After Careful Consideration

Recently I was asked my opinion about the future of private clouds. It's actually something that I spend a good deal of time thinking about, and I had an answer ready. As much as I'd like to think that my response was insightful, that question is one that's best posed to my colleagues who posed the question.

And if any of them are reading this now, I'd like to qualify my answer.

At the time I said something to the effect of, "as long as there are computing resources within an enterprise, it only makes sense to attempt to leverage the unused capacity."  I have no problem with my answer--at least in the short-term.

If you think about it, desktop machines are particularly powerful (and certainly getting more powerful all the time--Moore's Law, incredibly simplified), and it certainly makes sense to try to harness all of that unused computing capacity.  Years ago, my employer used to quote a statistic that typical machines had utilization numbers in the single digits. If you think about it, how often do you really harness the complete capacity of your computer anyway?  Unless you're constantly running complex calculations, it's unlikely (gaming may, but checking email and performing other routine business functions don't typically consume a lot of CPU power). As computers become more powerful, your utilization only drops further. My last computer had 16 CPU's--there are so many things it could've been doing in addition to everything I needed it to do.

Once you look at this in a business context, you can start to see the need to harness this capacity... and that's exactly what a private cloud would do--give you the ability to use these untapped resources without having to purchase additional machines to address the needs of applications that really demand a lot of power. It's particularly valuable because by increasing the usage of what you already have, you can eliminate the cost of new purchases... and you can reduce the high costs of housing and maintaining your current server farm by essentially doing more (compute) with less (resources)-- another benefit of increasing utilization.  Doing more with less also allows you to reduce what you currently have.

It's not really difficult to see the need for private clouds. Even without a dedicated datacenter, every desk typically has a computer on it... it is the 21st century after all.

But here's what I've been thinking about since my discussion last week, and the reason I want to qualify my answer: I was thinking in current terms, and hadn't considered the reality of the ever-nearing future.

Why does every desk need a computer?  It's the 21st century?  I think quite a few people could get away--and benefit--from not having a computer. It shouldn't be that shocking. Ever hear of the cloud? The PUBLIC cloud?

Most of what you already do is available there--email and the Microsoft Office products--among countless other offerings. If you can access what you need from wherever you are, why do you need to be chained to your desk? As this awareness continues to grow, the demand for private cloud will shrink... and the datacenter will go the way of other things that at some point seemed impossible to do without: the home telephone, the VCR, film, being the same room to conduct business, among them.

So that's my thought: there's a big need for private clouds today, but there won't be tomorrow. The change is as inevitable as technology itself.

To my friends, if you're reading this, that's my final answer.

Eliminate the Noise!

I’ll admit that I’ve just taken a longer than intended break from this column.  I’m attributing my vacation partially to the Thanksgiving holiday, and partially because I wanted to take a little extra time to think about this particular subject.

I want to talk briefly about social media misuse, but I first want to take a moment to state for the record that this isn’t a stance against a particular person.  What I want to do is talk about the downside of social media… something of a misuse of the power of the cloud.

Again… if you’re someone who’s reading this, and taking what I’m saying personally, I want to assure you that it’s in no way intended as such (unless you’re Ashton Kutcher, but even then, not as much as you might think).

I’ve tipped my hand by naming Ashton Kutcher, so let’s talk about him for a moment… in general terms.  For the purposes of this column, he’s a person with 8.5 million followers on Twitter.  While I personally am not among his army of followers, I have to admit that it’s an astonishing number.  Among the individual New York Yankees that I follow, most have tens of thousands of followers, which (to me, anyway) makes Mr. Kutcher’s army even more impressive.

As I’m writing this, I’m taking the time to verify my own facts so that I can avoid the very issue I’m going to mention, I verifying my own claims (something that we should all do before we make them!), and I find Joba Chamberlain is one of two above 60,000 followers (less than 1/100^th of AK’s total) and Nick Swisher is the other at approximately 1.5 million (far greater than I realized, but still less than a fifth of AK).

These two Yankees are great examples of the power of the medium—they reach out and interact with fans and respond to questions.  For me, someone who’s eager to see Joba recover from a serious injury, Twitter has been a valuable tool for getting information directly from the source.  I can only imagine how valuable the information would be if it had real value… nothing against Joba, but there’s not a lot I’m going to do with the information regarding his recovery from surgery regardless of whatever it is.  (That said, I want to be on the record stating that I hope Joba’s recovery news continued to be overwhelmingly positive).

So receiving information directly from Ashton or Nick or Joba is neat.  There’s no question.  I’ve mentioned before, and I will in future posts again (I promise!) that getting the right information to the right person at the right time can be invaluable.  As a director and vice president, I typically receive hundreds of emails a day.  A lot of them are worthless, but there is value—sometimes a lot of value—in at least a few.  If I could go about my day and spend less time sorting through the worthless email (essentially noise), I’d be saving my greatest resource: my limited time (think of it as beautiful music).  Less noise gives you more time to listen to the music.

You might look at this from the other side and ask, “what if I ignored the email altogether and focused on what I needed to do?” and while it’s not necessary a bad question, my answer might make it look that way.  Ignoring my email altogether means I might miss some potentially valuable information I might need.

In other words, I simply can’t ignore my email.  The risk is too great.

Social media (and the cloud) is the ready tool to fix this very problem.  What if I could essentially subscribe to the feeds that interest me?  I’d not only have access to the information I need, but also I wouldn’t have to sort through anything to find it.  I’d certainly have to do less sifting if I was at least looking in the right place.

It works in the other direction too.  Rather than wonder if I’m disseminating information to all of the right places (a sometimes lengthy and often changing distribution list), I can put my news in a single location and let the interested parties come looking for it.  It’s no wonder that companies such as Salesforce and TIBCO (just to name two) have tools—remarkably similar to Facebook—that do this very thing.

Let me illustrate my point another way.  I have a daughter, and at the time of this writing she’s almost two years old.  My daughter has grandparents who are naturally interested in absolutely everything she does.  In the pre-cloud world, keeping grandparents, other relatives, and friends updated on your family’s accomplishments meant sending our updates and photographs, and typically keeping track of what information (data!) was send where (distributed!).  As hard as it might seem to believe, not everyone cared (they just heard the noise) or they weren’t getting the information that others were (not getting data to the right destination!).  With Facebook, I post all of my daughter’s updates online.  Anyone interested can see my updates and I still have the finally authority over who sees what.

In a very personal way, I’m getting the right information to the right people.

Getting back to my business example, moving to powerful cloud-based tools won’t eliminate the noise completely.  I imagine I’ll still have to sift through emails, but I’m confident it will be a much smaller list—there will be less noise and more time to enjoy the music.

That said, I also have to acknowledge the dark side.

With social media there's also there's also the possibility for misuse, and we all know at least one person we consider an "over"-poster when it comes to Facebook or any other social media tool. I have to wonder if over- or inappropriate posting is somehow related to a misunderstanding of the medium. Sure it's exciting and fun to use, but there's also the potential that whatever you choose to share will be read or viewed by everyone. It's also likely to be permanent-- the Internet will never forget.

Quick!  Think of the person you know who’s most likely to post “thinking about making a sandwich for lunch” on Facebook.  I’m fairly sure that no matter who you are, it didn’t take long to think of a specific person.

What this does show for me in an inability to live in the moment.

Unfortunate comments and unflattering pictures are bad enough, but the next time you're in a car wreck, your power’s out, or in a bad neighborhood, please put Facebook away and call the police, save your precious battery life for something important, or pay attention to your surroundings. Everything else can wait.  Also, the hard-partying pictures from the weekend, unflattering comments about customers or friends, and indications that you're not working when you should be can probably wait indefinitely. Remember--once it's in the cloud, it never goes away.

More importantly, we need to be sure to continue to live in the moment, and not think about what we’re going to post on the internet.  Ultimately, the test should be whether you’re potentially eliminating noise (and getting VALUABLE information to the right people at the right time).

As I mentioned a while ago, I've wanted to write about this topic for a long time.  It was even one of the reasons I decided to start this blog.  For me, the final straw came in the wake of the horrible Penn State football scandal when a certain celebrity (going back to my original statement, it really wasn’t my intention to name names) tweeted about the "classlessness" of firing Joe Paterno.  Unfortunately, the tweeter was uninformed of the horrors behind the football coach's dismissal, but that didn't stop his post from going out to all of his followers.

It wouldn’t be hard to argue that this person created the very noise that the tool is supposed to eliminate.

I want to end on a positive note, so I have a message for Joba Chamberlain (in the billion-to-one chance that he’d reading this): keep the updates coming.  I’m looking forward to your future success.

(Hey, that's exactly the kind of entry I should've made on Twitter... and enabled the right information to get to the right audience.)

Okay-- I Admit It, I Love My iPhone

I believe it's safe to say I have something of a unique personality. I also think I'm lucky to possess an unbridled enthusiasm for what I do, the people I love, and the things I believe in.

Of course one of the things I believe in is transformative technology and I'm beyond fortunate to have a career that's given me the opportunity to try and change the world.

But my mindset doesn't change when I'm not on the clock.

There was a day last week when I was bounding through my building's lobby. I don't remember where I was headed (that's not true-- I do remember, but it had something to do with a surprise for my wife's birthday and it hasn't happened yet so I'm not going to ruin the surprise here).

Before I reached the door, I was stopped by a neighbor who was having problems with her Blackberry. Now, I should mention that I'd never seen nor talked to this woman before, and I have no idea why she'd stopped me to ask for help. As much as I'd like to think it was because of my friendly face, it's far more likely she had a problem and I happened to be the closest person nearby.

By sheer luck, I happened to be involved in one of the Blackberry beta projects at the very beginning. It wasn't even called a Blackberry yet, but it was impressive, and my entire department proudly carried RIM's. Depending on your font selection, you had between ten and twelve lines of text, it didn't have a phone or do anything other than email, but the fact you were no longer tied to a desk made it a transformative tool. Though we never took an official poll, I think I can safely say everyone loved those devices.

Getting back to my original story, my involvement with the RIM/Blackberry beta didn't allow me to develop any special skills to help me resolve my neighbor's problem, but fortunately, I was able to easily address the issue (without mocking my new friend, I'll say that the problem had something to do with the "on" button).

As I handed her device back to her, she was elated.

"What should I do next time?" she asked me.

Maybe I should've just shown her how to turn the device on and left it at that... well, I sort of did that, but I also added, "well... you should consider getting an iPhone."

This is actually a bad example of not taking someone's actual needs into account. An iPhone's great, but if you have no need for one, it's just a device with a lot of features that will never be used. (A similar question should be asked when considering cloud--what's the benefit? If there's not a clear or compelling one, cloud enablement is really just a science project that might increase complexity.)

I should've known better, and I immediately caught myself.

My new friend told me that her grandchildren frequently said the same thing to her. She then urged me to explain why they might say such a thing...

So, to summarize: a stranger had just asked me to explain the motivations of other strangers!  Little did she know she was talking to someone who was always eager to discuss the topic.

I was quick to point out that I certainly didn't know her grandchildren, but I had a feeling that their love of the iPhone was likely feature-related.  My preferences are tied to the transformative nature of the device. See here's the thing: for the longest time (long after by RIM beta days), I loved having a Blackberry. Running a presales and professional services organization and receiving hundreds of emails every day, I don't know how I could've done my job without it. There's simply no way I could've been responsive to the seemingly endless queries I'd receive and gotten into the field as frequently as I did. There just wouldn't have been a way to do both things at the same time effectively.

In short, for me the Blackberry was an effective tool that fostered communication. (The fact that it is also a cellphone and camera were features that I could only dream of in my RIM beta days.)

But enter the iPhone!  I practically live on the device. It's TRANSFORMATIVE because it enables me to do so much of what I do on my own terms (I'm writing and publishing this blog entry via iPhone, btw). Just as my Blackberry enabled me to email on-the-go, my iPhone enables me to email and so much more... and less time tied to a desk makes for a greater and more effective use of my greatest resource: my time.

Getting back to my new friend: the Blackberry was perfect for her. That's great too, but for me, I needed something else: something that enabled me to do what I was already doing, but better on my own terms (I hope that's starting to sound familiar)-- in essence, an enablement tool.

The Right Information At the Right Time

I live in New York City, and I was up on the roof of my building this evening staring over at the 59^th Street Bridge hoping to get a glimpse of the filming of the Dark Knight Rises that’s currently taking place there.  I wasn’t fortunate enough to get a glimpse of Batman like I’d hoped, but the fact that I had the opportunity to try again says something about the power of the cloud (in general) and social media (specifically).

Imagine the value of getting the right information at the right time.  For me, this evening, it meant being aware of a movie that was filming nearby.  As silly as it may sound, I would’ve been disappointed to learn about the Dark Knight Rises had been filming so close to my apartment if I’d learned about it after the fact.

Now imagine if the information was truly valuable.  The right information (even a little bit) is potentially worth infinitely more before an event, than all of the information after the fact.  In my case, learning too late that another truly awful traffic weekend had been caused by the Batman would’ve likely only added to my frustration if I'd missed the chance to see him entirely.  Instead, knowing what was occurring gave me the opportunity to see Batman in person (a potential thrill) and adjust my behavior (by staying off the roads and as far away from the affected intersections as possible).

Again, my example is silly and simple, but the value of having the right information at the right time in invaluable for businesses.

We’re all likely to have flown commercial flights and experienced the frustrating reality of getting somewhere without your luggage.  Chances are that you didn’t even know your luggage missed your flight until well after you’ve watched everyone else collect their bags from the carrousel.  Would your frustration over your lost luggage have been lessened if the wait had been shorter or nonexistent?

If you think about it, in this post-9/11 world, there’s absolutely no chance that your luggage is going to take a flight without you.  If you fail to board your flight, your bags are going to be pulled.  Thinking about this another way, somewhere there’s already a link between the passenger and their suitcase.  Why can’t this information be used to enhance the customer experience?

The obvious answer is that it should be.  It’s a matter of doing something with the right information at the right time.

I’ll be the first person to admit that this scenario is a business intelligence problem and not necessarily a cloud problem… I’m saying “not necessarily” because the volatility of demand for computational resources for business intelligence problems can lend itself very readily to a cloud solution… but the point that I’m trying to make is that there’s value to having the right information at the right time.  Waiting to receive bad news only seems to make the news worse.

In this situation the “right” information is readily recognizable—it’s the passenger who’s going to find his luggage didn’t make his flight—but in many business situations, information needs to be analyzed first.  These types of problems are ready for cloud solutions.

When I joined DataSynapse, one of the first customers I spent a good deal of time with was an insurance giant.  The value of our product to this customer was the ability to harness the unused compute capacity of all of the machines in their environment.  They’d crunch through their scenarios to try and determine their best price models… but the problem they had in a pre-cloud world they had to make certain concessions to get their work done on time.

(I apologize for the vagueness of this… I’m trying to keep a former customer and their operations confidential)

Enter the cloud!

We set up a private cloud and all of a sudden there was more compute capacity than they could’ve imagined—and not just in their data centers either.  If you think about all of the computers that are out there in a large enterprise, very few of them are used to their full capacity—there’s a lot of unused compute cycles that are simply wasted unless they’re somehow consumed.

DR resources?  You almost hope they’re doing nothing (meaning there’s not a disaster that’s forcing them into action).  Why not give them the ability to join the cloud—do work—and leave the cloud as soon as they need to do something else.  The same can be said for the resources on most everyone’s desktop—the typical PC has gotten far more powerful over the years, and there’s very little that you’re going to do to take full advantage of its power—especially after business hours or on weekends.  These are simply more resources that can be made available to the cloud thereby raising their utilization and lowering the cost of ownership.

In the case of my unnamed customer, with their new cloud, they suddenly had far more capacity than they’d previously realized, and now they were able to take advantage of all of it.

As it was explained to me in one of the program manager's own words, in their pre-grid (this was before “cloud” was the appropriate term) environment they knew they were facing a down year if two major hurricanes hit the state of Florida.  The first year this customer used their new cloud resources, there happened to be five major hurricanes, but because of all of the additional processing the customer was able to do beforehand, it turned out to be one of their most profitable years ever.  The value of the cloud was proven to this customer almost immediately.

In short, they were able to be more responsive and do more with the resources they already had.  More compute power allowed for more data to be processed and more effective pricing models to be determined.  It may have been a bad year for Florida, but it was a great year for this particular customer.  Eventually it benefited the same hurricane victims as well, because the customer was more readily equipped to address the demands of the market… it’s amazing what having access to the right data at the right time can do.

Cloud Computing: A Transformative Tool

I've spent the past seven years working in what's now referred to as the "cloud." Until now, for business, it meant running a program--or a portion of a program--somewhere within a pool of recourses, you just didn't necessarily know where.  More exciting is what it can mean for everyone else.

Because of my true passion for what I've been involved in professionally, I've personally had a keen interest in social media. For the record, social media takes the cloud to the next level--it's Cloud 2.0, if you will.  What does this mean to the person on the street?  Well, Facebook and Twitter are the biggest examples of social media, and at their core, they have the power to truly be transformative.

You don't have to be a hard-core news junkie to realize this. You may have heard how Twitter specifically has been at the center of the Arab Spring. Think about that for a moment: as a tool it's so powerful that's it's been used as a component to overthrow corrupt regimes.

You may not use Twitter, but chances are that you do use Facebook. With hundreds of millions of users worldwide, more people that we know are on Facebook than aren't. Because of this, Facebook has the potential to be one of the most transformative tools at our fingertips (please pardon the pun, it was completely unintentional).

If I were to ask you to list the things you liked most about Facebook, I have a feeling that somewhere near the top of your list would be the ease with which Facebook makes it possible to locate old friends and keep in touch with current ones (for the younger set that has no real memory of a pre-Facebook world, it's probably even more about the friends, trust me). This by its very definition is the "social network."

When I first started selling cloud technologies, I would stand in front of customers and enthusiastically talk how the technology I was selling was going to enable them to do what they were already doing, but it was going to enable them to do it better and on their own terms. It was extremely compelling for businesses, and now years later similar technology has found its way to the masses--I'm saying "similar" in this context because unlike what I was selling, Facebook and Twitter are available for free. Their value is similar to the product I was pitching however: in their own way they enable you to do what you were already doing... in this case, keep up with your friends while you go about your life.

And it's about to get better. Companies are currently developing and selling their own technologies that are similar to Facebook (and Twitter) and that interact with Facebook and Twitter. SalesForce.com is a great example of this, and I mention them specifically because I thoroughly enjoyed what should've been their keynote speech at the Oracle User Conference last year (http://www.youtube.com/user/salesforce?blend=4&ob=5)... I say "should've been" because their opportunity to speak was denied when it was determined that thier message was counter to Oracle's message (boo!). As SalesForce's CEO, Marc Benioff, points out in the opening minutes of his address, that the speech occurred at all is further testimony to the power of social media.  His message makes an even more compelling case for Cloud 2.0.

I know not everyone (if anyone) is going to have the passion to sit through the hour-long address (again for the record, I have more than once), but for me, his main applicable point occurs at the 13-minute mark when Marc talks about SalesForce's Chatter product.

Marc's example at 55:40 shows a car interacting with Facebook to give you its status the same way your friends would. Again the world gets smaller, and you get to do what you're already doing, but better and on your own terms (keeping track of the oil or gas in your car in this case).

Amazing stuff... and I say that without any agenda of my own. I don’t work for SalesForce (but I will admit that selling this technology would definitely excite me).  I love the fact that the world is getting smaller, and the social network is a big part of the reason why.

For now, that's what's on my mind. I'm sure there will be more to follow.