Google: We Can Be Avis, National Car Rental or an Off Airport Outfit Too
December 18, 2019
Quite a goal. Google wants to beat Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud. Err, isn’t Google a cloud centric outfit, or at least since it morphed from the cutesy Backrub into the behemoth it is today? What if Google doesn’t think it is a cloud business? Hmm.
The answer, of course, is Googley. Google has waffled a bit. The phones, the home helpers, and the mouse pads. But the company operates “out there”, from data centers in regular buildings to wonky containers which can be towed to a location where power is cheap and skills are hard to come by.
A series of stories is zipping around about Google’s new desire to become the big dog in cloud computing. Just like the PR program featuring Jeff Dean, the Google is starting to realize that it may have more in common with the low rent business of scalping tickets than with high technology outfits changing the way business does business.
That’s an interesting thought because it runs counter to the received wisdom that Google is the font of technology. Like the fountains in Rome, lots of work is needed to keep the fountains spouting water. Tourists don’t see Rome’s plumbing, and for good reasons.
The goal of knocking off Amazon and / or Microsoft (love that lawyer conjunction, don’t you?) will be achieved by 2023. That works out to 24 months. Microsoft’s NT project turned into a death march, and I think this goal is likely to follow the same trajectory.
First, Amazon and Microsoft are not standing still. Good old Microsoft is working overtime to make Azure stable and semi-coherent. How many search engines does one desktop software company need? How many analytics solutions? How many servers? These are questions Microsoft engineers are rushing to answer. The airplane is aloft, and making adjustments to an engine when the plane in in flight can be difficult when it has to operate in a hybrid mode and the ground stations can be crashed by a software update. Cool?
Plus, Amazon is moving along a different trajectory. The company is engaged in a multi front war, and it is less and less a cloud company. That bookstore in Nashville and the undoing of FedEx make clear that not even a mid tier state like Tennessee is exempt from the Bezos bulldozer.
Second, Google has not been particularly adept at sticking with projects over time. Examples range from the social media attempts, to the Alon Halevy semantic tools, and to some as simple as messaging services. The culture of incompleteness is a hurdle. Managers can fiddle with incentives and tweak the hiring processes. But the company is a bit like a flotilla of sailboats generally heading toward port when a bad storm presents itself. Everyone knows where to go, but there may be some delays. Delays when trying to knock off Amazon and Microsoft may not be desirable.
Third, there are lots of other companies which want to be the Avis and National to the Uber business. Oracle, down but not out. IBM, a bit of a clueless geriatric but still capable of surprises like its sales success in India, and dozens upon dozens of other companies.
Net net: The write up “Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud” is useful, but it contains one telling statement:
Google shifted headcount growth to its cloud platform sales and engineering teams.
What’s going to be the Google equivalent of Windows 10 updates which don’t work, arrive late, and kill some data? If it is ad systems, Amazon is going to get the best location in the airport to serve rental car customers.
Stephen E Arnold, December 18, 2019
Omni Content: Big CMS Deal? Nope, SOP for OCCP
December 17, 2019
The struggles of content management continue. Like analytics platforms and enterprise search, vendors of certain types of enterprise software have struggled in the last five years.
The reasons are not far to seek:
- CMS, search, and analytics offer silver bullet solutions, but more frequently turn out to be blanks
- Zippier, more CxO grabbing technologies sweep up utility functions. There’s AI, quantum computing, the cloud, and umbrella solutions like Salesforce’s hybrid of sales management, marketing, and content
- Old wine in new bottles works until the corks are popped at a festive occasion. The stylish bottle and label cannot change vinegar back to Bordeaux.
“The Rise of Omni-Channel Content Platforms” is a rebottling effort. I urge you to read it and consider these questions:
- Why is CMS scrambling to be more than software originally designed to generate Web pages going back to the gym, signing up for yoga classes, and buying Pelotons? Answer: CMS does not work very well.
- What content is not included in the omni channel content platforms? Answer: Streaming data, engineering diagrams with attached data sets, and those lovely chemical structures which are much loved by the pharmaceutical industry, to name just three omissions.
- How are the New Age CMS systems dealing with specialized access controls required for some classified projects, legal eDiscovery data, and data regulated by various government entities? Answer: Not very well.
Can CMS vendors and consultants stage a revival? Will the jazz band attract paying customers to classics from the 2000s before Billie Eilish was making When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
The frightening, no, terrifying answer, may be, “Yes.” Like enterprise search, CMS stakeholders have more to lose to reinvent themselves. New labels, plastic corks, and high-style bottles are a much easier, cheaper, and simpler solution.
In short, CMS cheerleaders are buying new sweaters and sneakers. Game on.
Stephen E Arnold, December 17, 2019
Azure Is Better at Hybrid Computing Because AWS Is an Orchid
December 12, 2019
There’s an interesting explanation of the DoD’s JEDI award in “Opinion: Microsoft Fairly and Squarely Beat Amazon in $10 Billion Pentagon Cloud Contract.” The reason is:
In 2017, Microsoft designed Azure Stack to meet hybrid cloud computing needs, a distinction from AWS, which was designed for cloud-only computing needs without the flexibility of leveraging on-premise servers. That has led Amazon to chase Microsoft with hybrid-cloud offerings such as AWS Outposts, which launched in November of 2018 — well after the Pentagon bid had been opened. As of the first half of 2019, Microsoft was the only company among the top three cloud providers that has a generally available hybrid cloud. Microsoft’s Windows operating system has run on servers for decades, and it was a natural extension to offer Azure Cloud to run on-premise. Microsoft’s hybrid strategy has resulted in 95% of Fortune 500 companies using Azure today. That is a staggering statistic, which shows the superiority of hybrid cloud compared with traditional cloud computing. As J.B. Hunt, one of Azure’s Fortune 500 customers, said: “Microsoft didn’t ask us to bend to their vision of a cloud.”
Amazon is unlikely to agree. Amazon’s lawyers definitely will view this explanation as insufficiently developed to justify dropping the lawsuit.
The problem is that “one throat to choke” seems like a great idea. But the reality is that there usually are many throats to choke regardless of who is the contract winner.
The idea of a common platform or framework, data harmonization, and smooth access control are easy to talk about.
Reality is a little more chaotic. Read the original write up and decide. Then consider how likely it is that a single individual or a small business has a single throat to choke when something goes wrong. Throat choking is preceded by finger pointing, and none of the technology giants deliver reliability, ease of use, and fantasy land solutions.
Reality. Messy. Azure is a hybrid. AWS is an orchid. Neither is guaranteed a long, healthy existence if the gardener forgets to water the plants, the insects decide to chow down, or a road grader grind ouy a new information highway.
Lawyers? Guaranteed money. Other parties? Not guaranteed much.
Probably not.
Stephen E Arnold, December 12, 2019
Countries Want Technological Backdoors
December 11, 2019
“Think of the children” is usually a weak claim people use to justify questionable actions, but law enforcement officials across the world are protecting children the correct way by teaming together to prevent child exploitation on the Internet. Ars Technica shares the story in the article, “Think Of The Children: FBI Sought Interpol Statement Against End-To-End Crypto.” Law enforcement officials, including the US Department of Justice, want there to be backdoors in technology for warranted search and surveillance.
US Attorney General William Barr and his UK and Australian peers asked Facebook to delay its plan to use end-to-end encrypt for all its company’s messaging tools. The FBI and the Department of Justice are encouraged other international law enforcement organizations to join their plea at the International Criminal Police Organization’s 37th Meeting of the Interpol Specialists Groups Group on Crimes Against Children. Delaying end-to-end encryption would find child sexual exploitation. Interpol has not officially supported the delay plea yet.
“The draft resolution went on to lay responsibility for child exploitation upon the tech industry: ‘The current path towards default end-to-end encryption, with no provision for lawful access, does not allow for the protection of the world’s children from sexual exploitation. Technology providers must act and design their services in a way that protects user privacy, on the one hand, while providing user safety, on the other hand. Failure to allow for Lawful Access on their platforms and products, provides a safe haven to offenders utilizing these to sexually exploit children, and inhibits our global law enforcement efforts to protect children.’”
Barr and his peers want technology experts should to agree with them about backdoors. Facebook and other social media companies already comply by terms in the CLOUD Act, a law to provide law officials with data no matter in the world it is located. Barr claims that if Facebook and other companies do not comply, they are allowing children to be exploited further. Research has shown, however, that encryption has had little effect on impeding law officials.
Facebook and other companies state there is not a backdoor skeleton key to any technology and if they did design one it would put people at risk.
Law enforcement officials have the right mindset, but they are missing the essential purpose of encryption and how a backdoor could be exploited by bad actors, including those who harm children.
Whitney Grace, December 11, 2019
AWS Storage Is Evolving
December 8, 2019
This is not your mom’s Simple Storage Service. An article at SiliconAngle describes how “Amazon’s New Storage Chapter Eyes NFS Support, Integrates from the Top-Down.” Writer Betsy Amy-Vogt explores details revealed at the recent AWS Storage Day event in Boston. She embeds some video coverage by theCUBE, her publication’s live streaming studio; see the write-up to view those excerpts.
Demand for easily accessible online storage is growing thanks to the rise of machine learning and edge computing. AWS is adding features to its S3 Glacier and EBS storage solutions, expanding support for file formats like NFS (Network File System), and beefing up security and management tools. Amy-Vogt writes:
“When a customer chooses to move to the AWS Cloud, Amazon takes care of administration, provisioning and maintenance. ‘You literally click three or four buttons to create a file system, and you no longer have to worry about it ever again,’ [AWS’s Wayne Duso] stated. Amazon also promises to maintain data in a secure environment. ‘Security is job number one for us,’ Duso stated. ‘We take care of all the security elements.’ Ease of integration is also a major benefit, especially to companies wanting to take advantage of new intelligent technologies, Duso pointed out. The wide range of AWS’ products means that advanced tools for building and deploying machine-learning models, such as AWS SageMaker, can be integrated with file storage services, such as FSx for Lustre and EFS, bringing even more simplicity to the process. ‘Customers don’t have to worry about storage; they don’t have to worry about sharing; they don’t have to worry about scaling. It’s all there for them,’ Duso said. Cloud brings global scale, but data must remain close to the user to avoid issues with availability and latency. AWS addresses this by creating regions where data is available in multiple locations. ‘Our regions are built to have, at minimum, three availability zones,’ Duso explained.”
Besides reducing latency, storage in multiple locations also serves as a backup. You can see Duso explain the AWS storage strategy at length in one of those videos embedded in the source article. He pledges that customers who use the AWS platform to manage their storage workload free up plenty of time to focus on other parts of their business.
Cynthia Murrell, December 8, 2019
Amazon Trumped?
December 5, 2019
DarkCyber does not have a dog in this fight. The fight? Jeff Bezos versus the President of the United States. If the information in “Trump Bezos Round 2: Amazon Faces Broad Antitrust Probe of Cloud Business” is accurate, lawyers involved in the matter will have a very good chance to generate some billable hours.
The write up reminds the reader that Amazon lost the $10 billion Department of Defense JEDI deal. Amazon then sued on the basis of the President’s pushing back against Amazon.
The write up reports:
But now, as Bloomberg details, investigators at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission have been asking software companies recently about practices around Amazon’s cloud unit, known as Amazon Web Services. Specifically, the outreach by the FTC signals that the agency, which is already looking at Amazon’s conduct in its vast online retail business, is taking a broader look at the company to determine whether it could be violating antitrust laws and harming competition.
Interesting. Mr. Bezos has money and a newspaper. The President has presidential things. Will presidential things trump the Bezos bulldozer?
In a comment to the write up, Sticky_Pickles said: “When you try to sue the government…”
But DarkCyber is thinking of the lawyers working on the matter. Winners.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2019
WWAD: What Will Amazon Do?
December 4, 2019
Silicon Angle published “Commentary: Andy Jassy Aims to Reinvent Amazon Web Services for the Cloud’s Next Generation.” The story carries the subtitle “In an exclusive one-on-one conversation, Amazon’s cloud chief reveals how he views the future of the cloud, the competition, market shifts, customer demands and controversies.”
Several statements in the write up warranted an orange highlight:
- It’s time to embrace the next cloud wave or get crushed by it.
- The cloud has completely “flipped the business and startup model on its head.”
- “Enterprises realize that if they want to be successful, sustainable companies over time, they can’t just make small, incremental changes,” he said.
- The “vast majority” of organizations pursuing a multicloud strategy tend to pick a predominant provider and then, if they feel like they want another one, either because there’s a group that really is passionate about them or they want to know they can use a second cloud provider in case they fall out of sorts with the initial cloud provider, they will. Jassy went on to say that for customers implementing multiple clouds the workloads are split between a primary and secondary cloud more like 70/30 or 80/20 or 90/10, not 50/50.
- “Companies are going to want to eliminate network hops and find a way to have the compute and the storage much more local to the 5G network edge.”
- Next year roughly 82% of all new workloads will run Linux.
Net net: Crushing is part of the game plan. The interview is a component of the AWS re:Invent PR push. Prime stuff, not Grade A, but okay for consumption by Amazon shoppers.
Stephen E Arnold, December 4, 2019
AWS: A Semi Critical Look
December 3, 2019
DarkCyber found “Unbundling AWS” interesting. We decided to label the write up as semi critical. We will reveal the reasons at the foot of this post.
The write up explains one reason why AWS has become one of the leaders in cloud service. (Yes, we are hedging our bets because it is not clear how the cloud vendors in China are keeping score for their “growth.”)
The article includes this chart. Its story is clear. AWS is growing. The article highlights some important attributes of Amazon. First, there’s the old saw about AWS being a juggernaut, a word I like better than flywheel. Second, there’s this observation:
Getting a new software product to market has never been as cheap or fast as it is today, despite the fact that the surface area of in-depth knowledge required to build high-performing software has never been higher.
DarkCyber thinks this is a very, very important facet of Amazon’s approach. Why? You will have to wait until my chapter in a forthcoming book becomes available or attend my lecture in Washington, DC, on December 11, 2019, at the DG Vision conference.
Third, the article includes this important observation, often overlooked by retail crazed MBAs:
The availability of open source tooling and the ease of access to infrastructure on AWS and other IaaS providers, and infrastructure turning into software, which means it’s programmable and, increasingly, thinly-sliced.
Big implications ahead, gentle reader.
But what DarkCyber found particularly rewarding was the overt statement that entrepreneurs will just use AWS. We noted this bulleted list:
- “Frameworks and deployment tools that make application software agnostic to the underlying infrastructure provider. Things like the Serverless framework, containers + orchestration, or IAC tools like Saltstack, Terraform, Ansible, etc
- The overlapping areas of logging, APM, and monitoring. This is a hot area right now, with IPO’s like Dynatrace or Datadog, or acquisitions like SignalFX. Related: Cloudwatch is terrible!
- Data science workflows – this is my subjective, anecdotal experience, but most data scientists I know have a preference for Google Cloud for a lot of their work, and custom hardware like TPUs likely play a role here
- Authentication and identity – Auth0, LoginRadius, Okta, etc … where it may make sense to have a third-party handle
- Paradigms that lead to different stack choices – I’m a big proponent of the JAMstack, and it’s a prime example of a paradigm where AWS may not be a natural choice for parts of this architecture. I believe that we will continue to see this and other new architectural paradigms evolve.”
We think the write up gets one thing off center; specifically:
we should all be so lucky to be at a scale and level of popularity where this becomes a problem. It’s hard for me to see a lot of cases where AWS will be competing with companies before they reach scale.
We think AWS will compete with its entrepreneurs and big buck customers. Amazon Essentials makes that clear.
Stephen E Arnold, December 3, 2019
DarkCyber for December 3, 2019, Now Available
December 3, 2019
DarkCyber for December 3, 2019, is now available at on Vimeo, YouTube, and on the DarkCyber blog.
The program is a production of Stephen E Arnold. It is the only weekly video news shows focusing on the Dark Web, cybercrime, and lesser known Internet services.
This week’s program features an interview with Trent Livingston, founder and chief executive officer of ESI Analyst. Livingston highlights the principal features of ESI Analyst. The cloud-centric software generated positive discussion at a recent law enforcement and digital security conference.
In the 10 minute interview, Livingston explains what makes ESI Analyst different from other investigative and eDiscovery systems. He said, “The system’s principal differentiators are its ease of use and affordability.” Livingston explained that licenses pay for blocks of data processed for an investigation or a legal discovery process. There are no per-user fees or annual fees. Cost savings range from 30 to 70 percent in typical use cases.
Other features of ESI Analyst include one-click analytics, options to display data on a map, and link analysis. Plus the system does not require classroom instruction. He noted, “Some users are up and running in as little as 30 minutes.”
In the next release of the software, Livingston’s team will be adding connectors and new report formats. Users will be able to output chat streams and maps in a form suitable for use in a legal matter. Livingston also revealed support for Amazon Web Services and Elasticsearch to add additional information access flexibility to ESI Analyst.
Stephen E Arnold, author of CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access, said, “ESI Analyst advances beyond the challenging interfaces and rigid pricing models for IBM Analysts Notebook- and Palantir Technologies Gotham-type systems. More predictable pricing and eliminating tedious classroom instruction reduces costs and improves efficiency. ESI Analyst makes clear the value of innovation for policeware.”
DarkCyber is a weekly production of Stephen E Arnold. The currency series of videos ends with the August 27, 2019, program. The new series of DarkCyber videos begins on November 5, 2019. The new series will focus on policeware with an emphasis on Amazon’s products and services for law enforcement, intelligence professionals, and regulatory authorities in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
DarkCyber programs are published twice each month without a charge, advertising, or commercial endorsements.
Stephen E Arnold will be speaking on December 11, 2019, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC. The event is sponsored by DG Vision. Media interested in speaking with Stephen can write darkcyber333 at yandex dot com to arrange a time to discuss the Dark Web and its impact on corporate governance.
Kenny Toth, December 3, 2019
HPE: Missed? Hybrid What?
November 27, 2019
I read “HPE Misses Q4 Revenue Targets, Sees Decline in Hybrid IT Group.”
I noted this statement:
the company continues to see declining revenue in several business lines.
But there is a bright spot, according to an objective money expert type:
Analyst Patrick Moorhead noted that HPE’s growth in strategic areas like Aruba Services and Apollo is indicative of a positive long term revenue strategy. “For HPE, I believe the future is all about its differentiation and execution in the hybrid cloud and ‘everything as a service’ about which I am optimistic,” said Moorhead.
The future? More cost cuts? Nope. The HPE future is Kubernetes.
Some observations:
- Misses, declines, yada yada. One point: progress is slow
- Excitement.Excitement HPE?
- Outlook? Sure, predict the future of HPE. No problem. Just guess.
Net net: A troublesome report from management making management decisions which appear to cause shares of HPE to drop. Yikes.
Stephen E Arnold, November 27, 2019
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
