The Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen sits in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden near the Walker Art Museum. (Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor)
Mystical lessons within the clouds.Centaur semiconductors have come up with a very interesting way of evaluating the energy efficiency of micoprocessor products. It is called the TreeMark™ Tree Rating. Centaur defines it as “The number of trees that need to be planted to counter the amount of carbon dioxide created as a by-product of the electricity generated to power the processor over its operational lifetime”. The good thing is, Centaur’s processors rate very well on this benchmark when compared with their Intel or AMD counterparts.
I still keep on wondering what would be the TreeMark rating for the components other than the processor in a computer. If a processor’s TreeMark rating is 7 trees, the rest of the electronics in the computer could raise the bar by 14-20 more trees. Not to mention the amount of thermal cooling required in the datacenters.
The situation demands more involvement in the process of creating energy efficient compute appliances on part of the industry leaders. I would like to mention the good work done by IBM for the Power6 Processor.
The figure below shows how the TreeMark Tree rating can be calculated for an electrical load.
Copyright 2007. Electronics & IT Grimoire. All rights reserved.
Cloud computing essentially encapsulates the following three concepts: pay-as-you-go, on-demand and on the Net. It is the computing model of the day, where the use of IT is billed like a utility and hence the term utility computing. Cloud computing is a part of the on-demand model for computing that allows companies to focus on creating true business value rather than delve on setting up and maintaining IT infrastructure to get going.
How do we then, relate cloud computing to SaaS, PaaS and HaaS? As you dig deeper it becomes apparent that SaaS, PaaS and HaaS are different categories of cloud computing. Where SaaS refers to applications in the cloud, PaaS refers to the platforms in the cloud while HaaS refers to the infrastructure in the cloud[1].
2. Software as a Service..
The concept of 'Software as a Service' or SaaS, is an application delivery model with vendors hosting Web-based applications on the Internet and consumers consuming them on line. Technologies such as Web services and REST [22] play an integral role in the development of SaaS applications.
The origins of the popular CamelCase term goes back to a white paper published by the Software & Information Industry's eBusiness Division in 2001 titled "Strategic Backgrounder: Software as a Service" [2], in which they discussed, “the delivery, management and payment of software by Application Service Providers (ASPs) as a service rather than a product..” with users 'subscribing' for the use of software rather than purchasing them upfront.
Despite the hype back in the days, the ASP model failed to take off as anticipated by the originators largely due to the unavailability of network and Web being untested grounds for many. Today, tables have clearly turned with Internet access at lightening speeds, increased habitats on the Web and the increased adoption of open standards.
Web 2.0[3] addressed largely the Web-based socializing and consumer-oriented software domain but not SaaS. The list of vertical industries qualifying for SaaS application model include Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems, Human Resources Management (HRM) systems, video conferencing, accounting and various others.
SaaS presents a number of licensing and pricing models for the vendors to choose from that includes pay-as-you-go, subscription-based, revenue-based, usage/transaction-based and other. Some even go as far as offering complete services free of charge preferring to monetize with ads only.
3. Hardware as a Service..
The concept of Hardware as a Service' or HaaS refers to, the virtualization of the data center. It appears to be that HaaS provides the real estate support while SaaS provides the application functionality in the journey towards cloud computing supremacy.
With striking similarities to hardware leasing, HaaS is a model in which the vendor manages the lease as opposed to the customer that helps keep service calls to an absolute minimum.
Earlier this year, Apple announced its slightly different flavor of HaaS that promises to improve old hardware with software upgrades an act that was already adopted by Microsoft on Zune devices, Nintendo on wii and Sony on its BlueRay playback on the Playstation.[4]
4. Platform as a Service..
In the next logical evolution of computing in the cloud comes as an integrated platform to build, test, and deploy custom applications that we called the Platform as a Service (PaaS).
The concept of 'Platform as a Service' is a form of cloud computing delivers development environments as a service rather than offering full-blown applications. Pioneered by Amazon, Google already has an offer with the Google App engine, where you can sign up for a free account use up to 500MB of persistent storage, CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month. Sun is on its way with their offering of Platform as a Service in what they called Project Caroline[5].
More Definitions
SaaS is predominantly looked at as an application delivery model, as opposed to the concept of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)[6] - an architectural strategy weaving together services to create business processes. So, what have they got in common?
On one side, the flexible and scalable pedigree of SOA brings value to SaaS - in terms of loosely coupled, contracted services that empowers SaaS providers more efficiently compete in the marketplace against packaged, on-premise software vendors in terms of price, flexibility and other service quality offerings. As demand for scalability and flexibility mounts, SaaS can only serve in the short term without SOA offerings to enable them optimize the construction and operation of SaaS services for the long run.
On the other side of the equation, increasingly many enterprises expect SaaS be made available for their SOA implementations without getting bogged down in development. As we see, although the initial impressions of the cloud computing model was all about delivering software, the transformation is far more fundamental and deep routed in SOA.
The intersection, has been inevitable. The two forms have converged and have already begun to fuse great possibilities for the enterprise.
6. Benefits
Is SaaS, cloud computing and PaaS serious enough for the enterprise to build and deploy business applications?
Cloud computing seem convincing enough. Buy how about security and privacy?
The concern inevitably raises the question "how much do we need to know about the services we acquire or consume from other sources?To this point I'd say that the companies offering cloud computing services will live and die by their reputations. As cloud computing leaves users to feel that they lose a degree of control over their often-sensitive information - it would be for the cloud operators to convince otherwise.
There are addtional concerns that include concerns of how well the popular pay-as-you-go payment model is defined, as services consumption variables become complex with tiers of service constraints being added.
8. Players
Infrastructure Providers:
Application Providers:
Platform Providers:
9. Summary..The on-demand model is moving everything from software applications to processing power to storage and APIs from desktops and organizational data centers to the cloud. The obstacles are more in the lines of security and privacy. Cloud operators are expected to prove themselves against rival hackers. Despite the concerns, however, the utility-style pay-by-the-drink pricing computing trend will no doubt change the society as profoundly as cheap electricity did centuries ago.
10. References & Resources:
SAN JOSE, California (AFP) — Lifelike graphics are breaking free of elite computer games and spreading throughout society in what industry insiders proclaim is the dawning of a "visual computing era."
Astronauts, film makers and celebrities joined software savants, engineers and gamers in the heart
of Silicon Valley this week for a first-ever NVision conference devoted to computer imagery advances changing the way people and machines interact.
"Visual computing is transforming the videogame industry; transforming the film industry, and has all kinds of potential for how we view real-time television," NVIDIA co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang told those gathered at the event.
"We solve some of the most challenging problems for more and more companies around the world. Let the era of visual computing begin."
Gamers dueled for three days in a cavernous room in the San Jose Convention Center while entrepreneurs showed how graphics breakthroughs are shining in other fields.
Car makers are exploring letting potential buyers not only customize automobiles with graphics software but go on virtual test drives.
Graphics processing underpins financial modeling and weather forecasting.
Israel-based Optitex demonstrated software that replicates fabrics so realistically that clothing designers can see what fashions will look and act like on people before garments are made.
Optitex's animation software is being eyed by Hollywood film makers.
Dassault Systemes puts 3D computer-assisted design to work virtually constructing passenger jets, buildings and more.
"Three-D should be a new way for us to dream and design the future of our world," The French company's chief executive Bernard Charles said at NVision.
"It will impact everything we do: education, science, talking to each other ... of course games."
He predicts that lifelike graphics combined with feedback from online communities will let people influence how products are designed, sold and even how "green" they are.
Charles maintains computer simulations will be so realistic that virtual activities will mirror physical experiences.
Simulators already play an important part in training for space shuttle missions, according to former US astronaut Eileen Collins, the first woman shuttle commander.
"When you fly the actual mission you feel like you are in a simulator," Collins said. "We really can't do our job without the good visual graphics that we get."
The world of visual computing is "inescapable," said Chris Malachowsky, a co-founder of NVIDIA, a California firm renowned for high-end graphics processing cards for computers.
"We are being presented with displays everywhere," Malachowsky told AFP. "It used to be about the computing part, but the emphasis is shifting. It is not so much about the computation but how it is presented and seen by people."
The rising tide of digital videos, photos, films and television shows on the Internet is lifting the status of graphics chips, cards, and software and strengthening a trend to "unflatten" displays with 3D imagery.
Malachowsky spoke of using visual computing power to develop new medicines or provide doctors with real-time 3D images of patients' organs.
"They will be able to recreate scan data so fast you could see your own heart beating," Malachowsky said.
"This is being subsidized by all these kids out there playing games."
Perceptive Pixel founder Jeff Han, referred to by some as "the father of touch screen" computing, maintains graphics opens up user interface control possibilities that could render a "mouse" obsolete.
Han demonstrated touch-screen technology that lets several people simultaneously manipulate applications and files on a single large monitor.
"It's not personal computing anymore," Han said. "It's visual computing."
Battlestar Galactica bombshell Tricia Helfer praised computer animation innovations that enable the science fiction television series to rivet viewers.
Helfer plays a part-machine, part-organic Cylon character called "Number Six" that has turned on its creators.
"It's a bit threatening," Helfer said of technology promising to one day make animated characters indistinguishable from real actors.
"But the advantages and uses of it are amazing, but it is something we are going to have to get used to."
I don't care if you have 30-megabit-per-second service, you'll get flaky performance from most online apps, especially if they're popular. Always remember that your online speed is only as good as the speed at which data is coming at you: The application server may be swamped, and the various nodes along the route could become clogged, too. Nothing is ever as fast as the machine sitting on top of (or beneath) your own desk.
Your desktop is faster than the cloud – that's true - but is your car? Information stored in the cloud can be accessed from any place with a Net connection. Information stored locally can only be accessed locally – well, unless you connect through a VPN or set up a VNC server. But even for those of us that know how to do it, a VNC server is a hassle, and a security risk unless you do it exactly right. 90 minutes is horrendous downtime for an enterprise application, and Dvorak is right so far as any application where 90 minutes downtime is unacceptable shouldn't be put on the cloud.
But there are plenty of applications – and for small-to-medium companies, e-mail is one of them – where the losses incurred from 90 minutes of downtime is less than the cost of having a dedicated in-house application installed and maintained on the network. (If the opposite is true, don't use cloud computing, use the in-house application, and keep an eye on how it performs.)
Dvorak also points out that your data is at the mercy of the service provider and that if the service is cut off, for whatever reason, so is your data. That's true, but if you don't back-up your data, your data can be lost by a hard drive crash. Both are about as likely to happen, in my experience.
To Dvorak, "People tend to forget that software is NOT a service; the whole cloud scheme is a scam to lock users into a single product and somehow extract more money from them." There is some aspect of vendor lock-in, but mostly cloud computing is a way to provide an application at low startup costs in exchange for revenue over time – whether through advertising, in the case of Google's apps, or through a subscription model. Yes, it is very much "renting" rather than "owning," but that can very well make financial sense in many cases.
After that, the arguments get a bit silly.
What happens if the net is attacked and your entire cloud world is gone for days and days? It just happened in the Republic of Georgia, and it can probably happen anywhere.
If the Russians start bombing us, John, I'm sure that the boss will give us a few days off.
Ask yourself why the heck will we need six-core, high-performance chips if the cloud takes over everything?
Why do we need six-core, high-performance chips now? In a virtualized server, certainly we'll need power to spare, but unless you're doing video editing or animation rendering, a six-core chip is probably overkill. And if we stop putting the big iron in the datacenters of big companies (very unlikely), they'll pop up in the data centers of the SaaS providers.
When it comes to performance and scalability, absolutely, standard client-server IT applications and local programs are going to have SAAS beat. Final Cut Pro is not going to the cloud. Photoshop isn't going to the cloud (though Photoshop Elements is...). But the key advantage of cloud computing isn't performance or scalability – it is portability. This is why people will pay twice as much for a laptop with the same specs as a desktop computer. Mobility is important.
Many people don't like the concept of "private clouds," including my colleague John Foley and Sam Johnston ("The case against 'private clouds' "), since by definition cloud computing involves letting people plug into shared IT services in data centers that aren't their own. As oxymorons go, though, private cloud computing doesn't strike me as particularly egregious: I would probably rank it halfway between 'green data center' and 'business intelligence' on my own (admittedly moronic) oxymoron scale.
I discussed the cloud computing ecosystem earlier this month with Sam Charrington, VP of product marketing and management for Appistry, a maker of middleware that helps applications run smoothly in a cloud environment, after his LinuxWorld Expo Cloud Computing session. Charrington's view of the future of cloud computing includes Google (NSDQ: GOOG)-like public clouds as platforms for applications; virtual private clouds, which are third-party clouds, or segments of the public cloud with additional features for security, compliance, etc. (for HIPPA medical record compliance or SOX accounting standards, for example); as well as private or internal clouds, which are an extension of virtualization and used primarily because of their capital or operational efficiencies. His formulation seems to me to make sense since it also dovetails with my view of cloud computing as a natural evolution from the grid/utility computing model, which is the delivery of storage, computation and other computing resources as metered services similar to the way traditional public utilities deliver electricity.
A private cloud, by analogy, is computing capacity produced "off-the-grid" similar to the ways some homeowners produce electrical power with renewable energy sources such as solar arrays on their roof or windmills, and therefore have the option of using it themselves; selling it back to a centralized grid; or allocating it to anyone they choose. Ultimately, anyone with a data center will conceivably be able to provide cloud services, as long as those services conform to a set of cloud infrastructure standards, most of which have yet to be defined.
Sam Johnston ("Cloud standards: not so fast...") is one of many who say cloud standardization efforts are premature. Johnson points to the market-driven ecosystem that has sprung up overnight aroundAmazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Web Services as an example of what kind of cloud standards are needed, namely "simple, rugged, market tested interfaces defined by the innovators in each area (virtualization, storage, services, etc.)." I tend to agree that much of the cloud standardization effort at the moment seems to be putting the cart before the horse, although I'm intrigued by the possibility of leveraging some of the work that's been done on the new Open Virtualization Format (OVF), created by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) standards organization. OVF is a platform independent, efficient, extensible, open packaging and distribution format for virtual machines that allows virtualization packaging, distribution, installation, and management -- all within an archive or Tar file such as "myApp.ova," which can include a digital signature for security. OVF can be compared roughly to the MP3 digital music format that is used to encapsulate music information. A packaging format that is vendor-neutral, it allows virtual machines, or sets of virtual machines, to be installed on any platform including public, virtual private, and private clouds. OVF is based on the DMTF's Common Information Model (CIM), which would make a good starting point for a cloud API. (If you're not familiar with CIM, it's an open standard that defines how managed elements in an IT environment are represented as a common set of objects and relationships between them. This is intended to allow consistent management of these managed elements, independent of their manufacturer or provider.) This seems like as good a blueprint as any for cloud standardization, although I would like some safeguards to assure the separation of public, virtual private, and private clouds. Off-grid private clouds should be able to be autonomous in much the same way that off-grid homes can generate electrical power on-site with renewable energy sources such as solar or wind; with a generator and adequate fuel reserves; or simply done without, as in Amish communities. http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/08/no_blueprint_ye.html Copyright © 2008 United Business Media LLC, All rights reserved.
Storage Optimization
umably on your Windows PC in Mr. Gates’ worldview) will be a cache of a subset of the master data held in the cloud.
Listen Now [3 min 14 sec]t
Even labelling the green computing issue as “environmental” does not really do the trick. The better approach is to start with “sustainable development” and work back from there.
According to the 1987 Brundtland Report, also known as Our Common Future, sustainable development “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
The report took an international view of sustainability and applied it to employment, food, energy, water and sanitation. We sometimes forget that if our computer equipment is made in China, its water and ground pollution largely stays there, while the gaseous emissions are shared with the whole world.
The only truly environmental way of accounting for our choices is to look at the lifecycle impact of what we buy and throw away. That includes everything from raw materials through construction, packaging, delivery, use and disposal.
Anything less than this is just playing at being green.
Of course, such an approach is also inconvenient. It is very difficult to discover the carbon footprint of what we buy – it is much easier to find out how much energy something uses for our base calculations.
As such, you rarely hear IT vendors talking about embedded carbon and other pollution in the products they try to convince IT managers to buy. And it is why governments are so keen to focus on pricing carbon and setting targets.
Some 5,000 British companies will be obliged to sign up for the Carbon Reduction Commitment in 2010, which will make businesses measure their carbon emissions to see how they compare year on year. League tables will be published and some firms will be rewarded with bonuses, while others will be punished with fines.
The commitment will focus minds. But companies will analyse their emissions – including those they inherit with their energy supplies – and may decide to offshore polluting elements of their work. The result will be a nice, clean UK operation and no reprimands for embedded carbon. As a result, the company in question might be obeying the letter of the law – but hardly its spirit.
So, what will drive companies to do the right thing? Money and regulation are top of the list. Brand value, corporate social responsibility and public relations are all closely intertwined.
Many companies need to be seen to be environmentally sensitive and if you work for such a firm, life will be relatively easy. These businesses concentrate on working with management and examine every corner of the business to discover opportunities to be greener.
However, if money and regulations drive the firm, every green decision needs to be costed. If regulations are involved, penalties are usually not far away.
As such, the equation still boils down to money – and you are wasting your time trying to appeal to the firm’s better nature. Sooner or later, though, the company will come under customer or shareholder pressure to act greener, especially if it is part of a supply chain to more committed businesses.
Centre attention on the areas that will make a difference but require little or no investment – switch off desktops at night, print fewer documents, turn off power chargers when they are not in use, turn off lights if no one is around.
Extend the period between machine replacements and find ways to reuse retired equipment. The Met Office, for example, sends its end-of-life computers to other measuring stations around the world.
Your next stage should be to look at virtualisation, which can help cut the amount of equipment you need or allow you to take on more work without buying new PCs. You might also be able to optimise your datacentre cooling without massive upheaval. And going even further, large companies can benefit from consolidating multiple datacentres, which can reduce electricity use and other associated costs.
But IT has a much bigger role to play in helping a company achieve good environmental performance.
Technology can help reduce energy use and other pollution in areas which are beyond IT’s remit.
Publishing reference materials online – catalogues, manuals, directories and so on – saves on print, transport and packaging. Videoconferencing can save time and money – and the stresses of work life can be diminished, too.
Home working can also help employees dodge the commute and, depending on how many people do it and for how many days, can also reduce office size and the associated costs.
In a recent survey, Freeform Dynamics discovered that only 28 per cent of IT departments actually know how much energy they use. And, no doubt, the figure would be even smaller if the question were asked with regards to the total IT estate.
If you belong to such a company, perhaps the most effective starting point for everything would be to obtain a copy of its bills. This approach might lead to more granular metering, so that you can see where to apply new measures for saving energy.
David Tebbutt is programme director at analyst Freeform Dynamics. Read the blog at: http://freeform.computing.co.uk
http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/analysis/2222199/holistic-approach-green-4127834
Computing provides insight for IT leaders.
Computing and Computing.co.uk are published in the UK by Incisive Media.
Thinking Out Cloud Cloudburst: The term cloudburst is being use in two meanings, negative and positive:
Cloudstorming: The act of connecting multiple cloud computing environments.
Reference: "...Zimory will be covering off the key cloudy marketplaces and activities: public cloud, internal cloud, cloudbursting (grow-over from internal to public clouds) and cloudstorming (connecting multiple clouds)." Source: The 451 Group: A Cloud for All Seasons
Vertical Cloud: A cloud computing environment optimized for use in a particular vertical -- i.e., industry -- or application use case.
Reference: "The verticalization of the cloud would provide marketing benefits, as Friedman notes, while also providing a possible means of addressing issues of information security crucial to industries such as health care and financial services." Source: Nicholas Carr: The vertical cloud
Private Cloud: A cloud computing-like environment within the boundaries of an organization and typically for its exclusive usage.
Reference: "It is these companies that have dramatically leveraged their internal and originally Private Cloud Computing infrastructures to significant economic benefit. " Source: Kent Langley: Private Cloud Computing: A Few Thoughts
Internal Cloud: A cloud computing-like environment within the boundaries of an organization and typically available for exclusive use by said organization.
Reference: "With Cloud Computing becoming more and more popular, large corporations are likely to set up their own clouds and integrate them with external clouds, like Amazon EC2." Source: Markus Klems: Internal Cloud
Hybrid Cloud: A computing environment combining both private (internal) and public (external) cloud computing environments. May either be on a continuous basis or in the form of a 'cloudburst'.
Reference: "Microsoft would, no doubt, agree. Their "software plus services" approach similarly advocates a hybrid cloud/desktop environment." Source: Kendall Whitehouse: Kevin Lynch: Clearing the AIR
Cloudware: A general term referring to a variety of software, typically at the infrastructure level, that enables building, deploying, running or managing applications in a cloud computing environment.
Reference: "Go to Google Maps, Yahoo Mail, or MySpace — most of Web 2.0, in other words — and you're using cloudware." Source: Wired: Geekipedia - Cloudware
External Cloud: A cloud computing environment that is external to the boundaries of the organization. Although it often is, an external cloud is not necessarily a public cloud. Some external clouds make their cloud infrastructure available to specific other organizations and not to the public at-large.
Reference: "If an enterprise were to run an app in an external Cloud and wants to connect that to their systems of record in their own datacenters, they might want to consider the same platform in their data centers." Source: Bert Armijo: Pain in the aaSemantics
Public Cloud: A cloud computing environment that is open for use to the general public, whether individuals, corporations or other types of organizations. Amazon Web Services are an example of a public cloud.
Reference: Gerrit Huizenga: Um, Just who is managing your public cloud?
Cloud Provider: An organization that makes a cloud computing environment available to others, such as an external or public cloud.
Reference: "Some workloads, such as application testing and training, are prime candidates for early deployment to a cloud provider due to their transient nature and high Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)." Source: John Janakiraman: Deploying Your Existing Applications to the Cloud
Cloud Enabler: A general term that refers to organizations (typically vendors) who are not cloud providers per se, but make available technology, such as cloudware, that enables cloud computing.
Cloud-Oriented Architecture (COA): An architecture for IT infrastructure and software applications that is optimized for use in cloud computing environments. The term is not yet in wide use, and as is the case for the term "cloud computing" itself, there is no common or generally accepted definition or specific description of a cloud-oriented architecture.
Reference: James Urquhart: The Principles of Cloud Oriented Architecture
Cloud Service Architecture (CSA): A term coined by Jeff Barr, chief evangelist at Amazon Web Services. The term describes an architecture in which applications and application components act as services on the cloud, which serve other applications within the same cloud environment.
Reference: Jeff Barr: The Emerging Cloud Service Architecture
Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): A term coined by Reuven Cohen, CEO and founder of Enomaly. The term describes a concept that is similar to, and derived from, the familiar concept of a Virtual Private Network (VPN), but applied to cloud computing. It is the notion of turning a public cloud into a virtual private cloud, particularly in terms of security and the ability to create a VPC across components that are both within the cloud and external to it.
Reference: "A VPC is a method for partitioning a public computing utility such as EC2 into quarantined virtual infrastructure. A VPC may encapsulate multiple local and remote resources to appear as a single homogeneous computing environment bridging the ability to securely utilize remote resources as part of an seamless global compute infrastructure." Source: Reuven Cohen: Life in the Cloud: Virtual Private Cloud
Cloud Portability: The ability to move applications (and often their associated data) across cloud computing environments from different cloud providers, as well as across private or internal cloud and public or external clouds.
Cloudsourcing - As defined by Dion Hinchcliffe: "Leveraging services in the network cloud to provide external computing capabilities, often to replace more expensive local IT capabilities.Cloudsourcing can theoretically provide significant economic benefits along with some attendant trade-offs. These trade-offs can include security and performance. The term "cloud" represents a set of external services on a 3rd party network, usually the Internet. The services can represent raw computing, storage, messaging, or more structured capabilities such as vertical and horizontal business applications, even community. These services are delivered over the network, but generally behave as if they are local." Read an overview of cloudsourcing by Dion Hinchcliffe.
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