Cloud computing and community laundry

Ever wondered why these days there is so much hype over cloud computing?
Do you feel intrigued to constantly hear about a subject which you don't know about?
Read on.......I was exactly at this juncture, when I decided to read about, and introspect....
Hope this read helps to kill your time on a boring Saturday evening when you have got nothing
better do.....

Ever wondered what is the difference of having a washer and a dryer in your own rented apartment,
than as a community service? How does it help you? In the case where the 2 are located in your own
apartment, you do not have to pay up 2 dollars to use them anytime you need. And the convenience
of not taking your dirty out in the public......

Of course you had to pay for the water and electricity that you are using, but that would be much cheaper
for you than paying 2 dollars for the other option.

But we always tend to think from a perspective that benefits us. Think about the apartment owner's
perspective. If one needs to install all the dryers and washers for renting out the homes, then the initial
cost would be very high. Add to that the maintenance cost, of something goes wrong.

But on the other hand, if the apartment owner installs these as a paid service, the owner not only
optimizes the cost, as the number of these that needs to be installed are much less, but also makes
a very small profit, every time you use them. Mind you, that does not reflect on the rent also, as the
rent is more determined on the demand of the apartment itself.

So once you get this analogy, think of the huge companies, with their huge IT requirements.
Currently most of them have in-house servers, for payroll, inventory management and blah blah blah.
They have whole IT departments dedicated to run them, 24/7/365. They have to constantly renew
their software agreements, upgrade them, and upgrade their hardware, as the companies grows,
or as the year passes.

These also add up to their energy bills, manpower requirements, for something that they are not selling. take for example a pharma company like Pfizer. A huge workforce, whether in-house, or outsourced is there, which does not do or know anything about medicines.

What if even part of this huge cost and headache can be given to another company, for a monthly price?
Or a pricing based on the number of users, or transactions, or strictly a fixed pricing model fixed over 5 years or more?

Think of Pfizer using Microsoft servers, and softwares for emails and other documents, and getting licensing agreements for the same, in a bundled manner? In this case, Microsoft is the sole responsible entity of ensuring to Pfizer, that their email service, and other document services, would be up and running, and all these services, would be maintained by MS, using their own hardware, and software. Pooooof....there goes a whole department, a huge server room, licensing issues, maintenance headaches, off the costs of Pfizer. What is added is a monthly cost, given out to MS. And a 24/7/365 guarantee.

Now lets move the spotlight to MS, shall we? By providing its products as services, to different client like Pfizer, MS can achieve a better operating margin, than the individual clients put together, in terms of manpower. It can also demand a lower hardware price from its vendors, if it can become the top service provider. In effect, the dollars are channelized to a lesser number of entities, than being previously done. If hard disk providers like Samsung, can provide the bulk of the storage space, to a single company like MS, it will lower its margins, on individual disks.

Think of Walmart, and Amazon, in the retail domain.

Who benefits from this? Of course the end customer, in this case, Pfizer and other MS clients, and also the service provider, in this case MS.

Consolidation was the name of the game in the retail goods market. It is going to be the same here, in the IT services space.

In the next blog, I will try to dissect what it can mean for the different stakeholders.
For now, blast away your comments.....

The demography of 2012 Christmas

Are we going to see the old combination of Microsft and Intel (Wintel), gunning for the top spots in 2012? Why not? With their impressive arsenal of portable OS and the biggest software stack, Microsoft may well end up hogging the limelights in 2012. And Intel, with its extremely wide spread array of CPU platforms, may end up ruling the roost again.

Why am I saying this? Why not?

Currently we are very much concentrating on the different eco-systems. There is a huge chunk of consumers who are in the Apple eco system, and another who are in the Android space. And there is a much much bigger crowd in the Microsoft world. Any day, worldwide, the usage of MS software is unparalleled even today. And yes, US is not the world. Even in the Apple space, Outlook and MS Office rules. They are so much used that people never notice them. They just use them on a daily basis.

Microsoft's dominance is not in the space where the Apps are catering to your non-essential needs. It is part and parcel of our daily office lives, where we spent most of our time.

And Intel's hardware business is spread out across many layers of our daily official lives. Whether its on laptop, server, DTV's....its actually envelopes the daily functioning of our lives barring the cell phones.

In essence, the ARM CPUs are now trying to come up with more speed, in turn becoming more heat generators, power hungry....in one word, more Intel like.

Convergence is a 2 way strategy. It not only works for cell phone manufacturers slowly extending themselves to the tablet world, and then perhaps to the laptop world. It also works the other way round.

As Intel tries to come out with much more efficient CPUs which are less power hungry, the software must be there which is less CPU hog. Apple has got this right balance, by doing everything in house. But it has always proved very expensive for their customers. And yes, there millions of people who still wants to have a choice in their decisions for choosing the hardware and software for their daily use. And the combination of the Intel platform, along MS, both based on the PC architecture, has been of invaluable use for the masses.

This combination is again set to align due to market pressure. It is necessary they align, for us, the consumers.

And talking of tablets, we are just seeing the first generation , where the operations are very much limited.
The next genrations will give you the power of video editing using Adobe's and Maya software. And that next generation will belong to Intel again.

Too much of soothsaying......will see next year this time.

Primesense and Kinect

I had earlier seen video demos of the Microsoft Kinect, and was pleasantly pleased with what Microsoft was doing with it. Microsoft has been picking up disruptive technologies like these, another being the Surface that seems to be straight out of Sci-Fi movie.

Of course Nintendo's Wii was the first to have this kind of sensors, albeit with a controller, but MS raised the bar with its Kinect offering.

So when I read this article in Engadget, and got to know about Primesense, it was good to know that Primesense was going to use the same technology, only without  motorized tilt functionality or voice recognition,  in other applications. One of them has been video gaming,  as shown by MS. But the possibilities are seemingly mind boggling. Yes, we can use this beautiful technology as an invisible mouse, as shown in these Engadget videos  but then I think there are huge possibilities to the application of this technology. One possibility is  sports training with the help of corrections shown judged by the movement of the trainee. This technology already exists, but currently expensive sensors needs to be attached to the body.

In fact it would be interesting to see what people can think up as applications for such a technology.

Your ideas in the comments section are welcome.

To read more about Primesense and Kinect:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/15/primesenses-openni-provides-the-best-kinect-drivers-yet-from-s/


http://www.zdnet.com/blog/home-theater/motion-sensing-technology-behind-microsoft-kinect-controller-coming-to-home-theater-pcs-cable-boxes/3586

Before the end of 2011

It has been an amazing year so far, with so many technological marvels being passed on to the consumer. As usual, Apple remains the pioneer in introducing products, which are sexy, and perhaps groundbreaking, in many  terms. The main onslaught of Apple, kept the companies guessing for a while.

But Google and Nokia both had figured it out a long time back. Both of them developed their application framework for next generation of smart phones based on open source Linux. While Google took the path of relying on Java Developers to rapidly develop apps for their platform, Nokia hung on to its QT offering.

In the meanwhile, companies like LG, Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson, who were late to predict the requirement of such kind of a platform, jumped onto the Google offering of Android. RIM still continues with its blackberry platform, and have been trying to lately join the party through development of a QNX based platform.

In all this chaos, Microsoft remained silent, perhaps it was still guessing maybe they will not be affected by the mobile market. They had no proper offering for the new generation smart phones, other than WinMobile 6.x.

But all hell broke loose, when Apple introduces its tablet, based on the same Mobile platform, and this throttles the company to what is it today: a behemoth with having USD 76 billion in cash, and a market value surpassing Exxon.

In the meantime, Nokia remains a leader in the non-smartphone segment, but a laggard in this new arena. Somehow, they reach the decision of dropping off Meego, towards which I have a personal bias, and starts collaborating with Microsoft, to use Windows Mobile 8, as their software platform. This strategy is still a short in the dark, and still needs to see the light of the day with a new phone offering.

Riding on the new wave of the Google platform, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and LG, all launch their own versions of the phone, some with deep customization, some with plane Android versions ported to their hardware. As new phones were being launched, buyers, who were looking for alternatives to iPhone or ATT or both, lapped up these devices in plenty.

Very quickly, a new set of eco systems have been created. On one hand, you have Apple, with its eco system of iPod, iTouch, iPhone, iPad, and Macbooks, seeing an unthinkable amount of sale, specifically in the US. Users who never used any apple device, was at least hooked onto the platform from iPod, and then got sucked into the stability, and usability of the Apple eco system as a whole.

The parallel eco system is being created by Google, with its host of features, the latest being Google Voice, offering a different perspective of cloud computing to the masses. And OEMs like Samsung and HTC, are taking huge advantage of the same by bringing out new devices, whether its a phone or a tablet. In fact Samsung has jumped onto being the second largest mobile phone company, and the best selling Android tablet company now. Though now Apple is upping the ante by fighting the patent battle, but it has been an established fact that markets like to have options, and hence, Apple's battle for trying to be a monopoly will ultimately have its limitations.

With major hardware vendors like Intel, NVIDIA, TI, and Qualcomm joining the Google eco system, it remains to be seen whether Apple, with its full control over hardware and software, keeps dominating the market, as it does now, or it will again  fallback to the days when it was a product for the niche, and Windows dominating the roost.

In between, a huge company like HP, tries to make sense of all this, buys up Palm last year, and immediately kills its own product, after it receives a lukewarm response initially. But that's another story.

As we move on to the end of the year, we will see Microsoft firing all its guns with both Windows 8 for desktop, laptops and tablets (including ultra thin laptops), and Windows Mobile 8. Some more devices targeted to specific user bases, like the Nook Colour, based on Android, but of totally different category are also scheduled to be launched. But personally I wait for what Intel does with Meego. If it launches successfully, then not only Intel will be having another platform for its chips to sell on, but the users will have a 4th platform to choose from.

In all, interesting months ahead before the year closes.