An old business plan for establishing value-added-service-operator (VASO) in China.
iBIT was incubated by Morning Forest back in 2002 and had a wholly owned subsidiary in China for this experiment.
Online distribution has become an important channel for the European hotel industry. On average, we estimate that in 2013 already more than one out of five overnights was generated by Online Booking Agencies (OTA), mainly through Priceline (booking.com, Agoda), Expedia (incl. hotels.com, Venere) and HRS (incl. hotel.de, Tiscover) which together account for nearly 90% of this market.
These are some of the results of a joint survey conducted between January and April 2014 by 26 European hotel associations coordinated by HOTREC, the umbrella association of Hotels, Restaurants and Cafés in Europe, in collaboration with the Institute of Tourism (ITO) of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland Valais (HES-SO Valais) in Sierre.
Demystifying Cloud Economics - How to Build an Investment Case for Scale Migr...Amazon Web Services
While Cloud is fast becoming the new normal for organisations of all sizes, many IT executives & budget owners struggle to articulate the business value of moving to the Cloud in terms that resonate with the Board and broader C suite. In this session, we will talk through the impact cloud computing is having on the overall IT cost base, not just the infrastructure layer. We will also cover what the typical non-cost benefits are, and how they can be measured and communicated. Finally we will provide a framework that can be used to calculate the transformation costs associated with moving to Cloud.
Speaker: Conor McNamara, Head of Cloud Economics and Enterprise Strategy, Asia Pacific, Amazon Web Services
An old business plan for establishing value-added-service-operator (VASO) in China.
iBIT was incubated by Morning Forest back in 2002 and had a wholly owned subsidiary in China for this experiment.
Online distribution has become an important channel for the European hotel industry. On average, we estimate that in 2013 already more than one out of five overnights was generated by Online Booking Agencies (OTA), mainly through Priceline (booking.com, Agoda), Expedia (incl. hotels.com, Venere) and HRS (incl. hotel.de, Tiscover) which together account for nearly 90% of this market.
These are some of the results of a joint survey conducted between January and April 2014 by 26 European hotel associations coordinated by HOTREC, the umbrella association of Hotels, Restaurants and Cafés in Europe, in collaboration with the Institute of Tourism (ITO) of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland Valais (HES-SO Valais) in Sierre.
Demystifying Cloud Economics - How to Build an Investment Case for Scale Migr...Amazon Web Services
While Cloud is fast becoming the new normal for organisations of all sizes, many IT executives & budget owners struggle to articulate the business value of moving to the Cloud in terms that resonate with the Board and broader C suite. In this session, we will talk through the impact cloud computing is having on the overall IT cost base, not just the infrastructure layer. We will also cover what the typical non-cost benefits are, and how they can be measured and communicated. Finally we will provide a framework that can be used to calculate the transformation costs associated with moving to Cloud.
Speaker: Conor McNamara, Head of Cloud Economics and Enterprise Strategy, Asia Pacific, Amazon Web Services
Work-life balance is too important to be left in the hands of your employer.
Nigel Marsh lays out an ideal day balanced between family time, personal time and productivity — and offers some stirring encouragement to make it happen.
Roselinde Torres describes 25 years observing truly great leaders at work, and shares the three simple but crucial questions would-be company chiefs need to ask to thrive in the future.
6 ways to simplify work and be more productiveTED Talks
Today's businesses are increasingly and dizzyingly complex — and traditional pillars of management are obsolete. As a result, it falls to individual employees to navigate the rabbit's warren of interdependencies. Yves Morieux offers six rules to overcome it and build a "smart simplicity."
Why we all need to practice emotional first aidTED Talks
We go to the doctor when we feel sick. So why don’t we see a health professional when we feel emotional pain: guilt, loss, loneliness? Guy Winch makes a compelling case to practice emotional hygiene — taking care of our emotions, our minds, with the same diligence we take care of our bodies.
A TED Talk by Dan Cobley, who is certain that physics and marketing have a lot of in common. He uses Newton's second law, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the scientific method and the second law of thermodynamics to explain the fundamental theories of branding.
Ben Ambridge walks through 10 popular ideas about psychology that have been proven wrong and uncovers a few surprising truths about how our brains really work.
Choosing easier. How businesses can improve the experience of choosing.TED Talks
Less is more. One of the biggest problems in today's world is choice overload. We all want customized experiences and products — but when faced with 700 options, consumers freeze up. Sheena Iyengar demonstrates how businesses (and others) can improve the experience of choosing.
Carrier Cloud Opportunity - TM Forum Management World Dublin 2011Randy Bias
Cloudscaling Co-Founder and CTO Randy Bias shows the world's largest telcos that carriers must embrace web-scale cloud to be successful in the apps that will drive mobile, web and emerging markets. Legacy "clouds" are essentially virtualized and automated IT, and they do not offer the cost performance or business agility these hyper-growth segments demand.
Press and analyst conference presentation from Juniper's "New Network" launch -- unveiling new silicon, systems and software to reinvent the experience and economics of networking -- at NYSE Euronext, October 29, 2009
Keynote presentation for KT's Cloud Frontiers 2011 (actual conference was in December 2010).
Contains a lot of early thinking on disruption patterns, cloud computing, and how Republic of Korea can be an effective global cloud competitor.
Work-life balance is too important to be left in the hands of your employer.
Nigel Marsh lays out an ideal day balanced between family time, personal time and productivity — and offers some stirring encouragement to make it happen.
Roselinde Torres describes 25 years observing truly great leaders at work, and shares the three simple but crucial questions would-be company chiefs need to ask to thrive in the future.
6 ways to simplify work and be more productiveTED Talks
Today's businesses are increasingly and dizzyingly complex — and traditional pillars of management are obsolete. As a result, it falls to individual employees to navigate the rabbit's warren of interdependencies. Yves Morieux offers six rules to overcome it and build a "smart simplicity."
Why we all need to practice emotional first aidTED Talks
We go to the doctor when we feel sick. So why don’t we see a health professional when we feel emotional pain: guilt, loss, loneliness? Guy Winch makes a compelling case to practice emotional hygiene — taking care of our emotions, our minds, with the same diligence we take care of our bodies.
A TED Talk by Dan Cobley, who is certain that physics and marketing have a lot of in common. He uses Newton's second law, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the scientific method and the second law of thermodynamics to explain the fundamental theories of branding.
Ben Ambridge walks through 10 popular ideas about psychology that have been proven wrong and uncovers a few surprising truths about how our brains really work.
Choosing easier. How businesses can improve the experience of choosing.TED Talks
Less is more. One of the biggest problems in today's world is choice overload. We all want customized experiences and products — but when faced with 700 options, consumers freeze up. Sheena Iyengar demonstrates how businesses (and others) can improve the experience of choosing.
Carrier Cloud Opportunity - TM Forum Management World Dublin 2011Randy Bias
Cloudscaling Co-Founder and CTO Randy Bias shows the world's largest telcos that carriers must embrace web-scale cloud to be successful in the apps that will drive mobile, web and emerging markets. Legacy "clouds" are essentially virtualized and automated IT, and they do not offer the cost performance or business agility these hyper-growth segments demand.
Press and analyst conference presentation from Juniper's "New Network" launch -- unveiling new silicon, systems and software to reinvent the experience and economics of networking -- at NYSE Euronext, October 29, 2009
Keynote presentation for KT's Cloud Frontiers 2011 (actual conference was in December 2010).
Contains a lot of early thinking on disruption patterns, cloud computing, and how Republic of Korea can be an effective global cloud competitor.
Presentation at Osaka Institute of Technology Technofrontia on Electronics.
Introduction on the latest trends in ICT space. Thoughts about the role of technology and the importance of innovation for Japan economy. Introduction of the the idea of Global Democracy as a product of Information Revolution.
20-minute speed-run presentation on what metrics and web analytics information startups need to collect. Focuses on companies with a lean methodology, and the kinds of data that will actually help them achieve product/market fit before the money runs out.
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 3DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 3. In this session, we will cover desktop automation along with UI automation.
Topics covered:
UI automation Introduction,
UI automation Sample
Desktop automation flow
Pradeep Chinnala, Senior Consultant Automation Developer @WonderBotz and UiPath MVP
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Elevating Tactical DDD Patterns Through Object CalisthenicsDorra BARTAGUIZ
After immersing yourself in the blue book and its red counterpart, attending DDD-focused conferences, and applying tactical patterns, you're left with a crucial question: How do I ensure my design is effective? Tactical patterns within Domain-Driven Design (DDD) serve as guiding principles for creating clear and manageable domain models. However, achieving success with these patterns requires additional guidance. Interestingly, we've observed that a set of constraints initially designed for training purposes remarkably aligns with effective pattern implementation, offering a more ‘mechanical’ approach. Let's explore together how Object Calisthenics can elevate the design of your tactical DDD patterns, offering concrete help for those venturing into DDD for the first time!
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
JMeter webinar - integration with InfluxDB and GrafanaRTTS
Watch this recorded webinar about real-time monitoring of application performance. See how to integrate Apache JMeter, the open-source leader in performance testing, with InfluxDB, the open-source time-series database, and Grafana, the open-source analytics and visualization application.
In this webinar, we will review the benefits of leveraging InfluxDB and Grafana when executing load tests and demonstrate how these tools are used to visualize performance metrics.
Length: 30 minutes
Session Overview
-------------------------------------------
During this webinar, we will cover the following topics while demonstrating the integrations of JMeter, InfluxDB and Grafana:
- What out-of-the-box solutions are available for real-time monitoring JMeter tests?
- What are the benefits of integrating InfluxDB and Grafana into the load testing stack?
- Which features are provided by Grafana?
- Demonstration of InfluxDB and Grafana using a practice web application
To view the webinar recording, go to:
https://www.rttsweb.com/jmeter-integration-webinar
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
Generating a custom Ruby SDK for your web service or Rails API using Smithyg2nightmarescribd
Have you ever wanted a Ruby client API to communicate with your web service? Smithy is a protocol-agnostic language for defining services and SDKs. Smithy Ruby is an implementation of Smithy that generates a Ruby SDK using a Smithy model. In this talk, we will explore Smithy and Smithy Ruby to learn how to generate custom feature-rich SDKs that can communicate with any web service, such as a Rails JSON API.
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
4. Cloud computing is that
you can have all the
resources you want...as
an infinite amount of
capacity living outside in
the cloud on the
Internet for you to use.
Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon
http://thenextweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/thenextweb-0485-2.jpg
5. In 10 years, what compute
tasks will still be running on
machines you own?
17. Is security an accelerator or
a brake?
Reason to avoid clouds
23%
Reason to move to clouds
43%
No opinion
34%
http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/102309_IT_Firms_Skeptical_About_Cloud_PEER_1_Study
18. Network Operating Management
Software
equipment systems tools
Sold to
Enterprises MSPs
28. OO promised so much
Object oriented (OOD) techniques and ADA (1985-95)
Increased NASA code reuse by 300 percent
Reduced all systems costs by 40 percent
Shortened development cycle time by 25 percent
Slashed error rates by 62 percent
29. But fell so short
Only 15-20% of FDD software written in Ada
Naysayers resisted the language change
Wanted to stay with what they knew (FORTRAN)
Had reusable components maintained by others
Evangelists didn’t help
Promised too much too soon
Avoided root issue: Lack of environment
30. What are the characteristics
of apps that work well in the
cloud?
31. What does a CIO need to do
to encourage a cloud-
compatible developer
mindset?
32. How long before in-house
computing is irresponsibly
expensive?
Unlike enterprises, clouds are focusing on cost
reduction and IT efficiency as their core business
33. Do we really need standards
yet?
Loose consensus and working code trumps
committees every time
FAIL HAIL
OSI HTTP stack
ATM TCP/IP
WS-X REST
36. A bit about Bitcurrent
Analysis and research of emerging technologies
Cloud computing, web performance, human/computer
interaction, emergent communications technology
49. How to think about costs
800,000 Variable
Fixed
Upfront
600,000
Cost
400,000
200,000
0
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
50. How to think about costs
800,000 Variable
Fixed
Upfront
600,000
Cost
400,000
200,000
0
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
51. How to think about costs
800,000 Variable
Fixed
Upfront
600,000
Cost
400,000
200,000
0
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
52. How to think about costs
800,000 Variable
Fixed
Upfront
600,000
Cost
400,000
200,000
0
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
53. IT costs: Upfront
Capital investment (often, “capex”)
Don’t overlook rewriting, retooling, retraining, data
migration
For many enterprises, this is just the cost of periodic
upgrades. They already have equipment.
54. IT costs: Fixed
Happen no matter what; a measure of leanness
May be shared with other activities, and therefore not
eliminated (this is often invoked in defense of jobs)
55. IT costs: Variable
Tied to delivery; a
measure of efficiency 500
Needs to be less
Servers per sysadmin
375
than the resulting
revenue or you’ll be 250
called a cost center
125
Enterprises
underestimate the true 0
costs of service delivery Enterprise Cloud provider
Barry Lynn of 3Tera
56. Clouds might seem pricey today
£30,000,000
£22,500,000
£15,000,000
£7,500,000
£0
Start up cost Year 2 Year 4 Year 6 Year 8 Year 10
Data Centre Cloud
2009 IDC analysis of running 100% of a big enterprise’s IT in-house vs on-demand
Used with permission. Copyright (c) IDC
57. Clouds might seem pricey today
£30,000,000
£22,500,000
£15,000,000
£7,500,000
£0
Start up cost Year 2 Year 4 Year 6 Year 8 Year 10
Data Centre Cloud
2009 IDC analysis of running 100% of a big enterprise’s IT in-house vs on-demand
Used with permission. Copyright (c) IDC
58. Clouds might seem pricey today
£30,000,000
£22,500,000
£15,000,000
£7,500,000
£0
Start up cost Year 2 Year 4 Year 6 Year 8 Year 10
Data Centre Cloud
2009 IDC analysis of running 100% of a big enterprise’s IT in-house vs on-demand
Used with permission. Copyright (c) IDC
59. Clouds might seem pricey today
£30,000,000
£22,500,000 Final score:
DC: £15M
Cloud: £26M
£15,000,000 After year 3,
cloud costs
exceed DC
£7,500,000 Even with 3-year
refresh cycles of 30%
DC remains cheaper
£0
Start up cost Year 2 Year 4 Year 6 Year 8 Year 10
Data Centre Cloud
2009 IDC analysis of running 100% of a big enterprise’s IT in-house vs on-demand
Used with permission. Copyright (c) IDC
64. But we’re deluded
£50,000,000 Year 6 requires build-
out for new facility +
expensive refresh due
DC reaches space to limited space
£37,500,000
capacity in year 3,
50% refresh to high-
end servers needed
£25,000,000
£12,500,000 Cloud costs are dynamic
so even if bad decisions
are made initially, capacity
can be ramped up linearly
£0
Start up cost Year 2 Year 4 Year 6 Year 8 Year 10
Data Centre Cloud
2009 IDC analysis of running 100% of a big enterprise’s IT in-house vs on-demand
Used with permission. Copyright (c) IDC
75. Are you negotiating with
cities & power companies?
“...Microsoft pays an annual utility bill just north of $13
million, which translates to just over 3.8 cents/kwh as
opposed to 5.7 cents/kwh for the ELP rate...”
http://www.virtual-strategy.com/Features/Microsoft-and-Google-Cloud-Computing-Dominance-Through-Renewable-Energy/-5.html
77. Idle
capacity,
lack of
automation,
etc.
IT server
costs
78. Idle
capacity,
lack of
automation,
etc.
IT server
costs
Private
cloud
costs
79. Idle
capacity,
lack of
automation,
etc.
IT server
costs
Ping, power,
pipe,
Private efficiencies
cloud
costs
80. Idle
capacity,
lack of
automation,
etc.
IT server
costs
Ping, power,
pipe,
Private efficiencies
cloud
costs Public
cloud
costs
81. So you won’t be building
your own data centers
70% of the Global 1000 must
“Modify their data center facilities significantly” by 2012
Increase energy from 35 to 70 watts/sq. ft (sometimes up
to 300 watts)
Gartner says to
Monitor energy use
Quantifying all capital and operation changes needed
Deploy virtualization and workload management tools
http://www.virtual-strategy.com/Features/Microsoft-and-Google-Cloud-Computing-Dominance-Through-Renewable-Energy.html
88. • 60 seconds per page
Desktop EC2 • 200 machine
Pages 17,481 17,481 instances
Minutes/page 1 1 • 1,407 hours of virtual
# of machines 1 200 machine time
Total minutes 17,481 • Searchable database
Total hours 291.4 26.0 available 26 hours
Total days 12.1 1.1 later
• $144.62 total cost
99. No straight answer
38% 47%
ITI “Unsure about adopting “Won’t consider the cloud in
cloud services” next 12 months”
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
100. No straight answer
38% 47%
ITI “Unsure about adopting “Won’t consider the cloud in
cloud services” next 12 months”
F5 Networks 82%
“In trial, implementation, or use of public clouds”
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
101. No straight answer
38% 47%
ITI “Unsure about adopting “Won’t consider the cloud in
cloud services” next 12 months”
F5 Networks 82%
“In trial, implementation, or use of public clouds”
“Implementing
cloud services”
60% 8%
CIO.com 29% “Actively researching (cloud on
“No interest in the cloud”
radar)”
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
117. Conclusions
Clouds make good economic sense
They aren’t an either/or
When you consider opportunities, not just costs,
they’re overwhelmingly compelling
But new cost tradeoffs emerge with elastic capacity
Here’s how one guy who should know—Werner Vogels of Amazon.com—describes it.
There’s always specialization along legal borders. Consider, for example, the Patriot Act
As a horde of angry librarians informed us in 2006, they’re specifically prohibited from letting you know when someone has looked at your data or behavior. For this reason, many countries won’t let certain companies use data storage or computation within other nations. So there may be a niche offering within your own country.
Remember Object-Oriented Programming?
Object oriented design (OOD) techniques and ADA (1985-95)
Flight Dynamics Division
Only a certain percentage of NASA’s coders could make that jump. With sharded, shared-nothing, distributed data, that may happen again.
15:10
If you want to post pictures or comments, use #Interop and #ECS
Yossi - I just wanted to let you know where I was staying at Burning Man (and urge all of you to go there!)
First of all: Let’s define the discussion.
If someone wants to have a conversation with me about clouds, they need to pick a tier, and a private or public model. Then we can compare facts.
If someone wants to have a conversation with me about clouds, they need to pick a tier, and a private or public model. Then we can compare facts.
If someone wants to have a conversation with me about clouds, they need to pick a tier, and a private or public model. Then we can compare facts.
If someone wants to have a conversation with me about clouds, they need to pick a tier, and a private or public model. Then we can compare facts.
If someone wants to have a conversation with me about clouds, they need to pick a tier, and a private or public model. Then we can compare facts.
Today, I mean these ones.
Now, let’s talk about cloud costs and ROI
Any cost model consists of three kinds of spending: Upfront money spent to kick things off; fixed spending that doesn’t change whether you sell one or a billion units; and variable spending associated with the amount you sell.
Any cost model consists of three kinds of spending: Upfront money spent to kick things off; fixed spending that doesn’t change whether you sell one or a billion units; and variable spending associated with the amount you sell.
Any cost model consists of three kinds of spending: Upfront money spent to kick things off; fixed spending that doesn’t change whether you sell one or a billion units; and variable spending associated with the amount you sell.
Any cost model consists of three kinds of spending: Upfront money spent to kick things off; fixed spending that doesn’t change whether you sell one or a billion units; and variable spending associated with the amount you sell.
Upfront costs are pretty straightforward. And with many enterprises at 10% utilization, virtualization can extend the lifespan of existing infrastructure substantially.
Then there are the fixed IT costs that you can’t avoid. Clouds can drop these, but if you have IT running internal systems, they won’t magically evaporate when things move to the cloud. What’s more, clouds mean new tasks for IT -- things like provisioning, managing policy, and so on.
The variable costs are where clouds are really strong. This stuff is the costs that increase with service delivery volumes. Cloud operators can handle 500-1000 servers per person (they have to!) and completely automate everything. They also focus on cost measurement and accounting, which is a luxury for many enterprises but a necessity for clouds. Management software is an afterthought for many IT departments; but it’s a competitive advantage for cloud operators
A naive look at clouds (intentionally naive, we should point out) from IDC says that clouds are expensive
A naive look at clouds (intentionally naive, we should point out) from IDC says that clouds are expensive
A naive look at clouds (intentionally naive, we should point out) from IDC says that clouds are expensive
A naive look at clouds (intentionally naive, we should point out) from IDC says that clouds are expensive
A naive look at clouds (intentionally naive, we should point out) from IDC says that clouds are expensive
A naive look at clouds (intentionally naive, we should point out) from IDC says that clouds are expensive
Remember: Google gets 38% server utilization, with insane effort. So this is likely unattainable. What’s more, cloud providers are competing, and may (assuming interoperability of some kind) reduce their costs, too.
Remember: Google gets 38% server utilization, with insane effort. So this is likely unattainable. What’s more, cloud providers are competing, and may (assuming interoperability of some kind) reduce their costs, too.
Remember: Google gets 38% server utilization, with insane effort. So this is likely unattainable. What’s more, cloud providers are competing, and may (assuming interoperability of some kind) reduce their costs, too.
Remember: Google gets 38% server utilization, with insane effort. So this is likely unattainable. What’s more, cloud providers are competing, and may (assuming interoperability of some kind) reduce their costs, too.
Remember: Google gets 38% server utilization, with insane effort. So this is likely unattainable. What’s more, cloud providers are competing, and may (assuming interoperability of some kind) reduce their costs, too.
Remember: Google gets 38% server utilization, with insane effort. So this is likely unattainable. What’s more, cloud providers are competing, and may (assuming interoperability of some kind) reduce their costs, too.
Remember: Google gets 38% server utilization, with insane effort. So this is likely unattainable. What’s more, cloud providers are competing, and may (assuming interoperability of some kind) reduce their costs, too.
Just how big are clouds? Consider that in July 2008, Microsoft revealed that it had 96,000 servers at the Quincy facility, consuming "about 11 megawatts"
More than 80% dedicated to Microsoft's Live Search and the remaining for Hotmail
In August, a really good discovery was posted to a blog called "istartedsomething.com":  a screen shot of a software dashboard that illustrates power consumption and server count at each of Microsoft's fifteen data centers, caught in a Microsoft video posted to their web site.
First, consider silicon. Look at the cost/capacity tradeoff of computing, as described by Moore’s Law.
Then think about another form of sand – glass. Then look at the cost/capacity tradeoff of networking. Netflix pays $0.06 to send a movie over the Internet today, and will pay $0.03 next year.
Finally, think about iron. And consider storage – which is dropping just as quickly.
This trifecta of computing, bandwidth, and storage are driving costs down dramatically. Every time Google builds a data center, it can do more than the last one did.
Cloud computing is on a breakneck ride to zero marginal costs because of sand, iron, and glass. This means the raw materials of clouds will be free -- or too cheap to bill -- for many of us. (if you want to know more about this, see Chris Anderson’s Free)
Consider a San Antonio, Texas facility from Microsoft.
http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p68-v39n1o-greenberg.pdf
if the data center takes the full load of 44 megawatts at a 90% load factor, Microsoft pays an annual utility bill just north of $13 million, which translates to just over 3.8 cents/kwh as opposed to 5.7 cents/kwh for the ELP rate.  To prove that these assumptions are in the ballpark, public documents from another SLP customer in the San Antonio area reveal that its overall utility rate is 3.7 cents per kwh.
Energy is a huge issue. Even Gartner’s recommendations for saving energy will only temporarily solve the problem at hand, because energy costs will have to be cut by more than 50% in order to keep up
Like electrical utilities, clouds are elastic—one machine for a hundred minutes, or a hundred machines for a minute.
They’re available quickly in convenient billable increments. All you need is a credit card and a phone number.
Clouds let IT focus on things that actually add business value. Very few companies have a competitive advantage because of their hardware infrastructure.
And they eliminate many of the tasks you really didn’t want to do anyway.
In it, he draws an analogy between the rise of electrical utilities and that of cloud computing.
Most of the enterprises I’ve spoken with use clouds as peripherals. In the same way we used to plug peripherals into our computers, enterprises plug clouds into their IT. They might have it for backup, or messaging, or content delivery, or for a specific business process. But to really harness the power of cloud computing, enterprises need to embrace it as more than just a bunch of things to plug into the organization. It needs to become part of their strategy.
One of the most interesting uses of cloud computing is time dilation. Okay, not really, but close: The Washington Post, needed to get all 17,481 pages of Hillary Clinton’s White House schedule scanned and searchable quickly. Using 200 machines, the Post was able to get the data to reporters in only 26 hours. In fact, the experiment is even more compelling: Desktop OCR took about 30 minutes per page to properly scan, read, resize, and format each page – which means that it would have taken nearly a year, and cost $123 in power, to do the work on a single machine.
Moved from their own storage to Amazon's S3 cloud storage system. They now have one petabyte of images and sold their own storage hardware on eBay
Insurance firm Kennedys and Rowanmoor Pensions claims to be saving more than £350,000 a year.
According to Rowanmoor Pensions, a similar cloud computing model is saving the organisation about £200,000 a year.
Main savings from: Being able to decommission
By providing applications, storage and computing power online, cloud computing enables firms to buy IT services as and when required without incurring long-term hardware and software maintenance costs.
Other cost savings come from reduced hardware requirements, no capital expenditure on software, and lower power consumption.
Sydney-based Fresh Produce Group has increased its net profit margin by 100 percent in the first 18 months of its implementation of NetSuite ERP, helping the company save approximately $1 million per year.
NetSuite replaced multiple software systems including a DOS-based financial system, which was actively used by only a handful of accounting staff, and Excel spreadsheets which were used to compile forecasting and inventory.
It has helped identify and eliminate overhead expenses, which is saving approximately $1 million per year."
many of the FPG team work away from an office environment, the organization required an Internet-based, Software as a Service (SaaS) model for 'anytime and anywhere' access.
Seventy of FPG's 100 employees are licensed on the system and can now see the business end-to-end, in real-time and play their part in providing better decision making.
Computer-aided design company AutoDesk wanted to offer some of their desktop software applications as an online service. They didn't know the size of the market and didn't know if it would be a successful business considering the high infrastructure costs. They could test the market at a much lower cost with cloud computing resources.
Vivek Kundra, the first U.S. chief information officer, said the government has been building multiple data centers, so many that about a quarter of its $76 billion IT budget goes to infrastructure. He noted that the Department of Homeland Security has 23 data centers.
As a result, he said, federal energy consumption doubled from 2000 to 2006
He said a revamp of the Web site for the General Services Administration was completed in one day and the site now costs $800,000 a year, compared to six months and $2.5 million a year that would have been expected using the government's traditional approach. And, he said, with cooperation from the IRS, the government's Free Application for Federal Student Aid can now be prefilled with IRS data at the click of a button, eliminating more than 70 questions and 20 screens.
Speaking at a press event at NASA's Ames Research Center Tuesday, Kundra said that the government could save a lot of money by using many of the Web-based and cloud technologies that are already available to consumers. It costs the U.S. Transport Safety Administration (TSA) $600,000 to set up a blog, he said. By contrast, consumers can get a Blogger account free.
"If in our lives, we can go online and provision Webmail within a matter of minutes, why must the government spend billions and billions of dollars on information that may not be sensitive in nature?" he said.
Kundra is hoping that the cloud will provide a way to streamline the government's annual $75 billion IT spending by using cheaper commercial hosting services and by using virtualization technologies to load more applications onto its servers.
Following up on Tuesday's Apps.gov launch, the government will roll out a number of pilot projects in 2010, making lightweight applications available to users. By 2011, federal agencies will start getting guidance on how they are expected to move to the cloud.
Government market research firm Input has revised its forecast for federal cloud-related spending upward; it now expects the government's cloud expenditures to grow from $363 million this year to $1.2 billion by 2014. "I think this is probably a conservative estimate, considering the push from the administration," said Deniece Peterson, an analyst at Reston, Va.-based Input.
The virtual stock market NASDAQ wanted to offer their users a service to replay market data. Their infrastructure were not set up to build that, and they estimated that to build it using traditional methods, it would cost $6m to $8m. Using cloud computing infrastructure, they built it for only $100, Vogels said.
German publisher Bild.de wanted to launch a citizen journalism video service. Their own IT department said it would take 9-12 months, but using cloud computing, they were able to build and launch the service in four weeks.
Although its revenue has dipped to $27 million, Wellington-based IT services company Fronde has squeaked out a full-year profit - thanks to a series of deals based around Salesforce.com and Google’s SaaS products, and Amazon’s cloud computing platform. In the year-ago period, Fronde had higher revenue - $31 million - but made a $2.9 million loss. The company’s debt reduced from a year-ago $3.7 million to $300,000. Chief executive Ian Clarke told NBR earlier this week, “We’ve made a modest profit but a fabulous turnaround.” Part of the move out of the red came from old fashioned cost controls (headcount reduced from 200 to 170 over the year), reduced overheads and productivity gains.
Fronde has been in the business of cloud computing - and integrating cloud, and non-cloud apps - for several years. In 2009, it’s seen the technology move toward the mainstream. Other recent highlights include venture capitalist, NZTE advisor and Power-by-Proxi boss Greg Cross joining Fronde’s board during April, and a major Filipino m-commerce deal struck by its Fronde Anywhere subsidiary. An Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) platform implementation has kept Fronde busy at one major account, and Mr Clarke sees a lot more business cloud computing coming up. Some projects expected to start have not. Some have started with reduced budgets.
In it, he draws an analogy between the rise of electrical utilities and that of cloud computing.
Jim Sivers reminded me recently of the paradox of choice. http://sivers.org/jam
Sheena Iyengar has been studying choice. For her research paper, “When Choice is Demotivating”,They set up a free tasting booth in a grocery store, with six different jams. 40% of the customers stopped to taste. 30% of those bought some.
A week later, they set up the same booth in the same store, but this time with twenty-four different jams. 60% of the customers stopped to taste. But only 3% bought some!
Both groups actually tasted an average of 1.5 jams. So the huge difference in buying can’t be blamed on the 24-jam customers being full. Lessons learned:
Having many choices seems appealing (40% vs 60% stopped to taste)
Having many choices makes them 10 times less likely to buy (30% vs 3% actually bought)
Surgeon Atul Gawande found that 65% of people surveyed said if they were to get cancer, they’d want to choose their own treatment. Among people surveyed who really do have cancer, only 12% of patients want to choose their own treatment.
Both groups actually tasted an average of 1.5 jams. So the huge difference in buying can’t be blamed on the 24-jam customers being full. Lessons learned:
Having many choices seems appealing (40% vs 60% stopped to taste)
Having many choices makes them 10 times less likely to buy (30% vs 3% actually bought)
Surgeon Atul Gawande found that 65% of people surveyed said if they were to get cancer, they’d want to choose their own treatment. Among people surveyed who really do have cancer, only 12% of patients want to choose their own treatment.
Both groups actually tasted an average of 1.5 jams. So the huge difference in buying can’t be blamed on the 24-jam customers being full. Lessons learned:
Having many choices seems appealing (40% vs 60% stopped to taste)
Having many choices makes them 10 times less likely to buy (30% vs 3% actually bought)
Surgeon Atul Gawande found that 65% of people surveyed said if they were to get cancer, they’d want to choose their own treatment. Among people surveyed who really do have cancer, only 12% of patients want to choose their own treatment.
Both groups actually tasted an average of 1.5 jams. So the huge difference in buying can’t be blamed on the 24-jam customers being full. Lessons learned:
Having many choices seems appealing (40% vs 60% stopped to taste)
Having many choices makes them 10 times less likely to buy (30% vs 3% actually bought)
Surgeon Atul Gawande found that 65% of people surveyed said if they were to get cancer, they’d want to choose their own treatment. Among people surveyed who really do have cancer, only 12% of patients want to choose their own treatment.
Both groups actually tasted an average of 1.5 jams. So the huge difference in buying can’t be blamed on the 24-jam customers being full. Lessons learned:
Having many choices seems appealing (40% vs 60% stopped to taste)
Having many choices makes them 10 times less likely to buy (30% vs 3% actually bought)
Surgeon Atul Gawande found that 65% of people surveyed said if they were to get cancer, they’d want to choose their own treatment. Among people surveyed who really do have cancer, only 12% of patients want to choose their own treatment.
Surgeon Atul Gawande found that 65% of people surveyed said if they were to get cancer, they’d want to choose their own treatment. Among people surveyed who really do have cancer, only 12% of patients want to choose their own treatment.
In it, he draws an analogy between the rise of electrical utilities and that of cloud computing.
There’s a basic equation in computing. Performance equals traffic divided by capacity. Put another way, more users and something gets slower. More machines and something gets faster.
This is an example of that relationship. As usage grows, performance gets worse.
Normally, IT adds capacity to a system and things get better.
But when if the capacity is infinite?
But when if the capacity is infinite?
But when if the capacity is infinite?
Then you set user experience (“under 1 second”) and the elastic platform adds capacity as needed. The only problem? The bill at the end of the month!
Joe Weinman (cloudonomics.com) should be required reading for some of this math.