Question the Cloud, Question the Experts
January 31, 2011
InfoWorld’s Bill Snyder’s “Beware the Fool’s Gold in the Heated Mobile and Cloud Predictions.” is an in depth analysis of Gartner’s rosy predictions. Finally, a real news publications questions azure chip consultants’ estimates. Let’s hope the critical thinking continues. If you are not familiar with the lingo of Beyond Search, “azure chip” is shorthand for low- or mid-tier consultants, consulting firms that hire retired “experts”, and unemployed journalists, English majors, and Web masters. Each of these groups position themselves as experts, and the knowledge-challenged farm yard animals gobble up the corn and kitchen scraps. Beyond Search has lots of English major and other no-good varmints as well, but, hey, we have to have some fun, don’t we?
Cloud computing and mobile apps are hot topics right now, as Gartner’s research has found. In fact, as portable tools, they go well together.
Though respectful of Gartner, Snyder warns against sinking too much time and money into transitioning to the cloud just yet, especially since analysts have observed inhibited server virtualization.
With regard to mobile applications, there is no doubt that downloads are up and will continue to rise. However, since most are free and the rest are about a dollar, revenue will only be so juicy.
Snyder summarizes the issues:
“I don’t question the trend, but I do question the rate of change. As I’ve said before, the PC era isn’t over — yet — and neither is the day of the enterprise app. We’re certainly moving away from the old paradigms and business models. You’d be blind not to see that. But it’s all too easy to see theoretical money pouring from the skies. . . . Stay skeptical — and beware fool’s gold.”
This article is full of stats to back up Snyder’s opinion. Be sure to check it out.
Cynthia Murrell January 31, 2011
Big Data Action from Cloudant
January 26, 2011
Do you have problems searching big data stored in CouchDB? Cloudant has discovered the solution to your problem by taking CloudDB’s full text indexing and applying them to search. CMS Newswire provides the details in, “Cloudant Has Found the Answer to Searching Big Data.” Three MIT particle physicists created Cloudant when their old tools to weren’t enough to manage their research.
“Cloudant’s product is the only one that integrates search directly into CloudDB to provide real-time access to data. Many of their customers were storing content in two places CouchDB and in Solr; Cloudant saw an opportunity to provide an easier, low cost solution.”
The new program combines the open-source search platform, Lucene, with CloudDB to make customized, easy searching. Cloudant is available free for hosting customers with an upgrade due in February 2011.
Whitney Grace, January 26, 2011
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Clearwell to the Cloud, Microsoft Style?
January 17, 2011
The EWeek Storage Station blog warns us that “Clearwell Now Enabling E-Discovery in Microsoft Cloud.” Cloud storage is one of the latest trends going around, but if you have sensitive information stored on it (like where you hid Jimmy Hoffa’s body or the fable Amber Room stolen by German soldiers) you should take it off.
“Clearwell Systems, which specializes in finding necessary data for litigation and audit purposes, announced this week that the latest version of its e-discovery platform now allows customers to discover information in emails and SharePoint docs from Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite.”
Companies like Clearwell are using software to track and collect cloud data through ediscovery processes that can be easily gathered for legal purposes. Cloud computing is a growing marketplace, so there are millions of potential files that contain information to help in investigations. Clearwell is one of the first companies in this new market, so congratulations are in order for them.
Whitney Grace, January 17, 2011
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Poobah Tilts at Azure Windmill
January 11, 2011
Before reading my comments, point your browser thingy at “Gartner Gets It Wrong With Cloud Quadrant.” Read it. Note this set up paragraph, worded to avoid litigation but worded to make the azure chip outfit “pundits” steam:
The Gartner Magic Quadrant isn’t an entirely accurate, or even objective, measure of who’s who in any given IT field. If you haven’t heard, the analyst firm’s ranking system has been called out as being everything from merely subjective (as opposed, I guess, to being only partially subjective like every other list of industry leaders) to rewarding vendors that have paid Gartner the most money for its services. I can’t comment on these allegations, nor do I care to. What I can say is that with its latest Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service and Web Hosting, Gartner just flat got it wrong.
So what’s the subject?
Cloud computing, one of the many, many next big things in computing. Never mind that timesharing and online services have become part of the furniture for living. Cloud computing is a big deal. Gartner sees the cloud revolution one way and the author of the “Gets It Wrong” write up another. I am not sure either is correct. The one true way is a tough path to discern.
Where did Gartner allegedly slip off the gravel path and tumble in the muck? Here’s the passage I noted:
Initially, it seems inconceivable that anybody could rank IaaS providers and not list Amazon Web Services among the leaders.
Yeah, mon. Gartner excludes outfits who don’t match their criteria. Don’t like it. Well, there are some options, which I will leave to your imagination.
What outfits are leaders in cloud ystuff? My view is just check out the vendors in lists like this one. You can get some color on this Y Combinator list here.
🙂
What happens when poobahs fight? Clarity gets trampled. Loss of clarity, just another way to say marketing.
Stephen E Arnold, January 11, 2011
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Amazon and Its Fast Moving Cloud
January 3, 2011
Several years ago, I noted that Google’s technical papers described features and functions that were evident in Amazon’s actual services. At that moment, I realized the Google had lost its chance for a cloud utility play. Now the GOOG may come roaring back, but with the legal friction increasing, Amazon has some clean air through which to float its big, fast cumulus cloud. Sure, Rackspace is a competitor to Amazon, and every vendor is yammering about the cloud. But right now, the Amazon has a big PR push underway. Now, to be fair, the Amazon cloud generated a nasty storm with its hardware crash the other day. Not good.
That’s why the PR guns are firing. You can see two examples of “good news”. Navigate first to the “I love Amazon” sky writing from Netflix. “Why We Use and Contribute to Open Source Software” and “Netflix Touts Open Source, Ignores Linux.” Netflix, of course, is flying in the Amazon clouds. The other PR example is a bit of a downer for library types who expect books to be available. Point your browser thing at “Amazon Erases Certain Books on Kindle Due to Content.”
But despite the good and bad PR, Amazon managed to pull of an interesting and useful technical coup. “Announcing VM Import for Amazon EC2” said:
VM Import enables you to easily import virtual machine images from your existing environment to Amazon EC2 instances.
Useful for many applications. Crash recovery. I think so.
Net net: The others in the cloud race need to kick into a different gear. Google? A question, “Can you get that airplane aloft?” Storm clouds rushing in.
Stephen E Arnold, January 3, 2011
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BitTorrent Top Searches in 2010
January 2, 2011
Short honk: I am not into BitTorrent. You may be like the goose. Or, you may not. Regardless of one’s affinity or lack of it, the list of the most searched words and phrases warrants a quick look. Navigate to “BitTorrent Zeitgeist: What People Searched For in 2010.” You can determine your “with it” score. Just tick off the referents you know. My score was a dismal 11 out of 100. Obviously 66 year olds are clueless about the content available on BitTorrent. Those with a more agile life outlook may find the list either thrilling or disheartening. What is a “hot tub time machine.” See what I mean. The phrase is number 100 on the list. Number 1: Inception. Go figure.
Stephen E Arnold, January 2, 2010
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Salesforce and Chatter
December 20, 2010
I was surprised when Salesforce hired a former journalist to push collaboration and attention to Salesforce staff and clients. I was interested in ZDNet’s alliterative touch in Chatter Free in “With Free Version, Salesforce Chatter Changes Collaboration, Communication Processes for Companies.” Chatter Free premiered at the Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference. It is a free social messaging platform that can be used by any employee within a company. It has features similar to Twitter and Facebook and endeavors to be used in atypical environments. More than 60,000 professional companies use Chatter at the moment.
“What was especially interesting was to hear the customers talk about the significance of Chatter when it comes to collaboration within the organization. Some spoke of launching Chatter as an experimental service and getting immediate feedback from employees who were worried that the experiment would end. Others suggested that an employee without access to Chatter is like having an employee without access to e-mail – unable to communicate and collaborate in real-time.”
Employees have found they are e-mailing less and Chatter has increased work productivity. To many, Chatter is becoming the preferred method of communication in business organizations. However, information sharing in the Intel community may be moving in the opposite direction. Just a reminder that point of view is important. And what’s that old adage, “Loose lips sink ships”? What could leak from an enterprise social cloud service? Nothing.
Whitney Grace, December 20, 2010
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Arnold Comments about Exalead
December 20, 2010
A couple of times a year, I make a swing through Europe. I visit vendors, get demos, and talk with engineers about the future of search. In Paris on November 30, 2010, I answered questions about my views of Exalead. As you know, Exalead is a unit of Dassault Systems, one of the most sophisticated engineering firms in the world. You can get my view of Exalead by navigating to this link. Here’s an example of the observations I made:
“Exalead delivers applications that fit seamlessly and smoothly into customer workflows,” said Arnold. “When I spoke with Exalead customers I heard only: ‘This system works,’ ‘It’s easy to use,’ ‘It’s stable,’ and ‘I don’t have to chase around.”
In the interview, I point out that Exalead’s engineering makes it possible to embed search and information access in applications. Instead of using key words to unlock the information in a traditional search and retrieval system, Exalead makes the needed information available within existing work flows and applications. Access extends across a full range of content types and devices, including smart phones.
I have tracked Exalead for a number of years, and it continues to distinguish itself in information access by going “Beyond Search.” Here at Beyond Search we use the Exalead platform for our Overflight service.
Stephen E Arnold, December 20, 2010
The Exalead engineering team bought me lunch, a plus in Paris. Too bad about the snow and ice, though.
Google, Multiple Operating Systems, and the Mad Scramble
December 19, 2010
I thought politicians changed their tune. Navigate to “The Cloud OS” and you will see that even wizards and former Math Club members can crawfish with the best of the Washington DC big wheels. Xooglers have, in my opinion, a schizophrenic knife edge. On one hand, Google gave them the moxie to be world beaters. On the other hand, Xooglers are no longer part of the Google.
The point of “The Cloud OS” is, well, it’s okay for Google to be Google. I don’t have any problem with a multi billion dollar company doing what it thinks furthers the shareholders’ interests. I am ambivalent about Google’s multiple operating system approach. I think most users don’t know an operating system from a solid state drive. Computing is on a trajectory to work like toasters. I don’t have a strong opinion about that shift either.
Here’s a passage from the write up that caught my attention:
One way of understanding this new architecture is to view the entire Internet as a single computer. This computer is a massively distributed system with billions of processors, billions of displays, exabytes of storage, and it’s spread across the entire planet. Your phone or laptop is just one part of this global computer, and its primarily purpose is to provide a convenient interface. The actual computation and data storage is distributed in surprisingly complex and dynamic ways, but that complexity is mostly hidden from the end user.
The big question is, “Who decides what does a function and when?” The answer, in my opinion, is the Math Club, Xooglers, and others of that ilk. The operating system is indeed irrelevant to the user. What matters is the control of the information utility.
Forget Google. Forget Gmail. Forget whatever hook one uses to think about a giant company controlling information plumbing. The physics of information work like the good old physics taught in grad school. In systems, strange attractors grab old and structures emerge. The idea for online information is to “own” one of those emergent structures. Other, smaller structures exist, but the physics of information becomes interesting when one of these big, emergent systems snags “energy”. In information one can measure energy in money, clicks, volume of data, or some other situational metric. The idea, however, is that once a big emergent structure becomes manifest, that structure calls the shots.
So the chatter about operating systems is useful but it is like talking about a behavior at a boundary condition. The main event is the emergent system which may contain substructures. Although interesting, the substructures are subordinate to the main idea: control.
What’s this mean to Facebook, Google, and similar companies? A two class world. The builders and the users. Medieval, Dark Ages, paternal? These terms are indeed suggestive. The focus is the system, not the players. The information of physics suggests constant change and when new structures emerge a bit of desperation becomes discernable. Today’s dominant system may be tomorrow’s LTV or Enron because permanence is tough when bytes collide. The mad scramble is a nibble of revisionism, but instructive nevertheless. Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, December 19, 2010
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Xoogler Predicts the Future of Chrome
December 14, 2010
Quite a bomb shell in “Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit: Chrome OS Will Perish or Merge with Android.” I don’t know if the prediction will come true, but the notion of two separate operating systems struck me as very expensive and quite confusing. Mr. Buchheit was Mr. Gmail. He then became Mr. Facebook. Now he is Mr. Banker. Xooglers are adaptable. A Xoogler even runs AOL, and that is a fascinating operation to monitor.
But back to the Android Chrome prediction. In my opinion, the key passage in the write up was not the killer tweet; it was:
Google to date has posited that Android and Chrome OS, its two operating systems, address different markets that will remain distinct despite the growing convergence of the devices they run on (netbooks, tablets, smartphones). Google co-founder Sergey Brin, however, has stated in the past that Google will likely “produce a single OS down the road”. Ironically, the key architect of the Chrome OS project, Matthew Papakipos, left Google over the Summer — for a job at Facebook, Paul Buchheit’s most recent former employer.
What will happen? I have learned that predicting Google’s activities to be a difficult challenge for even the most astute prognosticators. I confine my predictions to big fuzzy observations that are never really right or wrong. Quite a goosely skill I might add.
Observations about Android and Chrome are in order:
- Two of anything offers more choice, but it also means that in a Math Club environment one will have a higher score and, therefore, be more relevant. In short, two generates a list. The winner is the item with the most “votes”. No subjectivity involved. Google is not into subjective search results.
- Developers who pick the wrong horse are losers. Now I know the theory that Google code works like a champ on anything Google. Well, yes and no. Chrome is a cloud thing and Android is more of a gizmo thing at this time. I sure wouldn’t want to be the developer who backed the wrong horse. Maybe that unified, locked down Apple approach has some charm.
- Users are not likely to know an Android from a Chrome. The whole Google-is-into-hardware baffles me as well. Apple may end up looking pretty good. Even though the iPad and the iPhone are two different gizmos which means hassles for developers, the look and feel of the iPad and the iPhone is pretty similar. Users probably want consistency and sizzle more than detailed information about the operating system.
In short, Google threw out two “innovations.” Google now has to find a way to deal with the opportunities and downside of moving forward in a way that generates substantive revenue. Meanwhile, little old Apple just keeps cranking out gizmos people want and can use without knowing much, if anything, about the plumbing. User experience maybe?
Stephen E Arnold, December 15, 2010
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