Cloud is a System of Control

June 1st, 2009

Of course I’m biased… Bryan Doerr is my boss1 and a man that I greatly respect personally. But even considering my bias, I have to say that this is a great quote from his recent article at GigaOm, Cloud Computing: A System of Control:

…cloud computing isn’t cheap computing; it is the delivery of more control to enterprises so they can deliver IT services more affordably and efficiently.

This is the “dirty” truth: infrastructure costs money, and service providers don’t have any magic dust to make that fact obsolete. What providers do have is increased “buying power” and synergy due to large-scale multi-tenant operations. As well, an enterprise-class cloud provider has a focus on IT and the tools needed to operate as best-of-breed.

These are issues that businesses have historically invested in, just to build a platform to support their critical apps. But with the majority of apps running on common and well-established platforms this is “undifferentiated heavy lifting”2. By investing in enterprise-class cloud services instead of in-house platforms many enterprise IT shops can become more nimble, more focused on the issues and apps that drive their business, and ultimately lead their company to further competitive advantage.

1 - Nota Bene: This post is my own, is not sponsored, and has not been reviewed by anybody. My opinions, postings, and all other materials are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer (Savvis, Inc.) or of any other entity.

2 - Attributed to Werner Vogels (http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/), also see http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1466443.1466447 and http://blip.tv/file/471349

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Posted in Datacenters, Finance, Quotes, Technology, Virtualization | Comments

Flying Cars

May 27th, 2009

Driving to Raleigh, NC last evening I passed through Greensboro. Apparently there was a big project to move Interstate 40 to bypass the city and the new map details haven’t made it into my GPS, which I have lovingly named Fifi (short for Fiona). The effect was kind of fun; Fifi displayed my car zooming across open spaces as if it were flying… which brought to mind this image:

By the way, Amorphia Apparel has a ton of awesome shirts. I’d like one or more of each.

Posted in Random | Comments

Pointless Metrics: Server Count

May 16th, 2009

I just read http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/05/14/whos-got-the-most-web-servers/ which discusses how many servers are managed by different service providers. To use a term I recently learned: this is total e-peen. Seriously. With virtualization technology, the number of physical servers becomes less interesting as a metric. And neither physical or virtual servers illustrates the metrics that really count: how many people rely on the provider and the economic or social impact. Not that I have any idea what such a metric would look like, how to adjust for different types of applications, normalize for different software architectures (and efficiency), etc. Maybe for now server-count is the only sort of metric we could hope to agree on. *sigh*

Posted in Datacenters, Internet | Comments

Brains vs. Scripted Behavior

May 2nd, 2009

Leaving aside the details, I want to tell a story about AT&T’s DSL/Internet support. Being in the network industry by profession and possessing more knowledge than the average caller, I’m sure that the AT&T support processes aren’t designed for me. This was confirmed when I had to call them earlier today.

I had already looked at the problem and knew what I needed before I called. And if I had been able to talk with somebody that understood the topic then I could have been done in about 10 minutes. But instead I was talking to somebody that had a script to follow. On a few occasions I had to actually lead him to an answer or lie to him just to get him to move on to the next step. When I finally got the information that I needed, I flew through the rest of the setup and announced that it was working. He didn’t even know how to respond to that and asked me to go through to double-check a few things. In the end, I think he was more confused than me, and I was irritated. It took over an hour to resolve a small issue.

Which leads me to my point about scripted behavior and support desks. I know that we can’t all know everything, etc, and some process scripting is going to be necessary for real-world employees. But at some point it became common (or so it seems to me) for companies to accept scripting as a substitute for understanding. Company training focuses on process, back-office tools, etc, instead of educating staff about the product’s technology. And companies get away with hiring less-than-qualified employees.

Let’s face it, this leads to disposable employees and pissed off customers. So the employee suffers (outsourcing anybody?) and the company suffers (unless they’re a monopoly, I guess). Does anybody in management get this? Or perhaps it doesn’t matter. Because if I had called a help line for something I didn’t already understand then a script might have been just fine. Maybe most of society doesn’t understand most things, so most phone support employees can support most people. *shrug* Even if that’s true, I’m still irritated at AT&T.

Posted in Culture, Random | Comments

Road Trip/Business Travel

April 28th, 2009

I’m spending this week in Research Triangle Park (in North Carolina) working at one of Cisco’s labs here. This is an important stage of the project that I’ve been working on for the past year, finally coming to fruition. Things are going well so far and I’m looking forward to the next steps.

Even putting business aside, the trip has been nice. Instead of flying, I decided to travel here by driving over the past weekend. Normally a flight would be the default option, perhaps arriving on Sunday evening and flying home on Friday evening. That’s what my colleagues have done. However I’ve spent the past handful of years with “platinum” frequent-flyer status and I’m outright tired of airports, airplanes, the TSA, and the whole mess of flying. Besides, and perhaps most importantly, I find driving by myself to be cathartic. And in that respect this trip has not let me down.

I started driving from St. Louis late on Friday afternoon with the goal of reaching Paducah, Kentucky early enough to have dinner there. My wife was in Paducah with her mother and two sisters for the AQS Annual Quilt Show & Contest and I arrived just as their day was ending. Saturday I walked around the quilt show with them, which wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. ;) There were some beautiful quilts, and even some neat technology in the form of quilting machines. (I might even try to build one… as if I had free-time.) Saturday evening I left Paducah and drove to Lake Junaluska, NC, arriving around 2AM with my Out-of-Fuel warning light flashing, while listening to Phil Hartnoll’s Unsteady Waltz. Then, after spending a couple hours trouble-shooting the DSL Internet connectivity at the house there, I finished my trip on Sunday with a casual drive down into the piedmont and over to Durham.

The entire drive was done with the windows-down, enjoying the comfortable temperatures and lovely smells of springtime. In Tennessee the smell was of light flowers; North Carolina introduced the smell of pine. Both smells were enjoyable thanks to antihistamines. I listened to music through earphones (sound-isolating to overcome the roar of the wind). My soundtrack was all over the place, including Bill Laswell, Santigold, Muse, NERD, Hybrid, Orbital, Thom Yorke, Speedy J, Jamiroquai, Elliott Smith, Townes Van Zandt, and others. Even the timing was perfect with music, landscape, and the smell of the air working together. Pretty awesome.

Now in addition to looking forward to coming home to Emily, I’m also excited about the drive itself. Springtime is usually my favorite time of year, but this springtime is feeling especially good so far.

Posted in Music, Random, Work | Comments

Music of the Spheres

April 27th, 2009

No, I’m not talking astrology. (Musica Universalis) I’m talking wind-chimes. The most beautiful wind-chimes I’ve ever heard.

Music of the Spheres, Inc.

If I had $600 just laying around I would buy the Bass model. If I had money to burn I would buy the entire product line. I came across these in a little shop, in Highlands, NC this past Christmas holiday, and the sound still haunts me.

Posted in Music, Random | Comments

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