Tag Archives: technology

Cloud Computing: The New Timesharing

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Cloud Computing

Clouds reflected in a building facade.

In the late 1980′s, timeshared computing resources allowed enterprises to gain reliable, high-performing computing services without the overhead of in-house computing infrastructure. Cloud computing targets the same enterprises, however, without the lock-in or inherent “stickyness” that timeshared computing service providers created and benefitted from.

The commoditisation of cloud services has been able to go further than timeshared systems because of a number of factors: high-speed, reliable and pervasive network infrastructure, the open source movement, smarter ways of deploying applications on shared infrastructure, operating system, server and software virtualisation; and a more mature entprise consumer who understands more about the true cost of system ownership.

The argument to get into the cloud is compelling and some large players are betting the farm on it. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, in an interview on CNBC this morning, cites that “software is dead” and that “the cloud just makes good  business sense, let alone environmental sense”. His large customer base is proof that others feel the same way he does. Salesforce.com has over 77,000 customers, including the US federal government and even Cisco and Google.

So why is cloud computing possible today and why is it likely to be an unavoidable and seismic shift in the enterprise computing services market? There are six factors making the cloud a sensible step. First, it makes pretty good business sense because it is elastic: you only pay for what you consume so the enterprise avoids creating cost sinks. You can consume services when you need them and dispose of them when you don’t. Second, the services can be charged for like a utility such as electricity or water. You only pay for services you consume. Services may be acquired under contract too, but often the elasticity is more important than predictability of the cost (predictability of the cost is often not an issue as an upper limit is usually easily calculable). Third, cloud based services reside on a well connected set of servers so moving information to other parts of your cloud or to the Internet is a trivial affair. Fourth, services can be provisioned on-demand and typically without human intervention. Fifth, and perhaps the most compelling, costs to provide the hardware, software and internetworking can be leveraged across many customers creating significant economies of scale, especially at the computing, services and administrative layers. Sixth and finally, the savings to the environment are likely to be huge. Concentrating systems into large data centres and sharing resources reduce the overall quantity of computing resources, including electricity for power and cooling, needed around the world.

There are essentially three service models for cloud-based services: software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). The highest level is SaaS, this is Salesforce.com and Netsuite. It provides software, a hosted operating environment and shared infrastructure in order to deliver one or more software services. SaaS might be to acquire CRM or an ERP system services – more SaaS providers are appearing everyday including Google with their suite of office productivity tools labelled Google Apps. The next level of service provision down is Platform-as-a-service and can be likened to a suite of tools for developers to write applications on and the required hosting environment for those tools to run on. One could buy Ruby on Rails, LAMP or a Microsoft toolset from a PaaS provider. Finally, the most basic configuration of service is the Infrastructure-as-a-Service which is effectively network accessible hardware, operating system and network administration tools. What a customer of IaaS buys is computing power, storage and bandwidth/throughput. The computing power can even be arranged as a virtual data centre when clusters of servers are bought as an IaaS offering.

Apart from making good business sense for enterprises here in developed countries, there will be a raft of less developed countries that will stand to benefit significantly if their enterprises and governments can connect to cloud-based infrastructure, platform and software offerings. In some countries the engineers and experts that design, construct and maintain data centres simply don’t exist. It could be because of “brain drain” or years of civil war or an education system that is still developing – for whatever reason, without these critical human resources, the data centres cannot exist there. Consequently without cloud-based savings, enterprises there cannot attract the same cost savings that enterprises in the more developed countries will attract, making their products/services cost more and themselves as enterprises less globally competitive.

Other issues pertaining to the environment on-the-ground in less develped countries will further solidify the role of cloud-based service provision. In less developed countries, issues affecting the security of high-tech infrastructure may arise, for example in Papua New Guinea security problems are common among mobile operators and their cell phone base stations which are often vandalised. The provision of utility electricity may be unreliable due to poor energy infrastructure like the case of some Pacific island countries. In some cases, software is not available due to holes in national policy on intellectual rights protection or poor legal systems which prevent software authors from bringing their wares into the country, as was the case in Indonesia a decade ago. Finally, we have to remember that over 3 billion people live in BRIC countries and as these countries continue developing, their growing need for stable enterprise services will force them to turn to the clouds.

In my opinion, the clouds are rolling in are already overshadowing the desktop paradigm – this will continue as the Internet becomes ubiquitous.

What Color Is Your ICT?

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This is the third article in a series aimed at the non-technical reader to help demystify ICT for development. This month we explore the concept of “green” ICT. What does it mean in practical terms for us as citizens, businesses and government?

Green ICT

The "green" button on a computer keyboard.

The term “green” ICT refers to an ever expanding set of practices, technologies and policies aimed at reducing our environmental impact. “Green” ICT focuses on reducing this impact in two ways: (i) by lowering the environmental effect of the technology we create and use, and (ii) by using technology to enable the reduction of the environmental effect in other industries.

Direct Effects

Lowering the environmental impact of the technology we create and use, also known as the direct effects of ICT, is the most frequent objective of citizens, businesses and governments. In 2008, Gartner Research, a global ICT research firm calculated that ICTs are responsible for emitting 2% of the world’s carbon, putting the ICT industry on par with the airline industry.

The way in which ICTs are developed, manufactured, distributed, used and disposed of is being reconsidered to account for the multiple possible environmental impacts caused. ICTs impact includes: global warming, energy consumption, material toxicity, resource depletion, land use, water use, ozone layer depletion and even biodiversity.

Citizens, businesses and governments, as consumers of ICTs, play two roles in reducing the direct effects of ICT on the environment:

[1] We shape the ICT market. By purchasing ICTs from manufacturers and distributors that act responsibly towards the environment we encourage those manufacturers – we implicitly avoid rewarding other manufacturers who do not prioritise the environment in their business practices. Manufacturers that don’t act responsibly towards the environment will either go “green” or  go out of business.

[2] We can use ICTs in energy-efficient ways. We can:

  • turn on the screensaver on our computer to turn the monitor off after a few minutes of inactivity;
  • remove our phone and laptop power adapters from the wall socket when they are not charging our devices;
  • use energy efficient LCD monitors, instead of older CRT monitors;
  • look for better “Energy Star” rated appliances in our homes and offices;
  • use thin-client technology to share out a single computer to many users at the one time;
  • use cloud-based applications; and
  • ‘time share’ computers using USB flash drives and virtualization allowing a single computer to be used in turn by a limitless number of users.

Purchasing from environmentally responsible manufacturers and distributers of ICTs and using the ICTs we already own in energy efficient ways, will not only reduce the direct effects of ICTs on the environment but will also save us money through lower energy bills. The savings should not be underestimated – one government department in the Pacific conducted an energy audit of their ICT and discovered that reducing the energy used by its ICT could save enough to increase their existing workforce by 20% with the savings made from managing their ICT energy consumption better!

Enabling Effects

The direct effects of ICT on the environment are substantial. However, using ICT to lower the environmental impact of other industries, the enabling effects of ICT, is where the largest reductions in environmental impact are to be made. Intelligent transport systems can help reduce traffic congestion and road miles. Using videoconferencing can help to avoid the need for physical travel. Online collaborative tools can enable less physical travel as well as better decision making and a wider sharing of best and good practices. Intelligent energy networks can balance energy in the network so it is not wasted and can also facilitate remote meter reading. Smart buildings can be more energy and thermally efficient. Smart supply chains can also lead to less physical transportation and storage of goods. There are numerous environmental challenges to which ICT can be applied.

Applying ICT to these existing energy problems is not something to be done in the future, it can and is being done today. It is well underway in fact and businesses and governments the world over are already embracing the solutions. Home working projects, funded by Microsoft Corporation, are helping government agencies to reduce the amount of travel undertaken by its employees. UPS, a global parcel delivery service, reduces its fuel consumption by planning routes so that trucks do not have to turn across traffic – this may sound trivial until it is considered that the company has 88,000 vehicles and delivers some 15 million parcels every day. Siemens, a global electrical electronics and electrical engineering firm, has devised algorithms to control building ventilation, heating and cooling and applies these techniques to hospitals, schools, banks and industrial sites all over the world. Tandberg, a video conferencing equipment company, recently implemented videoconferencing for 200 of Vodafone’s offices around the world to reduce employee travel. Finally, video-on-demand is set to replace physical DVDs and CDs which alone would save 120,000 tonnes of carbon in the EU alone.

Apart from the reduction in environmental impact, organisations around the globe are reducing their costs by thinking “green” and the savings can be substantial. It turns out that reducing the amount of resources one uses also reduces expenses and improves global competitiveness. Organisations around the globe are embracing new ways of ‘doing more with less’ – less energy, less materials, less travel, less cost and less environmental impact.

Powering a mobile phone using D-cell batteries in Papua New Guinea.

Conclusion

As citizens, businesses and government departments we can utilise different ICTs to help us minimise our environmental impact – whilst also saving money. Whether it is turning on our computer screensavers, removing our phone chargers from the wall socket when not in use, installing low-power light bulbs in the office or just printing fewer documents each day; it is within our power to save our natural environment and critical for our natural environment to save power and other resources.

This is an adaptation of an article written for the Provincial Government of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, Indonesia by ICTD Corporation. ICTD Corporation specialises in the provision of consulting & advisory services for the design, planning, implementation and review of e-government initiatives and field research in developmental ‘leapfrogging’ in the area of ICTs. The author, Tony Willenberg (tony.willenberg@ictd.com), is managing director of ICTD Corporation and based in Sydney, Australia.

FOSS versus COTS

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The three commonly touted benefits to free and open source software (FOSS) in government are: (a) that it is inexpensive and so demonstrates that a government agency is being fiscally responsible and using taxpayer monies frugally, (b) that it avoids a government agency getting “locked in” to a commercial supplier, and (c) that it can be inspected by adequately ‘informed’ citizens because the source code is not hidden, thus consistent with open and transparent government.

The arguments seem compelling at first glance, but in reality there are a number of challenges experienced with FOSS:

Firstly, the low or no cost of FOSS only reflects the initial cost of the system. The total cost of software typically comprises three cost elements: (a) an upfront cost, (b) an ongoing cost and (c) a series of ongoing indirect and opportunity costs. FOSS has a low upfront cost element, but usually comes with high ongoing and indirect costs due to higher costs to locate and retain technical support. The cost of upgrading from FOSS is usually higher too because upgrade paths from one version to the next cannot be controlled as well as COTS software – many people contribute to the source code which makes up a FOSS product.

Secondly, the claim that FOSS avoids “locking in” a user to a particular commercial supplier is possibly false because it does not illuminate other forms of “lock in” which a user faces. Users of FOSS are often “locked in” to the product itself – a product that nobody or no company can support and a product which can be impossible to upgrade from. The user in effect becomes locked in to their own decision to use FOSS. The intellectual property behind FOSS is donated to the public domain and so it is not owned by any one company or person, the implication being that no one company or person takes ultimate responsibility for technical support of the users of the FOSS product – users have to be more technically independent and proactive when addressing their technical support needs. COTS authors usually reinvest a large part of their revenues back into technical support mechanisms to ensure their users get the most out of the COTS systems. COTS authors reinvest in technical support for their clients by building help desks and establishing telephone hotlines, writing documentation, providing online chat operators, developing training courses, setting up online communities of practice, and publishing lists of helpful information like “tips & tricks” and frequently asked questions (FAQs). The same quality and quantity of FOSS technical support is rare to find in one source. Typically technical support needs to be harvested from online user groups. There are instances of companies that “add value” to FOSS products but they charge for their version of the FOSS application and so by definition this excludes them from being considered FOSS due to the software charge.

Finally, the more philosophical attribute, that FOSS is consistent with the basic principles of open government because informed people can open and inspect source code may be flawed. The openness of government does not make sense when the granularity of the processes to be “opened” are so fine grained. An analogy: it would be difficult to argue that the inner workings of a photocopier must be visible to all for it to be accepted as an artefact that supports open government administration and therefore utilized by a government agency. A photocopier provides an organisation with certain ‘services’ and those services should be considered atomic or indivisible – they should be considered fine-grained enough to not warrant any further decomposition or revelation. The concept of open and transparent government processes taken to that level of detail does nothing to add value to the way in which a government serves its citizens. In fact, if a photocopier manufacturer could not protect and conceal its intellectual property and had to make it “open”, it is likely they would not be able to maintain a commercial business and future iterations of their photocopier may be jeopardised – government without access to a photocopier, because the photocopier is no longer profitable to build in an open way, may indirectly subtract value from government and its citizens. This is an exaggerated example, but the principle is the same. If opening a process adds no value or does not remove risk that a government process can be hijacked, then the reason to open the process is moot.

The Future of HDTV: UHDTV & 3DTV

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Dr. Yumita, the Executive Engineering Director of NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai, in English, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation) was a panel member in the last session of the ITU World Telecom 2009 Conference. During the panel discussion he outlined his vision for the next generation of TV currently in development. He explained that Japan is working extremely hard to develop the world’s first 3D television broadcasting system capable of running across the new generation of UHDTV or “super high vision” TV planned for introduction in the next couple of years in the country and around the world. The new broadcasting system would allow ultra HDTV (the next generation of HDTV) to display 3D video that will not require the cumbersome yet traditional red-blue glasses.

He explained how the broadcasting system will require enormous amounts of digital bandwidth between the broadcaster and the TV receiver and will be based on existing IP protocols but requiring next generation digital networks.  Dr Yumita also cited the significant progress made on “wide field” TV imagery, a display system which allows TV pictures with a 100-degree field of vision or more to be broadcast and displayed. Today’s widescreen TV typically displays a field of vision less than 30-degrees or so but humans often depend on at least 100-degrees of view. He explained that the new broadcast protocol is being designed to prepare for wall and ultra-large screen TV formats.

Google App Engine

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Google App EngineToday I experimented with the creation of an application in Python to run on the new Google App Engine (GAE) infrastructure. Things couldn’t have been easier. I whipped up a .yaml file, created a couple of Python classes, a simple CSS stylesheet and HTML form (to give the application a face) then ran a single command line command (“appcfg.py update myapp”) and a few seconds later, there it was! An online, robust, scalable web application operating on the Google infrastructure. I use Eclipse IDE because of its extensibility and because there exists a plugin to develop GAE applications in either Java or Python. I am a fan of python because of its efficient data types like lists and dictionaries. I was however curious as to why I need to locate all resources in a sub-folder called “src” under the application – why couldn’t the source files be located in the root directory of my local file system folder for the application? Anyway, something to test out another time. I am going to dig a little deeper into the data structures available to a GAE application tomorrow – I’ll let you know how it goes :-)