I recently gave the keynote address at a Kansas City symposium on cloud computing. So when I saw this article, my interest was piqued. The author believes that cloud computing is devouring itself. Um, alright. I guess I can buy the premise. But I think the author may be too absorbed with the technical layers of the infrastructure rather than focusing on the real transformation.
From my vantage point (as a consumer and as a technologist), I see this wave of transformation as being more about business and less about technology. Maybe even more important is the fact that tech-centric companies are moving from a capex-centric budgeting model to an opex-centric budgeting model.
What does this imply? First, it means that businesses are seeing IT as fundamental to their future. But while it is fundamental, it is no longer a strategic differentiator. Indeed, most companies are frustrated after spending thousands of dollars (or millions or billions) on IT capital without any real strategic benefit. The cloud allows a company to abandon capex investments in favor of opex outlays. This means that companies can be nimble – assuming that the cloud vendors are nimble enough to meet their customers’ needs.
But the larger and more fundamental implication of this capex/opex migration is that businesses are moving to an even more short-term focus. With a capex focus, companies were thinking about tax advantages and long-term viability. With an opex focus, they are looking at short-term return to the owners/shareholders. This does ensure that a company is competitive as long as it is agile.
But are we abandoning the future by focusing even more acutely on the short term? I am not certain. It does mean that on a micro-level, individual companies are trusting their future to their partners. On a macro-level, we may not be losing future investment streams to other countries. But we are pushing capital investment into the hands of a smaller number of companies that will be managing public or private clouds on behalf of other companies.
If this is indeed what is happening, then the savvy investor will need to look at hosting providers within the tech sector as these companies will be the real capital aggregation points. I’m looking at HP, Rackspace and Amazon being some of the biggest players in this space. And I would throw Salesforce.com into the mix as a software aggregation point.
Tag: cloud computing
Platform Pivot Possibilities
Anyone who has read my musings before already knows that I have loved technology for a very long time. You are also aware that I’ve used many different forms and flavors of technology. The list of operating systems is quite long. On the server side, I’ve used: Univac Exec 8, IBM MVS, IBM VM/ESA, IBM MVS/ESA, IBM z/OS, SunOS, Solaris, Irix, DG-UX, HP-UX, IBM AIX, Windows NT, Win2K(x), Linux and a host of other platforms. On the desktop, I’ve used: CPM, UCSD Pascal, HDOS, MS-DOS, PC-DOS, Windows (many flavors), MacOS (many flavors), Xenix, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux (many flavors) and a plethora of experimental OSes.
As you look at this list, you have to be thinking a few things:
- Roo is really old,
- Roo is fickle,
- Roo has been through a lot of tech transitions, and
- Roo is really, really old
So why would I recite this list? Am I building a new resume? [No, I’m not.] Am I a preening, arrogant technology elitist? [Yes, I am. But that’s not the reason I recorded the list.] I wrote the list because I’m becoming convinced that it is time for yet another technology pivot.
There are some big trends that are becoming absolutely obvious:
- Computing technology is for everyone. So it must necessarily be simple and bullet-proof. Over the past three years, I have deployed more “appliance” devices at home than I have deployed computers. Yes the appliances are computers. But for the average consumer, they are plug and play functionality. This includes: set top boxes, wireless routers, wireless extenders, wireless printers, wireless cameras, wireless phones, wireless monitoring systems, etc.
- Everything is becoming mobile. Computers are getting smaller. They are embedded in everything (including my heart). And they are increasingly becoming disconnected from fixed structures (like an office or a home).
- We are finally starting to see new user interfaces. Just as the keyboard was displaced by the mouse, the mouse is now being displaced by human touch. Haven’t we had pen computing for almost a decade? Yes, we have. But the iPhone made touch computing ubiquitous. More importantly, touch is not the only new user interface. Speech recognition is becoming ubiquitous as well. I can now talk to my phone and place calls (or write emails). I can now talk to my car (or its GPS) and get driving directions. With speech and touch replacing the hands and fingers that were tethered to a swivel chair, we are accelerating the move towards mobility.
- Retail purchasing and provisioning are finally reducing the need to go to the store. It is very possible to sit in your chair at home and order anything for delivery right to your door. I won’t go into the moral impacts of promoting such sedentary lives. But I do think that this change is transforming the way that we live – and the computer systems that we utilize.
These trends (and a few other minor trends) are allowing new competitors to jump into prominent positions. And these changes are putting strains on older competitors.
The big boys do see these trends. Microsoft recognizes these changes. And I think that they are trying to compete in these spaces. But their corporate identity (based on sales pros getting commissions) is becoming outdated. Their corporate ethos allowed them to miss the entire music resurgence that Apple inspired. Sure, Microsoft is now in that business. But not before Apple seized the entire market. The Zune is cool. And the Zune market is feature-complete. But the battle was lost because Microsoft was trying to protect their existing channel model.
The Microsoft phone strategy has been equally anemic. They did indeed recognize the mobility trend. But Windows Mobile was incomplete and clunky. Can WP7 and its successors thrive? Uh, using the number ‘7’ in your name won’t repeat the Windows 7 success. Did Microsoft have a chance? Yes. Can they seize market from both Google and Apple? Sure, but they are taking table scraps from their competitors. And their corporate heritage is holding them back. Android has succeeded because it is repeating Microsoft’s PC success: Google has built an open platform.
Microsoft isn’t the only company at a crossroads. Apple is also at a crossroads. Their model of retail purchase via iTunes and delivery to a desktop device is now under assault. The iTunes infrastructure has always used the desktop as the hub of your music experience. But staying with that model would be like staying with high-end audio equipment. Sure, some audiophiles still have a stylus and all of their other component gear. But component audio was replaced by compact discs and then by PC audio.
The new model is to buy the rights to the music and to store the music remotely. This allows you to access your content anytime and anywhere. You don’t have to be at your desktop. You don’t have to stream from that same desktop. And you don’t have to sync with that desktop. You store your licensed content in the “cloud” and then stream it to wherever you want to play it. For me, this meant that I could stream some cool music to Meredith’s outdoor wedding site while we decorated that site. It also means that I can have my entire library available while I’m at work or in the car or on my bike.
And as of this morning, I’ve now switched all of my podcast content from my desktop (and iTunes) to my mobile device. I’m playing with both Doggcatcher and Google Listen. I haven’t chosen my final podcast catcher, but the choice to push content to my mobile device is now made.
That’s a horribly long setup to the real point of this article: I have finally broken the musical cord that tied me to my desktop computer. And last year, I severed the cord related to web content browsing. For me, this mobility push has been thanks to Google and Android. For others, they are thanking Apple and iOS. But the trend is obvious: cloud-based music is yet another desktop tether that can be severed. And with cloud-based services like file storage (via Google Docs, or Dropbox or any number of other tools), I can snip yet another tether.
Think of a bundle of helium-filled balloons. I’m slowly snipping the strings that hold them down. And I think I may soon be cutting the last of the ties that hold me to my desktop computer. Once I can effectively type on a mobile device, I may be able to come out of the cave where my desktop computer is connected.
The final straw will be whenever I purchase a tablet. And when that happens, I will be free of both Microsoft and Apple. I may end up being dependent upon new vendors (like Google or Amazon). But it is just about time to change things up in my computing ecosystem. I can’t wait for yet another technology transition.
-Roo
Amazon Cloud Drive Musings
After uploading all of my Amazon MP3 purchases to my Amazon Cloud Drive, I used almost all of the 5GB that Amazon provided. I felt a little cheated because I made these purchases through Amazon. Amazon is even making you offers of additional storage for new MP3 purchases. Since I can see the record of all of these “legacy” transactions on my Amazon account, why couldn’t Amazon honor these purchases?
And then it struck me: Amazon is killing many birds with a single stone.
- If you purchase and leave your music on Amazon, then Amazon saves a lot of money. They can keep a single copy of the song in their storage farm. And then they just point your Cloud Drive pointer to this original content. If you have a really popular album, then they save multiple instances of storage. And these savings apply to transmission costs as well. Why download 100 or 1,00 or 10,000 copies of a song to thousands of customers? Cut out the storage costs and cut out the download costs. [Note: The transmission costs do occur on the back-end whenever you listen to the music. In fact, each time you listen to the music, you and Amazon are incurring that download.]
- Amazon can layer any number of services back into this offering. They can include cover art, and all sorts of other metadata. And they can add things over time.
- Amazon is storing the content – so they control it. This may not sound like much. But I suspect that this is a big deal to their content partners. For content that Amazon vends and stores, there is no real issue. But if a customer uploads content and it turns out that the content is obviously unlicensed, then Amazon has rights regarding content embargoes, content filtering and even content elimination. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon does content analysis on behalf of their content partners.
And none of these benefits accrue for older purchased content that would need to be reloaded back to Amazon.
But Amazon is risking very little by not addressing legacy purchases. They have a much bigger issue that they must address head-on: customer perception. Amazon is risking a lot based upon their belief that customers won’t mind having their content stored for them. I’m not certain if this is a good bet or not.
People get positively possessive about things that they have purchased. They want to use it in all sorts of ways. For example, I like to include song snippets in videos that I’ve bult for the kids and their sports teams. I would be upset if I had paid for content and couldn’t use it. In fact, I would consider that a violation of fair use. Not having access to this content in any way that I want (and at any time that I want) may result in some very dissatisfied customers.
For my part, I am still unsure about having “rights” to something without having anything substantial. Thus far, I only have two movies purchased via Amazon Video on Demand. [Note: I’ve also completed my first Amazon MP3 purchase that is stored exclusively on Amazon’s servers.] Yet I have dozens of digital movies on my media server. And I have hundreds of DVD and Blu-Ray discs in a cabinet. And I have thousands of digital music files on my media server. I could certainly buy more “rights” to other content that is stored off-site. But it just doesn’t seem the same to me. Proximity equals control and control equals confidence.
As I think about it, I like the Amazon Kindle model a little bit better. I do have the rights to books I’ve ordered. And I can view them anywhere – as long as I download them first. [Note: I do wonder why Amazon isn’t streaming book content as well as music content as it is less bandwidth intensive.] Either way, I feel very connected to the Kindle content – wherever it is. I think that this is because I have something to touch – i.e., the Kindle itself.
But I’m sure that Amazon customer studies have been through all of this. I am sure that they have recent data that suggests that younger customers are more comfortable with less concrete content. It’s just old farts like me that want to have something that is a little more tangible.
In a few years, all of this will be moot. Content will be stored in the cloud. And you won’t have direct and personal access to it – except via a technology broker (like Amazon). And that situation has the little “Lost in Space” robot (that is inside my head) screaming “Danger, Will Robinson.”
I am also reminded of the Doctor Who episode entitled “The Long Game.” In this episode, people have to pay for “access” to important information. The more you pay, the more “access” you receive. Surely this is not the future of computing. I certainly hope not.
-Roo
Does Amazon Have the Whole Enchilada?
For those who have read my musings for some time, you’ll know that I use a lot of Amazon services.
- I have purchased music from Amazon for many years. Why would I use Amazon’s music service when iTunes owned the market? Because I really believe in competition. And I really believe in good prices. And I really believe in digital freedom. Consequently, I’ve bought many dozens of albums from Amazon’s music service. And recently, I’ve purchased from both my home computer and my Android phone.
- I’ve also used Amazon’s Video service for a few years. Amazon decided that they would boldly venture into the same market that Netflix and Blockbuster had already captured. I originally chose Amazon because they weren’t Apple. But then I began to use their service more fully. And I realized that because they weren’t Apple, they were intrinsically better.
Yeah, that’s an exaggeration. But not by much. I bought a Panasonic Blu-Ray player. And it included streaming from Amazon VOD. Because both Amazon and Panasonic had an established history of leveraging open source technologies, it was a natural harmony. And as my Viera Cast capabilities grew, so have the Amazon VOD capabilities – especially with the Amazon prime membership that my wife has.
But while I’ve had Amazon VOD for about two years, I haven’t really exploited it much until I had the right wireless infrastructure at home. Now that I have that in place, it’s been wonderful using the Amazon service. I can get almost any video I want whenever I want it. And if I choose to buy it, then Amazon has provided a video locker to store the digital content in. - Since getting my Android phone last year, I have been waiting for Amazon to open up their own Android market. This week, they finally made it official and started vending apps using their retail purchasing engine. I haven’t bought a lot of apps from them yet. But if they provide the same application re-installs that the Google market does, then I may switch my purchases to Amazon. [Note: I really love automatic reinstallation of apps from the Android market. Every time that I switch ROM’s, I need to reload my system. So this is a sticking point for me.]
I’ve used a lot of “cloud-based” storage in the past. While at Microsoft, I tinkered with SkyDrive. BTW, this was a revolutionary concept that suffered from a horrible implementation. [Note: That is quite typical for many Microsoft technologies. They can always out-market you on technology that they acquire. And they can almost always build really cool new things. But they oftentimes have trouble building and marketing first-generation technology.]
But when SkyDrive didn’t seize the market, the most notable cloud-based storage tool in the market became DropBox. DropBox got a lot of the technology right. And they really captured a chunk of the geek market. Indeed, Cindy and I have used DropBox for several years. And it has been a wonderful success whenever she has needed a collaborative storage platform for her master’s degree classwork. But like SkyDrive, DropBox never made a big enough splash in the market to begin to seize the consumer marketplace.
And now it’s Amazon’s turn.
I REALLY love the cloud storage offering that Amazon released this week. If you’ve had your head in the clouds (or had your head stuck somewhere else), then I will tell you that the Amazon service is called the Amazon Cloud Drive. I love the name. It leverages the notion of the cloud (as popularized by Microsoft ads) and adds to it the simple and well-understood notion of the “drive” as storage. Hence, Cloud Drive may well be a marketing winner.
And the Cloud Drive offering is fairly complete. You can use it on your PC or Mac. And you can use it on your phone. And you can use it on a tablet. So far, it seems to really “sing” with music-based files. Of course, that makes sense as music files are the largest commodity that will be stored. It will be months (or maybe even years) before videos will become a ubiquitous on the service. So adroit mastery of music files hits the Amazon sweet spot.
And they have chosen a good niche for the amount of free storage. It is larger than either DropBox or SkyDrive. The current offering is 5GB for free. I suspect that Apple and Google may try and best this with a 25GB offering. But we’ll have to see. The folks at Forbes think that the first major reply will be to up the storage limits. If that happens, I would bet that Amazon will respond. That might be a fun price war to watch.
So far, I really like the first volley in the impending digital storage wars. Like the folks at Forbes, I see Apple and Google jumping in on this. And I think that Google may just buy DropBox. They don’t need the DropBox tech. But they may want the customers and the buzz. But I also think that you may see some other folks jumping in. I do believe that Microsoft may burnish and re-launch SkyDrive. If they do, this might be hella fun.
And I really think that storage vendors and media player vendors are going to want to get in on the action. While they may not be able to make a complete offering themselves, it will be nice to see how they are used as channel providers to the bigger players.
So what will it take to win? Winners (and survivors) will need the following:
- They will need capital to purchase and implement the vast quantities of storage that may be required.
- They will need established data center management skills to make the cloud-based storage initiative viable.
- They will need marketing to get the message to customers
- They will need partners for channel depth and diversity of correlated features/capabilities.
- They will need digital content.
- They will need a retail channel (with a strong purchasing and delivery engine).
Google has many of these. I do think that they lack diverse content – although YouTube does help. What they really need is some content partners – like Sony???
Apple has some of these. Nevertheless, they lack a robust and diverse partner ecosystem. Yes, they have lots of partners. But they re so closed that they are technologically inbred. And they don’t have a lot of online storage already in their pipeline. Yes, they sell content. But they don’t really store it for their customers. They move it to their customers’ devices.
Amazon has most of these (except for the brand identity across many markets). They do have all of the pieces in place. But no one knows that. They have content. They have storage. They have the retail channel. But they need critical mind-share in the consumer marketplace
I think that the market can bear all three of these big players – for now. And Amazon is first out of the gate. If they can capture enough early market, they may be the big winner.
I just wish that I could get “credit” for all of the Amazon MP3 purchases I’ve already made. I hate to move all my stuff right back to them – and then have to buy additional storage. It’s not fair! Wah! Wah! Wah!
-Roo
Center of the Universe? Meh, Bleh or Ewww?
Google is taking an increasingly central role in all of my computing. [Note: Please take a look at a few of my recent posts.] Here is the quick list:
- All of my personal email is processed via GMail. This includes my ISP email that I pull via GMail. And the introduction of offline capabilities only locks me further into the Google camp.
- 99% of my searches use Google.
- I consume 95% of all of my RSS feeds using GReader. The other 5% is processed using Yahoo! Pipes.
- I use Chrome over 80% of the time. I still use Firefox (for some of the extensions I love). And I still play with both Opera and Safari. But these will dwindle, not grow.
- I’m beginning to use Latitude for my location-based activities. I’m not sold on it yet. But Brightkite is going to have a tough time keeping me.
- I use GTalk as one of several IM ecospheres I routinely frequent for personal communications. This is even more important as my company will (in all likelihood) interconnect its enterprise IM solution to the public Jabber infrastructure via the GTalk servers. Personally, I believe that XMPP will soon become the modern-day equivalent to SNMP (the protocol that unified all email systems globally).
- I’m using iGoogle as a portal to all of these services. The current iGoogle actually has some very nice features. It has certainly improved greatly in the last two years. And the integration of GReader and Latitude make it far more compelling than it was a year ago.
- I used to run this blog on Blogger (a Google asset). But when I joined Microsoft three years ago, I had to drop Blogger. Of course, squatters came in and took my old blog address. So when I left Microsoft, I started to run this blog on WordPress. Actually, I like WordPress a lot more. When I transition to a site on my own domain, I will still be using WordPress. But Blogger (Google) has a huge number of active blog sites. And the fact that it is a free service will bring people to Blogger and get them hooked on Google tools and Google advertising.
- Over the past year, Google has been a pivotal player in the Open Social movement. And they are achieving an even great role in open/federated authentication. With their work on OpenID, they will be one of the three top players in any federated authentication solution.
It is clear that Google has a huge postition in my universe. And that position is growing, not shrinking. With more and more Google assets in common use, there is a defniitve gravitational “pull” associated with these computational bodies. Indeed, the gravitational well of Google is getting larger and larger. For example, if I had the spare change for a new phone (and no time left on my current contract), then I think I might pick up a GPhone rather than an iPhone.
This is becoming quite reminiscent of the place Microsoft began to take in the early and mid-nineties. Is Google becoming the next Microsoft? Gosh, I don’t want to be the millionth person to discuss that hypothesis. But it might be worth looking at Google as the next IBM. IBM had a lock on an entire platform (the mainframe). Every decision that was made within the corporate data center had to factor in the current and future blueprints from IBM. And it sure looks like Google is more and more capable of exerting this kind of influence – especially as cloud-computing evolves into a reality.
At this time, Google is a key vendor of some important client technologies. And Google is a key player as a vendor of infrastructure services and capabilities. Google is also a new and increasingly important player in communications. And Google is practially the only player in search-based advertising.
So what’s next for them? Is it hardware? I don’t think so. They don’t mind specifying standards – like their handling of the GPhone. They won’t build it – but they’ll design and direct it. Is it software? Well, I’d have to answer yes and no. They will build the software and then distribute it. But they will do this as a means of providing a platform for ad-based revenue. And right now, Google is able to monetize all of their software and standards investment via a simple advertising tax they impose on nearly every platform. Will they focus on services? Hmmm. That might be interesting. But I doubt that they have the stomach for that – especially in a market that is shrinking – not growing.
Is Google a Microsoft or an IBM? Who really knows the answer to that question. But should Google be watched by federal regulators? I would have to say yes. While I don’t think that Google is exercising monopoly power to the disadvatnage of others (either competitors or customers), I do think that they have the means to do so. But will the current governement (as controlled by the Democratic party) have the stomach to play watchdog over a company that is known to fund many a Deomocratic pet project? Now there is an interesting question.
-Roo