Utility Computing.....Myth?

Myth? I don't think so. I think it is the early stages, but definitely not a myth. This post by Richard Ziade, at the basement.org blog contends that utility computing is not the end of traditional software. He has a pretty funny statement -- "I don't need a multi-billion dollar data center in North Carolina to re-size an image". I don't think utility computing, cloud computing, grid computing -- what ever you want to call it is a myth. Far from it. The applications of these technologies will be seen in different places, for different reasons and at different paces over the coming years. The related space I'm watching is networking and wide-area networking (i.e.: wan accelerators / optimizers, metro ethernet, FTTP, and so forth). FYI - Worldwide Metro Ethernet sales hit $13 Billion in 2007, up 27%. Richards post and subsequent comments are an interesting read though.

Richard's joke about re-sizing an image did (for whatever reason) make me think about a really compute-intensive application (locally and in the cloud) that I simply love. Google Earth. I think I'll start my 12-step program tonight: Hello, my name is John Rath, and I am a Google Earth addict. I simply can't get enough of this program. If any Google Earth developers are reading and need someone to get them Mountain Dew or wash their car, I'm your man. :) I found a video tonight that will explain some of the amazing new features that they have added, if you haven't seen it lately. Check out the video (no, really) here.

One other post on basement.org piqued my interest on "visual browsing". As someone who recently purchased an Ipod Touch and is a BIG fan of visual browsing, the software Richard writes about, PicLens is ... (pardon my Paris Hilton) ....HOT!

Cloud Storage: Nirvanix and 3Tera Partner

I'm still not sold on the term "cloud" anything....maybe I just need to warm up to it, but that's for another post.

Today Cloud Storage provider Nirvanix announced a partnership with Utility Computing company 3Tera. The partnership includes offering global distributed storage, content distribution and remote backup capabilities to web developers. 3Tera's Applogic catalog will have the Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network(SDN) added.

“This solution blends together the best of both worlds, Utility Computing and Cloud Storage,” said Jonathan Buckley, Chief Marketing Officer for Nirvanix. “The two companies are coming together to address a very real problem for their customer: How to complement the simplicity and automation of a robust Utility Computing platform, with a cost-disruptive, yet most-reliable layer of data protection based on Cloud Storage.”

This sounds like a pretty good step for both companies. Check out the press release here

2008 Predictions

As promised, here are my 2008 Predictions. I don't think my predictions from last year (fiber to the home) came true at all -- as I visit my in-laws who can't even get a cable-modem or DSL in their new neighborhood (yet).

Ok...here goes:

1. As I have eluded to in the past, I am a big fan of utility computing. It does receive a fair amount of hype, but I can see the true potential in it and why people will start to see the light in coming years. Events that 365 Main and Rackspace encountered in 2007 helped paint the picture for web sites that only had a single hosting presence to wake up and take a more serious look at utility computing. Amazon EC2, S3, 3Tera and Joyent are pretty cool and worth a look for most anyone. I think the tools to measure, monitor and deploy utility computing will definitely grow in the enterprise realm, now that the internet sites/companies have pioneered so much. The growth of utility computing and enterprise interest should also help along the WAN accelerations and optimization industries as well. BTW--there was an interesting response to Intel's question about what emerging trends are in compute models - check it out here.

2. 2008 will see the hype phrase "Software as a Service" finally fizzle. There's no rocket science here people - get over the warm-fuzzy terminology.

3. Green/New Energy sources will continue to be big news in 2008 (big stretch here, huh?). Only two things I'll offer here.... the first, is to take a look at the Kleiner Perkins (Venture Capital firm) list of greentech companies they are funding --- here. I listend to Tom Perkins on the Venture Voice podcast recently -- what an interesting and amazing person! The second item is wind; Kansas took recent headlines , but it will continue to grow as a new energy source in 2008. There was an interesting story in Sunday's Des Moines Register about the wind industry in Iowa....some interesting stats and stories to see how the industry is growing here.

4. With the data center industry booming, I think 2008 will see more data center related services come out. I.E.- this article

5. Companies to watch / will be acquired? Akamai (an established company, but they will be doing exciting things), Riverbed , Savvis , Platespin , 3tera , and Joyent

6. Political ads will continue to be skipped on my Tivo . Living in Iowa means the privilege of having the first caucus, but the trade is enduring 24x7 ads on TV from the candidates. Maybe after the caucuses are over the ads will take a break until next fall.

7. Death to the RIAA in 2008 -- Alleluia!!

8. Here is my shot in the dark prediction -- at least 1 large acquisition will take place in 2008 in the Colocation or CDN industry. There has been a lot of activity here and some quality players; I think the market has hit a spot that something big will happen next year.

Paradigm Shift

Without sounding too much like an analyst and over-generalizing the tech industry as a whole, I really believe we are in the middle of a paradigm shift for technology. I’m old enough to remember mainframes, but never operated or administered them (unless doing COBOL programming in college counts). So there was the mainframe era, the client/server era and whatever-we’re-in-now era. I’ve loved the concept of utility computing ever since the hype (and over-hyping) began. I think it has a ton of potential and some really important concepts and intelligent people behind it. As many others have pointed out, the internet companies have contributed a significant amount to changing architectures used in IT. Perhaps they can be credited for driving much of the needed change that allowed for such enormous scalability (there, the words paradigm shift AND scalability should sit well for the search engine spiders :) A comment from a Gartner session yesterday summed it up nicely…. “cloud computing has ‘some’ degree of truth to it, but also a lot of fog”.

I’ll keep this post as short as possible so I don’t blab on too long and lose readers (assuming you have made it this long). I wanted to link to some utility computing and virtualization articles I liked and then make a few links out to some thoughts on data center containers/black box (DataCenter in a box part IIIa).

Bert Armijo and Peter Nickolov from 3Tera wrote an article recently on Fishtrain about services that virtualization needs adapt to the utility computing model. It is a very good article about future concepts and why virtualization is “not a complete utility computing solution”

The additional service that I would add is security. I’ve been a big fan of Christopher Hoff’s blog that frequently discusses virtualization security and potential vulnerability attack angles. And speaking of innovative technologies and industry shifts, check an excellent post on Security and Disruptive Innovation part III. Security needs to be improved in virtualization, but even more so as it spans across a utility computing implementation.

Network World also ran an interesting article on virtualization security and the realization that many are coming to for their implementations and how some have not even started their implementation because of security issues.

Because I am in the data center business I always digress to the physical part of the infrastructure when the ‘virtual’ data center is mentioned. To me there is no such thing as a virtual data center because it is the one true ‘real’, tangible asset in the infrastructure equation. So when I read about Amazon EC2 and 3Tera, I love the utility computing concepts and having infrastructure virtualized across physical data centers. Of course, with my recent white paper on site selection I also automatically assume geographically disperse data center locations to account for BCP plans and risk avoidance.

A final paradigm shift item I’ll mention is workload lifecycle and management. I don’t know if I completely understand it yet, but I have spent a fair amount of time on the Platespin web site and feel they have a very complete set of products. As it relates to a new and better way to deploy, manage and control your infrastructure I would recommend anyone gives their products a consideration. There is also a decent joint presentation from Dell, Microsoft and Platespin on their respective technologies here

Ok, so there is the paradigm shift in infrastructure architecture and deployment options. Let’s go up a level and look at the data center as a whole. If you’ve read my blog for any amount of time you know I am intrigued, interested, and perplexed by the container model that Rackable, Sun, APC and others have come out with and Google patented, but was dropped as a research project.

There are some interesting comments on the Slashdot post about Intel Data Centers. Some of the interesting points I noticed from these comments are:

1. Chuck Thacker from Microsoft has a very interesting PowerPoint presentation on data centers as a container model. It is a 26 slide presentation full of their research and insight to the topic.

2. There are references to the recent news about Sun’s BlackBox being used underground in Japan and using Geo-exchange for cooling and heat exchange.

3. A user comment: “The reason a "data center in a box" sounds so attractive is that the amortization schedules are different for IT equipment and buildings. If building infrastructure can last its advertised 25-30 year life then a tilt-up or factory assembled type of building structure is more cost-effective than containerized data centers architecturally.”

The thing I have always been thinking about, and that was brought up many times in the Slashdot comments, was just what in the world was the practical application of the data center container? With Google, Sun, Microsoft and others seriously looking at it and doing such deep research on the possibilities, you simply have to think that there is something that they have found that makes business sense and that they have justified.

More later --- back to the Gartner conference for now…..