Zettabyte Appetite

April 10, 2011 — mbaylor

I’m here today to talk to you about a matter of serious concern, server obesity across the worlds data centers.

Just as the waistlines of people are expanding, so is that of our servers. Our super-sized appetite for food has caused us to become bloated and lethargic and our voracious appetite for information is having a similar effect on our servers.

If there was ever a question that we are an information hungry society, that question has been answered. Researchers at UC San Diego announced at Storage Networking World’s (SNW’s) annual meeting in Silicon Valley, that they have rigorously estimated the annual amount of business-related information processed by the world’s computer servers at 9.57 Zettabytes.

One Zettabyte equals one billion Terabytes!

That’s billion with a “B” and that’s a lot of trillions.

The study estimated that by 2024 the world’s enterprise servers will annually process the digital equivalent of a stack of books extending more than 4.37 light-years to Alpha Centauri, our closest neighboring star system in the Milky Way Galaxy.

But just as our super-sized meals are high in fat, so is the information that is stored forever in massive storage farms around the globe. With that much information, one has to question how much duplication there is and more importantly how much integrity does the data have?

The bigger question is, can you ever really trust all the information we consume or just like our mega-meals, is it full of fat and empty calories with no nutritional value whatsoever?

Posted in Michael Baylor, Observations, Social Computing, Uncategorized. Tags: , . No Comments »

What is your time worth?

March 25, 2011 — mbaylor

Until yesterday, I had never met or even spoken with anybody that is widely considered a true genius. Someone whose body of work is so extraordinary that mere mortals could not begin to grasp the enormity, breadth and depth of his contributions to science and technology, if not society as a whole.

I finally had the honor of speaking with one of the greatest deep thinkers of our generation, if not history. The purpose of the discussion was to conduct research for an article I am writing about a company he founded, only one of his many amazing accomplishments.

I had a month to prepare for the call which meant that I had 30 days to stress over coming up with a series of questions that would be worthy of his time. The first question in my mind was “why in the world would this guy even waste his time to talk with me?” I concluded that if I did in fact ask him that, he may well reply “if you don’t know, why should I?” and then promptly hang up the phone.

About 30 minutes prior to the call it dawned on me that he is brilliant and all I have to do is shut up, listen and take notes…a lot of them. In fact, the less I talked the lower the risk that I would flaunt my stupidity.

Just the fact that he would take the time to talk with me was shocking enough. I have never been so apprehensive. But then something even more amazing happened. He was so, um, uh, well…human.

He was gracious, patient with my lack of knowledge, engaging and of course, brilliant and fascinating. But beyond his obvious brilliance he was a human being with heart and soul. One that cares about other people and even trying to help me with the article.

The time flew by and afterwards, I just sat back in a semi-conscious state and marveled over what had just happened. I just had the honor of speaking with one of the greatest living minds. I am better for the time he so graciously shared with me although he got nothing in return.

Later, it occurred to me how nice it would be if the majority of us with only average intellects would give of our time so freely.  Of course, how can we be expected to give our time freely given that every minute of our lives is consumed by very important, if not critical, things to do.

But now I have a different type of stress. I have the responsibility to write something that he will hopefully look at and feel that his time was not wasted.

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Stop, Step Back and Reconsider

March 15, 2011 — mbaylor

My foray into the world of social media has taught me a few things which is progress, right?

The first thing I learned is that apparently the majority of my readers are from the Ukraine and that the primary purpose of my blog is for them to promote their services by embedding links in the comments section. No surprises but these “services” are usually of a questionable nature.

The other thing I learned is that my blogs were too long. Seth Godin, whom I consider a master at communication publishes extremely valuable blog posts that are oftentimes only a couple of sentences. Comparatively speaking, my blog posts were more analogous to War and Peace.

From that, I’ve learned that we do in fact live in an “attention economy” and most people couldn’t care less about my pontifications if they extend beyond two paragraphs max.

But this highlights some other lessons ; A.) Exactly who in the hell do I think I am to think that people are even interested in my ramblings and how big must my ego be? B.) People want information condensed into 140 characters or less which is why Twitter is so huge. By the way, I have started using Twitter also…more progress.

These realizations caused me to stop, step back and reconsider what this blog should be about and how it can be more meaningful to anyone that happens to stumble across it.

So, with this enlightenment (I realize that I have just lost 85% of you), going forward I shall commit to keeping my musings clear and very concise. I will also attempt to provide engaging and thought provoking snippets of information that will in turn, cause you to stop, step back and reconsider.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share with you and to my fans in the Ukraine, will you please limit your comments to 100 per day.

Michael

Posted in Computational Anthropology, Michael Baylor, Observations, Social Computing. Tags: , . No Comments »

It Only Takes a Vision to Start a Revolution

July 5, 2010 — mbaylor

Just over forty years ago in the dusty little orchard community of Santa Clara valley, eight guys named Moore, Noyce, Kleiner, Roberts, Hoerni, Last, Blank and Grinich were branded as traitors.

The team left the “mad genius” that originally brought the eclectic group of physicists and chemists together. Little did this group of eight defectors know, but they would be the forefathers of the Digital Age.

The “Fairchild Eight” built the Silicon Valley from the ground up with a little invention that remains at the heart of every electronic device in our world today, the integrated circuit.

Today there are almost as many transistors produced in the world market as there are printed characters in all the newspapers, books, magazines and computer pages combined.

Not only did they reshape the modern world but they also reinvented the American Dream: technology for the greater good, stock options and venture capital.

Noyce & Moore are most recognizable as the founders of Intel but the company was also shaping a new market and one of the most influential forces in the Venture Capital world, Eugene Kleiner of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield fame.

Had it not been for William Shockley and the “perfect storm” he created by bringing this group of young scientists together, the world would be a very different place.

Even though Shockley ended his career under a black cloud for his political and social views, we have him to thank for bringing this group together behind a common vision. And even though he did not have the foresight to see the potential of silicon which lead to the infamous exodus of his crack team of eight, his initial vision provided the cadre for countless companies and industries.

While civil unrest caused by the Vietnam War got the headlines in the 60’s, eight industrious young men started a revolution that would redefine the modern world. Their vision of the future and tenacity to figure out the science to make their vision a reality is the stuff of legend.

Celebrating the Fourth of July in my home country for the first time in 15 years caused me to reflect on another group of “traitors” named Washington, Jefferson and Adams.

So, here’s to the men and women who have done what is considered wrong in order to do what they know is right.

What they know is right, regardless of the consequences!

Posted in Computational Anthropology, innovation, Michael Baylor. Tags: , . No Comments »

Is It Still HPC If Anyone Can Use It?

June 19, 2010 — mbaylor

High Performance Computing is supposed to be something special. Those magnificent, highly specialized screaming silicon eaters that can bitch-slap a Monte Carlo simulation into submission before breakfast and have a DNA sequencing party for lunch, all without producing one bead of sweat on its brow.

They are not supposed to be commonplace or ordinary. They operate in rarified air and are reserved for the biggest and baddest calculations on the planet and those with the requisite business and scientific challenges to feed their insatiable appetite for complex computation.

If everyone could use these majestic computing machines then would that not make them simply every day, run-of-the-mill computers and not “high performance computers”? It is somewhat analogous to the meteorologists that refer to normal rainfall and temperature based upon data that is long overdue for an update. At some point the bar needs to be reset and the new “average” adjusted accordingly. This is what needs to happen in the HPC world as well.

Maybe we need a new term to replace HPC. Oh wait, we tried that already. “High Productivity Computing”…really? Come on guys, we have enough of a credibility problem without using some dumb cliché that by the way isn’t catching on with anyone! The last guy who tried to use that in a meeting with a client hasn’t been heard from since.

The problem is that everyone wants “high performance” (and productivity) computing. Have you ever heard anyone say they want LPC (low performance or productivity computing)?

No, we here at Acme Corp. prefer our low performance, low productivity machines, thank you. Our cloud computing strategy is to send Maynard up in a hot air balloon with an abacus. According to the company’s CEO, Jethro Bodine, “Ways we figer, he oughts to be done cipher’n the books by ‘coon hunt’n seezun”.  The company plans to migrate to a compute-free work environment by 2014 and Bodine went on to say “we am gonna save a enuf money to git Granny a new set of wood teeth cuz her old wuns smells reel bad.”

In reality, almost every modern-day computer is “HPC capable” relatively speaking. Even laptops have multi-core processors. Just add some parallel-optimized code and voila, HPC in your lap (well sort of), but you get the point. The bar simply needs to be reset.

The term HPC needs to be restored to the level of honor and respect it once had. Just the mention of HPC used to evoke images of semi-mad scientists in lab coats working on complex problems beyond the imagination of mere mortals in computer rooms buried deep in the Cheyenne mountain range. They would emerge only annually to be treated for radiation poisoning and then return to their super-secret computing lair to work on solving the world’s most difficult problems on the biggest, baddest computers on the planet.

This is the domain of High Performance Computing!

Posted in Cloud Computing, HPC, Michael Baylor. Tags: , . No Comments »

Just Say I Don’t Know

May 25, 2010 — mbaylor

There are 3 answers to a question; Yes, No and I don’t know. Societal pressure however, oftentimes prevents us from responding with the latter.

Our fear of admitting that we do not know is instilled in us from a very early age. When we were kids and didn’t do our chores, our parents would ask why and of course we were compelled to come up with a really good answer. “I don’t know” would have never been an acceptable response, even though it was most likely true that you had no real idea why, you simply didn’t.

“What do you mean you don’t know, you have to know, answer me right now.” “Um, uh…I forgot.” That answer would also have likely produced the same undesirable response from our parents such as “Reeeeeeealy, then you are grounded for two weeks.” Either way, you were in trouble and nothing short of an asteroid landing in your back yard was going to distract them enough to change that.

As grown adults (and accomplished professionals), we still have difficulty admitting that we may not have an answer to a question when it is asked. What’s worse, we will answer a question even if it is the wrong one or if there is no right answer at all such as “are you dumb or stupid?” There is really no right answer to that question. Even “I don’t know” in this case would be a bad answer…because that would make you both.

Perhaps it is ego combined with cultural conditioning that instilled the belief that “I don’t know” is simply not an acceptable answer, or even a “real answer” in the opinion of many.  Society tends to scoff at “I don’t know” and will oftentimes go so far as to label someone that dares give that answer as incompetent (and yes, even dumb or stupid).

Regardless, “I don’t know” should be an acceptable answer. Possibly, we need time to contemplate various options or analyze something further before we are able to give an appropriate answer. Or maybe as I said previously, it was the wrong question to begin with. This pressure is especially evident with regard to the question over Cloud computing.

The media hype around Cloud computing is applying pressure directly and indirectly on executives to have an answer to questions related to their “cloud strategy”. Boards of directors caught up in the Cloud frenzy are also applying pressure to have an answer, much like a room full of parents asking why we didn’t do our chores.

I have watched as executives stumble over themselves in a desperate attempt to answer questions about their Cloud strategies. While I acknowledge that it is far easier to critique a response when you are not the one in the hot seat, a simple “I don’t know” (or “we are evaluating our that”) would have been far more graceful than falling flat on your face in the middle of the dance floor as you trip endlessly over technical jargon and meaningless clichés.

So, What is Your Cloud Computing Strategy?

Not only are we unwilling to answer with “I don’t know”, the question is technically the wrong one to ask.

Cloud computing, in and of itself is not a “strategy” at least from an Enterprise perspective. While Cloud computing may be part of an IT strategy in support of one or more Enterprise strategic objectives, it is in actuality, an Enterprise “tactical” initiative.

For example, the Enterprise strategy may include a charter to “improve operating efficiency through a 20% reduction in CapEx”. However, IT’s reduction in CapEx is not a strategy. Rather, it is an operational efficiency as a result of a well-defined and executed IT strategy in support of an Enterprise Strategic objective. This may be achieved through the Cloud or server optimization through consolidation and virtualization, etc.

The IT Strategy charter would read something such as “improve operational efficiency through server virtualization and consolidation and Cloud computing to handle non-standard workloads in order to reduce CapEx.” A reduction in CapEx then is the result of executing the IT strategy but to the Enterprise, it is still simply a tactical initiative that supports the Enterprise strategy.

The Enterprise strategy should inform the development of an IT Strategy that will optimize technology resources and improve the ability of IT to support a broader range of Enterprise strategic objectives.

So the appropriate question would be “what is the role of Cloud computing in supporting the company’s strategic objectives”?

I know that it may just seem like semantics, but this subtle difference has potentially enormous ramifications. It places the focus of the discussion about Cloud computing where it belongs…dare I say…as a “strategic enabler”.  You know…that old chestnut.

It also provides a way for executives to answer the question a bit more gracefully, such as; ”Well Mr. Reporter or Mrs. Board Member, Cloud Computing in our view is a tactical initiative that may support one or more Enterprise Strategic objectives and we are currently evaluating which of those may be supported through the adoption of some form and degree of Cloud computing.”

That’s how the pros say “I don’t know.”

Posted in Cloud Computing, innovation, Michael Baylor, Strategy. Tags: , , . No Comments »

You Don’t Get a BMW by Buying Four Hyundai’s

May 18, 2010 — mbaylor

The rush to get to the Cloud is resulting in a widespread “ready, fire, aim” shotgun approach. The risk of Cloud computing failing to achieve its potential is equally proportionate to our unwillingness to stop for a minute and say “I don’t know.”

What I mean by “I don’t know” in this case is that organizations are rushing to the Cloud without a clearly informed IT strategy. Every component strategy (e.g. IT) and its tactical initiatives exist exclusively to support one or more Enterprise strategic objective. So the Cloud should map directly to an IT strategic objective which in turn, should map directly to the Enterprise strategy.

Many have rushed to the Cloud simply so that they can at least say “we are there”, even if they don’t know what to do with it now that they have it. It is analogous to a dog chasing a hubcap on a moving car; what is he going to do with it once he catches it?

The client-server movement was very similar and the result was absolute chaos. The persistent lack of interoperability and difficulties with collaboration among groups today can be traced back to the time that the client-server model took hold in organizations.

A similar risk exists today in that within the same organization, different groups are taking different approaches to cloud computing which is a direct result of the lack of a clearly informed and defined IT strategy. Within the same organization, I have seen up to four different cloud models in use.

At a high-level there are 3 Cloud computing strategies; all, hybrid or nothing.  Meaning that you move everything to the cloud (highly unlikely, unless you are a startup), you have a combination of on and off premises IT resources or, you move nothing to the cloud (also highly unlikely unless you are in the business of making walking sticks for blind mice).

All sides of the debate provide some interesting perspectives but it is somewhat analogous to arguing the merits of a BMW over a Mercedes. They are both great vehicles but they are designed for different types of drivers. Automobile aficionados say that you “drive” a BMW and you “ride” in a Mercedes so the analogy to Cloud computing is not too much of a stretch.

The “all” model is pretty much the Mercedes in that you relinquish the majority of control over your IT resources and can just sit back and enjoy the ride. The “hybrid” model requires a bit more active involvement on your part in that you retain control over on-premises IT resources and the Cloud services provider acts somewhat like the dynamic stability control. It can deal with unanticipated driving conditions (workloads) and is always ready at the flip of a switch.

Both automobiles share many common attributes, (performance, safety, reliability, panache and status), the most important being that they both require drivers. The enterprise strategy is the navigation system and IT is the power train but without a driver they are both useless.

One could buy 4 lesser automobiles in an attempt to get all the features but anyone would agree that would be impractical (Read: Really Dumb). Yet, this is exactly what some organizations are doing in their approach to Cloud computing.

The pressure to “get in the Cloud” is driving the random selection and adoption of multiple cloud models that most likely do not make sense from a strategic business perspective. More importantly the shotgun approach will not deliver the strategic value that should be provided by any IT initiative and will ultimately fail.

Posted in Cloud Computing, Michael Baylor, Strategy. Tags: , . No Comments »

Computational Ambiguity in the Cloud

May 2, 2010 — mbaylor

Thought provocation can come from many places. For example, I recently saw a television commercial where a non-descript young lady pronounced herself as “racially ambiguous” in a satire on competitors advertising. The ad is intended to convey the message that she is “just like you”, no matter what you look, dress, or talk like and hence the product is right for everyone.

It occurred to me in that moment (my mind works in strange ways) that Cloud computing could result in the ambiguity of computation. The name “Cloud” even infers a certain level of obfuscation (or clouding) of the underlying infrastructure.  Something about this bothers me so I thought I would reason through it with you.

One caveat, while this may seem like a strange warning coming from a Cloud strategist and evangelist, it is simply an attempt to caution against computational ambiguity and is certainly not intended to be a negative commentary on Cloud computing in general. After all, it’s this or serving Caramel Macchiato’s at Starbucks and that would not be a good thing for anyone.

The Cloud provides the ability to do things that are not possible with other computing models but “hiding” some of the most important parts of the architecture removes an important part of our identity.

When a culture loses its identity things tend to get less interesting (Read: boring and lacking creativity). Traditions are forgotten, the things that make us unique are gone, innovation comes to a standstill and we become very mechanistic in all aspects of our personal and professional lives.  We essentially become a society of wooden-headed puppets that have little need for the gray matter between our ears.

Sure, abstracting away the layers can simplify development, deployment, management and maintenance but at what cost? Perhaps there will be long-term unforeseen and unintended negative effects such as intellectual degradation in the architect and developer community.

Think about it, we are depriving architects and developers of their God-given right to worry about things like capacity, code optimization, resource utilization and performance. Will computer science programs start dumbing down their curriculum because the infrastructure is no longer in the thought domain of the developer or architect?

Infrastructure capacity is now only a tick away. Failed to contemplate resource requirements and need more capacity, just increase the number of servers by selecting a check-box. Need multiple instances of an application, just increase the digit from 2 to 3, oops too much, just change it back on the fly. Where is the art and science in that type of approach?

Cloud computing has the potential of stripping away the intellectual heavy-lifting of architecture, design and development and stifling innovation. When you have limited resources you tend to be more innovative in the way you allocate and utilize them. The Cloud eliminates that problem and along with it can come sloppiness and a laissez-faire attitude towards utilization and optimization of the underlying infrastructure and hence, the applications themselves.

Will the Cloud cause us to all start looking and acting the same by eliminating our identity and hence our ability or even desire to innovate?

As a Cloud Platform Strategist & Evangelist I implore you to challenge your developers and architects to remain concerned with the optimization and utilization of Cloud resources and never stop innovating for efficiency and performance. We are denizens of the technology society and it is our duty and responsibility to continue to innovate, both in the Cloud and on earth.

Remember, only you can prevent computational ambiguity!

Posted in Architecture, Cloud Computing, innovation, Michael Baylor, Strategy. Tags: , , , . No Comments »

Two Strong Oxen or 1024 Chickens?

April 23, 2010 — mbaylor

Is it Getting Hot in Here?

Microsoft’s recent announcement that they are ending support for the Intel Itanium processor on the Windows HPC Server product got me thinking again about specialized processors versus low-cost commodity processors for high-performance computing (HPC) in general and specifically, HPC in the cloud.

Low-cost, general purpose processors have made the Cloud possible, not only from an economic standpoint but also due to their broad support for various programming languages, compilers and tools. The tools for specialized processors are most often special-purpose and limited which require highly trained resources. This of course results in a significantly higher Total Cost of Ownership. However, there are certainly some performance advantages which in some cases make the trade-offs worth it.

Plus, there is not anything more sexy (calm down, I’m talking computers here) than an ultra-scale High Performance Computer running Itanium or Tile-Gx specialty processors. The harmonics of the heat sinks as they dissipate the inferno created from 100 screaming cores annihilating billions of complex calculations per second, is music to the ears. Add NVIDIA’s Tesla GPU’s to this powerhouse and you have got yourself one serious Ox capable of pulling a plow through 6 feet of mud.

From Multiple Processors to Multi-tenant

Alas, the sex appeal of the specialty processor has been diminished by the economic realities of low cost commodity processors. In addition to significantly lower capital and operational costs, the technical expertise necessary to run a “generic” shop are far more plentiful and less expensive also.

It’s the Ford truck of computing models; “Never runs great but runs forever.” This approach has a long history of stable and reliable performance which dates back to the 1960’s when computer design was largely focused on adding as many instructions as possible to the machine’s CPU.

It was also at this time when “parallel computing” emerged and along with it came the multiple-processor, general purpose computer design. The system divided the workload up by distributing parts of the problem to each CPU and consolidating all the results into a single answer.

In 1965, in an effort to capture market share in the scientific field, Burroughs picked up where Westinghouse left off with their Solomon high performance computing initiative. In a shared-risk project, Burroughs teamed up with the University of Illinois as a development partner to build what would become the last generation of the ILLIAC family. Given that the systems computational resources would far exceed what the University could use, they decided they would “rent” capacity to commercial customers. This may have been the first true example of a multi-tenant cloud computing model.

Time has proven the ILLIAC’s design to be effective for technical computing applications. Today, supercomputers are almost universally made up from large numbers of commodity computers, precisely the concept that the ILLIAC pioneered. What the Burroughs engineers did not realize was that they were laying the foundation for the mega data centers that power cloud computing today.

Does Technical Computing Require a Dedicated Cloud?

There remains a question as to whether the Ford truck design will be sufficient for applications that require high-performance computing. The Cloud was not designed with technical or scientific computing applications in mind they were designed for reliability and steady, predictable performance. The biggest challenge is that not all HPC applications lend themselves to this type of processing and extracting “high-performance” from this type of design was and still is, problematic.

The Cloud presents some interesting possibilities for HPC and there appears to be a divide forming between traditional cloud models and those that are designed specifically for high performance computing applications.

SGI recently introduced their Cyclone HPC in the Cloud service which is comprised of some of the world’s fastest supercomputing hardware architectures, including Intel Xeon and Itanium processor-based SGI Altix scale-up, Altix ICE scale-out and Altix XE hybrid clusters. The Cyclone also incorporates high performance SGI InfiniteStorage systems for scratch space and long-term archival of customer data, another pre-requisite for HPC.

The technology at Cyclone’s core is highly specialized and designed exclusively for HPC workloads, something that traditional Cloud designs are lacking. While traditional Cloud computing designs can impersonate an HPC environment, they do not possess the true performance characteristics that are necessary for complex scientific and technical computation.

As Seymour Cray once remarked, “If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?”

It is my opinion that true HPC workloads will require specialized Clouds and we will see more models like SGI’s in the near future. As a result the division between low-cost commodity and specialized Clouds will become clearer as HPC and non-HPC workloads are better defined.

Posted in Cloud Computing, HPC, Michael Baylor. Tags: , , , . Comments Off »

context and its influence on business culture

April 7, 2010 — mbaylor

Context is the circumstances and events that shape many aspects of the organizational culture that influence technology adoption.

A simple fluctuation in revenue to a global financial meltdown can be the impetus for a cultural shift in technological innovation. One of three responses can typically be anticipated; progress, regress or stagnate.

In other words, an organization will; 1.) Advance its IQ through the increased adoption of innovative technologies in order to improve operational efficiency or gain strategic advantage, 2.) Lower its IQ through a reduction in technology innovation, or 3.) Do nothing and remain status quo (stagnate).

The manner in which leaders respond to circumstances and events directly shapes the culture of the organization. A leadership response that consistently drives a cultural attitude of technological innovation has a stabilizing effect and measurably improves organizational IQ.

A “high IQ” society mistrusts and resents leadership that responds to circumstances and events with a “regress” or “stagnate” attitude and leadership with a lower IQ typically drives High IQ workers away and produces a culture of complacency.  If this sounds like a blistering indictment of leaders that reject technological innovation, it is meant to be.

Insight

History has taught us one immutable lesson; Technological stagnation will lead to the demise of a culture.

Posted in Computational Anthropology, innovation, Michael Baylor, Strategy. Tags: , , , . No Comments »
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