CherryPal vs. the Laptop

They other day my wife's laptop died. This is a serious inconvenience to her, as she uses her laptop for both work and home. As a medical practitioner she often has to look up drug interactions, print off medical forms, and investigate new treatments. At home she looks up recipes, watches movies, plays sudoku, authors documents in MS Word and reads her Email.

So after reading about the new CherryPal, "Get onto CherryPal's 'Cloud Computer'", I started wondering if a Cloud based computer could replace her need for a laptop?

My first premise is that the computer will be hooked up to our HDTV as the monitor with a remote Keyboard and Mouse. That way we don't incur the additional cost of a monitor. Using this premise I can figure out the cost differential between the new CherryPal and a basic home laptop, say the Dell Inspiron Dual Core with 2GB RAM and 160GB Hard Drive.








As you can see the CherryPal comes in about $300 lower than the Laptop, not bad. So now to the real question - can it replace the laptop for functionality?

* Only Streamed Videos, this precludes iTunes and Amazon UnBox
** Their web-site claims that "We provide drivers in the cloud to support printers", I am dubious about how this works and how well
*** Documents will have to be converted from MS Word to Google Docs


So is it worth it? No movies, not portable between home and office. Saves us about $300 over the laptop. For us the answer is - No. The inability to truly play movies is a killer. Given that our premise is to hook up the laptop to our HDTV so that we don't incur the cost of a new Flat-Screen Monitor (and have to find someplace to set it up) - not being able to play Amazon Unbox or iTunes movies would be crazy. If I go and buy a new flat-screen monitor I wipe out the $300 price savings and still can't move the system from home to work.

I think the concept of a truly web based Cloud Computer is cool. I have thought so since Sun Microsystems tried to produce their first "Java only" desktops in the late 90's. However, as a consumer machine it falls short of the need. For certain Enterprise applications, especially enterprises that run almost all of their applications in a web model, the device might have a good fit. But for me - I'll stick with the Laptop for now.

So the real question is - stick with Microsoft or jump ship and get an Apple?

The Confluence of Cloud Computing & the Semantic Web – Part 1

In the following series of blogs I will attempt to capture the nuances of the dance between these two major mega trends – Cloud Computing and the Semantic Web.

For purposes of this blog, it is suffice to say that these emerging trends have yet to realize mainstream adoption. In fact, we are still grappling with the concepts and clarity of the real value.

Just in the last couple of days I have been exposed to surveys and articles that suggest cloud computing is low on the priority list for CIOs and not well understood Study: IT jobs will drop in 2009, and the real value of the Semantic Web is suspect - The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview.

Despite the skepticism and adoption rate, both of these mega trends promise to have disruptive influences on the way we do business. These mega trends are taking well established computing ideas, and expanding them and making them work across the Internet. For many, cloud computing is an extension of grid/utility computing, software as service (SaaS), managed services platforms, web-services and platform services – What cloud computing really means.

The Semantic Web, as described by Tim Berners-Lee is an extension of the existing web paradigm, where the target audience is the human. The new extension is intended to develop languages for expressing information in a machine processable form; interoperability taken to a new level.

Tim Berners-Lee defines the Semantic Web as a web of data that can be processed directly and indirectly by machines. “The Semantic Web is a web of data, in some ways like a global database.” - Semantic Web Road Map. The promise being that computers can search, acquire, present, filter, and manipulate data in a useful way based on the data’s meaning and its relationships. This is accomplished by defining structured sets of information and inference rules that allow machines to understand the relationship between different data resources.

One of the promises of the Semantic Web is ease of integration of information across a wide spectrum of data artifacts and systems. There are solutions to the data integration challenge but require extensive transformations and one-to-one mappings between elements across systems and repositories. What puts the promise of the Semantic Web above the fray is the ability to allow a machine to connect to any other machine and exchange and process data efficiently based on built-in semantic information that describes each resource. Metadata that allows machines to understand relationships and context. This semantic information allows disparate data sources to become compatible through adopting a consistent relational model across structured and unstructured information.

Conceptually the cloud represents a ubiquitous set of computing services that are interconnected and seamlessly exchange and process information. But as Galen Gruman accurately states, in his article, What cloud computing really means, “Today, with such cloud-based interconnection seldom in evidence, cloud computing might be more accurately described as "sky computing," with many isolated clouds of services which IT customers must plug into individually. On the other hand, as virtualization and SOA permeate the enterprise, the idea of loosely coupled services running on an agile, scalable infrastructure should eventually make every enterprise a node in the cloud.”

As these mega trends mature the confluence of the two may indeed bring to fruition the promise of loosely coupled ubiquitous services that have context and are ultimately understood by machines.

In the blogs that follow I will explore what all that really means and what is the real value?

Recent Posts

Some great new articles over at InfoWorld on the Cloud -

The dangers of cloud computing

What cloud computing really means

Early experiments in cloud computing

A step closer to the integrated cloud

Amazon's cloud computing service fuels startup's launch

Amazon adds resilience to cloud computing service

Adoption of the Cloud

There is an interesting article over at Infoworld talking about the dangers of cloud computing. It is an intriguing read about how cloud computing infrastructure is not secure enough for the Enterprise - but more secure than existing mid-size enterprises probably have in place.

The premise is that cloud vendors don't put as much investment and resources into security as do large Enterprises - but more than small companies. This might well be true. Ephraim Schwartz, the author of the piece, goes on to talk about the what applications truly belong in the cloud, and which don't. Non-mission critical applications belong within the cloud, and mission-critical applications do not.

I tend to agree. However, there is another classification of applications that will not readily map to the cloud - ones that support business processes that differentiate an organization.

Companies gain competitive advantage in the marketplace through many factors. I would argue that many companies today have only a small number of factors to play with - Service, Quality, Price, and Availability. The way they deliver these four factors is their competitive advantage. This competitive advantage is built into their internal business processes, culture and approach to the market. All of which are supported by technology.

The way a company uses technology to create business advantage, link internal processes, communicate, share information and support their business - is the competitive differentiator most companies have.

Many business critical applications will not move to the Cloud - not because of a concern about security - but because of it's inability to enable differentiation. Based on some of these assumptions I believe that we can map out, to some level of accuracy, the types of applications that different businesses will adopt.








Large Enterprise - Early adopters of Transactional Service, Moderate Adopters of Infrastructure (for non-critical applications), and late adopters of SaaS applications.

Small to Mid Size Enterprises - These folk will also be early adopters of Transactional services, and medium to early adopters of Infrastructure. They will view the cost savings related to using infrastructure services as a competitive advantage. They will also adopt SaaS applications, but at a slower rate - and for specific types of applications that are either commodities, non-critical or require a level of B2B collaboration. For instance Sales Force Automation, Supply Chain Demand Planning and Business Process Hubs.

Small to Mid Size Businesses - Early adopters of Applications (SaaS) due to it's cost benefit, pricing flexibility and low up-front cost structure. They will also take advantage of Cloud Infrastructure capabilities - but only as they are wrapped with business friendly applications. Don't look for this group to directly write web services that take advantage of Amazon S3, they will wait for the application they can install on their Windows XP Server. Low adopters of Transactional services - due to the IT requirements around the data integration.

Cloud Computing - Startup Opportunity?

Eric and I are watching the cloud computing phenomenon with great interest. As software entrepreneurs we are intrigued by the possibilities that cloud computing may hold for innovators. It is obvious that cloud computing is real and building momentum.

The web is littered with articles about the behemoths (Amazon, Google, IBM, MS) building city-block size data-centers, platforms, and defining new business strategies around the computing cloud. We also know that Web 2.0 companies are leveraging the low cost, quick time to market, and scalability benefits of cloud computing.

As a middleware guy, I wonder if there is or will be a market for the smaller innovator to provide applications and services within the cloud or is do the big boys already have a strangle hold on that market?

A non scientific, yet interesting way to answer that question is to examine the amount of money being put into cloud computing ventures. Venture Capitalist (VCs) make their living on being able to predict the future and align their resources accordingly. Are VCs financing non-Web 2.0 startups that provide infrastructure plays in the cloud?

I have scoured the web and have found very little information to dogmatically answer that question. We are a bit early and we are still asking question like, What is Cloud Computing? Yet, I believe there is a tremendous amount of opportunity for innovative companies to make rain in the every evolving cloud. Case in point, startup RightScale recently raised $4.5M for their resource management application.

Stepping outside the cloud for a minute, there are tremendous opportunities to help the enterprise leverage the benefits of the computing cloud. Frank Gillett, from Forrester Research suggest that a lack of security and service-level agreements are hurdles that need to be overcome before clouds are embraced by big corporations. Hurdles... that's another word for opportunity!

Market Sizing the Computing Cloud

When looking at the Computing Cloud from a market perspective a number of very obvious questions start to arise. How big is the computing cloud? How many companies are in the cloud. How much revenue is actually being generated by the Computing Cloud, who is actually buying Cloud services and most importantly what is the Growth and opportunity within the Computing Cloud?

My gut tells me that the Computing Cloud very well might be another disruptive technology. A game changer that transforms how applications and services are delivered to the market. But good companies don't make decisions based on a gut feels, they make them based on business models that promise a strong return on investment.

Many companies are looking at the Computing Cloud as a way of reducing costs and delivering core services to market faster. However some companies are looking at the Computing Cloud as a new market itself. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, eBay and SaleForce.com are already in the market. Others like RightScale, who recently raised $4.5M in financing, are just now entering. How do these companies figure out what the Market opportunity is?

I have started to scan the web to try and see how much information is actually available on the topic so far. The results are pretty slim. Gartner, Forrester and the like might have some market data, but nothing that showed up on any of the public sites.

So far I have been able to find a few data points on Cloud Computing. There is a great site for registering all of the APIs available for Cloud Computing - programmableweb.com. The site not only lists all of the APIs available (755 as of this writing), but also lists the mashups that use these APIs. They also track the most used APIs, by category and vendor, by all of the Mashups. I took a couple of snapshots of the API usage and plotted it's 1 month growth, by category.

Click to Enlarge
This chart tells us a few things. First off the most used APIs for mashups are mapping. This does make sense, as many web sites are now embedding maps and context sensitive location information. All one has to do is look at the proliferation of map information within Realty web sites to see this phenomena.

Second we can see that the second tier of mashups are using APIs for Photos, Shopping, Video and Search. These are all consumer related APIs, not enterprise related. Part of this is related to the nature of mashups and the source of our data. We are not likely to see corporate activity and usage patterns within this data set. However it is interesting to note that the sum of usage for Storage, Hosting, Identity, Office and Database is less than 1/3 of the total usage for Video and only 1/20th of Mapping.

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The next chart shows us the number of mashups added during the period by Category. Again this shows us that Mapping is by far the leader. Widgets and Search also added 3 new mashups.

Summary
So what does this tell us? First off we have to realize that the data set is limited, and comes from a site very focused on mashups and the usage of APIs by those mashups. Even within that context it is obvious that Mapping is the big winner in the early use of Cloud Computing. This does make sense. There are a tremendous number of web-sites that can immediately benefit from embedding location sensitive maps directly onto their site. With the publication of easy to use map tools from companies like Google and Microsoft it is inevitable that sites would start to take advantage of them.

This trend should continue, and even accelerate. How long until every corporate web-site has an embedded Google map on their Corporate Location Page? Who is going to write their own video or photo management application when they can just embed that service onto their web site from a site like Flickr or YouTube.

The transition is now in full swing. Base services for mapping, photo management, video, advertising and other web-based services are becoming commodity applications delivered from a core set of providers. It will be left up to the rest of us to figure out how to use these services in unique and interesting ways.

Classifying the Computing Cloud

Introduction

More and more we see references to the Computing Cloud appear in articles and blogs across the Internet. Just the other day Scientific American wrote and article highlighting the shift away from traditional data centers to the Computing Cloud. You can find that article here.

This article is interesting because it talks about the Black-Box data center strategy being aggressively pursued by Sun Microsystems. In a nutshell these Data centers give organizations the flexibility to place a fully functional Data Center wherever they need it. This flexibility allows companies to realize cost savings by locating their computing power either closer to where it's needed, or in locations with cheaper power costs.

These Black-Box data centers are tremendously powerful and cost effective, but are they part of the Computing Cloud? This begs the question, "What is the Computing Cloud"? How do OnDemand applications, utilities, data feeds and Black Box data centers all fit under the same definition? Is the term Cloud Computing in danger of becoming overloaded like Enterprise Content Management (ECM). A term so broad as to be unhelpful in helping classify and understand an applications function?

This confusion has led us to attempt to start defining and classifying the broad parameters of the Computing Cloud. This is a work in progress and an exercise in understanding what is, and what isn't in the Computing Cloud.

What is a Cloud Computing Application?

As you look across the spectrum of Cloud, Utility and Grid computing a clear separation in functionality becomes evident. What's more, companies utilize the Cloud for very different purposes.

Some organizations are looking to companies like Google, SalesForce.com and eBay for user level applications; Email, Blogging, Word Processing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and the like.

Other companies see value in leveraging infrastructure level components. Offloading storage and computing power into centralized service centers enable them to benefit from the inherent economies of scale in the Computing Cloud. At the same time they can take advantage of best of breed data centers, network management and operational capabilities.

Finally companies look to the Cloud for discreet transactional information and capabilities. Want to know what the temperature is in San Francisco? Just look it up on a Web Service call at XMethods. Trying to calculate the risk associated with the Yen carry trade? Look up the current Yen to Dollar conversion rate at XIgnite.

While these Cloud Computing applications offer very different capabilities, and solve different business solutions, they do share common elements.

1. Computing Cloud applications are shared between organizations and reside on a common platform.
2. Computing Cloud applications are accessed remotely across an Internet connection.
3. Computing Cloud applications are priced using different revenue models than Enterprise and Traditional Software.
   

There are many other differences between Enterprise/Traditional applications and the Computing Cloud. However the three factors above seem to be common among all the Cloud Computing applications we looked at.

Types of Computing Cloud Applications

Different organizations use the Cloud for different reasons. By compartmentalizing the Cloud we start to understand how and why organizations use it. The natural divisions seem to be; Applications, Infrastructure and Transactions.

Applications encompass all of the services delivered directly to an end user. These are typically web-driven programs that help users with day-to-day business functions. For instance Google Desktop Apps, SalesForce.com, Microsoft Live and Siebel OnDemand CRM are all instances of Cloud computing applications.

Cloud Infrastructure components are services that provide capabilities you would typically associate with physical hardware or application development, specifically storage and computational power. Amazon is a classic example of making infrastructure capabilities available in the Cloud. Their Simple Storage Service, Elastic Compute Cloud and Simple Queue Services are all instances of Infrastructure capabilities. Google's own Data API is also a Cloud Infrastructure component.

SalesForce Apex and Adobe's Apollo application development platforms are another example of Cloud Infrastructure components. Specifically these platforms give developers storage, processing and development capabilities that deploy onto a remote Cloud infrastructure. Developers can create, test and deploy entire applications that run completely within the Cloud Infrastructure which in turn gives companies tremendous flexibility to create value added applications, while significantly lowering the risks and costs associated with large scale Web based deployments.

The rest of the Cloud falls under the Transactional classification. Transactional elements of the Computing Cloud help you perform discreet actions that either retrieve, manipulate or transform data and information. Cloud Transactional capabilities range from the thousands Web Services available from organizations like XMethods and XIgnite to Amazon's Alexa services, encompassing everything from Thumbnail creation to the Webs top sites.

This leaves us with what is not part of the Computing Cloud. I would propose that while Black Box service centers are an attempt to help with some of the same problems that the Computing Cloud solves, it is not by definition part of the Computing Cloud. An organization might use a Black Box service center to deliver a Cloud Computing component but the Black Box itself is not inherently a part of the Cloud. It is just an extension of an existing network.

Additionally not all Web Services are Cloud Computing. At it's core a Web Service is just a way of communicating between two applications. It might be a key mechanism of delivering Cloud Computing capabilities, but is not inherently part of the cloud itself.


Summary

There are real fundamental issues that IT organizations are struggling to solve today. The explosion of information, connectivity and user expectations are rapidly increasing the demands put on MIS departments. Add to this the drive for cost containment present in every modern company and you have a real pain point.

Cloud Computing is beginning to offer viable solutions to these problems. By using Cloud Computing solutions companies can stop spending time on commodity Application, Infrastructure and Transactional capabilities and focus on adding real value and differentiation through their IT departments.

IT departments will use Cloud Computing for three reasons - Cost reduction of commodity application deployments, management of peaks in infrastructure demands and delivering to business segments that demand linear or exponential growth in computing power, storage and delivery.

Through the next two to three years we will see companies begin to experiment with Cloud Computing in test or pilot applications. After that companies will start to adopt Cloud Computing wholeheartedly. However, companies will not abandon their data-centers. Instead Cloud Computing will become an integral part of delivering a companies value, sitting right alongside and integrated directly into their existing network and data center.