Rack Pack Blog

Will Cloud Computing lead to Global Smog?

Posted by Rack Packer - 30/03/10 at 03:03:34 pm

New Greenpeace Report claims coal fuels much of the cloud’s growth

 

Today has seen the release of the Greenpeace report: “Make IT Green - Cloud Computing and its contribution to Climate Change” catch the headlines. The report basically claims that the rise of cloud computing is increasingly reliant on the use of dirty fossil fuels and that urgent action needs to be taken to redress the situation.

 

According to the report, Greenpeace claims that the energy consumption and carbon emissions of cloud computing is already significantly higher had been previously estimated. Using carbon emission projection data provided by McKinsey (included within the 2008 study Smart 2020: enabling the low carbon economy in the information age published by the Climate Group) and updating it with data supplied by the Environmental Protection Agency, Greenpeace has concluded that the actual energy consumption of cloud computing is 1.3 times greater than intimated by the Smart 2020 study.

 

Greenpeace’s concerns focus on the fact that should this situation remain unchecked, and with most data centers around the globe using fossil fuels, cloud computing could lead to a real cloud of pollution, revealing that at current growth rates data centers and networks will consume about 1,963 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2020. This is more than triple their current consumption and more than the current electricity consumption of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined.

 

If considered as a country, global telecommunications and data centers behind cloud computing would have ranked fifth in the world for energy use in 2007, behind the United States, China, Russia and Japan, it concluded

 

The report highlights the data center expansion plans of several global giants such as Google, Facebook and Apple and appears somewhat critical that few of these highlighted companies appear to have pursued renewable energy for their power supply at their facilities.

 

“The last thing we need is for more cloud infrastructure to be built in places where it increases demand for dirty coal-fired power,” said Greenpeace.

 

The cloud, argues Greenpeace, may be the fastest-growing facet of technology infrastructure between now and 2020, and requires its main exponents to innovate, increase energy efficiency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lobby Government for a workable renewable energy agenda.

 

“The potential of ICT technologies and cloud computing to drive low-carbon economic growth underscore the importance of building cloud infrastructure in places powered by clean renewable energy. Companies like Facebook, Google, and other large players in the cloud computing market must advocate for policy change at the local, national and international levels to ensure that, as their appetite for energy increases, so does the supply of renewable energy.” concluded Greenpeace.

 

So are the arguments highlighted in the report valid? Will cloud computing lead to smog?

 

On the face of it this particular report is accurate, and no one can argue that Industry (not just the data center/technology industry) needs to address the issue of renewable energy and a move away from reliance on fossil fuels, but it could equally be argued that this report is somewhat ‘one eyed’ in its approach.

 

In an ideal world we would all use renewable energy sources but at the current moment in time this situation is idealistic. Most data center operators are utilising facilities that were built in less enlightened times and simply plug into the grid offered by their utility or power provider and are therefore often faced with ‘Hobson’s Choice’ as to the mix of fossil vs. renewable energy offered. Whilst companies with the financial clout of Google might be able to enter the power utility space, for many other cloud operators this is simply not an option.

 

One recognises that the Greenpeace, with its wholly admirable intentions in issuing this report, is seeking leadership from the global IT giants in its bid to move renewable energy up the public agenda, but it should also recognise that the DC industry as a whole, not just the IT super powers, is generally aware of its responsibilities and is genuinely seeking to reduce its impact where it can.

 

In the report, Greenpeace claims that seeking energy efficiency, whilst to be commended, is not enough but for many smaller operators, faced with legacy builds, it is a start and a major one.

 

It is an undeniable fact that the raw energy consumed by the data center is both the biggest financial cost overhead and is easily the largest contributor to the facility’s carbon footprint. But whilst acknowledging that power supply is obviously vital, there are many other major considerations to take into account when building out a new DC facility – internet/network connectivity being one rather important one for example.  

 

The report correctly claims that Cloud computing is growing, and so too are the data centers that are supporting its growth, but what it does not appear to mention is the overall net effect on energy consumption  as disparate server farms are closed and replaced by moving business processes to the cloud. Many companies taking advantage of the benefits of the cloud are effectively outsourcing their existing IT infrastructure and no longer have a need to own or maintain servers.

 

Logic would suggest that one hundred companies ridding themselves of their own in-house maintained and cooled servers in exchange for utilising one single cloud operator’s infrastructure would lead to an overall reduction in carbon emissions. Analysts at IDC estimate that for every $1.00 spent on new hardware, an additional $0.50 is spent on power and cooling. By implementing a more efficient cooling solution e.g. a single DC rather than a 100 server rooms, fitted with the latest cooling technology, the amount of energy consumed must be reduced.

 

Even acknowledging the tough current economic conditions, it is no surprise that IDC reckons that in 2009 the overall server market declined by 18.9 per cent as many companies consolidated and outsourced their computing requirements.

 

In addition to the physical building and plant economies of scale that cloud computing offers, much effort is currently being expended by cloud providers on the utilisation of virtualisation technologies within the DC.  The cloud service provider can add real value here through scale and through the dedicated technological expertise offered. Underpowered virtual servers can fail to meet an organization’s processing needs, and over-engineered systems can waste money and energy. There is also a real potential for server sprawl to occur with a badly planned and implemented virtualisation project but this is mitigated when handled on a purpose built cloud platform.

 

Likewise the use of “energy proportional” operational techniques is growing amongst cloud service providers, which basically manages ‘spikey’ computing power activity - from idle to peak load - at its most energy efficient.

 

And of course we shouldn’t over look the fact that the very nature of cloud computing can lead to other environmental benefits as well, the web applications hosted in a data center may allow thousands of people to telecommute instead of travelling to offices and meetings thus reducing the carbon footprint further.

 

If we are to truly assist the environment by building greener data centers - and given that it has also been said that the ‘greenest data center is the one that we don’t have to build’ - we need to pursue a holistic approach which looks at every aspect of the services that the cloud offers not just the raw power supply.

 

If utilised effectively, cloud computing offers organisations the opportunity to reduce their energy consumption, renewable or otherwise, and surely overall energy reduction rather than energy replacement is a long term goal that will be of benefit to everyone.

In with the In Cloud

Posted by Rack Packer - 15/03/10 at 06:03:40 pm

Will Social Networks lead to a Community Cloud?

 

On Thursday 25^th March 2010, people from an estimated 200 cities across the globe will come together to celebrate and support the second Global Twestival. Defined by Twitter as ‘a way to take part in a global event that transforms lives’, Twestival was created last year by London based Amanda Rose, an events-minded entrepreneur, who believed that Twitter’s users could be brought together for the common good.

 

Ms Rose’s creation resulted in a series of worldwide off line events – from concerts to knitting groups – that raised over $250,000 for the chosen beneficiary - Charity:Water -  and brought worldwide public awareness to the global water crisis and the devastating fact that over 1 billion people lack access to clean water.

 

This year’s Global Twestival looks set to repeat last year’s achievements, at the time of writing a shade over $52,000 had been donated, with all proceeds in 2010 going to Concern Worldwide.

 

Perhaps it was the success of the first Twestival that led Wolverine himself, Actor Hugh Jackman to challenge Twitter users to explain in one short tweet why he should support their favorite charity. The charity supported by the most convincing “tweet” would win $100,000. In the end Hugh ended up donating $50,000 each to both Operation of Hope and Charity:Water. Another Hollywood Star, and everyone’s favourite tweeter - @aplusk - a.k.a Ashton Kutcher delivered on his promise of donating to Malaria No More, if and when he beat CNN to the million followers mark.

 

Likewise, last year ABC New Reporter, Bob Woodruff, who himself was seriously injured whilst on news duty in Iraq called upon Twitter users to donate to his foundation, which aids injured service personnel and veterans. To date his ‘Tweet to Remind’ initiative has raised over $200,000 towards its May Memorial Day target of $1.9M.

 

The examples listed above - all Twitter - are just a flavour of the hundreds and hundreds of fund raising tales that involve the use of social networking tools to spread their powerful messages and calls for action. And you can bet that they won’t be the last.

 

With 400M users on Facebook and 119M unique visitors on MySpace, and Twitter managing to acquire 6.2M new users per month, social networks offer non profits and charitable causes a huge opportunity for getting both their voice heard and raising vital funds (even allowing for inactive and deleted accounts).

 

Campaigns and petitions can be set up and released in seconds. The old saying a ‘picture tells a thousand words’ is never truer than on the internet. A 20 second You Tube video of an elephant being culled by poachers is far more powerful, and engenders a far more emotive response, than a 1,000 word article describing the slaying.

 

The beauty of the internet is that’s instant and will genuinely elicit a reaction in real time – which gives any organisation a pretty decent snapshot of whether their campaign is going to float or sink.

 

And as the trend for online social/community fund raising and campaigning grows apace so does the need for additional computing power to effectively support the demand. So used to simply logging in and typing away are we, that we are completely oblivious to the infrastructure that is humming away in the background to deliver the services we consume.

 

And this is an absolutely key characteristic of the other buzz term (social media just about outscoring it) cloud computing. To the end user, the cloud is invisible; the technology that supports the applications doesn’t matter — the fact that the applications are always available is key. Uptime is everything.

 

Take Facebook for example. When it first began in 2004, with a small number of members and with no photos or videos to display, the entire service ran on a single server. Today, some 30,000 servers later, the company is investing somewhere between $180M & $125M in a purpose built data centre in Prineville, Oregon. How many of us even remotely consider this fact or are even bothered by it as we join the other 35 million users in updating our status pages daily?

 

Yet this is a great example of how computing and communication is moving to the data center – someone else’s data center – the cloud. No need to invest in and manage your own infrastructure, you simply plug into the services offered by a third party supplier as and when you chose. But there is a risk of relying solely on ’free to net’ Social Networking tools for planned events and campaigns in that you are basically beholden to standard terms and conditions and have no recourse for action should your service provider fail you or suffer an outage. A thought worth hanging onto if you’re attempting to raise millions of dollars.

 

As the tech industry debates the benefits and merits of the public vs. private vs. hybrid cloud models, perhaps with initiatives such as Twestival, we may also begin to see the development of a fourth not so widely touted model - the Community Cloud.

 

It may take a while to become a reality, but you can certainly envisage the day when communities of like minded people/groups across the globe decide to take the socio-technical concept one stage further, and create their own virtual data centers utilising the spare capacity of their networked personal computers/laptops.

 

Not for them the Fail Whale, but their own dedicated controllable cloud. Not only will they control the messages and promotion but also the apps/storage/shared workspace behind the campaign. The technology exists today but there are still many barriers and questions to overcome, such as latency, resource management and security. These are not insurmountable challenges, and it will certainly be a while before the Community Cloud truly materialises – but it certainly is one cloud on the horizon.

 

 

The State of the Internet Past & Present - A whole lot of Web Hosting going on and on

Posted by Rack Packer - 03/03/10 at 03:03:44 pm

Kudos to JESS3 - a creative agency that specializes in web design, branding and data visualization - for this excellent ‘State of the Internet’ presentation. When you take a step back and consider the mind boggling numbers presented throughout this vid, you realise just how far we’ve come since Nicholas Negroponte of MIT Media Labs said back in ‘97 that “the internet was the most overhyped, underestimated phenomenon in history.”

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but how must the guys at Newsweek feel when they look back through their archives and read this piece from Clifford Stoll, published in the magazine on February 27th 1995.

“After two decades online, I’m perplexed. It’s not that I haven’t had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I’ve met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I’m uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.” - Good opening, but one feels that Clifford should have wrapped at this point.

“Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.” Oh dear Clifford, its not looking good. BTW remind me what is a CD-ROM?

“Consider today’s online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it’s an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can’t tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.”  Might have been advisable to have been a little less dismissive of Mr Negroponte’s predictions.

” Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.” A world without Salespeople? What a preposterous idea. No one would welcome that.

Well there we have it. Clifford ‘Ex-Stolling’ the future of the internet. Phenomenon it most certainly has proved to be and long may it continue.

Footnote to this. Clifford Stoll was reminded of this article last week as it became something of a cult on the web (some 15 years later)  and he gamely came back with this reply:

“Of my many mistakes, flubs, and howlers, few have been as public as my 1995 howler.

Wrong? Yep. At the time, I was trying to speak against the tide of futuristic commentary on how The Internet Will Solve Our Problems.

Gives me pause. Most of my screwups have had limited publicity: Forgetting my lines in my 4th grade play. Misidentifying a Gilbert and Sullivan song while suddenly drafted to fill in as announcer on a classical radio station. Wasting a week hunting for planets interior to Mercury’s orbit using an infrared system with a noise level so high that it couldn’t possibly detect ‘em. Heck—trying to dry my sneakers in a microwave oven (a quarter century later, there’s still a smudge on the kitchen ceiling)

And, as I’ve laughed at others’ foibles, I think back to some of my own cringeworthy contributions. Now, whenever I think I know what’s happening, I temper my thoughts: Might be wrong, Cliff …

Warm cheers to all,

Cliff Stoll on a rainy Friday afternoon in Oakland”

A true internet Legend! (be interested to read Cliff’s take on Cloud Computing! - coming to a shopping mall the size of India soon)

So sit back and enjoy the fruits of JESS3’s labours as you see just how wrong one journalist can be…

Oh! and make sure you have your volume on when viewing as the accompanying music is so annoyingly catchy…and it just leaves you feeling good!

Miami’s Latest Vice - Cloud Computing

Posted by Rack Packer - 01/03/10 at 06:03:18 pm

There were a couple of things that I will remember from my time at the Parallels Summit ’10 which wrapped up in Miami last week.

The first was that the Summit’s venue – the Fontainebleau Resort – has a rich movie and music heritage, with its beautiful grounds providing the back drop for pivotal scenes in Goldfinger (Bond), Scarface (Pacino) and A Hole in the Head (Sinatra), whilst it is also the title subject of a song written by Neil Young and performed by the Stills-Young Band on their 1976 album Long May You Run.

The second was that, and the theme for the Summit, Cloud Computing will be the next game changer in IT, and that, with a little thought from within the Industry, it will survive the hype and deliver on its promises.

The organisers pre amble had stated that by attending the Summit ‘you will develop strategies to transform your business; you will better compete in the market through differentiated offerings and improve profitability through growth and operational efficiency’. A bold statement and one which was certainly not going to be fully implemented within three days, but thanks to the excellent key note speakers and the networking opportunity, the Summit certainly provided plenty of food for thought.

These are the points that I have taken away and will be mulling over for the next few weeks (quite probably months and quite possibly years):

There is no simple definition of ‘Cloud’

During the summit, cloud was defined as ‘Consumer and business products, services and solutions delivered and consumed in real-time over the Internet’, ‘an enabler for Small Business to get access to the fully fledged IT services they need’, a ‘combination of PaaS, IaaS and SaaS enabling technologies’ and there even appeared to be train of thought that suggested Cloud is simply existing virtual server/hosting services rebranded and marketed. Perhaps the most brutally honest description was ‘Cloud is whatever my customers want it to be and what they want to pay for’.

What this simply highlighted was that as an Industry we have yet to crystallise a definitive simple meaning which is universally accepted and easily marketed. This situation is indicative of the evolutionary state of the Cloud and will eventually pan out in much the same way as access technologies ADSL, SDSL and Cable simply became ‘broadband’ in the mid noughties.

What was clear was the message that the existence of a cloud computing infrastructure is not an end game, it creates opportunities and encourages vendor innovation, and at the end of the day it will be the customer that lets us know ‘who has won and who has lost out’ in the battle for market share. One particular phrase which resonated with me was ‘Embrace the cloud and make it your own.’

Drop the Hype

See above. Almost to the man or woman, every presenter stressed that the Industry needs to stop stoking the hype fires and focus more on the benefits and the services that Cloud Computing will deliver customers. The term ‘Cloud’ has a really high recollection rate amongst businesses in general, but few are opting to avail themselves of the services - of making the ‘jump across the Chasm’ - with many of them slightly distrustful of the mixed messages and general vendor confusion. A recent IDC survey showed that 18% of business respondents stated that Cloud was simply ‘a renaming of an old concept’ and that a further 22% believe that the market is far too immature to even consider whether Cloud would be of benefit to their businesses. In other words the Industry has some work to do.

SMB Market is the sweet spot for the Cloud Services

As highlighted in my earlier blog post, the SMB market is seen as the real sweet spot for Cloud Service vendors provided the following criteria are met:

• Competitive Pricing
• Offers SLAs
• Option to migrate back to ‘on premise’
• Provides a turnkey/complete solution
• Understands my business
• Offers both public and private versions of the Cloud
• Large network of proven partners
• Can support me
• Technology and business innovator
• Reputation & Brand

And perhaps most importantly, a business that ‘I have already done/do business with’ was given as a key criterion by 50% of those surveyed – supporting the fact that ‘Trusted Supplier’ status will be a key USP for the Cloud providers.

What the results of this survey suggest is that the SMB seeks from its Cloud provider exactly the same set of standards/values that it would from any other provider of business services – peace of mind at a competitive price.

In the Shadow of Giants

One fear or notion, which was dispelled at the Summit was that the Cloud Computing market was set to be dominated by a few major brands – Google, Facebook (an interesting inclusion - but logical when you consider the size of its recent Data Centre investment), Amazon, Microsoft, HP etc.
One of the key reasons given by several speakers, was that (apart from the obvious: this is a ‘new’ market with plenty of headroom) Cloud Computing can be sliced and diced on so many levels or ‘layers’ gauranteeing  that no single company will successfully ‘own’ or dominate every layer. The consensus was that customers will buy as their computing needs require from every layer within the Cloud, be it the infrastructure layer, the hosting layer, the development layer and the apps layer. No ‘killer’ app was identified but most indicated that basic hosting, email, back up, data storage and archiving would drive the market past the early adopter stage.

Overall a great three days worth of thought provoking debate, excellent speakers, exotic location and the reinforced satisfaction of knowing that this is a very vibrant and innovative industry to be a part of.

Maybe the next time Auric Goldfinger is in Miami planning world domination and untold riches, he won’t have to consider a nuclear explosion in Fort Knox, he simply needs to look to the Cloud.