cost for a similar family in Phoenix is under $15,000. There is significant evidence that the parts of the country where integrated delivery systems are the predominant form of care delivery consistently rank as the most cost effective—for example, Rochester, Minn., and Seattle, Wash. A payment system that holds providers accountable for overall quality and costs, and encourages provider integration, would seem to have a better chance at improving quality and controlling spiraling healthcare costs. ACOs can be a useful way to provide the structure and financial incentives to encourage integration. Of course, if ACOs sound like capitation, that's because in many ways they are a version of it. For patients and providers with bad memories of capitation in the '90s, the ACO concept will raise concerns. Still, the concept is gaining industry attention; most notably with an article in Health Affairs proposing shared savings around voluntary ACOs as a potentially acceptable way to move along the continuum towards integration of the delivery system. This would avoid the controversy that a more widespread, mandatory approach would likely generate but still meet the interests of providers, patients, and taxpayers by incrementally shifting fee-for-service providers toward integration. But a voluntary approach, without providers having skin in the game, may not be incentive enough to move the dial toward more efficient practices. Q: How does the ACO concept work? A: At the heart of the ACO concept is the expectation that when groups of providers are collectively accountable for meeting cost and quality targets, internal peer review and peer pressure will drive the identification and implementation of best practices systemically, which in turn could lead to better cost controls and outcomes. In an iterative process the providers themselves, not payors, will drive efficient, evidence-based care delivery. Q: What's the appeal of ACOs to Medicare and to the state of Massachusetts? A: Massachusetts is on the forefront of developments that dovetail with ACOs. Its healthcare reform initiative first addressed expanding coverage rather than payment reform. The Special Commission on the Health Care Payment System has indicated that, if reform is to survive, Massachusetts now needs to address cost issues. The current cost trend is driven by the fee-for-service payment system, which rewards volume rather than outcomes and efficiency. The Special Commission recommends two alternative payment models: episode-based payment or global payment. In both models, provider groups are accountable for financial and clinical outcomes. It is interesting to note that the big insurers in Massachusetts have begun to implement contracting strategies that are shifting providers into variations of these payment models. Similarly, in response to the unsustainable volume increase and uneven quality experienced by the Medicare program, MedPAC is proposing ACO demonstration projects as an alternative to fee-for-service payment. The pilots would expand beyond the PGP demonstrations in hopes of incentivizing integrated, efficient care delivery to slow spending and improve quality. Interestingly, both Medicare and Massachusetts, while highlighting the magnitude of the task, anticipate the necessity for ensuring that all changes to the system are incremental and phased, especially given the sensitivity over a repeat of the capitation pains of the 1990s. Q: What are some of the potential challenges for ACOs? A: In many cases it will be a challenge for ACOs to meet financial targets. ACOs will, in many ways, need to operate as mini health plans, building the infrastructure to manage utilization and insure quality care delivery. To establish targets, cost trends, and provider payment and incentive distribution models, ACOs will require sophisticated financial and actuarial analyses. To control demand and improve the quality of care delivery, ACOs will need to have the tools, processes, and reporting for chronic disease management, complex case management, and wellness/prevention services. To control medically unnecessary services, ACOs will need to have the tools, processes, and reporting for preauthorization, hospital utilization review, high-tech radiology management, specialty referral management, and pharmacy management. These functions have typically been carried out by health plans and arrangements to provide some of or all of these services for ACOs will need to be evaluated. It is an open question as to whether ACOs will have the financial resources to internally develop or purchase from health plans the infrastructure, tools, and reporting capability. Also, will they have the expertise to undertake the financial and actuarial analyses necessary for success? Regardless, the need to control supply and demand for medical services will directly impact provider revenue, which will pose a significant and sensitive challenge. Q: What's the downside to ACOs? A: Policy change in practically any area will come with unintended consequences, and ACOs are likely to be no exception. In order to make participation attractive to providers, it will be necessary to find the winning balance between rewards and requirements. Voluntary ACOs may have the carrot of financial rewards but may not be sufficient to drive the desired improvements in overall system performance. Mandatory ACOs could well encounter fierce resistance. It's also hard to anticipate the challenges that may be encountered in the physician/patient relationship as witnessed in the managed care backlash of the 1990s. There will be reluctance in quarters that benefit from the lack of accountability that exists currently in the fee-for-service model. Any efficiency improvements will undoubtedly result in reduced income levels to some providers. Without the administrative and technological support discussed above, financial success by providers in ACOs is also unlikely. If ACO payments include significant penalties this could well result in a provider backlash. However, the time for ACOs would appear to be ripe as providers advocate for more control of patient care ("medical home"), better tools are available for managing care (electronic medical records, comparative effectiveness information, evidence-based clinical pathways), and there is increasing transparency around the costs and quality. At the very least, ACOs offer a reasonable alternative to the fee-for-service model, particularly an incremental approach that starts to better align the interests of stakeholders, patients, providers, and payors. AuthorsKathryn V. FitchNew York, NY, USTel: +1 646 4733000View bioKathryn V. Fitch, RN, MEdPrincipal, Healthcare Management ConsultantNew York, NY, USTel: +1 646 4733000Read more>>View bioE-Mail | VCardRobert ParkeNew York, NY, USTel: +1 646 4733000View bioRobert Parke, FIA, ASA, MAAAPrincipal, Consulting ActuaryNew York, NY, USTel: +1 646 4733000Read more>>View bioE-Mail | VCard Healthcare Affordable Care Act researchHealthcare costsHealthcare reform 2.0Healthcare reform reading list: From the ACA archivesLong-term care insurance MedicaidMedical professional liabilityMedicareMedicare ACOs and Alternative Payment ModelsProvider See all topics HealthcareAffordable Care Act researchHealthcare costsHealthcare reform 2.0Healthcare reform reading list: From the ACA archivesLong-term care insurance MedicaidMedical professional liabilityMedicareMedicare ACOs and Alternative Payment ModelsProviderEmployee Benefits and InvestmentDefined benefit plansDefined contribution plansInvestmentInsuranceAnalytics and modelingCatastrophe risk and insurance-linked securitiesInsurtechLife insuranceLong-term care insuranceMedical professional liabilityProperty and casualty insuranceRisk managementSolvency IITelematicsRisk Management and Financial ServicesEnterprise risk management Related links Six challenges to successful adoption of value-based care in the Middle EastMedicaid block grant risks and considerationsDental coverage in Medicare Advantage plans: Nationwide market landscape, 2019 updateAn overview of the CMS Quality Rating System for QHPsEIOPA's guidance on cloud outsourcing Your choices regarding cookies on this site This website uses cookies to provide you with an optimized experience. Refer to our privacy policy for more information regarding our use of data or click here to learn more about the cookies we use and how to disable them. Agree and Proceed Required Cookies These Cookies are necessary for you to access and navigate our Sites. Analytics & Performance These Cookies are used by us or third-party service providers to analyze how the Sites are used and how they are performing. We use the following service providers and you can learn more about their privacy policies and how to opt-out of their cookies by clicking on these links: Google Analytics: https://policies.google.com/privacy#intro AI Media group: https://aimediagroup.com//user/themes/aimedia/docs/privacy.pdf Social We use 'social buttons' to enable our users to share or bookmark web pages. These are buttons for third party social media sites. We use the following service providers and you can learn more about their privacy policies and how to opt-out of their cookies by clicking on these links: Facebook.com: https://www.facebook.com/policies/cookies/ Google Inc.: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en Linkedin.com: https://privacy.linkedin.com/ Twitter.com: https://twitter.com/en/privacy Agree and Proceed Cancel


text:
Network virtualization -- the next big thing?
What exactly is network virtualization and what consequence does it have for your network? This week Loki enlightens us -- offering various descriptions and uses for your consideration.
Network virtualization is an inevitable consequence of the rising complexity of networks. Currently the resources offered by a network are still coupled to the underlying physical infrastructure and, therefore, relatively inflexible.
Just as servers and storage have become virtualized to support increasingly adaptable and scalable functionalities at the application-side, so will the communications conduits that connect servers together. However, networks are advancing more slowly due to several key factors and are only lately showing signs of becoming thoroughly virtualized.
The term "network virtualization" has been used to describe many things: from high-level network management systems, to the use of networks to enable virtualized storage and grid computing. However, these references are, for the most part, misleading -- networks today are still relatively unchanged from Layer 3 downward and most of these initiatives simply use network paths to support abstractions at Layer 4 and higher. Only a few examples, such as HP's PlanetLab project or the National Lambda Rail, actually virtualize the network itself.
So what does "network virtualization" really mean? Roughly, the phrase refers to the pooling of resources below a layer of abstraction such that the pool can be accessed without regard for its physical constituents.
Consider the following: The "new layer model" ( see Network intelligence for dumb applications) re-interprets the standard OSI model to abstract it into just three simple layers:
- End-user behaviors
- Application behaviors
- Network behaviors
Each is relatively well contained within the various technological embodiments that correspond to them — the end-user, the server, and the end-to-end network, respectively. While each is a complex system in its own right composed of many elements and influences, the boundaries between each are relatively well defined, as are the interfaces that inter-connect them.
Server virtualization has shown that there is significant advantage to decoupling a set of functionalities associated with the application from the underlying infrastructure. Decoupling allows for greater flexibility, scalability, and robustness in the application as its performance is not tied to the intrinsic limits of the server itself. Additional resources (e.g. CPU power, memory, disk space, response time) can be allocated to (and de-allocated from) the application on-demand.
Following on, network virtualization allows for the same sort of decoupling of network functionalities from the underlying infrastructure. These functionalities include any attributes of interest to an application using the network:
- Bulk transfer capacity
- Characterizations related to quality of service (e.g. latency, MOS)
- Route and domain
- Task-specific service resolution (e.g. where to find DNS)
- Network-specific services (e.g. DNS)
The framework providing for this virtualized interface with the network needs to be able to manage individual elements, remediate and provision on-demand, monitor and assess end-to-end paths, and otherwise coordinate the resources within Layers 1, 2 and 3.
There are several reasons why IP networks have not yet been as fully virtualized as servers and storage. In contrast to servers, an end-to-end network path…
- Is necessarily composed of many distributed elements
- Offers limited means for sharing state between network elements
- Is constrained by security and trust issues as the elements are not all single-proprietor and may be publicly accessible
- May support multiple network applications with differing requirements
- Performance is more (or less) than the sum of its parts
Servers have comparable issues but it has been possible to build a layer of abstraction on top of the operating system that obviates these limits. Doing the same for network elements will be more challenging.
It should be noted that, by design, TCP/IP networks already offer a form of virtualization. The typical TCP connection provides for tremendously simplified interaction with network resources including the ability to transparently packetize data without regard for content, deliver reliably along best-effort routing, and even crudely sense the availability of network resources (through the TCP fair-use mechanisms). Networks today can be torn down, switched over seamlessly, and re-provisioned without significant interruption in service. By humans, of course.
However, networks still fall short in areas of:
- Shareable end-to-end performance assessment
- Automated diagnosis and troubleshooting
- Federated access and authentication to network elements
- Rich interfaces for applications to network resources (e.g. QoS)
- Scalable provisioning
In simpler terms, network virtualization requires automated remediation and provisioning. Networks are not sufficiently advanced to scale flexibly and transparently in terms of performance criteria. Until this key requirement can be addressed, networks will continue to be limited in their "virtualization."
On the bright side though, there are many indications that virtualization is on its way. A few notable examples:
- Overlay networks – abstracted routing and transport layers
HP's PlanetLab project
Internet2 and National Lambda Rail
- Sun Microsystems' N1 project - converged server, storage and networks
- Cisco's SONA initiative (including AON)
- VLANs – local area virtualized routing and domains
- NetConf v1.0 – IETF standard for querying of network elements
HP's PlanetLab
Internet2 HOPI project
National Lambda Rail
Sun Microsystem's N1 Project
Cisco SONA
Chief Scientist for Apparent Networks, Loki Jorgenson, PhD, has been active in computation, physics and mathematics, scientific visualization, and simulation for over 18 years. Trained in computational physics at Queen's and McGill universities, he has published in areas as diverse as philosophy, graphics, educational technologies, statistical mechanics, logic and number theory. Also, he acts as Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at Simon Fraser University where he co-founded the Center for Experimental and Constructive Mathematics (CECM). He has headed research in numerous academic projects from high-performance computing to digital publishing, working closely with private sector partners and government. At Apparent Networks Inc., Jorgenson leads network research in high performance, wireless, VoIP and other application performance, typically through practical collaboration with academic organizations and other thought leaders such as BCnet, Texas A&M, CANARIE, and Internet2. www.apparentnetworks.com