Ireland has set many of milestones so far with respect to the Cloud. We've our first dedicated cloud computing third level course, our Government has talked about a Cloud Strategy & the importance of Cloud Computing to Ireland, we had Irish businesses bought over by large international companies because of their head start in the Cloud, we've had venture capital companies invest into Cloud computing businesses. Now Ireland's Cloud contributions face something that has been coming for some time, carbon taxes tangibly harming its growth potential.
Ireland however, will not be alone. It's biggest & nearest trading partner also seems set to introduce a carbon tax in its budget later this year. While Ireland has already had an carbon tax in place since our Novermber 2010 budget, it looks set to increase under pressure from our EU/IMF deal, which has already been outlined in a Department of Finance published paper.
In 2007, it was estimated that the I.T. industry as a whole contributed about 2% of the carbon emissions in the world according to a Gartner report. That put it on par with the Aviation industry, which is constantly under-fire from the Green movement on its eco-record. Gartner said the solution was fewer servers, better management of resource consumption, increased virtualisation, & better capacity planning.
In 2007, when Cloud was slowly taking off here in Ireland, that sounded great. It made for compelling sales patter. It made for a great eco-friendly story to sell the cloud with, when the idea of carbon taxes was being introduced. It was a great time to sell the concept of the 'Green Cloud'.
The Green Cloud has been a concept that has existed as long as the idea of Cloud has. Greenpeace however in 2010 showed an example of the real problems that Cloud Computing faces in terms of its environmental impact. It also highlighted that if Cloud Computing is now going to be the driver of the I.T. industry, it must also influence how the energy that is to power it is sourced. Michael Dell in an interview with Forbes Magazine said that "I.T. is the engine of an efficient economy, it can also drive a greener one."
As the demand for Cloud Computing increases, multiple cloud providers have opened for business in Ireland in the last twelve months. Wirtualisation companies have taken off, & gathered in the market. With these will come an increased demand for data centre space. This increasing data centre space requirement will see an increase requirement for the provision of power for the infrastructure, as well as cooling systems, power supply fail safes such as generators (usually diesel) & battery systems. All of these are an eco-warrior's bane. Again, the Greenpeace report looked at the greenhouse gasses development from increase data centre creation, & it wasn't a pretty picture being painted.
It also showed that companies in the U.S. like Google led the way when it came to energy sourced from renewable sources, but Yahoo! was the clear stand-out with nearly one third of its energy used coming from renewable sources.
But how does this affect Ireland? These companies (Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Google, IBM, HP, Intel etc), have invested significantly in the country, provided thousands upon thousands of jobs, & Ireland still is heavily dependent on 'Brown Power' (oil/coal/fossil fuels etc). We still have issues in making better use of freely available resources to us to exploit so we can shift our dependency away from fossil fuels, thereby reducing our energy imports, which would in turn allow us to reverse the role, & become a significant energy exporter.
Each day, almost twenty times our energy needs is washed against our shores & still Ireland procrastinates in the area of renewable energy. Yes, we have a number of wind energy projects. We've one of the highest growth rates for this in the world, but no-where near what could be achieved. This comes down to horrendous planning laws, & poorer administration of our planning system in general. In some instances, wind farms don't get built by their developers unless there is a confirmation of guaranteed connection to the national grid, & the entire development project remains contingent on the fact there is absolutely no guarantee of connection to the grid, which seems foolish.
With Cloud Computing increasing in Ireland as we move forward in being a hub for these services to Europe & the world, our greenhouse gasses & carbon emissions will increase. These increases will become subject to these increased carbon taxes.Costs of these services will increase, hamper their ability to be competitive while other nations have greener power sources, & benefit in the market along with lower unit costs of service delivery. This may leave Ireland missing its place on the Cloud gravy train.
If we are to pursue our national agenda & interests in Cloud Computing, Ireland as a whole must make our energy strategy towards shifting to more renewable energy sources in Ireland an integral component of that framework. Commercially, it would be ideal to have a paradigm shift towards more of the 'free-air-cooling' datacentres like Microsoft's own here in Ireland, or others adopting FaceBook's own recently made-public datacentre & servers model.
The issue of datacentre green credentials & its service platforms 'being green' to grow with this rapidly expanding market is really a small part of an even larger global Cloud issue that Ireland will have to confront head on with its notoriously expensive costs to do business. Lower costs for Cloud services for suppliers & end users is a must to be competitive in what is a global service arena given the nature of the Cloud. The green side of it however is not an issue for tomorrow. It's an issue that should have been resolved earlier this morning. We're now in the afternoon without a comprehensive plan or answers, or idea of a solution with the clock still ticking.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Monday, August 1, 2011
Episode 11: No, the answer is not 'Cloud'.
In the last week I've had some really interesting conversations about Cloud Computing with some acquaintences of mine. While a good portion focussed on the technical aspects such as the 'true' public cloud, what is perceived as public cloud, & the reality of public cloud actually really being private clouds, there was an aspect of the conversation that kept coming back up; market perception, marketing & of course, those all important sales numbers.
When I think of my own experience in selling cloud solutions to various people whether they were guys starting up a web-based business or cloud-services business, or media companies, or even large multinational businesses who were brave enough to jump into the Cloud, alot of the time the USP was the fact it was 'Cloud' & all that goes with that; scalability, utility resourcing/billing, resiliency etc etc.. That was all fine & good when it was solutions that were going head to head against traditional infrastructure-based solutions.
But, right now we're right at the cusp with a Cloud revolution already underway. The stories of 'I went Cloud, & my business went stratospheric also' while few & far between, do exist. But, we're now at the stage where 'Cloud' is no longer really acceptable as a USP. Nor is the ideal of 'Something-As-A-Service'. Something provided as a 'Cloud' must be a solution that gives a better quality of life as an end result.
A good example of how quality of life is almost of absolute paramount importance is 'Office365'. In Ireland, Microsoft are pushing this like crazy with radio advertisements etc., of how you too can have your office in the Cloud (I realise this is something I covered in a blog in June, but I'll not labour on this point too much). Microsoft Office is the most widely used piece of Officeware right across the Globe whether it's home users, business users or students. In short, it's been a stalwart product for the Redmondians. It does exactly what you need at every level of user from basic to power user alike.
Now, the argument for Office365 is compelling; no longer worry about keeping your office software up-to-date, access your office software & documents anywhere & so on. They tell you front & centre with the marketing it's office in the cloud. Now that's all very well, but how does the quality of life of moving from say a desktop office license to Office365 work for a basic, low end user of Office? The quality of life is practically non-existent if they move to Office365 from a desktop license of Office.
In trying to be clever, Redmond totally missed the point of why Google Docs is successful, & that the Googleplexians have absolutely nothing to fear, & why they are more likely to convert people from desktop versions of Microsoft Office to Google Docs. Microsoft made their product ridiculously difficult to use, totally unintuitive, & giving users as a result a total disimprovement in their quality of life. The pricing model is difficult to get to grips with & small businesses are going to be 'living on a prayer' when it comes to support (online forum support will not make Bob from SmallBusiness Ltd 'feel the love').
It just looks more like Balmer signed off on a project for the sake of it being a Microsoft contribution to the growing Cloud market in a desperate attempt to try keep up with more agile, inspired & user savvy solution providers out there. In essence, cloud for clouds-sake. If big guys like Microsoft are getting this so blatently wrong, then the odds are very rich that smaller companies with an eye on some of the change off the lower end of that big USD$150bn market valuation too are heading for a rude awakening.
I think the example of Microsoft Office365 as 'businesses embracing the cloud' is a really poor example. The numbers of businesses placing their e-mail with Google's G-mail, or people using SalesForce, or the business adoption rates for Apple's iPad & ultimately their use of iTunes' Cloud services are far more telling, but they're not 'sexy stories' that sell magazines, or business news section, or Cloud monthly periodicles online or in paperform.
The truth here really is Cloud in its integration & deployment should be almost anonymous or go un-noticed. That is the absolute true point to & of cloud computing; scaleable, easy deployment without any impact on the end user or them noticing. I mean, yes there are the self-agrandising press-releases of 'Hey, we went cloud, we're awesome & now our customers are awesome too!'. That's par for the course, & shouldn't be mistaken for an indicator for success, or an indication for the existence of a Cloud solution making people's lives better.
For some people Cloud is part of a solution, or not even a solution at all, as the problem with Cloud is that at a certain point in your scaling, the cost becomes absolutely prohibitive, & the technological ability to scale becomes a joint issue of technological & fiscal prohibition. Cloud adoption must be about more than a solution for now to a business, it must be about how it will serve the business now, next week, next month, next year & even in the next five years.
Moving platforms is expensive, costly, is fraught with many things that can hurt your business. If you're trying to shave costs right now, ask yourself what are the costs to get off the platform you're moving to, & what are the lock-ins to your growth using it. Saving cents that ultimately costs you dollars or euros later is not good economy. Do not be bullied into going cloud because the 'sales guy says so'. Sometimes the sales guy just wants to 'A.B.C.' (Always Be Closing), & knows the longer term revenue from you on their platform is more important to him than to your business. Solutions must be the square peg for the square hole, not a sphere that happens to also fit that hole.
When I think of my own experience in selling cloud solutions to various people whether they were guys starting up a web-based business or cloud-services business, or media companies, or even large multinational businesses who were brave enough to jump into the Cloud, alot of the time the USP was the fact it was 'Cloud' & all that goes with that; scalability, utility resourcing/billing, resiliency etc etc.. That was all fine & good when it was solutions that were going head to head against traditional infrastructure-based solutions.
But, right now we're right at the cusp with a Cloud revolution already underway. The stories of 'I went Cloud, & my business went stratospheric also' while few & far between, do exist. But, we're now at the stage where 'Cloud' is no longer really acceptable as a USP. Nor is the ideal of 'Something-As-A-Service'. Something provided as a 'Cloud' must be a solution that gives a better quality of life as an end result.
A good example of how quality of life is almost of absolute paramount importance is 'Office365'. In Ireland, Microsoft are pushing this like crazy with radio advertisements etc., of how you too can have your office in the Cloud (I realise this is something I covered in a blog in June, but I'll not labour on this point too much). Microsoft Office is the most widely used piece of Officeware right across the Globe whether it's home users, business users or students. In short, it's been a stalwart product for the Redmondians. It does exactly what you need at every level of user from basic to power user alike.
Now, the argument for Office365 is compelling; no longer worry about keeping your office software up-to-date, access your office software & documents anywhere & so on. They tell you front & centre with the marketing it's office in the cloud. Now that's all very well, but how does the quality of life of moving from say a desktop office license to Office365 work for a basic, low end user of Office? The quality of life is practically non-existent if they move to Office365 from a desktop license of Office.
In trying to be clever, Redmond totally missed the point of why Google Docs is successful, & that the Googleplexians have absolutely nothing to fear, & why they are more likely to convert people from desktop versions of Microsoft Office to Google Docs. Microsoft made their product ridiculously difficult to use, totally unintuitive, & giving users as a result a total disimprovement in their quality of life. The pricing model is difficult to get to grips with & small businesses are going to be 'living on a prayer' when it comes to support (online forum support will not make Bob from SmallBusiness Ltd 'feel the love').
It just looks more like Balmer signed off on a project for the sake of it being a Microsoft contribution to the growing Cloud market in a desperate attempt to try keep up with more agile, inspired & user savvy solution providers out there. In essence, cloud for clouds-sake. If big guys like Microsoft are getting this so blatently wrong, then the odds are very rich that smaller companies with an eye on some of the change off the lower end of that big USD$150bn market valuation too are heading for a rude awakening.
I think the example of Microsoft Office365 as 'businesses embracing the cloud' is a really poor example. The numbers of businesses placing their e-mail with Google's G-mail, or people using SalesForce, or the business adoption rates for Apple's iPad & ultimately their use of iTunes' Cloud services are far more telling, but they're not 'sexy stories' that sell magazines, or business news section, or Cloud monthly periodicles online or in paperform.
The truth here really is Cloud in its integration & deployment should be almost anonymous or go un-noticed. That is the absolute true point to & of cloud computing; scaleable, easy deployment without any impact on the end user or them noticing. I mean, yes there are the self-agrandising press-releases of 'Hey, we went cloud, we're awesome & now our customers are awesome too!'. That's par for the course, & shouldn't be mistaken for an indicator for success, or an indication for the existence of a Cloud solution making people's lives better.
For some people Cloud is part of a solution, or not even a solution at all, as the problem with Cloud is that at a certain point in your scaling, the cost becomes absolutely prohibitive, & the technological ability to scale becomes a joint issue of technological & fiscal prohibition. Cloud adoption must be about more than a solution for now to a business, it must be about how it will serve the business now, next week, next month, next year & even in the next five years.
Moving platforms is expensive, costly, is fraught with many things that can hurt your business. If you're trying to shave costs right now, ask yourself what are the costs to get off the platform you're moving to, & what are the lock-ins to your growth using it. Saving cents that ultimately costs you dollars or euros later is not good economy. Do not be bullied into going cloud because the 'sales guy says so'. Sometimes the sales guy just wants to 'A.B.C.' (Always Be Closing), & knows the longer term revenue from you on their platform is more important to him than to your business. Solutions must be the square peg for the square hole, not a sphere that happens to also fit that hole.
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