Commentary

CIVETS: Oh No! Another Country Grouping!

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:08:00 EST

IT purveyors and executives looking for new sources and markets have been bombarded with tales of the potential of the four BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India, and China – since London-based, Goldman Sachs economist James O'Neill coined the term in the 90s. More recently, Mr. O'Neill created a grouping called “the Next Eleven,” nations that have the population heft and economic potential to emerge as significant global players in coming years. Now, there's another grouping – the CIVETS – coined by Robert Ward of The Economist Business Intelligence Unit. These countries are viewed favorably by Mr. Ward by dint of dynamic, diverse economies and youngish populations. Each has its own significant internal political challenge as well, archetyping the notion of an exciting, yet risky, developing nation. The CIVETS are: Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa. The term was coined in 2009, and is now receiving increasing coverage. Contrast and Compare Each of these were among the 82 nations that I've been studying recently, with two of them in Southeast Asia, the region in which I was based for the past three years before returning to the US in late January. My research focuses on national ICT expenditures, adjusted for local cost-of-living, relative bandwidth speeds, and social factors such as income disparity, perceived corruption, and press freedom. The primary idea is to create a relative, pound-for-pound view of the nations of the world and how they are adopting technology. A secondary goal was to put into numbers what one feels on the ground. There's a crackling vibrancy in the air when you step off the plane in certain places, a resigned air of struggle against overwhelming odds in others, a torpor in others, none of which is communicated through standard ways of compiling statistics. Vietnam is the real star, according to my rankings, among the CIVETS grouping. No other country comes close, frankly. Vietnam ranks 7th among the nations of the world, trailing only South Korea and a handful of Eastern/Central European countries. Egypt ranks 21st, Turkey 40th, South Africa 53rd, Colombia 71st, and Indonesia 76th. Specific Country Notes Egypt does rank 2nd in the North Africa/Middle East region, closely behind Morocco. Turkey is more highly developed than the other CIVETS, and my method tends to favor highly dynamic, lower-income nations. South Africa ranks higher than Kenya in Sub-Saharan Africa, and leads Nigeria by a very large margin. Latin America as a whole trails most of the world in my research, and even by that standard Colombia is a middling performer. Honduras, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and a few others are performing better than Colombia. Indonesia is among the laggards in Southeast Asia and the world. Many people may be surprised to hear this, given Indonesia's new status as a member of the G20 – the world's largest 20 economies. But that status is a function of the country's population of about 240 million – fourth in the world. Other factors work against Indonesia: Its per-person income trails that of Malaysia, Thailand, and China. To be fair, income disparity is much lower than in China and most Southeast Asian nations. Its national ICT expenditure is only 3.3% of GDP. Compare this to China (5.2%), the Philippines (6.5%), Thailand (6.7%), and Malaysia (11.7%). Its average bandwidth of 1.35Mbps is slow, even by the standards of the Philippines (a constant source of complaint there). The CIVETS grouping is another valuable contribution in helping people make decisions about what places they should be considering as they look beyond traditional sources and markets. It's my hope that the laggards in this group will be more aggressive in their use of ICT as they develop – this is the best way, in my opinion, to create that rising tide that lifts all boats.

Cloud: The Zettabyte is the Coin of the Realm

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:59:00 EST

I'm more of a words-and-numbers person than a graphically oriented one, but do find occasional insight in a number of these wild cloud infographics that are going around. One of them, from Cisco's Global Cloud Index, recently caught my attention – because of some of the incredible numbers it contained. According to Cisco, global datacenter traffic will more than quadruple in size between 2010 and 2015, from 1.1 to 4.8 zettabytes. About a third of that will be cloud-based traffic by 2015, compared to 11 percent in 2010, and will represent a growth of 12X over the five-year period. We can imagine we're already at about 2+ zettabytes, with perhaps 20 percent of it cloud-based. A zettabyte is a billion terabytes, a million petabytes, or a thousand exabytes. I prefer to think of it as a 1021 byte, as I can't keep the names straight above the terabyte level. So we're already looking at .4 zettabytes, or 400 million terabytes moving through cloud datacenters today on an annual basis. That would be more than 1 million terabytes a day. This means there are, right now, 13 terabytes of dataflow being processed each second by cloud datacenters. Trillions & Quadrillions The Cisco report offers some quick fun facts about sources of this data – a world in which Carl Sagan's famous “billions” is a comically small number. Cisco says there will be 4.6 quadrillion emails sent in 2015, along with 1.8 quadrillion web pages browsed, 230 trillion photos uploaded to Facebook, and 99 trillion minutes spent on YouTube. Breaking down the first three figures yields about145 million emails sent, 57 million web pages browsed, and 7 million photos uploaded each second – with the amount of YouTubing approaching 200 million person-years. But here's the kicker: all of the above will account for only about one-sixth of the datacenter cloud traffic in 2015, according to Cisco. Another 7 percent will come from datacenter-to-datacenter (DC-to-DC) traffic. The rest – 76 percent – will be in the form of intra-datacenter traffic – involving storage, production and development (ie PaaS), and data authentication, according to Cisco. Perhaps it's a bit deflating to learn that so much of this “zegabyte” (my word) action will be silently (if heatedly) processed within the confines of the world's massive datacenters. But processing is processing, and will require literally millions of tons of hardware. Where will all of this stuff be manufactured, anyway?

Money Thrown at Finding Proof in the Cloud

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:15:00 EST

Last year marked a 10-year high for venture capitalists in terms of deals and dollars. This year is starting off just as hot. Joyent just announced an $85 million D round, bringing its total to date to about $115 million.

It's Time for Cloud-Focused Tax Policy

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 09:22:00 EST

President Obama has committed himself to a return of manufacturing jobs in the United States. His idea is to use the tax code to punish companies that locate facilities offshore and reward those who return jobs onshore. His plan will go nowhere in this election year. Many Republican legislators proclaim an avidity for manufacturing, too, and somehow blame Obama for the current dearth in that sector. They ignore the fact that the steepest drop in manufacturing employment – worse than in the 70s – came over the past decade during the George W. Bush administration. While the administration fixated on war and domestic surveillance, 28 percent of the manufacturing jobs disappeared. Even so, China is the real bogeyman in these discussions, something on which parties agree. Yet of course all politicians remain silent on the reality that Americans buy hundreds of billions of dollars of goods from China without having guns pointed at their heads. A colleague of mine from Shanghai once asked, “why are Americans so mad at us Chinese now? We've worked very hard to produce exactly what you want at really good prices. We think we've been great business friends to you.” Eine Gute Idea A counterexample to the US is provided by German consumers, who go out of their way to buy German-made goods, even at additional cost. The theory is that homemade goods are of higher quality and better for the economy. The vast German SMB manufacturing sector (the “Mittelstand”) forms the backbone of the national economy. Mittelstand companies are still the largest employer in Germany, and make vast contributions to exports as well as to local markets The US has no inclination to create an educational system (focused on apprenticeship and high-level skills) or business mindset (family-owned, focused on long-term value) to copy this. So we return to tax policy. I've argued, wishfully if not realistically, that cloud computing should be the focus of tax breaks from the US government. I remain convinced that widespread adoption of cloud will wring the new productivity out of the US economy that will restore growth. Cloud First Expanded The Congress and President need to extend the administration's Cloud First IT acquisition policy beyond federal buying, into all sectors of the economy. But it won't. Instead, we are seeing a disingenuous, rhetorical battle to restore low-productivity, assembly-line jobs – to return to the perceived good old days. Robots have eliminated at least as many jobs as China, so the question is, who makes the robots? Who makes the machines that make the robots? The US still has manufacturing bright spots – defense, aviation, and chips, to name three – but has ceded its presence, let alone leadership, in most consumer technologies. Restoring the sector is going to take more than the occasional whistlestop speech in Ohio. Creating large tax breaks for deployers of cloud computing would favor the technology industry above all others, obviously. So it's likely a non-starter outside of Silicon Valley and other tech regions. And it would also heat up the cloudwashing debate to a boil. I still say someone should push legislation in this area – let's start the discussion, at least. Darrell Issa, new friend of the tech business, are you listening?

Does Germany Now Oppose ACTA?

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 08:45:00 EST

It's looking like the politicians of the world are waking up and realizing that pirates are pirates and non-pirates are not pirates. Pirates would be those homicidal, old-style drunken English guys with eye patches and wooden legs, and those modern, drug-hazed Somalians who ransom and sometimes kill people. Non-pirates would be people who visit YouTube. The latest development is the reported decision by the German government not to sign ACTA – the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement – a global version of the noxious, proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation in the US. Our friends in Canada as well as the Obama Administration have already signed on. ACTA would create a new, independent body with responsibility for prosecuting manufacturers and purveyors of counterfeit goods, generic drugs that are verboten in commercial quantities, and trademark and copyright counterfeiting. As with SOPA, the legislation proposes to criminalize what has traditionally subject to civil litigation. And like SOPA, the ACTA would wield a blunt instrument that equates fake Armani and Gucci with generic blood-pressure medicine and downloaded video clips and songs. In Europe, activists and politicians have taken to wearing those Guy Fawkes masks associated with the Anonymous black-hat hacker movement. It seems ironic that opposing a Hollywood power grab and massive rewrite of centuries of copyright law and is considered revolutionary. In any case, there are rumblings from many in Europe who had previously signed onto ACTA. One Slovenian politician, who apparently reads proposed legislation as closely as do most American politicians, said she “did not pay enough attention” to what she was signing, according to a report by the Washington Post. One could surmise she is hardly alone among her Euro-peers. Germany is the central, driving force behind all that Europe does, so one can imagine some dominoes falling if the German government does, in fact, now actively oppose ACTA. We just saw numerous US politicians cave in the face of loud opposition – what Rupert Murdoch has tweeted as “terrorism” but many interpret as “exercising rights in a democracy.” Now the other shoe appears to be dropping on the far side of the pond.

Bandwidth Is the Oxygen of the Internet

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:12:00 EST

Bandwidth is the oxygen of the Internet. The countries, companies, and individuals who have a lot of it breathe free and prosper. A lack of it literally slows down the progress of nations as they try to catch their metaphorical breath. My research over the past 18 months has uncovered a number of developing countries who are deploying bandwidth at very fast speeds relative to their economic development. Now I'm gathering some statistics about access to said bandwidth. My original idea is that a low-income country with the same average bandwidth speed as a high-income country is doing more with what it has, ie, doing a better job in pumping oxygen into its economy. As an example, Poland's average speed of 8.6Mbps is more impressive than New Zealand's average speed of 8.7Mbps. That numerous countries in Central and Eastern Europe have much faster speeds than the United States is a more dramatic example. I've written before about the various nations that lead in my rankings, by region and by income level. Now it's time to season in some information about access. I'm helped in this respect by an EU report called Eurostats that provides a lot of useful information. A section of the report measures broadband access in 2010 (the most recent year available) and the growth in broadband access between 2008-10. It covers all EU nations except the UK, and adds Turkey and a couple of others into the mix. The report finds Sweden, Norway, and Denmark at the top of the heap, with 80+ percent broadband access, followed closely by Finland and Germany. One can imagine it's easier to deploy bandwidth to a Scandinavia's small, generally urbanized populations of 5 to 9 million people than to most places. Even so, my research has found Sweden in particular to be a regional and global leader overall in its level of IT deployment. Trailing the group are Romania and Bulgaria, with broadband-access percentages in the 20s. Yet Bulgaria and Romania have done well in my research, due to their still-low per-person incomes, especially compared to their Western European neighbors. The key factor is that I'm measuring “torque” or dynamism, so my formulas tend to be weighted towards those nations that are changing most dramatically. Turkey is included in the Eurostats analysis, too, and was found to have broadband access of about 35 percent. Most everyone else fell somewhere between 40 and 60 percent. I'll be spending some time sequestered in Ye Olde Laboratory formulating how to weigh this data from Eurostats, and will report my new results sometime in March. Meanwhile, tweet me up if you want to discuss.

Facebook: No Way to Run a Railroad

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:08:00 EST

I guess it's my turn, and my obligation, to chime in with my opinion about the insane Facebook overvaluation. I don't know anyone at Facebook, or any of the company's financial advisors. But I know about tech bubbles. And I know railroads. A decade ago, a semi-hysterical chorus of Cassandras wailed for about three years before the dot-com bubble popped and led us to the miserable dot-bomb era. They were right. But the disaster wasn't only that the pets.com's and Webvan's of the world went down, it was that they brought everything else down with it. Supposed tech blue chips such as Cisco, Sun, and so many others lost 90 percent of their valuation. The total damage to the markets was $7 trillion of paper worth. The Nasdaq, which accounted for about 20 percent of that, has to this day not recovered even half of what it lost. That's $700 billion gone forever for those keeping score at home. So my fear is that when the Facebook bubble pops – and it will as sure as puppies are cute and rain is wet – it will bring down untold tons of financial infrastructure with it. This we don't need. I've Been Workin'... Which brings me to railroads. I've recently relocated, for the most part, in Illinois, after spending three years in Asia. This is still railroad country. The BNSF (Warren Buffett's fairly recent acquisition) runs train after train around the clock on the local tracks. There are a couple of massive yards in the area. The Burlington Northern Santa Fe is the present-day amalgam of several historic railroads, including the two contained within its name. It operates on 32,000 miles of track (yes, that would circle the Earth and more), has more than 6,000 locomotives, 85,000 freight cars, and 40,000 employees. Its annual revenue is about $18 billion; Buffett's BNSF buyout in 2009 valued it at about $44 billion. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, will continue to invest billions more to keep things in shape. End of Privacy-Based Business? We have no privacy, today. Governments are as intrusive as business. Yet ironically, governments are also intruding on corporate privacy policies, and a big fat target like Facebook is easily hit. I “get” that the power of slicing and dicing the personal details of 850 million people is worth several gold mines, and I “get” that personal data is the coin of the realm today. But I also just get the feeling people are gambling again, nothing more. Put another way, what's going on with Facebook is no way to run a railroad. Not only is this sort of data fluid (ie, it changes a lot and many people aren't entirely truthful), it seems to be at risk for complete destruction at the hands of government regulators throughout the world. As important, we've already seen this sort of semi-tangible Internet company get destroyed by the markets before, many times. Give me 7,000 tons of train roaring down the tracks any day – I'll invest. Facebook? You and your purported $100 billion valuation are making me nervous. OK...now you kids, get off of my lawn.

Hong Kong Considers Cloud as Economy Slows

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:49:00 EST

Hong Kong's economy is muddling along due to a continued lag in exports to the US and the world, and is estimated to grow as little as 1 percent in the coming year. This will result in a projected decline in IT spending of 4.4 percent this year, according to a budget announced this week. Cloud computing is a bright spot for this city – officially a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China – with a planned cloud platform implementation, more free WiFi, mobile-app development, and a commitment to more IT in business, according to some of the budget's details. The government also wants to focus on building more datacenters over the next two years. The Hong Kong government plans to spend about US$80 million on IT in 2012. But the city overall spends $20 billion annually on IT and telco. Hong Kong does well in my own research, finishing 27th in the world in terms of its annual IT spend, and rising to 11th in the world when the figures are adjusted for bandwidth and the city's lack of corruption. Among “Tier B” developed economies, Hong Kong ranks 4th in my research, trailing only the Czech Republic, South Korea, and Slovakia. (Eastern and Central European nations do very well in this research due to a relative lack of income disparity, one of the few positive legacies of the region's Communist era.) I'll watch to see how aggressively Hong Kong implements its government cloud platform, and how it compares to Singapore's ongoing G-Cloud initiative. Singapore finishes slightly lower than Hong Kong in my research, although it does rank 4th among “Tier A” developed economies, trailing only Sweden, the UK, and Japan.

Cisco - More than Half of Workloads to be Cloud

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:45:00 EST

More than 50 percent of all workloads will be processed in the cloud by 2014. This statement comes from a Cisco “Global Cloud” whitepaper, which examines the current state of things and guesses where we'll be at in 2015. It also forecasts a 22-percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for cloud datacenters, with the share of workloads handled by these centers rising from 21 percent back in 2010 to 57 percent by 2015. The report says that the workloads themselves will increase about 2.5 times in that period. Cloud is of course the key to these additional workloads, as it shifts the paradigm from one workload to multiple workloads on any single server. The Cisco report also sees cloud-based traffic growing at a 33-percent CAGR in the 2010-2015, accounting for 34 percent of all datacenter traffic by 2015, as the total datacenter dataflow approaches 5 zettabytes annually worldwide. A quick reminder shows that 5 zettabytes equals 5 billion terabytes. (I prefer to think of a zettabyte as a 1021 byte, as I quickly lose track of the names after “tera-”.) Much of this will be driven by video, and especially video on mobile devices. The Cisco research implies this – although overall cloud-based datacenter traffic will be 34 percent in 2015, the consumer cloud will be 37-percent cloud-driven, compared to only 19 percent within the business cloud. Getting out my old slide rule deduces that this means the consumer cloud will account for five-sixths of total datacenter traffic – about 83 percent of it. ZOMFG. No wonder the paleolithic mandarins of the music and film industries want to cast sharing and everything else under the guise of stealing and terrorism. The Cisco report also has a section devoted to Cloud Readiness. This is the same term used by AsiaCloud, which published a report on the topic last year, and which features Cisco's Singapore-based CTO Bernie Trudel as one of its leaders. The Cisco report states that a location must have a download speed of greater than 2.5Mbps (and latency of less than 50ms) to handle advanced cloud applications. It defines the latter as advanced gaming, video chat, and file sharing; HD audio and video conferencing; and streaming of super HD video. It prescribes a modest download speed between 750kbps and 2.5Mbps for “intermediate” cloud apps, including telephony, basic chat and conferencing, and what it terms advanced social networking. Seems modest enough. My recent research on bandwidth around the world, which used – as did the Cisco report – bandwidth speed data from Seattle-based Ookla, shows all of the world leaders with speeds many times that of Cisco's advanced requirement. Even the laggards amongst today's dynamic, developing economies – such as such as India and the Philippines (both at 1.7Mbps), Indonesia (at 1.35Mbps), and Nigeria (at 880kbps) – meet the intermediate standard. Other developing hotspots such as Jordan (at 2.97Mbps), South Africa (at 3.02Mbps), and Kenya (at 3.31Mbps) are far above the advanced standard. The leaders in my own Tau Index research are typically 6x to 10x above the advanced standard. All this tells me that Cisco is on track with its projections. We'll be wallowing in zettabytes soon enough, and we'll have the capacity to do this. Now, if someone can help me figure out what this means for the hardware industry – chips, storage, and plumbing – I might get totally optimistic about the near future.

Whether in Sports or Biz, Make Your Opponent Defeat You

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:00:00 EST

Using American football metaphors to illustrate business strategies and tactics is a timeworn and tiresome practice. Monday morning quarterbacking is another. However... I was glad to see in yesterday's Super Bowl the use of a tactic that has been yammered to death over the past few years on sports radio (to which I listen far, far too much) – whether to allow a team to score if there is little time left in the game and you think you can score in the precious seconds that remain. I've heard many people who should know better advocate this tactic, although until yesterday, I'd never seen it in practice at any level. It does not behoove most of us to criticize people who are working at the most elite levels of their profession. For every “dumb” decision a coach of a professional team makes, there were thousands upon thousands of other decisions along the way that were correct – in building a staff and roster, implementing the way things are done, preparing for games, and making split-second decisions in front of millions of people who think they can do your job. And yet... The decision on Sunday by New England Patriots' coach Bill Belichick to let the opposing New York Giants score, in order to give his team enough time to score once more and win, violated one of the cardinal principles of sports, business, and life – force your opponent to defeat you. In Mr. Belichick's case, had he told his team to keep trying to prevent the Giants from scoring, perhaps the Giants would've missed the short field goal that seemed to be in its future, perhaps a penalty would've pushed the team back and made said field goal more difficult, perhaps someone would've fumbled. And perhaps the Giants would've scored with almost no time left and won the game. As Belichick said, there was a 90-percent probability that the Giants were going to score while running out the clock, so he pushed all his chips to the middle of the table and bet on the cards he was holding, weak hand or not. It was admirable in a sense to see someone at the absolute peak of his profession to make a move that about 99.9% of us would fear to make. But it didn't work. He gave the game to the other team. My guess is that no coach will ever make this move again, as very few people have the job security to do so – and because we have now seen that it didn't work. So we can all learn that sometimes the fundamentals are the fundamentals. Prepare your best. Create the best products and services you can. Meet your competition head-on at all times. Play to win. But if you lose, be sure your opponent defeats you – don't simply give someone the lead (whether market share, product superiority, or the potential to disrupt) on the chance that you can create a miracle. Doing so may seem like a good, clever idea. But remember, when actually implemented at the highest level of a profession, it didn't work.

Will Taiwan Now Focus on Software?

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:15:00 EST

Taiwan is one of the great economic and technological success stories of the past 30 years, transforming itself into the top rank of the world's economies in the face of political isolation and pressure. Starting with the success of its semiconductor industry in the 80s, and leading PC company Acer, the country today continues to be a global electronics leader through Foxconn, Asus, HTC, and hundreds upon hundreds of component manufacturers. It exports to the Chinese mainland now total $30 billion, and it exports $200 billion in electronics (including $50 billion in LCD screens), to the world. Taiwan's government recently committed US$750 million annually to develop what it calls its “4C” technology push – cloud, commerce, connectivity, and client. It's working to create 50,000 jobs directly related to cloud computing within five years. It envisions a “Cloud Valley” generating US$33 billion within a few years. But all of this just isn't enough, according to a new government cabinet minister. Chang San-cheng, who leads Google's Asia-Pacific hardware operations, has been put in charge of technology in the country's latest cabinet. His first public statement was a vow that Taiwan “must not repeat its error of overlooking software and applications in developing cloud technology.” Slackers. Chang said the country “should cautiously cope with such blind spots (ie, software) while positioning ourselves for the global cloud race. He is especially concerned that Taiwan doesn't miss out on software opportunities related to the current revolution in the use of mobile devices. Chang was one of the key figures behind Google's APAC datacenter in Taiwan, built at a cost of about US$100 million. Look out, world. And look out, United States. Software is one of the areas in which Taiwan has not excelled, and is one of the few remaining brilliant aspects of the US economy.

Back in the US, Feeling the Freedom

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 07:00:00 EST

As we traveled over the course of three flights and 22 hours from Manila to Chicago last week, making a return to the US after about three years in Southeast Asia, there was plenty of time to contemplate the global nature of cloud computing, big data, and all the rest. This sort of trip is not unusual for many of our readers, most of whom, like me, no doubt find it astounding that their mobile phones work almost anywehere now, and that data services are nearly ubiquitous on all of their devices. Roaming charges and most hotel access fees are criminal, of course, but it was a generation of people ago and many generations of technology ago that I patiently watched a telex operator bang out a message (flawlessly) from my hotel in Lima back to my boss in San Francisco. I haven't felt the need to send an aerogram in years. So what does this mean? The same technology becomes available worldwide within the same timeframes today – within months, sometimes weeks, most everyone can get their hands on the same thing. There are notable exceptions in the cloud-computing space, such as the availability of AWS, for example. But today, we've come to expect to see the same products and services no matter where we go. The ubiquity of it all should mean, in the long run, that most nations are playing on a more-level field, and thereby have the capacity to create more local opportunities for developers, entrepreneurs, and technology buyers and users. This should mean that a keystone of creating a local version of Silicon Valley – the dream of political and business leaders all over the globe – is in place. Add a strong university system (as in Russia and India, for example) with a lot of available capital, and the rest of the foundation is laid. But now that I've been back in the US a whopping three or fou days, I've discerned another keystone – freedom. The freedom to move around, to create, to do what you want to do in an unconstricted space. I'm feeling this in a way I haven't felt it for years. More on the topic later this week...

Remote Testing: the Achilles Heel of Cloud Services

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:00:00 EST

Cloud services provide a new and promising opportunity for Enterprises to address the growing complexity of Information Technology (IT). The availability of smartphones and the expectation of immediate and simple access to both private and company specific information on a global basis are driving demand for centralization of IT services and the related competence required to support these effectively. Cloud service providers have established the necessary competence and IT infrastructure to deliver on these demands, but there is one potential Achilles heel that can present a challenge; assuring cloud service quality and performance.

Back to the US: What's Wrong with Uncle Sam?

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:57:00 EST

As I wrote yesterday, I'll be returning to the United States late this week, after spending most of my time over the past three years in Asia. From my base in the Philippines, I've covered cloud computing and related developments throughout Southeast Asia and China, with the occasional opportunity to cover India, Japan, and South Korea. Now I'll be setting up close to Chicago, with frequent trips to the San Francisco Bay Area, and planning to visit Asia when possible. I noted yesterday that most businesspeople are students of America to some degree. The notion's been seconded by a few fellow tweeters and some email I received. Still a Student Magnet Is this study warranted? Is the US still the technology leader, the land of opportunity, the place to be? It seems the country's been in a psychological funk since 9/11 and the two wars launched in its wake. Realistically, are the good times really over for good this time? Students seem to think the US is still the place to be. More than 700,000 of them – a record number – came to study in the US in 2010. China led the way with more than 150,00 students – enough to fill five or six major universities – followed by India (100,000+), South Korea (about 75,000), and Canada (about 25,000). Japan, which led the list in the 90s, dropped to seventh place (about 22,000). Iran, which led the list in the days after the Shah's fall in 1979, has now dropped to 22nd (with about 5,000). All of these numbers come from the Institute of International Education, based in New York City. The US's Silicon Valley continues to lead the world in turning many of its successful students into successful businesspeople as well. Companies in favor of H1-B visas routinely tout the high percentage of Silicon Valley companies started by foreigners. To be sure, there is innovation throughout the world these days. As I've reported, a country of very modest means such as the Philippines now has its own start-up culture, often-frenetic activity, and highly successful entrepreneurs. But the US is still the dreamland, at least according to conversations I've had in Asia over the past three years. So?... So, what's wrong with Uncle Sam? Did callous outsourcers or greedy unions kill the manufacturing sector? (Industrial employment dropped 28% from 2000-2010, with rippling effects throughout the entire economy.) Did an overstimulated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac cause the housing crisis, or was it careless lenders who knew they'd be bailed out by the government? (I think it was oil prices of $140 a barrel that tipped over the applecart.) Is the Dodd-Frank reform bill stifling economic recovery, or is Wall Street still way out of control? Are corporations really sitting on $2 trillion in cash only because Barack Obama is the President of the United States, or are they simply waiting for signs of economic improvement? Why do all these questions have to be posed in a binary, black-and-white manner? Whatever happened to nuance, subtley, and effective compromise? Uncomprehending I recall people in Europe and Asia being baffled in the 70s about how “a third-rate burglary” could lead to a Presidential resignation, being flummoxed again in the 90s when a sex scandal (or was it sex?) led to a Presidential impeachment, and perplexed today that American politicians can't agree on the simplest of procedures, let alone grapple effectively with major issues. “Is this the best your country can do?” is the question I hear over and over. I've written before that the US Congress and White House should be highly aggressive in supporting cloud computing – not just through the groundbreaking Cloud First program, but with a big tax-policy hammer. This idea would go absolutely nowhere, of course. Doesn't mean it's a bad idea. Now the Good News It's encouraging to see Ford emerge as a world leader in hybrid vehicles with its Fusion, and even more encouraging to see the South Korean companies Hyundai and Kia set up major auto manufacturing plants in the US (close to one another in Alabama and Georgia). It's encouraging to see Apple drive new markets for smartphones and tablets, and I encourage people to read a recent New York Times article about why the company thinks it doesn't have to, like, make any of this stuff in the US. It's encouraging to see a US company, Google, have the other major smartphone platform, and it may be encouraging to see Microsoft pull itself out of the PC era with its smartphone OS. It's encouraging to see HP and IBM continue to be $100-billion revenue companies, each still with tens of thousands of US employees. It's encouraging to see what Google and Facebook have achieved with massive back-end database and real-time processing. Yet, It Lags... But overall, the US simply must do more with the technology it's developing. According to my research, the US lags Canada in its use of technology. This is not a mortal sin, but when viewed on a relative rather than absolute basis, the US also lags Honduras in the Americas region. Globally, the US ranks 33rd among 82 nations studied. It trails everybody from Sweden, the Netherlands, and the UK; to South Korea; to parts of Southeast Asia and large swathes of Central and Eastern Europe. There are far too many smart, hard-working people in the United States, native and foreign-born, for it to lag and slog through a 70s-style malaise. Its current doldrums are rooted, in my opinion, in the fatuous “red-blue” dichotomy coined and exacerbated by lazy reporters, and by the hardening positions that have resulted throughout our political system. I lived in Louisiana, Texas, and California during much of the 70s and 80s, and enjoyed the heck out of all of them. There was a lot of good-natured political back-and-forth during my days there, but nothing that trumped the pleasures of living in all of those great places. Today, it's hard to feel comfortable in any of them unless one hews closely to the accepted local doctrine. And I've seen people who truly despise each other make things work at a very high level in business. One thing that characterized these people is they all had a deep understanding of the business and what they wanted to do with it, even as they could scarcely stand the presence of their fellow executives. Listen Up, Buster It's time our politicians – all of them – got a little (OK, a lot) smarter, got off the damned talking points, stopped playing their little game of Pander 24/7/365, and set an example of how America can continue to be a melting pot of ideas, rather than a poster child for a dysfunctional nation in decline.

Goodbye for Now: From Asia Back to the US

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 04:45:00 EST

I'll be returning to the United States late this week, after spending most of my time over the past three years in Asia. From my base in the Philippines, I've covered cloud computing and related developments throughout Southeast Asia and China, with the occasional opportunity to cover India, Japan, and South Korea. Now I'll be setting up close to Chicago, with frequent visits to the San Francisco Bay Area. What have I learned during my time in Asia? Are we truly in the early decades of the “Asian Century”? Where does the US fit into the mix these days? I'll try to answer these and other questions in a series of columns before I leave. I'll start by noting that Asia doesn't seem especially foreign to me. In all seriousness, when one has spent decades in the Bay Area, as I've been fortunate to do, seeing a lot of Asian names, faces, and restaurants becomes as normal as bad traffic and overcrowding. Those last two commodities are delivered full force in most parts of Asia. Combine it with a steambath environment in most places in summer and throughout Southeast Asia year-round, and you learn to throw out this Western notion of personal space and comfort. Once I arrive in Illinois this week, I'll finally be able to stop bitching about the heat, at least for a few months. Asian population numbers are indeed impressive. If the Indian sub-continent were to be re-united (from present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh), it would contain 1.5 billion people – more than China's present population of 1.3 billion+. Add to that the 600 million people of Southeast Asia, the 200 million people of Japan and the Koreas, and other assorted millions from the region, and you get about 3.7 billion people. This is about 54 percent of the earth's total. (I'm not counting Russia and Central Asia into this mix, as these regions seem more closely tied with the Middle East.) The Philippines, with more than 90 million people in an area two-thirds the size of California, is often cited as being overpopulated. Widespread poverty here contributes to that view. Yet the country is not as crowded as wealthy Japan and South Korea. India's another place that just seems to have too many darned people – yet its population density, even today, is less than that of The Netherlands. Only Bangladesh, the gold standard, is more densely populated than any other nation of significant size. These raw numbers don't tell the tale. The Philippines seems crowded because Manila is crowded – there are 12 million people in the unified Metro Manila area, and another 13 million in the surrounding “suburban” provinces. A total of 35 million are shoehorned into what is sometimes called “Mega Manila,” a 15,000-square-mile, primarily urban sprawl. This sort of incredible urban beast characterizes much of Asia. Whether riding in a Japanese shinkansen through endless miles of cityscape, navigating Jakarta's infinite crush, gazing with awe at a Mumbai that stretches to the horizon in every direction from its waterfront, or trying to grok the massive and often-gleaming infrastructures of Beijing and Shanghai through the haze, a Western visitor in Asia can be daunted, overwhelmed, even paralyzed. But progress here comes in the smaller spaces: an international meeting in the ballroom of a local hotel, an introduction in a nicely air-conditioned high-rise boardroom or stifling alcove in an old government facility, a random exchange of business cards at an expat hangout somewhere. Americans are usually too impatient, too assumptive, and too direct here, while also being seen as refreshingly unburdened by formality, enthusiastic, candid, and coming from a great nation. It's this latter point that rankles. The people I've met throughout Asia uniformly offer unprompted praise of the great achievements of the US over the years, its innovative tradition, its great university system, and the opportunities it provides, invariably followed by an anecdote of a close relative or friend who has found great success there. Most businesspeople are, of course, students of America to some degree. What they find puzzling is the vapidity of American TV media and coarseness of popular culture (if they've visited), or the intractable political gridlock and current economic malaise if they haven't. Despite having occasional concerns about US military bravado, the people I've met here wish for a strong and smart America, one that will continue to offer inspiration, technological ingenuity, and a big, big market for their goods. Next: America: Are the Good Times Really Over for Good?

Measuring IT's Impact by Region

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 03:04:00 EST

Which of these things do you like best – motorcycles, race cars, or big ol' jet airliners? This question is relevant when you're considering new markets or sources, an acquisition or subsidiary office, or an investment. Information about population size and wealth can be accessed in seconds, and there are many absolute measures of size, wealth, and national development. But none of this basic information provides a relative comparison. The Usual Suspects Look at, say, the World Economic Forum's Competitive Index. There they are, the developed countries at the top, the developing ones at the bottom. Here in the Philippines, many people sweat out whether the country will finish 69th or 79th on the list. Wrong focus. People in the Philippines should be focusing on its regional neighbors, fellow members of the “Big Six” economies among the nations of the Associatino of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. People in the United States should no doubt strive to lead the world by any measure – but should also see how its immediate neighbor Canada is doing. (It's doing quite well by many measures.) And when it's time for you to consider the countries and regions of the world, you no doubt take a practical approach doesn't directly compare the apples of Germany with the oranges of Brazil – or a motorcyle with a car or plane. How Does It Feel? The research I've been conducting and writing about for the past several months addresses this problem by providing a relative, "pound-for-pound" (or “apples-to-apples”) look at the IT expenditures of 80+ nations of the world. As I wrote yesterday, my work also seeks to find "torque" within societies, on the premise that IT is disruptive and furthermore that a highly aggressive commitment to it may be aggressively disruptive. My Tau Index – being developed with the support of Cloud Computing Journal and Computerworld Philippines – integrates several technological and social dimensions to derive a single, rational measurement. I embarked on the Tau Index to answer questions I've had about the "look and feel" of places I've visited. People who've had the fortune to travel internationally will tell you that you get an immediate feeling for a country the instant you step off the plane, for better or worse. The visceral experience of breathing and doing business in any place transcends simple statistics that can lead one to believe that all of the countries of, say, Latin America or Southeast Asia are essentially the same. Certainly when it comes to their IT deployments, they're not; my research is focused on finding those places that are the most dynamic today and therefore have the better chances of improving themselves tomorrow. Yesterday, I provided a list of the leading nations in my research, by income level. Today, I've provided a brief list of the leading countries by region. For more information on the data and how I derived it, email me or Tweet me up. Americas Canada Honduras United States Mexico Chile Western Europe Sweden UK Netherlands Germany Finland Central/Eastern Europe Bulgaria Ukraine Lithuania Romania Hungary Asia South Korea Vietnam Hong Kong Bangladesh Malaysia N Africa/Middle East Morocco Egypt Israel Saudi Arabia Turkey Sub-Saharan Africa Senegal South Africa Kenya Cameroon Nigeria

How to Measure IT's Relative Impact

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 07:45:00 EST

The research I've been conducting and writing about for the past several months provides a relative, “pound-for-pound” look at the IT expenditures of 80+ nations of the world. This image is popular among the people I meet in the Philippines, the home of pound-for-pound champion boxer/congressman/national hero Manny Pacquiao. But my work seeks to find “torque” within societies, on the premise that IT is disruptive and furthermore that a highly aggressive commitment to it may be aggressively disruptive. Thus I've named it the Tau Index, as the Greek letter Tau is used to measure torque (and related characteristics throughout the sciences.) Comparative images that work here include a motocross cycle, a Formula 1 car, and the Space Shuttle. All are powerful, with plenty of torque. All are to be taken seriously. It's just a matter of degree – what type of market are you living in, hiring in, developing in, sourcing in, or investing in? Torque is “twisty” (and therefore, potentially disruptive) power that must be handled carefully. And to be sure, several nations listed in my original Top 25 list in late 2010 became headline-grabbers during the Arab Spring in 2011. Other top finishers included Ukraine (which maintains a tenuous peace among two rival factions) and Vietnam (which is starting to make headlines with rumblings of labor unrest). I've modified the list since its original publication, adding a few more dimensions and working to smooth out the data integrations within the index. I've also focused more on the achievements of developed nations, after focusing more on developing nations in the early stages of my research. The stars among the developed nations are less likely to undergo the revolutionary change found in the most highly rated developing nations, but are clearly in transformative phases that could leave their neighbors in the dust some day. I embarked on the Tau Index to answer questions I've had about the “look and feel” of places I've visited. Why does Southeast Asia feel more energetic and vibrant than Latin America, even though the economies throughout these regions are similar? Why does Sweden seem more dynamic than neighboring Norway? Why do the BRIC nations not impress me with their dynamism as much as many other places? What in hell is wrong with the United States these days? This year, I'll be focusing on the presence and impact of cloud computing within the nations of the world. There are easy ways to measure its presence, but a more difficult task to determine its impact. I'm confident my formulas and calculations will let us discern at least a measure of said impact. For now, here are the most highly rated countries in my current calculations, tiered up within income levels: Developed Tier A (per capita income $30K+) 1. Sweden 2. United Kingdom 3. Japan 4. Singapore 5. Canada Developed Tier B (PCI $16K-$29K) 1. Czech Republic 2. South Korea 3. Slovakia 4. Hong Kong 5. Slovenia Developing Tier A (PCI $7K-$16K) 1. Hungary 2. Romania 3. Saudi Arabia 4. Poland 5. Russia Developing Tier B (PCI $3K-$7K) 1. Malaysia 2. Bulgaria 3. Thailand 4. South Africa 5. Tunisia Developing Tier C (PCI <$3K) 1. Bangladesh 2. Ukraine 3. Morocco 4. Egypt 5. Honduras 6. Senegal 7. Vietnam 8. Pakistan 9. India 10. Kenya, Philippines (tie) Follow me on Twitter

SOPA Seems Dead; Now What?

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:22:00 EST

It looks like the SOPA bill, known formally as HR 3261 is dead now that President Obama has come out against it. As I write this, support among its sponsors, and of its twin PIPA (aka Senate 968), is on the wane. The day-long blackout by certain sites, and the publicity surrounding it, seems to have had a profound effect. But we all know we're trapped in a Freddy Krueger movie here. These bills will be back, no doubt shortly after the 2012 election. The strength of their venom will depend on the election results. To me, there were two nefarious aspects to SOPA – turning traditional civic remedies into criminal prosecutions, and its pre-emptive nature. I was simultaneously amused and outraged at the language that the bill's author chose to place near its very top - “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to impose a prior restraint on free speech or the press protected under the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.” As with so much that politicians say, this statement is factually true and thoroughly dishonest. Prior restraint has to do with material that has not yet been published. This is clearly not the issue here, as the bill explicitly targets material that has already been published and which may be violating someone's copyright. I'm sure that the people who wrote that passage did so with smug grins all around, proud of the sophistorial powers their fine educations have granted them. In my opinion, they should be made to dig post holes for a few months this summer somewhere in Texas. If the issue of prior restraint is a red herring, the issue of pre-emptive behavior is not. What is traditionally a civil action would now literally be a Federal case, with little due process. There's a provision for a defendant to file a “counter notification” to forestall this – but this is hardly full due process, in which a full trial decides the outcome. Preliminary injunctions that would black content out before the counter notifications are also part of the bill - of course. The wording heavily skews the process, such as it is, toward large companies that want to stamp out an annoying gnat before it can (allegedly) bite. In layman's terms, this is called bullying. As I was reading through the proposed bill, I also picked up that dreadful, boorish scent of American unilateral interventionism. Who likes America sticking its nose into every corner of the world over every issue? The three branches of the Federal government have had an ongoing nervous breakdown since 9/11, and the SOPA act continues this tradition. By using the word “piracy,” it associates foreign websites with terrorism, even as its opening line promises “to promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation.” SOPA and PIPA follow the Bush-era USA Patriot Act (which has been carried on faithfully by Pres. Obama), the Obama Administration's “International Strategy for Cyberspace,” and the pesky “Internet kill switch” idea that no one in Washington will claim but which will surely crop up again like the corn in my home state of Illinois. This sort of thinking comes from a fearful America, not a strong one. The SOPA debacle is also a demonstration of how Los Angeles and San Francisco differ greatly, and why most people in the Bay Area despise LA. It's a great irony that Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from Southern California, has been one of the heroes in stopping SOPA. As President Obama likes to say, “we can do better.” Yes we can. My wish for the upcoming campaign is for him – or his opponent(s) – to outline a course for the US that leads by example, earns respect rather than extracts it, and focuses on economic stimuli for technology development rather than police-dog legislation that favors only those companies wealthy enough to pay for it. I'm dreaming of course. Maybe I'll lose a bunch of weight and make the Olympic boxing team this year, too.

Facebook, Mad Magazine, and King Lear

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:34:00 EST

“Oh, that way madness lies; let me shun that.” The quote is from Shakespeare's King Lear, and it applies to the new addictions spawned by the Web and social media; Facebook is the most prominent example. The addictive, "always on" nature of Facebook etc. may ultimately fail them, as people grow bored, then try to quit the habit. But don't be fooled by my reference; this is not another screed about a lack of culture and intelligence today, how we're truly on the road to Hell now, kids these days, etc. I spent a far larger portion of my youth watching Wally Gator, reading comic books (the Fantastic Four were my favorites), and getting my hands on the latest copy of Mad Magazine than I did reading Shakespeare, for better or worse. We loved MAD because of its limited frequency. Not really a monthly, we never knew exactly when the next issue would come out, so my friends and I spent a lot more time than our parents liked hanging around the local cigar store in anticipation of the latest issue. Had we been able to access Mad online every day, around the clock, we would've grown bored, and quickly tired of it. We joke about our Web addictions, but they can be a serious deal. I'll be clear that I do not equate Mark Zuckerberg or any other successful Web-company executive as the craven sort of people who run tobacco companies. Facebook, along with Google and a few others, have created magnificent monuments to IT performance, and contributed enormously to computer science, scalability, and real-time big-data performance. Facebook's management has also figured out how to appeal to a tremendously broad spectrum of users old and young, geeky and computerphobic, worldwide. Its limited functionality drives many sophisticated users nuts, but its power in creating a universal, unique medium is as big an accomplishement as what it's achieved technically. Yet all glory is fleeting, and the challenge to today's social media titans is to continue to make their service interesting and appealing, without effecting that shaky, jangled addictive feeling amongst its users. As amusing as Rupert Murdoch's obtuse ineptitude with MySpace (and now with his tweets) is to many of us, the lesson is that Schumpeter's creative destruction is never more alive and well than in the social-media space. Mad Magazine is still around, believe it or not, 60 years after its launch. It retains a certain entertainment value to people of many ages, in its own limited fashion. Its “usual gang of idiots” once reached a few million people, but nowhere close to a billion. Its peak value may have been in the tens of millions of dollars, and certainly not $100 billion. I can vouch that it raised the blood pressure of my parents' generation more than any modern-media concoction raises my now-cranky-now-old generation's BP. Unlike Friendster and MySpace, Mad is not a dead man walking, but alive and well. But other than the back-cover fold-in, Mad didn't push the limits of technology the way social media are doing today. Innovation is alive and well in our industry; the trick is for the big social-media brands to maintain their usefulness and entertainment value, while somehow cutting down on their addictive nature, lest they become shunned in a tragic, Shakespearean manner. By the way, I bought a copy of King Lear for five bucks at a local bookstore. Nice read. Strong writer. Recommended.

What Does Big Data Mean to You?

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 05:57:00 EST

Big Data is undergoing a Big Redefinition, as the issue comes front and center in discussions about IT and Cloud Computing in 2012. We can be sure that vendors will become experts in defining Big Data in terms that match precisely whatever they offer. Less sure is whether and how IT buyers perceive the term, and how they will use it as they make buying and deployment decisions. So the question before us is, “What does Big Data mean to you?” I provide some options below. Retweet this or contact me directly with your answers! Specialized scientific, medical, military, or economics application involving significant modeling or simulation problem and terabytes of data. Real-time business analytics applied to large information flows customer buying patterns, inventory control, etc. of gigabytes per day. Those damnable hi-res multi-megabyte PDFs that have to bypass my email server. I work at Google, Facebook, or another Web monster and I can't tell you what it means; you wouldn't believe it or understand it, anyway/ I work for the NSA and can't tell you, but can tell you that I've put you into the mix, pal. None of the above. Dude, you don't grok my problem! Here it is...

The "Why" of Expanding Cloud & Big Data Definitions

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 06:38:00 EST

My father would tell me that during his time in the U.S. Navy, “we weren't encouraged to ask why we had to do something.” Creating and enforcing a strict command-and-control policy is critical in getting a military organization to function. Too often, this mindset permeates companies as well. Even in its milder forms, it often leads to groupthink and/or a passive-aggressive “acceptance” of corporate initiatives and their execution. The Big Topics Thus we come to Cloud Computing and Big Data initiatives, both of which will no doubt be in evidence in the majority of enterprises in developed nations – and in a strong minority of enterprises in the developing world – this year and beyond. There will be a lot of crossover: Cloud Computing projects will be developed explicitly to handle Big-Data problems, and many Big-Data problems will seem to require a Cloud-Computing approach. Whichever comes first, the chicken or the egg, won't matter as much as whose goose will be most likely to get cooked. Ever Expanding The expanding definition of Cloud Computing last year is seen by many as CloudFUD and “cloudwashing.” My opinion is that squishy Cloud definitions make the idea of Cloud Computing more palatable to a wider range of people in the enterprise, even as many engineers cringe. I don't know if the big vendors are merely gaming the system and stifling innovation. I take Oracle turning to Cloudera as evidence they are not. But I'll admit we won't know for sure for many more years. In any case, Big Data will be subject to similar “definition creep” in 2012 and beyond. It will no doubt go well beyond its notional definition as unstructured data that must be handled by NoSql, and massive data flows that can only be handled by Hadoop. Expect its expanding definition to rankle the same people who despise Cloud's definitional squishiness today. Clear & Present A greater danger is that these expanding definitions will lead to companies deploying Cloud-for-Cloud's-sake rather than to solve a particular problem or plan for the future. Ubiquitous Cloud talk means that nebulous C-suite and board-level directives to “migrate to the Cloud” can rain down onto the directors and managers responsible for deploying it. This creates a slippery slope in which previously unknown Cloud aspects of ongoing projects are “discovered,” and in which new initiatives turn into logrolling exercises aimed to appease impatient executive suites. A corollary to this is the potential of honest Cloud-centric approaches being hooted down by higher ups because when Cloud (and soon Big Data) mean everything, they mean nothing. Imagine the following scenario: a B2B software company has multiple customer lists spread throughout the world. Increasing numbers of these customers are blogging and tweeting and generally making social-media nuisances of themselves, frequent referencing the company (and not always in a good light). Integrating these lists once and for all, receiving real-time data and near-real-time reports on customers' social-media activity, then planning and executing active response campaigns seem like a classic case where Cloud Computing and Big Data (as this company defines it) can come riding into the rescue. But ironically, high-level corporate pushback could be that “just throwing Cloud at the problem” is a panacea meant to appease the C-suite and board! Putting The problem is when Cloud Computing and Big Data are viewed as the cart and not the horse. The high-level corporate mindset often views all new technology as beautiful new carts, and the question is whether its sound system, cupholders, and leather seats are of a high-enough quality. IT views technology as the horse that literally powers whatever sort of cart the company wants to pull. These two views are diametric opposites. Without addressing conflicting views in an atmosphere of no fear and much frankness, disaster looms. Yet I've been in too many meetings and on too many projects in the corporate world in which one is not encouraged to ask “why,” let alone encouraged to tell why.

High-Speed Internet Access is Not a Human Right, But...

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 08:44:00 EST

One of “those” debates broke out this week when word came of Vint Cerf's statement that Internet access is not a human right. His full quote can be accessed on the Internet easily enough, at least in places where free and open access is still a privilege. The quote enabled a lot of people to get all wound up on this topic, with deconstructions and the metaphysics of how many daemons can dance on the head of a pin quickly filling the netsphere. Vint's statement carried two main insights: don't whine and stay focused. Don't whine that Internet access should be on the same exalted level as freedom from torture, and stay focused on push, push, pushing the technology so that it becomes so ubiquitously important that it can't be easily suppressed. I didn't see where he said that people in the US should be as vigilant in their own country as they are about Internet-access curbs in the Middle East, China, and elsewhere – but I'll say it, and I think he would agree. Beyond the realpolitik of the Great Chinese Firewall and the terrifying goofiness of the American Internet Kill Switch and SOPA, lies the very large issue of bandwidth. I remain convinced that a lack of bandwidth was as responsible as anything for the dot-bomb era, as the vast majority of individual in the US were limping along with paleolithic dial-up connections. Fiber optic cable was being put in at an astonishing rate during that time, but the telcos who controleld the channel were too wilfully slothful and avaricious to provide the high-speed, stable connections their customers were demanding. Today, the US continues to lag most of its peers and many lesser developed nations in its average bandwidth. We should put cigarette executives in charge of the telcos; at least this bunch knows how to get as much of its product as possible into as many hands as possible. But bandwidth is an issue far bigger than even that in much of the developing world. A survey of average bandwidth speeds, from data supplied by Seattle-based Ookla, shows a wide disparity among the 200 or so countries that have Internet service delivered to them. To be sure, high bandwidth is not a human right. But as Vint Cerf points out in his recent statement, “Technology is an enabler of rights...improving the Internet is just one means, albeit an important one, by which to improve the human condition.” Yes. One needs a fast connection to get webpages to snap up on the screen, to open multiple windows, to play video, to use their social media to stir stuff up. Throttled access –whether by dint of poor infrastructure or rapacious providers – is almost as bad as no access. I don't care what sort of junk that people with bitchin' fast access may be accessing. I know that serious-minded people will be making good use of their bandwidth, and we live in a world – as humans always have – in which a few committed souls can elevate the species beyond its mindless, mediocre tendencies. I developed a little formula that weighs average bandwidth speed by nation against its income per person. I call these my gamma numbers, but we can also think of it as bandwidth-for-the-buck. This approach shows, for example, how developing Cambodia is doing a great job in providing an average speed of 2Mbps with a per-person income of less than $1,000. With 2% of the per-person income of the United States, Cambodia provides 20% of its bandwidth speed. Vietnam does even better on a relative basis. Other shining stars in this firmament can be found in the former Soviet republics. The percentage of the population with Internet access, and what they do when they're online, are also very important factors, of course. I'm working that problem now, integrating those two factors into the bandwidth-for-the-buck formula. Hope to report these findings soon. So let's push for higher bandwidth this year. It's rightly human for us to do so. Follow me on Twitter

Narrow Bandwidth in the Wild

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 07:16:00 EST

I was sitting next to about 50 gallons of gasoline, stored in uniform plastic containers that each held about five gallons. Many people on the boat were not smoking. We were aboard a ferry from the Port of Tacloban to the far island reaches of Samar Province, in the Eastern Visayas Region of the Philppines, sitting in a crowded harbor on a late December morning that was not hot by local standards and threatened rain. I had my little netbook with me, a machine I will value long after netbooks are manufactured. It works for me. I was worried about how well my Internet connection would work once we arrived in our provincial village. These worries were not unfounded, it turned out. More on that in a second. Prior to our boarding the ferry, we had loaded a new refrigerator, mattress, a couple dozen bags of food, several more luggage bags, and 500 feet of garden hose, following a brief negotation with the pilot. Later, the eight of us walked the narrow plank to the boat's bow, joining the other families making the final step on their journety home for the New Year's holiday. What's Known as Infrastructure If OSHA were in the Philippines, the question would be whether any regulations were being followed, rather than how many were being violated. But life for the massses here is hard, reminiscent of a much earlier time in the US when you lived or died by your own wits, without help or protection from the government. I wasn't worried; I'd ridden smaller boats than this many times in this country, with no drama. Even a moderately sized ferry like this one was locally owned, and I figured the pilot didn't want to die any more than I did. Our village, like so many in this country, had cell phones and Internet access via 3G networks long before it had electricity, which arrived just last year. The occasional generator would be fired up to recharge phones and laptops, and provide lighting and videoke during fiestas and other holidays. During this visit, the new electrical grid was fairly steady, with just the occasional short brownout. The egregious aspect of it is the lack of circuit breakers or proper grounding into the small houses. The lights dim if too many watts are applied to the loop, and the local junction box is a fire waiting to happen. Circuit breakers have been put on the agenda for this month. The Internet access was abysmal, however. I tried 3G access from two of the three major telcos; one had no signal and the other was coming in at something that must have literally been about 300 baud. I have no illusions about the glamor and status of being able to use shiny toys in the far reaches of the world; but as a self-employed writer and entrepreneur, I need to work as often as possible to keep the ship upright. My efforts to develop small business in this remote corner of a developing nation depend on it as well. Buhay (Life) You kill your own chickens and pigs here, without ceremony or sentimentality. The fish and squid come straight from the ocean at your doorstep to your plate on your table, and the water used for showers and other personal matters gathers in cisterns from the rain and via that new garden hose from the small mountains that surround the village. Rice is the big expense; its ever-rising cost of rice is a major topic of discussion each day, on a par with the ceaseless talk of gasoline prices in the US. A 50-kilo bag of rice costs about US$40 now, and will feed an extended family of 20 for about a week. Much of the rice is imported from Vietnam, a topic of economic debate in the Philippine government. Is it a matter of national shame to have to import this staple, or is it smart to do so? The latter argument notes that continental Asia, with its massive river deltas, is much more suited for rice development than the Philippine archipelago. Better that the Philippines concentrates on higher value use, the argument goes. Back in the province, my day-to-day efforts to create local business and opportunity is threatened ceaselessly by heat and humidity, a lack of local educational infrastructure (the schools are far away), and the difficulty in getting across abstract concepts like profit-and-loss, stock, market size, and all the rest to a society that lives moment-to-moment in addressing and solving its immediate problems. It's tough to weave an entrepreneurial vision when two of the babies have just come down with a high fever and the nearest doctor is a two-hour boat ride away. But there's always hope. I'll write more about specifc examples as the year progresses. Families are strong here in a way most of the US has forgotten, people persevere to attend those distant schools, and life, though very hard, is vibrant, full, and often joyful.

Let the Cloudwashing Continue...

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 08:00:00 EST

“Cloud computing is expected to mature and become a mainstream technology for businesses in Asia-Pacific by 2015,” according to a new forecast from Frost & Sullivan. Meanwhile, Joe McKendrick writes in Forbes that “'cloud' will begin to fade as a differentiating term — because it will just be the way we do things.” I believe that 2011 will be viewed in retrospect as Year Zero of cloud computing, with 2012 seen as Year One. Yet I also agree with the opinions above, primarily because they relate to my first theme of 2012. In all, I've identified five themes for 2012, the overarching ideas that will frame discussions throughout the year. I. Let the Cloudwashing Continue It must be annoying as hell to be heads-down for a few years developing an exquisite multi-tenant, metered, scalable, flexible, distributed cloud service or platform, only to have all the legacy IT guys jump in and say they have seen the light and are now cloud vendors, too. Thus, the cloudwashing fingerpointing begins. It is surely even more aggravating when said legacy vendors define the cloud however they please, then make the recursive argument that they can define cloud as they want because there's no precise definition of cloud. Yet, we should consider the customer—IT, which is famous for furious pushback against the latest magical elixir, whether it's client-server, AJAX, SOA, or BPM. Cloud is just the latest in an endless buzzword stream IT buyers, developers, and deployers must navigate. By tagging certain of their assets as cloud, the legacy vendors are making it easier for IT to accept the term. In doing so, they will no doubt learn which approaches fly best in their enterprises. The bolder ones will gravitate towards the things we might label as “more cloudy.” But in a world where IT is faced with an either/or legacy-or-cloud decision, it's not going to venture far into the sky. IT will not allow vendors who claim philosophical purity to cram things down their throats. Cloud computing will be adopted more quickly, and will become “the way we do things” because legacy vendors are easing the transition—let's call it cloudeasing rather than cloudwashing. II. Big Data Redefined If you've hated the expanding definition of cloud computing, get ready for the sequel: Big Data redefine. Long the province of the true geekery involved in simulations of nuclear bombs, epidemiology, and the weather, Big Data is coming to mean any sort of data flow (not just capture) that looks big to a particular organization. Ubiquitous computing has turned into ubiquitous telemetry and data collection, and the new Big Data has emerged, along for the ride. Cloud computing and Big Data are part of each other's Boolean circles, and will become ever more so as their respective definitions continue to loosen. Tell me, what is your Big Data problem, and to whom are you going to turn to solve it? III. Too Much Social Is Still Not Enough We can see the lines blurring when we consider that social media are driving part of the Big Data phenomenon. At the same time, it seems a lot of people are already calling “game over” when it comes to the dominance of Facebook and its (hardee har har) $100 billion valuation. The argument runs along the lines of Facebook (and to some degree, Twitter, LinkedIn, and maybe Google+) have blotted out the sun; there is no room left for another damned social-media company. But to me, this argument is analogous to the idea that everybody in Europe and North America loved chocolate candy when it was first introduced in the 19th century, and there was no room for innovation after about 1900. Even today there's room for a bitchin' new type of candy bar. I don't see a huge, long-term first-move advantage in social either, particularly since its primary business model is still Google's business model (and dependent on Google to boot): Sell a lot of ads based on minuscule clickthrough rates. Add in the “Christmas toy factor” (kids get tired of their Christmas toys quickly), and it seems that the history of social has only just begun. More targeted social ideas—whether activity-based, or built around a specific business usage—should gain traction, especially as they now have not only the desktop, but a proliferation of mobile devices through which they can reach people 24/7/365. IV. The Year of Apping Dangerously Speaking of those mobile devices, who in hell really knows what will happen in 2012? I certainly don't. It's easy enough to offer profound insights such as “RIM is dead,” “W7 Phones have no chance,” “Droid's divergence is its fatal flaw,” or “Apple has lost its edge.” Much harder to be working somewhere within this massive ecosystem trying to make things happen while blotting out all the white noise. Who knows, maybe the two RIM guys will move to an ashram, see a bunch of gods, and come back with renewed religious fervor. Maybe a real keyboard will make a comeback. Maybe Google will buy Nokia in a hostile takeover. Maybe Samsung will buy Microsoft (although unlikely in an election year). Maybe webOS will make a miraculous, open-sourced recovery. Who knows? Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition. We do know that smartphone growth will continue. The questions will be, what's the danger in buying a type of product that might be discontinued soon, and where do developers place their bets? Within this growth, it seems there will be a market for ultra-high-end devices if the vendors don't get all OWS-squeamish about things, and a very large low-end to middle market in developing nations. Synopsizing the Bottom-of-the-Pyramid strategy, poor people like nice stuff, too. Smartphone and tablets are not only nice, they provide a digital lifeline to friends, family, and the world. Which leads to the final theme... V. IT's Eternal Disruption A pack of unruly seventh graders is not as disruptive as IT. Seen through the lens of social media, IT was given much credit for the disruption of the Arab Spring revolutions. It seems clear that these events were not Twitter or Facebook Revolutions, but it seems equally clear that IT—in the guise of smart devices, the software that gives them life, and bandwidth—will continue to be a disruptive force. Be warned that said disruption is agnostic, and could happen in any nation that is facing issues of economic instability and perceived inequitability. In other words, it could happen in any nation. The days of IT trends hitting the US first, Western Europe 18 months later, Japan another two years later--and the rest of the world be damned--are over. The latest cool stuff gets into the hands of people almost simultaneously throughout the world today, and those hands are often connected to unhappy people. A generation ago, people in so-called third-world countries would see the wealth of the West and aspire to it someday. Today, people in developing and developed countries alike aspire to getting what they want now, using the powerful tools our industry has created over the past decade.

Australian Government Commits to Cloud Computing

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 07:45:00 EST

There is “a window of opportunity for Australia to be the the global leader in the creation and adoption of cloud computing innovation,” according to a recent report from the federal government's IT Industry Innovation Council. Australia is rich in natural resources and one of the least densely populated countries in the world, which has allowed it citizens to build a wealthy economy and stable society without having to become a world-beating manufacturer or innovation center. Knowing that this economic model may not last forever, the Council's report says “there is a need to engender a sense of urgency and clear political leadership in this debate.” Centering the Data Datacenters are one measure of a movement toward coud, and Melbourne-based NextDC has emerged as a leader, recently announcing plans for sites in Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, and Perth. Equinix, based in Redwood City, CA and known as a major cloud host through its 20+ US-based sites, also has datacenters in Sydney and is planning to expand to Melbourne. The Russian anti-virus company Kaspersky Labs is also planning a new site in Australia. The nefarious USA Patriot Act is seen (if not explicitly mentioned) as a driver of local cloudy datacenters in Australia, too, with a recent report bringing up the issue of data sovereignty, and by extension, the potential problems of locating Australian data in the US. The Council report states that cloud won't happen in Australia by dint of techies along, noting “there needs to be a strong pull from the non-ICT sector in terms of understanding the fundamental business benefits of Cloud adoption, including operational efficiencies, greater reach into markets, cost reduction, reduced risk of IT investment with pay-as-you-go pricing, and greater flexibility to handle changes in business conditions.” It cites IDC research from September 2011 that found more than 20 percent of respondents already using cloud computing—albeit there was not a breakout of how many of those respondents rely on cloud-bsaed email as the extent of their commitment. The Bandwidth Issue Bandwidth is another measure of national commitment to IT in general and cloud computing in particular. In this area, Australia has a mediocre present and insanely optimistic vision for the future. According to figures from bandwidth monitor Ookla, Australia's average bandwidth of about 8.6 Mbps trails both the US and Canada by more than 30 percent. On an adjusted basis that accounts for the amount of bandwidth delivered weighed against societal wealth, Australia finishes 57th among 82 countries that I surveyed, on a par with Egypt and Argentina. In my Tau Index research, which balances per capita income with bandwidth and societal factors such as income disparity and corruption, Australia finished 52nd, in the neighborhood of the developing nations India, South Africa, and Jordan. In counterpoint, the IT Industry Innovation Council report states that the Australian government “has a commitment to position Australia as a leading digital economy by 2020 (through) the National Digital Economy Strategy (NDES) (and) sets the National Broadband Network (NBN).” The NBN, which I once described as a lunatic plan, may be the most aggressive bandwidth provisioning idea in the world. It is envisioned to provide as much as a gigabit-per-second to individual customers, reaching 93 percent of them by 2021. Even 100Mbps would be 12X the amount of bandwidth delivered today. Additionally, the world's highest current bandwidth is on the order of 30Mbps, found in South Korea. The network is expected to cost in the neighborhood of US$36 billion, with about 80 percent of that coming from the government. In a nation of 22 million people, that works out to more than US$1,600 per person. Well, we all have dreams, don't we?

Big Data Means a Big WAN Bottleneck

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 07:31:00 EST

As the Big Data cascade starts to drown out other topics in 2012, it seems there will be an especial focus on WANs. Indeed, “DC2DC” (Datacenter-to-Datacenter) connectivity has been recognized for many years as a potential bottleneck and headache. With Big Data driving “Big Traffic” – a term mentioned by the Internet Research Group (IRG) in a recent report – around the horn of a cloudy datacenter complex, the issue of WAN Optimization will be more prominent on roadmaps in 2012 and beyond. The IRG recently completed its new report for Infineta Systems, one of a few WAN Optimization specialists seeking to find its place in cloud discussions and IT budgets. The use of Hadoop to scale up (unstructured) Big Data applications has put the WAN bottleneck issue in clear relief. Through the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), “Hadoop offers as much as a 30-to-one reduction in the cost of storage due to its use of commodity disk drives rather than conventional enterprise storage systems,” according to the IRG report. “The confluence of (this) low-cost storage coupled with an affordable scalable execution environment meant lift-off for Big Data,” the report states. As companies employ data analytics to get a grasp of the value in their new-found data treasure troves, they often find significant “data isolation,” the report notes, cases in which a company needs to analyze data from several sources in a way that was not planned when the original applications were set up. The Old Way, Sped Up Hadoop jobs are batch jobs (à la recherche du temps perdu), which brings a non-realtime element to analyzing disparate data. But this is the 21st century, and hundreds of Hadoop jobs can be scheduled daily on today's systems, lasting from a few seconds to several hours in length. WAN bottlenecks not only impede the ability to do this, but simply “may not have enough throughput capacity to support these tasks.,” the report states. Infineta joins Riverbed Technology, Blue Coat Systems, Silver Peak Systems, and of course Juniper Networks, Citrix Systems, Cisco Systems, and all of the big end-to-end enterprise players in being aware of and attempting to address this problem. As the new year dawns, I'll be interviewing as many people from these companies as I can to get my own grasp of the situation, which is going to be a major theme in all Big Data discussions. For now, I'm heading deep into the provinces of Southeast Asia for a few days to see in the New Year. Mangos and rambutan will be on the menu as I contemplate the tropical blue sky and its variety of real clouds. Follow me on Twitter

'Twas the Rev Before Christmas

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:57:00 EST

'Twas the rev before Christmas, when all through the aisle, Not a cable was stirring, not even a dial. The servers were mounted in the cabinets with care, In hopes that St. Linus soon would be there. The geeks were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of disk arrays danced in their heads. The elephant in her 'kerchief, the penguin in its nest, Had just settled their caches for a long offline REST. When out at the gate there arose such a clatter, Security sprang from its shell to see what was the matter. Away to the window it flew just like Flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The LAMP on the crest of the new-painted logo Gave the latency of fiber to every bean, every POJO, When, what to HAL's wondering eye should appear, But a miniature wrapper, and eight tiny reindeer. With a little old driver, so embedded and thin, HAL knew in a moment it must be the Finn. More rapid than electrons his hackers they flew, And he troffed and shouted, all their names he sure GNU. "Now Apache! Now Debian! Now Hadoop and Guru! On, Ritchie! On, Kemeny! On, Kurtz and Grace, too! To the top of the RAID! To the top of the stack! Now dash away! Dash away! Dash clear to the rack!" As legacy code that before new paradigms fly, When it meets with failover and links to the sky. So up to the routers the hackers they flew, With a payload full of virtual AWS EC2. And then, in a nano, HAL heard on the 'site, The prancing and pawing of each little byte. As he drew in his sensors, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Linus came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur, from glasses to boots, And his clothes were all tarnished with Jolt Cola and square roots. A bundle of source code he'd flung on his chip, And he looked like a cracker, toggling a DIP. His eyes how they networked! His dimples how non-trivial! His cheeks were like mouse pads, his nose so convivial! His tiffed little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the script on his chin was as clean as the snow. The stump of a thumb drive he held tight in his teeth, And its tokens encircled his head like a wreath. He had a synced face, a small tum like a Guava That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of Java! He was nerdy and sure, a right jolly young gnome, And I awked when I saw him, in spite of the DOM! A scan of his eye, a debug of his head, Soon gave me to grok I had nothing to dread. He spoke not a pixel, but went straight to his coding, And filled all the sessions, then turned with foreboding. And laying his digit aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the stovepipe he rose! He sprang to his wrapper, to his team gave a kernel, And away they all flew, persistent and vernal. But I heard him grep, ‘ere he drove out of sight, “Open Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!"

It's Not Just the Cloud - The Re-invention of Everything

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:45:00 EST

Look around and be amazed, everything is being re-invented. From the tablet computer to the thermostat, from cars to enterprise software, from incubators to light-bulbs. We are living in an amazing time. Opportunities abound to capitalize on the biggest industrial change since electricity. We are at the the convergence of 6 megatrends, some new, some old, that when taken together create this incredible rush of innovation and opportunity.

The Magic of Mobile Cloud Debunked

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 06:30:00 EST

It’s like unicorns…and rainbows! #mobile

Mark my words, the term “mobile” is the noun (or is it a verb? Depends on the context, doesn’t it?) that will replace “cloud” as the most used and abused and misapplied term in technology in the coming year.

If I was to find a pitch in my inbox that did not someway invoke the term “mobile” I’d be surprised. The latest one to catch my eye was pitching a survey on the “mobile cloud”. The idea, apparently, around this pitch involving “mobile cloud” is the miraculous capability bestowed upon cloud deployed services to automagically perform synchronization and storage tasks.

The proliferation of mobile devices has created demand for services that allow users to access personal data and content from any device at any time. Mobile cloud services are emerging that synchronise data across multiple mobile devices with centralised storage in the cloud.

While the statement regarding demand is true, the follow-on assertion is at best inaccurate, at worst it is false. There are no services, in the cloud or anywhere else, that can synchronize data across multiple devices. Oh, services may be emerging that claim to do so, but they can’t and don’t. Without fail, services “in the cloud” are invoked from the client – each individual client, mind you – and without that initiating event a cloud service would no more be able to synchronize data than previous incarnations of mobile services when we called them hosted applications.

SERVICE-SIDE PUSH

This is because the underlying technology used to access these services is still, regardless of the interface presented, the web. It’s an API. It’s HTTP. It’s a client-server paradigm that hasn’t changed very much since it rose to ascendancy as the preferred application architectural model back in the last century. The reason SPDY has started to gain attention and mindshare is not necessarily because it’s faster (that’s a plus, mind you, but it’s not the whole enchilada) but because of its bidirectional communication capabilities. SPDY can push to clients in a way that HTTP has never really been able to do, though many have tried. They’ve come close with approximations and solutions that to the untrained user appear to be a “push” but in reality they are little more than “dragging out a pull response.” And yet SPDY is still constrained in the same way as traditional HTTP: the client must initiate the connection.

The capability to push from the service-side does not and will not imbue “cloud services” of any kind with the ability to initiate actions, because the “cloud” cannot push to a client unless a connection is already established. And who initiates connections? That’s right, clients.

The only entity that could make a claim that it could initiate anything on a mobile device would be a service provider. That’s because they are the only ones who can actually find and connect to a device on-demand – and then it’s only their devices on their mobile networks. And then they’d best only do that if it’s (1) part of their terms of service or (2) the user specifically checked a box allowing them (or their service) to do so.

But consider the impracticality of “service-side push” to clients to synchronize data. Client devices are, well, mobile. That means their connectivity is not assured. “Always on” is a misnomer. Yes, the device is always on in a way the PC has never been, but it’s also in stand-by mode, which often means the radio – its means of communication – is off. This little fact is a problem for performance-focused IT, and it’s even more troublesome to those who’d like to create a service-side “push”. So Bob uploads a photo to a “cloud storage” service and the service wants to synchronize it with Bob’s other (configured by Bob, of course) devices. So the service starts sending out messages to try to connect to Bob’s other devices.

Right. One is turned off and the other is in flight mode to prevent his three-year old from purchasing God only knows what apps through the Android market and the third? It’s in standby, the radio is off.

That’s not the way it works today and it certainly shouldn’t be the way it works in the future. It’s a waste of processing power, of bandwidth, of resources in general. The client will eventually be online and will open a session with the “cloud service” and ask it for updates.

MOBILE CLOUD

Whether applications use web technologies because of the reality that clients are not “always on” or because it’s the model (client initiated and more importantly to them, controlled) most familiar and acceptable to consumers, reality is that mobile devices and clients leverage web technologies to store, share, and synchronize data across services. The “mobile cloud” and its alleged ability to “synchronize data across devices” is little more than cloud washing, as is the term “mobile cloud” itself which some have tried to claim is defined by the way in which a device accesses its services. From differentiation between network type (wired versus wireless) to the client-model (thin client browser versus thick client application), some continue to try to make the case that there exists some “mobile cloud” that is completely different than that of the “regular old cloud.”

There is not. The web is the web, the presentation layer of an application (thick or thin) does not define its server-side technological model, and service-side push (and control) remains yet another marketing phrase used to describe capabilities that is not technically accurate and which ultimately sets unrealistic expectations for consumers – and in the enterprise, IT.

The notion that you’d build a “mobile cloud” that is somehow separate from the “regular cloud” is preposterous precisely because it contradicts the purported purpose for building it: synchronization and “access from anywhere.” It’s that “anywhere” requirement that makes a mobile cloud as realistic as unicorns. If I upload a photo to <insert photo service here> I should be able to access – and thus synchronize – from any device, and that includes my laptop or desktop PC, the latter of which is certainly not “mobile”.

These assertions that a mobile cloud exist only serve to reinforce the heretofore unknown Clark’s Third (and a half) Law: Any sufficiently advanced web technology is indistinguishable from cloud in the eyes of the marketing department.

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Life Beyond the US & Eurozone (1/3)

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 06:00:00 EST

With a sluggish US economy and Eurozone concerns continuing to sap the confidence of corporations and investors, the search for opportunity other parts of the world continues to intensify. This is as true for IT managers tasked with finding sources as it is for executives seeking new markets. The so-called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have offered opportunities in natural resources, infrastructure, and consumer markets in recent years, but these markets are hardly a secret anymore. Many people and companies today are searching “beyond the BRICS.” N11 & Frontier Markets Two groups of countries have emerged in recent years. The first is known as the Next Eleven (or N11), and was created by James O'Neill at the London office of Goldman Sachs, the same person who created the BRICS designation. N11 countries must have sufficient population and potential economic heft to merit the notion of entering the world's largest economies. They are in widely divergent stages of development. Members include: highly developed South Korea less-developed Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey, and Vietnam least-developed Bangladesh and Nigeria. Clearly, investing in many of these countries is not for the squeamish, and investing in Iran is, of course, illegal for American companies and individuals. Members of the the second group are known as Frontier Markets, and change annually. This designation first appeared in 1992, coined by Farida Khambata of the International Finance Corp., part of the Washington, DC-based World Bank. The database is now owned by Standard & Poor's, which publishes an index of key companies in these markets; competing indices have sprung up as well. A large population (and its consequent, potential economic heft) is not a criterion for this group, so a number of smaller countries are included in it. (I've listed the current group of Frontier-Market countries, along with the Next Eleven mentioned above and Tau Index countries mentioned below.) Frontier Markets can remind one of the admonition about Russia shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union: “if you have $100,000 to invest, invest it in Russia. If you have $1 million to invest, invest $100,000 in Russia.” N11 and Frontier-Market investors are seeking high returns, to be sure, but over a long term. An expectation of short-term volatility (even catastrophe) is built-in. But over a term of say, one or two decades, investments in Frontier Markets are expected to grow much more rapidly than a similar bet in a highly developed, stable, conservative environment.

Life Beyond the US & Eurozone (2/3)

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 06:00:00 EST

If you live in, or spend a lot of time in Silicon Valley, New York, or another innovative crucible of information technology (IT), you can get the impression that hot tech startups are the only great investment vehicles around. And to be sure, who wouldn't want to own a percentage of the next VMware or Facebook for a modest, first-stage investment? But fly far from major tech regions and you'll find tremendous potential in more traditional investments. Some recent examples I've encountered include hydroelectric power in Laos (the nation desires to be “the battery of Asia” and is rife with Chinese investors today), and coconuts in the Philippines. Yes, coconuts. The country produces 50% of the world's supply, and has just caught the wave of a new US craze for coconut water. One investor, from Brazil, has already acquired thousands of acres as part of an end-to-end global supply chain for his product. The irony is that native coconut-tree owners – who have been using machetes to harvest their fruit for thousands of years – consider the water to be of no value. They harvest the coconuts for the “meat” inside, which feeds the global market for “copra” and coconut oil. Now, it seems, the water has become more valuable than oil. Other investments throughout the N11 nations and Frontier Markets can be found with so-called public-private partnerships to build roads, bridges, and schools. There is entrepreneurial activity within the telco sector (Indonesia, for example, has 16 companies providing mobile service), a sector that requires significant investments. Countries in Eastern Europe continue to rebuild from their dismal Communist legacies, while Middle-Eastern nations work to leverage their oil wealth before it peaks and invariably declines. Tau Index All that said, we can still look at the use of IT as a good indicator of future economic development. IT contributes to economic productivity, whether in designing and managing major infrastructure projects, evaluating potential new areas rich in natural resources, or empowering entire populations through better and faster Internet access. Yet traditional surveys of worldwide technology use and bandwidth take an unweighted, absolute approach that invariably shows wealthy countries on top, impoverished countries at the bottom, and everyone else in the middle. There's not much value-add in learning that Scandinavian countries have much more highly developed national IT infrastructures than Sub-Saharan African countries, for example. To address this problem, I've been conducting research over the past year (through my company Samar Pacific Inc.) that takes a “pound-for-pound” view of how the nations of the world deploy their IT. Given that an aggressive approach to IT deployment directly improves a nation's productivity and economic growth, and given that IT costs are essentially the same worldwide, a commitment of $1,000 or $1 million represents a more aggressive approach in a poorer, developing nation than in a wealthier, developed one. By looking at things this way – and adjusting for social issues such as income disparity and corruption – I've uncovered a group of nations that strongly resemble those in the N11 and Frontier-Market groups. According to this research, South Korea leads the world with its aggressive approach to buying and deploying IT. Moving through the Top 10, we find Bulgaria, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, Hungary, Vietnam, Estonia, Czech Republic, and Sweden.

Life Beyond the US & Eurozone (3/3)

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 06:00:00 EST

One can see, when looking at these lists, that there is significant crossover among the three groups of countries in the Next Eleven, Frontier Markets, and Tau Index leaders. Bangladesh is a “triple play,” for example, appearing on all three lists. Still among the poorest nations of the world in terms of per-capita income, Bangladesh has a large, young, dynamic population that is focused on the future. It is also smack in the middle of southern Asia, nestled among India, China, and Southeast Asia. A flight to Dhaka and tour of the country may be the smartest move one can make this year. Oil-rich Nigeria appears as both an N11 nation and a Frontier Market. There's no shortage of bad press about corruption and income disparity here. The Tau Index figures show it lagging South Africa, Kenya, and even Senegal and Cameroon in its use of IT. Yet, entrepreneurs such as the Harvard- and UN-backed Julius Akinyemi are working to develop mobile-based, online markets there to “unleash the wealth of nations,” in Akinyemi's phrase. Eastern Europe in Focus As mentioned, Eastern European countries continue to develop their economies by dint of government stability, upholding the rule of law, and the use of technology. (I apologize to those who don't like the term “Eastern Europe,” and recognize that much of this area has been known as Central Europe or Mitteleuropa for some time.) It's no secret that Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia are attractive places. They haven joined more recently by Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and former Yugoslav republics. Ukraine provides yet another interesting example in this region. This country is ranked third among the Tau Index leaders. It's a largish country, with a low per capita income compared to its neighbors. It has very high levels of broadband access (with an average speed exceeding that of the United States), relatively low income disparity (a legacy of decades of Communist rule in which everyone was poor equally), and a relatively high level of national IT expenditures. Ukraine is also a politically riven place, with half of it leaning toward West Europe and half toward Russia and the East. The western city of Lvov, for example, will remind one of Austria. Many citizens in its east, on the other hand, long for the days of the Soviet Union. Ukraine thus provides a microcosmic view of the ambiguous opportunities offered by so many developing nations. Trillions and trillions Public companies in the United States are sitting on at least $2 trillion in cash. Private equity funds represent another $2.5 trillion or so. Each dollar is (one hopes) being managed in a sophisticated way that allocates assets to mitigate the risks found in the less-stable markets. Yet, for the long term, the N11, Frontier Markets, and Tau Index leaders will attract significant investments from companies and individuals who believe in them. For money that seeks a more traditional home, there's still some dynamism left in well-established countries, at least according to the Tau Index. A trip to non-Eurozone Sweden or a renewed look at Canada could also be a smart move this year.

Life Beyond the US & Eurozone (Tables)

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 06:00:00 EST

The countries in these tables are featured in my three-part series, "Life Beyond the US & Eurozone." Table 1. The Next Eleven 1. South Korea 2. Egypt 3. Indonesia 4. Iran 5. Mexico 6. Pakistan 7. Philippines 8. Turkey 9. Vietnam 10. Bangladesh 11. Nigeria Table 2. Frontier Markets South America Argentina Central/Eastern Europe Bulgaria Croatia Estonia Lithuania Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Southeastern Europe Cyprus Macedonia Malta Romania Northern Africa/Middle East Bahrain Jordan Oman Qatar Tunisia Sub-Saharan Africa Botswana Ivory Coast Kenya Mauritius Nigeria Southwest/Southeast Asia Bangladesh Sri Lanka Vietnam Table 3. Tau Index Top 30 1. South Korea 2. Bulgaria 3. Ukraine 4. Lithuania 5. Romania 6. Hungary 7. Vietnam 8. Estonia 9. Czech Republic 10. Sweden 11. Hong Kong 12. Poland 13. Latvia 14. Bangladesh 15. Slovakia 16. Malaysia 17. UK 18. Singapore 19. Netherlands 20. Morocco 21. Egypt 22. Canada 23. Russia 24. China 25. Slovenia 26. Germany 27. Japan 28. Finland 29. Honduras 30. Denmark

How Important Is Democracy to IT? (Take Two)

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 06:10:00 EST

Yesterday, I compared democratic India and the Philippines against communist China and Vietnam, respectively, in a look at some key economic factors and my own research. The commies were winning. I concluded by stating, “we can only hope that democracy is good in the long term, even as many of today's measurements, for better or worse, don't necessarily lead to that conclusion.” Alas, I ignored some of my own research in making that sweeping conclusion. Eastern Europe to the Fore In fact, by integrating and balancing a number of technological and societal factors, I recently compiled a Top 25 group of IT-savvy nations that is dominated by democracies. More accurately, the list is dominated by South Korea and Eastern Europe's democracies. I call the results of my research the Tau Index, and have written about it extensively. A look at the Top 25 finds South Korea at the top, with 11 Eastern European nations (all former Soviet republics) making the list: Bulgaria, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, Hungary, Estonia, Czech Republic, Poland, Latvia, Slovak Republic, and Slovenia. Russia cracks the Top 25 as well. The primary factor in this index is IT expenditures on a per capita basis, adjusted for local cost-of-living. Then I weigh income disparity and bandwidth speed heavily into this ranking. Disparity & Speed Eastern Europe's nations do very well in the income-disparity category; their former Communist leaders kept everyone poor equally, and two decades of capitalism has not resulted in the income imbalances seen in the developing world and the US – or in China and Russia, for that matter. Eastern European nations have also been aggressive in deploying high-speed bandwidth connections, particularly with respect to their relatively modest per capita income when compared to the West. Each of these nations has its own internal challenges and struggles. Ukraine's Orange Revolution of a few years back featured the almost-fatal poisoning of the man who eventually became its President; its East-West political struggle is far from finished. Romanians continue to complain of endemic corruption and politics as usual. Western diplomats worry about a potential return to autocracy in Hungary. Poland was thrown into turmoil with the death of its president in a plane crash, in Russia in 2010. It has also been a victim of an ironic lumping of its economy into that of the troubled Eurozone, in the view of many investors and risk analysts. And so it goes throughout the region. Flaws Major & Minor As I mentioned yesterday, all of the world's democracies appear flawed in ways major and minor. Even the clean, egalitarian governments of the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Finland have seen tragedy and terror reach their shores. But democracy shows up strong in my research. These nations make the list through a weighted balance of IT expenditures, wealth and income disparity, bandwidth, and the perception of corruption. The index is weighted against wealthier nations, as I am seeking to find the most dynamic places, nations that have the best chance to grow rapidly through their use of IT. Even so, the few well-developed nations listed above are on a pace to continue to improve their economies, as other nations lag. My Top 25 list also includes Vietnam and China; revolutionary Egypt; Singapore, Malaysia, and Bangladesh; Morocco; and showing that the West ain't dead yet, Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands, and Canada. Back to India v China These findings may contradict my closing statement of yesterday, but they do not address the issue of China's success versus that of India. There's no mystery here; China's autocrats have been able to focus the country's energy in a way that brooks no nonsense, with spectacular results over the past few decades. India's democracy brooks a lot of nonsense, and its government is seen as an impediment rather than an enabler of economic growth. So democracy has not won out, economically, in the comparison between the world's two population leaders. Yet we have to ask how long China's autocratic mandarins can keep this up, and how long before India's local and global entrepreneurs can breach the hurdles set in front of them by their duly elected officials. Shall we say 2025? 2030? Ever? Follow me on Twitter

How Important is Democracy to IT and Economic Development?

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:37:00 EST

“Any research on India should take into account the impact of diversity within the country, and its vibrant democracy,” writes Krishnan Subramanian (@krishnan), in response to my recent article about India lagging its fellow BRIC nations in economic development. “In my opinion, that is the difference between India and China, for example. Democracy can be a severe drag in the short term but is good in the long term,” he added. Krish is a well-respected technology writer, analyst, and researcher, with a focus on the convergence of open source, cloud computing, the semantic web, and social networking. He raises a serious point in the global discussion about the role of IT and investing in the global economy. Just the Facts Many current facts are dispiriting to democracy's proponents, to be sure. My previous article looked at the results of the Tau Index, something I developed a year ago to create a “pound-for-pound” look at national IT expenditures. It found India lagging China and Russia among the BRIC nations, exceeding only Brazil in its ranking among the four countries. Score one point for the Commies and another for the ex-Commies. The non-profit Asia Cloud Computing Association (aka Asia Cloud), based in Hong Kong, put together a Cloud Readiness Index earlier this year that also provides little comfort to democracy's proponents. Integrating 10 different measures – including a few government-related ratings – it found democratic Japan at the top of the list. A total of 14 places were surveyed. After Japan Hong Kong, followed by South Korea, Singapore, Australia, Taiwan, New Zealand, Malaysia, China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. There's almost no correlation between democracy and lack of same in this ranking. Rather, it followed a fairly predictable path that seems to balance per capita income with per capita IT investments. Perceptions Even though it's a clear democracy (by far the world's largest), India's bureaucrat-heavy government is routinely cited as a big impediment to the growth of IT and the economy. Basic infrastructural needs have not kept pace with the growth of the IT/BPO industry. More damning, the country remains mired in the second-lower tier of the global Corruption Perceptions Index. China is ranked slightly higher in this index, although in the same dismal tier as India. Democracy does shine overall in this index, with Scandinavia, Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada all in the top tier. Only authoritarian Singapore intrudes into this group. Aside from India's ranking, there is more dismal reading in this index. For example, the democratic Philippines ranks alongside Syria – gack. So it's clear that “democracy” is a term that covers a lot of ground. “Flawed democracy” is a term you'll see now and then; even it is not precise enough. I guess happy democracies are all alike, every unhappy democracy is unhappy in its own way. Show Me the Money Foreign direct investment (FDI) is another widely quoted measure. China has an almost preposterous lead over India in this category; its level of $185 billion in 2010 trailed only the United States (at $228 billion). India received about $24 billion of FDI in 2010. On a smaller scale, communist Vietnam easily leads its (flawed) democratic neighbor, the Philippines, with $11 billion vs. $1.5 billion in FDI in 2010. Vietnam's $11 billion is, in fact, a tremendous number, representing $130 per person, only slightly less than China's $142. Compare this to India at about $22 and the Philippines at about $17. To be fair, the (flawed) democracies of Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia receive levels competitive with that of Vietnam. Back to the Tau Circling back to my Tau Index, I took a look at what would happen if I weighted things differently. But even giving India a 25% premium for being a democracy doesn't bring its rating to China's level. The Tau Index weighs several factors, but the most important is IT spend per capita, adjusted for local cost-of-living. India could benefit best in this ranking (and overall as a nation) from simply spending more on IT, particularly at the enterprise level, in my IT-centric view. So, What is Democracy? Vladimir Putin will tell you he is part of a democracy. Ditto Thailand's newly elected Yingluck Shinawatra, in a country where even the slightest whiff of disrespect toward its king will land your butt in jail for a long, long time. Americans have been wringing their hands about their democracy since the final, ugly days of the Nixon administration. In my travels to China, I have not felt an excessive, police-state burden. Its immigration procedure, for example, asks you to push a smiley face if you're happy with the agent's performance. Compare this to the snarling, condescending bullies that staff most ports of entry to the US these days. Of course, should I write something blazingly critical of the Chinese government, I may find my next experience there to be quite different. Along the same lines, what if I start ranting too much about the idiotic TSA in the US? (The good news is that I'm not important enough to either country to be perceived as a problem. But some writers are.) Finishing Up We're far from the end of history, and not close to understanding how to govern ourselves optimally. Meanwhile, the recent Indian diaspora to the US in general and Silicon Valley in particular has created a group of enthusiastic, outspoken proponents of their nation, its long history, its cultures, and its potential as a democratic nation. I wish Krish well in his efforts to contribute to Indian democracy and economic progress. We can only hope that he is correct in asserting that democracy is good in the long term, even as many of today's measurements, for better or worse, don't necessarily lead to that conclusion.

Does India Trail Its Fellow BRIC Nations?

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 07:19:00 EST

India has shown the most disappointing performance among the BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India, and China – in the 10-year period since the term was coined by Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs' London office. The opinion above is reportedly held by Mr. O'Neill himself, who did offer a caveat that all four BRIC nations have grown more quickly than he originally estimated, and that India is the most disappointing only “in some ways,” according to a report from the Reuters 2012 Investment Outlook Summit. Is this a fair statement? A look into my own research, an 82-nation survey fcalled the Tau Index that focuses on national commitments to IT, shows that three of the BRICs have indeed advanced further than India. Yet one of these countries, Brazil, lags against its current peers. BRIC by BRIC Mr. O'Neill and others have also pointed out India's relative lack of foreign direct investment recently; at US$20 billion in 2011, it trails Brazil ($23 billion), Russia ($33 billion), and especially China ($60 billion). Furthermore, there are no reports or commentaries that praise government reform or helpfulness; the business successes of India over the past decade seem to occur uniformly despite India's government at all levels. Pound for Pound Yet my research, which balances national IT expenditures with several economic, social, and technological factors into a weighed index that seeks a “pound-for-pound” comparison of national economies, shows Brazil to be the statistical laggard in the group. China and Russia do perform significantly better than India, and rank in the Top 25 of the 82 countries I was able to survey. India comes in 51st, whilst Brazil ranks only 68th – in the bottom quintile. The Tau Index tends to favor developing nations – the ones with the most dynamic economies, with the most “torque.” Stable, developed countries tend not to score highly (although wealthy Sweden is a strong performer, and wealthy-ish South Korea continues to be so insanely driven that it tops the world). Most of its current leaders come from Eastern Europe, Asia, and North Africa. None of the BRICs spends on IT as aggressively as several other countries in the world. China leads the group by spending 5.2% of its GDP on IT, followed by Russia and Brazil at 4.7%, and India at 4.0%. Compare to the US at 7.3%, South Korea at 8.0%, Bangladesh at 9.7%, and Malaysia at 11.7%, as examples. Raw IT spend is barely the starting point for determining the Tau Index, though; it is adjusted for local cost-of-living and income disparity; corruption are factored in. Average bandwidth speed (also adjusted for local costs) is another major component. Country by Country Throw all this together into a weighted average that involves several exponential curves, and it's Brazil, not India, that drops to the bottom of the BRICs. Brazil's income disparity (the highest among the BRICs) and relatively modest bandwidth speeds (compared to its per-person income) work against it. But, wait wait. Brazil is perceived as less corrupt than the other BRICs (although still has a long way to go by world standards), and has seen dramatic growth in its per-person income over the past 10 years. Ironically, this works against it the most in the Tau Ratings, as the pound-for-pound analysis seeks which countries are doing the most with what they have. Indeed, Brazil has now advanced enough to be considered in a more developed group of countries, including South Korea, Malaysia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Turkey, Mexico – and China and Russia. India has not advanced nearly this far. So, it seems that Jim O'Neill is correct. Who am I to argue with him? Yet Brazil trails this new group of countries badly in the Tau Index, ranking with developed laggards Greece and Italy, and developing laggards Kazakhstan and Iran. In my view, the country should commit more to its IT infrastructure. Doing so is an integral way to achieve productivity growth and economic expansion; this holds true even in resource-rich and manufacturing-driven economies (such as Brazil's), as those industries gain productivity through smart IT use. Russia and China, on the other hand, rank with developed leaders Canada, Japan, Germany, and Singapore, and developing hotshots Egypt, Morocco, Slovenia. Whither India? It's ranked with languid developed nations such as Australia, Austria, and Norway, and struggling developing nations such as the Philippines, South Africa, Kenya, and Jordan. Not catastrophic, but something that could stand significant improvement. Day by Day It's easy enough to throw goobers from the peanut gallery, and much harder to do something about what ails the world and effect real change. So I don't make my comments lightly. I spend a lot of time in a developing nation (the Philippines), and struggle on a daily basis, apart from my writing, to make something happen here. It can be about as much fun as military sit ups. I'm also well aware of the millions of Indians who enthusiastically shoulder the burden to build their country into a modern state. It can be a disheartening task most days. My research aims to recognize those nations that are on the straightest paths to future success, while uncovering nuggets of information within the data that can be used to improve every nation's path.

Appirio's Cloudwashing Awards #fail (Update)

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:37:00 EST

The newly launched Appirio cloudwashing award – known as “The Washies” and said by the company to be an annual event – is a bad idea, poorly executed. No reason to draw too much attention to it, nor to rant too stridently against it. But I would like to point out a few things: It lists only four nominees in each category, all dominant IT providers, even as it calls on people to nominate their own candidates. Not the most savvy method in an era of tagging. Appirio has a dog in the fight. It is a cloud vendor itself. This would be like an independent movie studio launching a negative awards campaign against Disney, Universal, Paramount, etc. In reality, Hollywood's “Razzies” (The Washies' role model) were created by a writer. It says it's not meant to be mean-spirited, but of course it is. Appirio claims it aims to “poke a little fun” while in the same sentence declaring that the major vendors are guilty of a “questionable marketing tactic that creates confusion and missed expectations.” This is Silicon Valley-style passive-aggressiveness at its finest. It gets personal, naming names. No reason to feel bad that Larry Ellison and Steve Ballmer head the list; they are big, public targets who will be harmed by this as much as a spitwad would harm a battleship. But Christopher Hoff (@beaker on Twitter)? What sort of vast and evil power has he accumulated that merits such a public calling out? Those obvious points aside, I like to think that so-called cloudwashing is one of the more positive developments in the industry. After all, the term “cloud computing” since its inception has been squishy and built upon decades of IT development. That major vendors such as Oracle and Microsoft now characterize some of the things they've been doing along doesn't alarm me. Rather, it reflects that a number of good ideas – distributed resources, abstracted and decoupled assets, usage monitoring and metering, flexible compute-power delivery – can now be corralled under a single term. Corralling everything in this manner means that IT discussions – which should always focus first on what a company wants to do rather than how it should do it – can move forward, unburdened about whether Company A's cloud is more pure than Company B's cloud. Religious discussions are never a good idea in business. In contrast, the Appirio cloudwashing award tries to take the moral high ground; a losing strategy no matter what the topic. It demeans the industry as a whole and Appirio in particular. It should be quickly washed into the dustbin of history, as should the term “cloudwashing” itself.

Is the Cloud Clouding Our Judgment?

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:30:00 EST

As consumers, we all interact in the cloud. A big part of our lives has been virtualized for more than a decade. We bank in the cloud. We buy insurance in the cloud. We book hotels, flights and cars in the cloud. We are so used to logging on that we often don't realize the extent to which we have removed ourselves from the physical action of doing what we do. For example, I never need to visit a bookstore again. The three Kindles in our household all sync off the same set of electronic books. No more paperbacks, no more shelf space - only kilobytes. Amazon doesn't need to print, pack or post anything. They resell the exact same piece of data to millions of people, they host it online and we download it as and when we need it.

Is Big Data a Big Problem or Big Opportunity?

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:15:00 EST

Hadoop and NoSQL are entering more conversations about enterprise IT and Cloud Computing. Mongo is now more than a guy who “like candy” and is “only pawn in game of life.” The usual brilliant explosion of innovation is ongoing in this space, which is both a sympton and a driver of the new era of Big Data. Facebook reports it now handles 30 petabytes of data (or 30 million gigabytes). Other numbers of that magnitude are appearing all over the place, along with estimates of daily data flows that seem to increase by a magnitude every few years. All this should be good for manufacturers of chips, storage, and networks, even as the general principle of Moore's Law relentlessly drives per-unit prices down. It should be good for software developers as well, as multiple newish skills come to the fore. The parent company of Cloud Computing Journal has announced it will be co-locating the First International Big Data Expo to the Cloud Expo New York in June 11-14. The announcement came before the doors even opened at the recent Cloud Expo in Silicon Valley, as the company's far-seeing chairman took in key input from his sponsors and advisors. Big Data and Cloud Computing share some part of each other's circle in a Boolean diagram – specifically how much is not important, although Captain Obvious tells me that Cloud Computing is more important to Big Data than Big Data is to Cloud Computing. Enterprise IT is really somewhere around Year Zero or Year One with Cloud Computing, even as all vendors are offering Cloud-something by now. We are thus at Year Minus-2 or thereabouts with the new conception of Big Data. The coming year promises to be a boon for the private cloud, as companies seek to virtualize and optimize, track usage more effectively, and integrate proliferating mobile devices into the mix. Meanwhile, simultaneously, those pesky mobile thingys – smartphones and tablets – are helping to create the modern-day Big Data monster. Yet they are not the real culprit per se. Rather, let's point our fingers at online transactions/interactions, point-of-purchase scans, and especially, all the fascistic monitoring software embedded in our browsers and phones. The key differentiator is that cloud is something you do, but Big Data is something you have. The smartest technology companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook understood the implications of mass scaling from the get-go, and have had rare glitches in serving continuously expanding mass data to the masses. Walmart has also kept on top of things as the Big Data generated by about 1 million transactions per hour has evolved. But what about everybody else? How prepared are most of the Fortune 1500 and the millions of SMBs for the Big Data that's flowing into their IT departments? Add social networking to the mix – the need to address, respond, and cultivate online communities who are blasting their informed and uninformed opinions your way every second – and Big Data emerges as a Big Problem. Or is that Big Opportunity?

VMware Survey: Malaysia Moving Steadily Toward Cloud

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 02:01:00 EST

Malaysia seems to be moving steadily toward cloud computing, at least according to results of the latest Cloud Maturity Index study conducted by Forrester Research on behalf of WMware's Singapore office. Of the 158 Malaysian companies surveyed, 64% respondents said they have deployed or are actively planning cloud initiatives. Insurance companies led the way among current deployers with 67% reporting current cloud initiatives. The education sector led among groups planning to deploy, with a positive response rate of 69%. Among all respondents, 43% use or are considering a combination of private and public clouds, with 30% favoring private clouds only. Four in five of the companies said that smartphones and tablets will be driving significant traffic through their cloud deployments. The Cloud Maturity Index surveyed more than 6,000 organizations in eight countries: Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Interviewees were senior business and IT decisionmakers. Cloud Readiness These results can be viewed in context with research earlier this year by Asia Cloud, a non-profit based in Hong Kong. This organization's Cloud Readiness Index, which considered more than a dozen factors, ranked Malaysia in seventh place in Asia. It followed Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. But it led its more directly comparable neighbors: China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Tau Index Ranking Malaysia emerges as a star performer overall in the Tau Index research I've been conducting over the past year. In my research, I weigh a number of technology and social measurements into a recipe that delivers a “pound-for-pound” ranking of national ICT expenditures. This approach measures dynamism and torque – rather than raw spending power – so tends to favor highly aggressive, developing economies. Malaysia has been highly committed to economic development through technological commitment for a couple of decades now, and is no longer considered to be a developing nation by many measures. Nevertheless, in the Southeast Asian region, it trails only Vietnam in my rankings. It is also ranks in the world's Top 20. What merits this distinction? Start with its national ICT spend of US$22 billion, which represents almost 12% of its overall economy – compare this to 7.3% in the US. Adjust that total for local cost-of-living (which is low compared to highly developed countries), and Malaysia's annual ICT spend represents 23.4% of its economy. This ranks second in the world, behind only Bangladesh, which is committing serious resources to IT relative to its still-impoverished population. I also factor income disparity and corruption against these raw numbers – the worse the news in these categories, the more the ranking is impacted. Malaysia maintains a very high level of income disparity, and mediocre corruption perception. I also factor bandwidth into the mix; Malaysia's relatively modest network bandwidth ranks it only 60th in the world. Not Quite There Yet This mixed bag results in a strong overall ranking for Malaysia within the Tau Index. The country has its shortcomings, to be sure, but is clearly headed in the right direction. It's the prototype “not-quite-highly-developed” nation. It also leads the pack among its immediate neighbors, with the exception of the wealthy Singaporean city-state. Malaysia's status as a not-quite-highly-developed nation is further reflected in the Cloud Readiness Index. And I expect to receive additional, country-specific Cloud Maturity Index data from VMware soon, which will enable me to draw a contrast between Malaysia and its Asian brethren.