Five years ago...

I placed this note on my calendar for today (February 23, 2015):

VARs as we knew them would be almost extinct, replaced by direct sales or 'mom and pops' schlepping gear. Most companies are looking to service providers for this stuff and not spending nearly as much on gear and pro services to implement it. What is the cloud like now?

Now that we're here, I wonder how far off I was.  Obviously the VAR landscape has changed.  There has been a great deal of consolidation over the past five years.  At that time, I was a part of INX, sub-$500M company that had grown through acquisitions to about 450 people.  Within a couple of years we were acquired by Presidio Network Solutions and we are now pushing past the $2B revenue mark.  Many of our major competitors exceed (or are rapidly approaching) $1-4B per year in the U.S.

Additionally, most of us have strong Managed Services offerings, our own capital leasing arms, and a number of other complementary offerings that bolster the business, directly.

My thinking at the time was that cloud services would have displaced the traditional IT consumption model more quickly than it has but it has definitely transformed the landscape and most of our customers have incorporated some level of X-as-a-Service into their IT operations.

So, while my thinking may have been irrationally exuberant at the time, I don't think I totally missed the mark.  If you look at some of my much earlier posts, some of the things I wondered about back when, have come to pass and some may still be to come or will never make it to reality.  Certainly I am not the only one making predictions and hopefully we are all looking back as much as looking forward to keep ourselves in check (hubris is a fatal flaw).  Still, it's a fun exercise.  I guess it's time to set an appointment for 2020.  I'll have to give it some thought.

Your comments and prognostications are welcome. 

Been a while...

It's definitely been awhile since I posted out here.  After checking in recently, I saw that I had received over 800 page views.  I think I have only looked at this just over 700 times so those views must be coming from someone else!

For what it's worth, I've been observing a lot over the past couple of years as I've been heads down working on completing my undergraduate degree that I started some time ago. 

Several things have come to fruition over the past few years.  I don't really consider myself a futurist or some sort of digital prophet, but I do think it is pretty cool that Google Glass and Oakley's Airwave goggles have been released since my post on singularities.

More to offer but no time right now.  I need to finish some homework, but I'll be back soon (you know, for what it's worth...).

A thought on anti-virus as anti-bodies

Sooner or later the OS and the virtualization layer will become one and the same. They already perform the same function (brokering limited physical resources amongst multiple applications) and while virtualization is a huge step, it just adds overhead to the equation.

In the future, I think each app will have its own little blended OS/virtualization wrapper and it will be able to move around a cloud environment, using what it needs, but not dependent on any single physical piece of hardware. That presents a problem though of securing it against some of the bad stuff that is sure to affect these systems.

This came up in a conversation with a friend tonight who posed the question of applications that today, while they are not required, sit in a shared OS environment with the application...applications like anti-virus software. It's a good question and if the applications are going to be more self-contained, then I don't think it can be answered from a traditional application programming perspective. I think we have to look at the cloud as more akin to a living biological organism rather than a static collection of manufactured processes and compute systems.

And if that is the direction that the cloud takes, one where the location of an application is much more dynamic than in even a traditional virtual infrastructure, then we need a better way to provide these protective functions as part of the "organism". We need an immune system for the cloud.

The first line of defense is the "skin" encompassing your standard perimeter security items such as filters and firewalls. Other layers of defense would be needed if that first layer is breached, apps that act like white blood cells or anti-bodies. Let them flow through the cloud in search of the virus or malware or whatever bad thing is there and then they can go to work cleaning it up. Of course, we'll still have to inoculate and create new vaccines and we'll need the ability to introduce "cures" for the new "bugs" that show up, against which there is not an existing defense, just like with our own bodies.

I don't know that this "organism" model is where we will end up, but something like it should be our end goal. If not, then we'll ultimately end up confined by a great monolithic structure instead of an organic type of thing that can adapt, self-monitor, and heal itself, or that, at the first sign of new symptoms, can be quickly and effectively treated and innoculated against future outbreaks.

Just my two cents and it is still a little rough, but I think the premise is sound. Feel free to comment.

Onramp to the cloud?

As I posted back in March, we "have all of the pieces to build out the Cloud 1.0. There are still a lot of questions around access, security, and offerings" that are need to be answered before we can get the cloud to the next level. With most people predicting a hybrid model based on a private-public partnership between companies and their providers, the vendors that can secure and maximize the efficiency of that link the soonest have a tremendous opportunity to capture a niche market that could generate a significant amount of demand, if the predictions hold true.

Afore Solutions may be the first one able to fill that gap. Having witnessed their Advanced Service Edge (ASE) product in action at last year's VMWorld, I was impressed with their ability to extend layer 2 services across extremely long distances for an extremely reasonable price. Since then they have taken that functionality, improved and bolstered it significantly, and are rolling out a virtual, software-only version of it at this year's VMWorld. Designated "CloudLink™", this new product provides security, SLA management, and performance optimization for private or public clouds.

This may be a niche area but it is a critical one. Keep an eye on these guys.

A Singularity (of Sorts)

While it may not be as dramatic as the end of the human era when machines become smarter than people and "wake up", a la Cyberdyne Systems, we have reached a minor milestone in personal technology. For several years, I have been saying that our phones would get bigger and our computers would get smaller (no, I don't think I'm the only one that has made that obvious prediction) and now we have the Dell Streak. The iPad came close but it doesn't have any native telephony capabilities (Thank goodness this is not a Windows Mobile device. Dell chose Android and while it will be interesting to see how Oracle's suit against Google for allegedly violating Java copyrights will turn out, I think that is a great long-term strategy).

As Mr. Mossberg points out, the Streak is a "tweener" device, either a tiny tablet or a jumbo smart-phone. What the Streak gives up to the iPad is screen-size, which begs the question, "How big is too big?" We love our big-screen TVs and our 20"+ computer monitors, but we don't want to carry them around. And, aside from the initial cool-factor of being seen at the coffee shop with an iPad in your lap and a steaming latte on the table next to you, how long will this foray into the tablet-world last? The reality is, people will want bigger screens but they won't want to carry them around.

The next move will be toward personal heads-up devices (HUDs) and while I don't think this model solves the problem, there are some interesting things happening with much smaller form factors. Of course, that is also the next step in the devolution of social interaction. It's bad enough that we see people talking and don't realize they have a small blue-tooth earpiece in. Imagine having someone looking at you with their eyes darting all around, a visual shakedown, only to realize later that they were reading the news on their contact lens-based HUD.

I expect Oakley to develop a very stylish HUD that will also incorporate wireless connectivity and that will be the one people scoop up (after all, the problem with contact lens HUDs is getting the cable from the lens to the wireless radio!).

Don't get me wrong, I love technology and all of the things it has and will continue to provide. The problem is with how we use it. At that point, we will have moved even closer to the William Gibson view of the cyberpunk future, one in which we are able to "jack in" to a virtual reality that is more appealing than our physical one. No, our greatest threat is not that the machines will become aware and take over the world; our greatest threat is that we will become so "hooked" on them, that there will be no separation or identification of us without them. That is the singularity that should concern us.

Cloud Computing, the Tablet, and the Developing World

I love Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child organization. As the name states, their mission is:

"To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning."

One big challenge he is running into is the cost and he sees the tablet as the way to get to his goal of a $100 "laptop". He thinks all of the necessary functionality can fit into the tablet and that it is the ideal platform because it has "no moving parts, not even a hinge." It's perfect.

Except that today's tablet is finitely usable. Like any self-contained computing platform, it is only as good as the technology that is in it and its useful life is limited. What needs to happen is to purpose-build a tablet to tap into the cloud. Think how this could impact, not only Negroponte's children, but numerous others, especially women, in developing nations.

One of the things that I find fascinating (mainly due to my self-absorbed Western perspective) is the rise of the microfinance industry. Here we have people that are starting businesses on as little as $100-200! Compare that to the latest VC-financed enterprise here in the States. Now don’t get me wrong; relative to their annual incomes, that can be a steep price, but entrepreneurs exist everywhere, and few have ever had access to capital to launch. But the microfinance industry (made up of secular and faith-based participants) has opened up tremendous possibilities in those areas where it has been able to gain traction.

When we start to couple cloud-enabled tablets with microfinance opportunities and expand both we give those folks access to information and the means to begin to move out of the abject poverty in which so many of them live. Will we ever totally eradicate poverty? Not in this world. There are too many other factors at work. And neither the cloud or the tablet or even the applications are where they need to be yet. But they will be. And as information becomes more ubiquitous and people have access to means that allow them to act on it, other freedoms and opportunities can follow.

Sure, it's an idealistic view of things, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't give it a try someday.

The Cloud: A Simple Definition

How do I personally define the cloud? At the risk of over-simplifying: Online banking. Think about it: I ultimately run my business based on information. Information about my products, my customers, my employees, my finances, etc, and I need that information to be presented to me in such a way that it enables me to make decisions and to take (or not take) action. Online banking works just like that. It presents information about my account balances, gains/losses, etc. and based on that information I decide if I need to save more, if I can afford to spend any, if I need to move some around, etc.

Ultimately I only care that I can get to the data by calling my banker, or preferably, via a computer, netbook, terminal, or smartphone with a browser. I don't care where the data sits as long as I can get to it and it is secure. I don't care about the application that serves it up to me and I certainly don't care about the operating system or hardware on which it runs. I'd bet that most CEO/CFO types would tell you that this is exactly how they feel: Give them access to the data they need, wherever they are, whenever they need it, and make sure it is secure at rest and in transit.