Umang Kumar's Weblog

Network computing, cloud computing and creation of myths...

Businessweek did a recent story on "Google and the Wisdom of Clouds"...a story that highlighted Google's entry into the world of "cloud computing"

According to the gushing  tone of the article, 

What is Google's cloud? It's a network made of hundreds of thousands, or by some estimates 1 million, cheap servers, each not much more powerful than the PCs we have in our homes.

...

At the most basic level, it's the computing equivalent of the evolution in electricity a century ago when farms and businesses shut down their own generators and bought power instead from efficient industrial utilities.

Ah, it is a network of computers...and its adoption marks "a fundamental shift in how we handle information. At the most basic level, it's the computing equivalent of the evolution in electricity a century ago when farms and businesses shut down their own generators and bought power instead from efficient industrial utilities." Is that reminiscent of the slogan of a company and even some blog posts by its current CEO [here and here]? Let me quote from one the blog post:

In looking at the evolution of the commodity called computing, history provides an extraordinary parallel to the evolution of electricity. In fact, if you haven't read it, I'd highly recommend "Empires of Light," by Jill Jonnes. It's a very entertaining historical examination of how electricity was first discovered (rubbing amber produced mysterious sparks), reliably generated, and ultimately distributed across the world.

 

It is instructive to see how hype gets created, how the (populist) press presents sensational news items [Would a Stephen Shankland or a Peter Coffee have written such an article ever?] and how an image of wonder is perpetuated. Google is of course the blue eyed boy of the entire world right now. The normally starchy and tech-uppity Slashdot generally contains an average of two articles related to Google every day. Every magazine worth its salt tries to do its best in trying to explain the phenomenon that is Google. I myself am an enthusiastic user of many of their services. However, one must distinguish between what one invents from scratch and what one builds upon, expands and embellishes.

Online search was not a new idea when Google came onto the scene. However, it was what Google did with it that propelled it to importance. So scintillating was their implementation that the world was wowed and the rest is history. 

So, a better-way-to-do-things and the acute insight that this thing we are bettering will truly be crucial in times to come trumps actually having invented the technology itself. This of course is captured by the NIH syndrome. For the longest time Google was a one-trick pony, when they kept fine-tuning their search. But soon, other avenues suggested themselves as the Internet increasingly became part of people's lives. Maybe the founders had glorious visions all along, visions such as making all knowledge in the world archived and search-able, making the web the information superhighway it is meant to be. But it is evident is how each success is the stepping stone for other successes, how visions expand and possibilities are limitless as confidence grows.

Necessity is the mother of invention but so is an all-pervading confidence. To think big, to dream, one needs a very nurturing environment, to think in terms of limitless possibilities...to have your head in clouds, that is...

An introduction to the File System Manager for SAM-QFS filesystems

This is a quick introduction to the File System Manager -- by way of resurrecting my blog! Over the coming weeks I will walk through the many features that the Manager offers to configure, monitor and manage SAM & QFS file systems.

First, a very brief introduction to SAM-QFS products from the Sun website:

Sun StorageTek Storage Archive Manager (SAM) software provides data classification, centralized meta-data management, policy based data placement, protection, migration, long-term retention, and recovery to help organizations effectively manage and utilize data according to business requirements.

 Sun StorageTek QFS shared file system software improves quality of service and utilization of SAN infrastructures. It delivers maximum scalability, data management, and throughput for the most data-intensive applications, optimizing the data path across your infrastructure and enabling the convergence of SAN and NAS technologies.

 
The File System Manager has been around from the 4.0 release of the SAM-QFS product and the latest version released with SAM-QFS 4.6. The Manager is bundled with the base SAM-QFS product.

Below we see a screen-shot of a system which has a SAM file system configured [note: all SAM file systems, archiving or non-archiving are referred to as "qfs" in the manager; archiving, if configured, is added as the attribute], besides a few other file systems [UFS, ZFS, non-archiving SAM file systems...]:
[click image to enlarge]
 

Among many other features, the Manager also lets us manage all the archive media [disk-based, magnetic tape libraries etc] associated with a server which has SAM file systems. In the image below is shown a summary of the tape library associated with the system. Please note that the tape lib is being managed via the ACSLS software.

[click on image to enlarge] 

 

 I will drill down into further details of this very feature-rich product which offers completely secure, web-based management of systems running SAM-QFS. As a preview, I will touch upon the management of media, clustered systems, shared file systems, snapshot and recovery, file system metrics, fault monitoring and, of course, archiving in my forthcoming posts.

Jack Welch at the Boston Public Library
I went down to the Boston Public Library yesterday to hear Jack Welch, ex-CEO of GE, speak on his new book Winning. Well, the format of the occassion was not a straighforward talk but a sort of an interview, conducted by the head of the Boston Public Library, who fired a diverse set of questions at Jack. The questions ranged over a wide variety of topics: the efficiency of government and the applicability of his methods to improve things; the logic of the paychecks of CEOs vs say, a librarian ("Who decides?" All about choice one makes in life, according to Jack); his many nicknames and the stories behind them (e.g "Neutron Jack" ); his famous (infamous?) 20-70-10 rule and a following explication of his idea of "no-level-playing-fields" ; the issue of ethics in business... All in all, a very lively and entertaining hour of question-and-answer. His message to companies/businesses in general: competitiveness is everything, not "doing well" etc...but being constantly innovative and competitive.

Chelsea 1, AC Milan 0 at Foxboro
Chelsea and AC Milan faced off at the Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA yesterday. AC Milan seemed quite off-color and frankly, quite clueless in the midfield. But, on the whole, good to see some big names on field and some fine moments of soccer.

'Ash seen on TV': Aishwarya Rai on David Letterman's Late Night Show!
The beauteous Aishwarya Rai, former Miss World and current Bollywood star appeared on David Letterman's Late Night Show yesterday. Popularly referred to as 'Ash,' Aishwarya is often billed as the "world's most beautiful woman." Be that as it may, she certainly comes across as strong and savvy---and last night, as smart as a whip with the normally unflappable David Letterman. It was hard to discern if David was a little flustered by her sang-foid but he definitely seemed pleasantly rattled just for one bit from this brilliant retort by Ash:

Dave: "So you live with your parents...? Is it common for grown up children to live with their parents in India...?" Ash: " Yes, I live with my parents. It is common in India...Well, one does not have to take an appointment to see one's parent in India!" Dave (looking around, emabarrassed-like, smiling sheepishly almost) " We learnt something tonight."

Not much of a Bollywood follower myself, still I have had the pleasure of seeing her in two marvellous and very accomplished roles, in the movies: Devdas and Chokher Bali. Highly recommended.

Innovation is Key: P&G's buyout of Gillette
According to this BusinessWeek article, "The P&G purchase of Gillette shows that innovation is key, and marketing is more diffuse and personal." Further in the article, there is this emphasis on Innovation:

1 Innovate. Innovate. Innovate. Why would P&G tinker with Tide? Long the detergent leader, Tide would seem best left alone, a profitable annuity on years of mass-market flogging in the '60s, '70s, and '80s. But P&G has tinkered nonetheless, combining strong technology and consumer research to push sales up 2.6% over the last year in a category that is growing less than 1%. The secret: a widening family of detergents and cleaners that now includes everything from Tide Coldwater, for cold-water washing, to Tide Kick, a combination measuring cup and stain penetrator. Innovation isn't always built from scratch. P&G is a master at transferring technologies from one brand to another. Tide StainBrush, a new electric brush for removing stains, uses the same basic mechanism as the Crest Spinbrush Pro toothbrush, also a P&G brand. Gillette, too, is adept at cross-pollination. Its latest winner is the battery-operated M3Power, the result of a collaboration between the company's razor, Duracell battery, and Braun small-appliance units. Despite a 50% price premium over what Gillette charged for its previous top-of-the-line razor, the M3Power has captured a 35% share of the U.S. razor market in seven months.

This does seem to resonate with our push on innovation...and more recently branding... But there are other examples too of innovators and companies that remained true to their credo and were very clear on the values driveing them: Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL ), which was late to market with its digital music player, the iPod, took the lead nevertheless with a combination of great product design and marketing brains. But why were consumers willing to accept a computer maker as a consumer-electronics company? Because Apple made its brand stand not for desktop computing but for imagination and fun. "The iPod is about creative people doing creative things," says David Placek, president of Lexicon Branding in Sausalito, Calif. Such thinking can fuel a rise to megabrand status in a fraction of the time it once took. The proof: Starbucks Corp. (SBUX ) The Seattle-based coffee chain does plenty of core innovation. Credit for part of its holiday profit surge of 31.2% belongs to its new pumpkin spice latte. But that's just the start. Anne Saunders, senior vice-president for marketing, sees the cafés not just as a place to slurp java but as somewhere "to connect with other people or as a getaway." That broader vision has led to offerings such as music and wireless Web connections.

Software as Service: CNET article
CNET has this article about IBM's plans about software as a service. The creation of an IBM-hosted application bundle is one of several initiatives at Big Blue to promote the notion of software as a service, or having applications delivered over the Internet. This model for buying software "on demand" is taking hold after years of missteps and failures, which were due to both technical challenges and faulty business models. ... In 2005, IBM will be accelerating its efforts, in the form of technical and sales resources, to promote software as a service with application partners, Buell Duncan, the company's general manager of developer and independent software vendor relations, said in December. As part of its broader plan to recruit ISV partners, IBM is seeking out companies that build their applications on Big Blue's software and hardware infrastructure and that have their hosted services run from IBM data centers. I remember Scott McNealy outlining his vision about software as a service in this interview and specifically saying: He predicts a future in which its servers and other hardware form networks that individuals and companies use to store and retrieve important information from huge data warehouses hundreds of miles away. Much of the operation will be controlled by Java, a programming language developed by Sun that runs on just about any device - from cellular phones to massive servers. ... We want everyone to standardize because we have the best technology in the planet. Then we are trying to move businesses to the level of where we will actually operate it for you. Because we manage about a half-million Sun servers around the world, we are down the experience curve.

Dell's Rollins dismisses iPod as a 'fad'
According to this article in news.com, the Dell CEO thinks the IPod as a "one-product wonder." Of course the IPod's wild success will solicit such comments. But are 'fads' in themselves bad? Did the Sony Walkman, which example Rollins cites, do nothing for Sony? Also, I personally do not think the IPod "just a fad" in the same league as a new diet or a new hat everyone must have. As I mentioned in my recent post , the IPod offers more than a temporary gratification--it offers a novel way of storing, accessing and listening to personal music. Its crazed popularity may level off, but I doubt one can call the IPod a flash in the pan. But what was even more interesting in this article was this statement of strategic focus by Rollins: "Our strategic focus has been on corporations and institutions, and selling them large server clusters and huge SAN (storage area network) installations," he said. "The data center isn't very sexy to write about but, frankly, that's where the money is. No. 1 is corporations and institutions."

"I have seen the promised land": remembering Dr. King

 I must admit I know very little about Dr. Martin Luther King. Just few bits and pieces: the usual "great man" biographical pen-sketches, his ideas of non-violence and the influence of Mahatma Gandhi. Yet, I have no real idea of his movement, his ideas and his struggle.But I was truly fortunate to come across this program on PBS yesterday: American Experience: Citizen King.

When I caught this program, it was tracing Dr. King's march in Chicago and the unexpectedly rough reaction to it. It later showed Dr. King's disapproval of the Vietnam War, the subsequent criticisms he received for his stance and his march into Mississippi in support of striking garbage workers when there occurred violence during the march. It was later reported of this march that Dr. King 'had fled the scene.' But Dr. King fought back such allegations with the explanation that he never supported violence in any form--how very Gandhian--and went back to Mississippi.

What I also liked about this documentary was the portrayal of the human side of Dr. King--the relentless demands of travel, meeting people, answering people's concerns, taking on criticism from within and without, and relentlessly fighting with towering courage and equanimity the suppressed underdog's fight.

Just like Gandhi who took on the British empire and finally won freedom for India, Dr. King took on the established attitudes, ideas and prejudices of a nation and was instrumental in securing another sort of freedom for those he represented. It was a very brave thing to do.

The meaning of IPod
Seeing Apple's 'Ipod-fuelled' results (and the inevitable word of caution) , I was reminded of an article that appeared in The Economist last year:"The meaning of IPod." Though quite brief, and a little disappointingly so given the import of the analysis, it still presented some insightful views. Its success depends on many factors, but the most important is its vast storage capacity. ... Apple correctly bet that many people would pay more for the far larger capacity of a hard disk. ... Few people know more about the behaviour of iPod users than Michael Bull, a specialist in the cultural impact of technology at the University of Sussex in England. Having previously studied the impact of the cassette-based Sony Walkman, he is now surveying hundreds of iPod users. Their consumption of music, he says, changes in three main ways. The first and most important is that the iPod grants them far more control over how and where they listen to their music. ... By granting them control over their environment—the audible environment, at least—the iPod allows its users to escape into their own little private bubbles. This does not mean the iPod is inherently anti-social, however. For its second effect is to make music consumption, a traditionally social activity, even more so. ... That leads to the third of the iPod's effects on music consumption. The ability to mix and match tracks in playlists unconstrained by the limitations of vinyl records or CDs could undermine the notion of the album as a coherent collection of music. So, despite poor reception of the idea ['Internet discussion boards buzzed with jokes that its name stood for “idiots price our devices” or “I prefer old-fashioned discs.”'], a conviction in the philosophy behind the product and an astute understanding of the needs of the consumer combined to make the IPod such a big hit. I am sure this has great lessons in marketing ["satisfying unmet needs"] and product development.

Open-sourcing the news
There is this interesting article on news.com about open-sourcing news. The project, called Wikinews, is in its early stages and faces clear challenges, from the difficulty of doing original reporting to delivering news quickly in a peer review model. Then why do it? Wales and others think that the mainstream media have let slip their pledges of objectivity and commitments to high-quality journalism. The goal of Wikinews is to give the straight story, neutral and unbiased. And to get the facts right--an area where mainstream media has lost some credibility. This does seem quite fascinating as you can have people in the places where the news occurs updating the facts. Of course, it could be quite a tower of babel and contention as people are so sensitive to news and often perceive the same news in different ways, but, hey, this does seem like a cool idea!! This just after the news that the NYT online edition was thinking of becoming subscription-based and the owner was worried about "a generation brought up on expecting quality news to be free." Now one can actually 'create' the news--no need for temperamental arbitrators and nosey editors and restrictive, overly solicitous management--and have it all free! A case in point is the excellent Tsunami Blog which combines blogging and a lot of independant news about the tsunami affected areas, run by a bunch of volunteers: open-sourcers!

The Future of the New York Times
This article in BusinessWeek discusses the future of the NYT. To me, as to countless others, the New York Times represents something beyond the normal provincialism of journalism: eclectic, diverse, informed and unique reportings and news-stories, day after day. While many feel that the Times is blatantly left-of-the-center, I still think it provides one with extremely incisive and discriminating points of view. My main interface with Times is with its online edition, magnificently produced and indefatigably updated, with crystal-clear visuals and easy-on-the-eyes text. The dreaded question on everyone's mind is of course, how long it can stay free. The BusinessWeek article has this on the matter: ONLINE, THE TIMES ALREADY is making serious money. New York Times Digital (which includes Boston.com as well as NYTimes.com) netted an enviable $17.3 million on revenues of $53.1 million during the first half of 2004, the last period for which its financials have been disclosed. All indications are that the digital unit is continuing to grow at 30% to 40% a year, making it NYT Co.'s fastest-revving growth engine. Advertising accounts for almost all of the digital operation's revenues, but disagreement rages within the company over whether NYTimes.com should emulate The Wall Street Journal and begin charging a subscription fee. Undoubtedly, many of the site's 18 million unique monthly visitors would flee if hit with a $39.95 or even a $9.95 monthly charge. One camp within the NYT Co. argues that such a massive loss of Web traffic would cost the Times dearly in the long run, both by shrinking the audience for its journalism and by depriving it of untold millions in ad revenue. The counterargument is that the Times would more than make up for lost ad dollars by boosting circulation revenue -- both from online fees and new print subscriptions paid for by people who now read for free on the Web. Sulzberger declines to take a side in this debate, but sounds as if he is leaning toward a pay site. "It gets to the issue of how comfortable are we training a generation of readers to get quality information for free," he says. "That is troubling." Somehow the availability on the web of 'free' stuff does not to me seem an obsession of low-minded, miserly web-citizens who lust after freebies. It does not seem as endemic and dire as "training a generation of readers to get quality information for free," somehow...it has to do with the way the web evolved, the way services started out on the web, the way many services and software is still available, free...the way two web giants offer peerless service 'free' : Yahoo and Google, and it is all accepted unquestioningly, but also with some knowledge that these outfits have learnt how to make money by other innovative channels while still maintaining their free offerings and also staying afloat themselves... I think the NYT is a very valuable resource (and immediately the statement engenders the obvious question : "Should we then not be ready to pay for it...?" ), and if the online site is making money, supporting itself, it 'should' continue being free...but that is probably an unrealistic, utopian thought...is there an "authoritative economics of free stuff on the web?"...

Jared Diamond on WBUR

Jared Diamond, of Guns, Germs, and Steel fame was on WBUR's On Point. They discussed his new book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

I had earlier read his article in the NYT which summarised the arguments in the book: the collapse and obliteration of once-mighty empires and societies chiefly because of environmental depradation. These people literally cut off the branch they were sitting on...or the tree they lived off, as it were, such that the societies could no longer support the populations.

His term for such reckless behaviour is 'ecocide.'

While environmental damage has been an issue the world has become aware of increasingly since the dawn of the industrial age, I still wonder if it is safe to draw parallels between those societies and modern First-world societies.

For instance, what checks and balances did those societies have to see where they stood resource-wise: financially, environmentally etc? Of course, one may argue, without an attempt at humor, that even in the modern days in the first-world, some societies seem to proceed merrily with what seems like financial suicide despite a thousand indicators which urge restraint, yet, it seems unlikely that a major debilitation of a great power is likely to occur without it being noticed well in advance...

Google on 60 Minutes

This program might have been a re-run, I do not know...but it was quite fascinating

Of course, they mentioned what had initially set Google apart, their claim to fame, the PageRank system. But what I remember about first using Google, as most others would have, was the _clean_ interface and the blazing speed of the searches!! The other search engines suddenly became oh-so-slow in comparison.

The other thing discussed was how Google's reputation spread: simply by word of mouth. And isn't that true? How did that happen? Isn't that a staggering social phenomenon worth looking into: a worldwide reputation spreading word-of-mouth so as to overturn already established players! Ah, if that isn't a evidence of the connected world we live in...Of course it had to do with the power of the Internet as it provided instant proof-of-the-pudding-in-the-eating that convinced people of how good it was...

Quite importatntly, Google's chief idea was nothing original, they did not do something earth-shatteringly different; they concentrated in doing it more efficiently and that in its effect proved earth-shattering. So their initial success is based not on any new new innovation that bedazzled by its originality but a unique optimization of an existing technology. On that single effort, they have built a hugely successful company and continue to build on that because their turf, the Internet, holds out infinite possibilities...

How interesting...

Freedom, Innovation, and Convenience: The RMS Interview

From Richard Stallman's interview :

FB: It seems that Sun Microsystems wants to release Java source code. Do you think that a language such as Java could spread more if it were covered by the GPL?

RMS: I think that's a secondary question. Whether a particular programming language becomes more or less popular is just a technical issue. That Sun's Java platform is nonfree is a social, ethical issue--more important than a merely technical issue. We're not waiting for Sun to start respecting our freedom. We're developing free replacements for all the various parts of the Java platform. We don't have all the features yet, but you can write and run Java programs. If you develop a Java program on Sun's Java platform, it won't really be platform-independent; it will depend on a specific proprietary platform. If you use our Java platform to develop it, then it really will run on all platforms.

...

FB: What do you think about reports that Sun Microsystems will create an open source project around its Solaris 10 operating system?

RMS: I am not sure what that means concretely, and I do not advocate open source. If Sun makes Solaris free software, then it will be respecting the users' freedom. That is the right thing to do. Making Solaris free would be a substantial contribution to the free software community, but since we already have software (GNU/Linux) that does more or less the same thing, it would not be a major contribution such as OpenOffice was or as freeing Java would be.

FB: Do you think to promote something like a fork or maybe replace Hurd with its kernel?

RMS: I do not understand that question. Fork of what? Replace Hurd with whose kernel?

FB: I was talking about replacing the Hurd kernel with the Solaris 10 kernel (obviously only if free software).

RMS: This would be possible, but I don't see a purpose in it. There is already a free kernel that works quite well with the GNU system--namely, Linux. Why would we want to replace it with the kernel of Solaris?