Tech Talk
2009 Forecast: Cloudy with a Chance of Windows
Columnist: Michael E. Duffy
January, 2009 Issue
You’re sure to be hearing a lot about “cloud computing” in 2009. So here’s a bit of “what it really means to you” to start out the new year.
Like Web 2.0 before it, the phrase “cloud computing” has rapidly expanded to include almost everything to do with using Internet-based computing and storage resources (the “cloud” in “cloud computing”): Software as a service (SaaS), utility computing, Web services, managed service providers, remote computing, and Web-based platforms and applications. Adding to the muddle, Microsoft recently announced its “Azure” services platform, which offers some cloud-based services, but still supports the desktop-based dominance of Windows and Office.
Regardless what may or may not qualify as “cloud computing,” you should be aware of its two basic thrusts: cheap computing and ubiquitous access.
Cheap computing
First, you can reduce or eliminate your need for powerful servers or massive disk storage arrays by using cloud-based equivalents. This is the function served by utility-computing providers like Amazon Web Services (aws.amazon.com) with its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3) products. It’s also true of SaaS applications like using Azure’s SQL Services instead of deploying your own database servers, or using Netsuite.com instead of running your own server to support accounting, marketing and sales. In both cases, you trade your servers and disks for ones maintained and worried about by a service provider. In the case of utility computing, you pay as you would for electricity: metered amounts of computer time or disk storage. In contrast, with SaaS, you typically pay by the number of users.
Here’s an example: One of the wonders of our age is the New York Times article archive. The archives from 1851 through 1980 are available for free as PDF files, constituting approximately 11 million articles. The newspapers themselves had already been scanned (a large project in and of itself), creating a 4-trillion-byte stack of images in TIFF format. As an image format, TIFF is not as friendly as PDF, so the Times faced the problem of converting 11 million articles. While converting one article is relatively quick and easy, doing it 11 million times adds up to a big job.
Of course, this is the sort of processing job that goes much quicker if you split it up onto multiple computers. Lots of them, say 100. Alas, buying 100 computers costs a lot of money. But what if you could rent those 100 computers for only as long as you needed them? Better yet, what if those 100 rented computers could be controlled over the Internet, so you didn’t have to set them up and plug them in (in other words, 100 virtual computers)?
That’s what one bright programmer at the Times, working alone, did with Amazon’s EC2 and S3 services. The programmer, Derek Gottfrid, first stored the 4 terabytes of TIFF source files on Amazon S3. Then he wrote the code to process a designated group of articles from TIFF to PDF, taking the source TIFF files from S3 and storing the resulting PDF files back to S3. He then fired up 100 virtual computers running that processing code on Amazon EC2.
Less than 24 hours later, the work was complete. Total cost (aside from the original article scanning and Gottfrid’s programming magic): $240. One hundred computers running for 24 hours at $0.10 per computer hour (which is what EC2 charges)—pretty amazing!
Of course, it still takes programming smarts to make something like this happen, but that obstacle will shrink over time. Forward-thinking business owners will ask themselves “What kind of things could my business do if powerful computers were (essentially) free, and I could get as many as I wanted for only as long as I needed them?”
Ubiquitous access
Second, you and your employees can exchange desktop applications for equivalent cloud-based applications accessed via Web browser. Instead of Microsoft Word and Outlook, you might choose to use Google Docs, Mail and Calendar.
The advantage is, you can access “your” applications and information from anywhere you have Internet connectivity. Collaboration may become easier with Web-based documents to which you control access. If your computer is stolen or destroyed, the potential for loss is reduced. And with new advances like Google Gears, it’s possible to work offline and synchronize with the cloud when you have Internet access; Google Docs maintains a revision history.
Should your business be cloud-based? The answer is, as always, “Maybe.”
The biggest challenge to moving your business to the cloud is the effort required to make the change. I can testify to that: I used Microsoft Word on my Windows laptop to write this column, as opposed to using a Web-based word processor like Google Docs or Writeboard from 37signals or Zoho Writer. It’s the way I’ve always done it, and it’s easy to stay in the same rut.
Which makes my point: Living in the cloud is, in large part, an attitude shift. Your information doesn’t live on your computer anymore, it lives in “the cloud.” That makes some people nervous, for reasons of both security (“What if someone else can access my data?”) and reliability (“What if I can’t access my data?”). Are you and your employees ready to make that shift?
For sure, don’t try making a change without having a “fat” (high-bandwidth) Internet connection for your business, such as a T1 or business cable. Nothing will kill adoption of a cloud-based app faster than slow user response.
The easiest way to start moving toward a cloud-based business is to look for cloud-based applications that can replace noncritical, desktop-based apps, or to choose cloud-based over desktop when selecting a new application. Even if you’re not ready to make the shift, you should at least be familiar with the offerings from Google, Zoho, Zimbra, and 37signals, so you know what’s possible.
And if you’re already using cloud-based services in your North Bay company, drop me a line to let me know how you got started and how it’s worked out.
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Michael E. Duffy