I realize that competition can be a great thing however I wonder if in this case this everyone in the pool idea is such a good thing. First off lets take a look at the companies currently involved with cloud computing and those who have announced their intention to join the party. After a quick search this is some of the companies that I found to add to the ones I already knew of:

• Microsoft – currently active
• Google – currently active
• Amazon – currently active but directed primarily at web developers
• Dell – active
• Apple - active
• Sun – currently spinning off their utility computing operation into a separate company
• IBM – currently building out their cloud computing infrastructure
• Intel, HP and Yahoo – announced partnership to create a cloud computing test bed
• AT&T – announced the launch of their cloud computing offering called Synaptic Hosting
• Verizon – intends cloud computing offering in Q1 of 2009
• eBay – a possible move being planned

It is easy to tell from even this cursory list that this field is becoming the next Internet gold rush with everyone looking to get their slice of the proverbial pie in the sky. The problem is that all these different companies all have different ideas of how cloud computing should be implemented, how the platform should be structured and how it should be accessed. Potentially this could make the OS war that we are use to know seem like a walk in the park on a sunny afternoon.

Something that should in theory provide a level computing playing field for us the users could end up being just another minefield of protocols, access method and program interoperability – you know … those things that have been haunting our current computing life. I know I could be wrong about this worry and I hope I am – really I do – but history has shown us otherwise.

What do you think – will having all these companies (with more to come most assuredly) make the adoption of cloud computing easier or harder?

Conversation Tags: cloud computing, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Dell, Sun, IBM, Intel, HP, Yahoo, AT&T, Verizon, eBay

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The Dominance

The other day I had a Discussion Point podcast where I talked about the idea of how the current operating system sectors were potentially being transplanted to this new cloud computing platform and the OS war along with them. Then today Hugh MacLeod from gapingvoid.com suggests that rather than a war per se we could end up with a single global company being the major force in the Cloud much like Microsoft on the Desktop or Google on the Web:

But nobody seems to be talking about Power Laws. Nobody’s saying that one day a single company may possibly emerge to dominate The Cloud, the way Google came to dominate Search, the way Microsoft came to dominate Software.

Monopoly issues aside, could you imagine such a company? We wouldn’t be talking about a multi-billion dollar business like today’s Microsoft or Google. We’re talking about something that could feasibly dwarf them. We’re potentially talking about a multi-trillion dollar company. Possibly the largest company to have ever existed.

I imagine my friends who work for the aforementioned companies know all this, and know how VAST the stakes are.

Windows vs Apple? Who cares? Kid’s stuff. There’s a much bigger game going on… And for some reason, its utter enormity seems to be a very well-kept secret.

While Hugh might be considering it a secret for now one has to wonder if indeed one company could end up being the major force – and which company; if it even currently exist, will it be. If computing history is any guideline to go by chances are Hugh could be right. Now whether that will be a good thing or not still remains to be seen.

The Cost

The main component of all cloud computing offering regardless of the company making them is massive data centers all around the world. companies like Google and Microsoft are spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year and there is no sign of them slowing down – if anything they will be increasing their spending. However there is another cost beyond the investments being made by the companies involved – one that could have far reaching effects in our changing world.

There is one common element that all data centers need that has nothing at all to do with storing data and that is the electrical power required to run these massive server farms. The folks over at Pingdom did some number crunching and the one usage example they gave and based on stats for 2005 the amount of power used by all US data centers at that time was enough to power five million houses. this figure doesn’t take into account either the other equipment involved – like the routers and such.

Since 2005; which really was only the early years of data centers being built on any huge scale, there has been an explosion of data center projects. It is this insatiable need for electricity that has Microsoft and Google building their data centers in remote areas that are close to current hydro electric installation and looking to even building their own. While this need for power not just to run the actual data centers but also to cool them has prompted these major player to also heavily invest in research about cooling these data monstrosities.

One has to wonder though with this increase desire to move us all to the cloud what is going to be the cost to our environment and is it worth the cost. Will this increasing push potentially endanger our power supply because of our dependency on computer? Have we really looked at the possible repercussions to our society if we hinge our future growth on clouds being propped up by a single source that could be vulnerable in so many different ways?

Conclusion

It is inevitable that cloud computing will become a primary platform in our computing world the questions that remain are who is going to control it and will our society be willing to pay for the possible ecological effects of our dependencies.

What do you think?

Conversation Tags: cloud computing, Microsoft, Google

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Well it turns out that indeed there is support coming. According to a report on LiveSide [nw] today there is a pre beta version of a Mesh client that is floating around. While the team at LiveSide didn’t have the Mac equipment to test on they turned to their friends over at jkontherun to give the new client a run through [nw] and you can read their whole post on what they found on their blog.

I remember that when Live Mesh was first announced sans Mac support how the Mesh team stressed that Mac support was a very important part of their strategy and there would be a Mac client in short order for it – which by this new would seem to be the case.

So all you boo-hooing zealots how there – how would you like your slice of crow pie served up?

Conversation Tags: Live Mesh, Microsoft, Apple, Mac

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When I first installed the CTP release and started using it I couldn’t understand why some of my posts where being displayed with varying length of whitespace between paragraphs. The problem even came through on the RSS feed of the posts. Then one day I was switching between the Edit and Source display and I noticed multiple lines of the paragraph tags in my post – much like you see with the accompanying screenshot I took of a previous post.

For some reason when you are writing your blog post in the WYSIWYG editor view at very odd times and places the editor will insert anywhere from two to a dozen lines of these paragraph tags. Unless you switch to the Source display before publishing your post you won’t know they are there but your post on your blog will now have a nice amount of whitespace between the paragraphs.

So a word of caution to those of you using the CTP release – double check your Source display to make sure there are no unwanted paragraph tags and if there are just delete them. Also to the WLW team this is a great release with the exception of this problem so hopefully it’ll get fixed up in short order. Keep up the great work.

Conversation Tags: Windows Live Writer

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Even though Microsoft still maintains some dominance in the software world it is a world that is changing on an almost daily basis and Microsoft still has some really big albatrosses hanging around its neck. Over at MSFTextrememakeover there is an exceptionally good post about the problems Microsoft is facing from a company insiders point of view and I strongly recommend grabbing a coffee and giving it a read as it will be the last post the author writes. Now I for one am really sorry to read this as for me both MSFTextrememakeover and Mini-Microsoft were some of the best reading to get a grasp on how Microsoft was dealing with its decline internally.

And yes I did say decline because I am really worried that Microsoft is indeed on a downward spiral. Don’t get me wrong – I definitely don’t think that Microsoft will be going out of business in my lifetime or my kids lifetime. What I do think is that if Microsoft continues the way it is it could very well become almost irrelevant in any area other than maybe legacy type operating system software company. I personally believe that the company has some really hard choices to make which I believe they need to start making as soon as possible in order to turn around a behemoth of a company. Not just in size but also in mentality.

Steve Ballmer

As MSFTextrememakeover puts it

And I admire his work ethic. He may well be the world’s hardest-working billionaire. Also, the most passionate. My concern is whether or not the company has been effective under his leadership. Rightly or wrongly, the buck stops with the CEO. And when I look at the totality of MSFT’s performance under his reign, it’s not a pretty picture. In fact, it’s an epic fail.

I as well have not hid my feeling about Ballmer either as I have written about him and Microsoft a few time here. To reiterate – until Ballmer leaves; either willingly or not, Microsoft is screwed. Besides the fact that under his leadership the company hasn’t had a serious growth quarter unlike its competitors I don’t think the problem lies just with Ballmer.

Everything that I have read or have experienced from being a part of this industry points to a major problem with much of the upper management of the company. I believe that there are a lot of really intelligent and excellent developers working in the company but it is suffering a company wide case of management reaching its Peter Principal and that is slowly strangling the company.

Windows

Personally I think that there needs to be a total separation between the consumer division and the corporate division for the Windows operating system. While this might have been very difficult in the past with the advent of Vista and Server 2008 this isn’t the case. This is because Microsoft is moving to a more modular operating system that will let them build more type specific versions of the OS.

With this being the case there should be two separate divisions for the OS with the consumer side having only one version – contrary to the current mess we are having to put up with. It make no sense whatsoever for the consumer to have to pick from mind numbing number of versions. Once you do that then you can have a smaller and more nimble team focusing totally on one thing – a useable and exciting operating system that covers all the needs of the consumer – whether they are new or minted power users.

You could actually have three sub-divisions of the spun off OS Division with there being the Core team that concentrates on just the core modules and drivers. It is that product that is then shipped out to the two other divisions – Consumer and Corporate.

Culture

The one thing you can’t say about the folks that work in the trenches at Microsoft is that they don’t love what they do. The problem it that I believe that love is being beat out of them by middle and upper management. On top of that though is the over all perception of the company by the consumer of being a monolithic uncaring face corporation that is constantly trying to rape your wallet and not even giving you a smoke afterwards.

Recently they hired one of the most cutting edge advertising company to try and bring some life; some cool, to the Microsoft brand. The company – Crispan Porter + Bogusky have been charged with turning the public perception of Microsoft around. As Andrew Keller said in an interview by Danielle Sacks at Fast Company

That may explain why Keller and Reilly are today using their team as an early focus group for learning how to persuade Mac lovers to embrace Windows. "You’ve got a lot of passionate Mac people in here, and they’ve got to get their head around this thing — why Windows is genius," says Keller.

As important as trying to get new users for Windows I think it is more important that they figure out how to convince me as a loyal Windows users as to why I should continue being one. You can convert as many Macheads or Linux users as you want but if you keep pissing off your loyal fan base no amount of advertising is going to help you.

What is even worse is if they keep demoralizing their own troops – those people who go to work everyday believing that are doing something important. But all it seems that Microsoft can do is have its dedicated workers run around like chickens with their heads cut off. In the end no amount of advertising genius is going to save the company if the management continues to kill the culture that its developers have built up over the years.

Last Point

Microsoft has a hellva lot of great people working in the company the problem is that none of them are in a position that can change the direction the company appears to be headed. I would like to believe that Microsoft can turn itself around but nothing I am seeing so far into this lead up to Bill Gates retiring from the company leads me to believe that it will. Personally I think that the company needs to make some radical changes – not with the developers within the company but rather in the leadership because right now they don’t have any.

Conversation Tags: Microsoft, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer

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Without a doubt the whole Web 2.0 movement and its various step children like social media have brought about a wave of a belief that everything is about openness and transparency. The one big target that proponents of this ethos love to trot out as an example of what they are against is Microsoft and its past history; and maybe even its current actions, of being a monopolistic soul crushing company. For this movement everything is couched in words of things like OpenID, Data Portability along with the ever present transparency and any other warm and fuzzy catch phrase they can think of.

The thing that gets me is that these people advocating (because evangelizing is no longer the cool word of the day) all this openness and transparency have decided that their primary tool – their computer – is the product of one of the most closed and anti-community companies around.

Yes I am talking about Apple.

It doesn’t matter where you turn at Web 2.0 type conferences or start-up offices all you will see is a sea of MacBook Pros or their desktop equivalents. It doesn’t matter where you turn in the blogosphere or the news aggregators all you hear is drooling praise for anything Mac or Apple. It is the cool factor that everyone on the cutting edge of the web wants to have in their hands. Anything Microsoft is looked up with derision and disdain as if we are lesser being for being sucked in by the Borg.

The thing is that for all the flack that Microsoft gets it does one thing that the Apple operating system can’t do. It can run on just about any hardware available whereas OS X can only be used on Apple hardware. Sure Microsoft should get slapped around for what it has done in the past and for trying to screw its customers but they aren’t the only company to do this. Apple in my opinion is a far more predatory company because they said you want our operating system then you must pay us what we want for our hardware. You don’t like it – tough.

I give far more kudos to the Linux community than I do either Apple or Microsoft because they practice what they preach. With Web 2.0 folks though it sure seems that being a part of the cool crowd is more important than than any real transparency or openness. To me the fact that Apple is touted as being the symbol of Web 2.0; whether it be the people creating this new space or the people writing about, is hypocritical of the movement.

Conversation Tags: Apple, Microsoft, Mac, Web 2.0

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It never fails that when Microsoft releases an upgrade or a new product it is automatically put up against the wall and the firing squad marches out ready to  lay waste to their newest victim. Even when we try and do something constructive to try and suggest improvements the voices of the anti Microsoft contingent seem to rise above those trying to really help.

So it was really nice to hear that Long Zheng from istartedsomething.com was willing to step into the fray when word of Windows 7 started to trickle out. He did this first with a post that asked users to list things with Vista that needed to be addressed in Win7. This idea proved to be extremely popular – well too popular as he was soon inundated with a flood of good suggestions. When he realized that this was going to be as popular as it was and that it would entail a lot of manual work he decided to step up his game.

As a result he developed the Windows UX Taskforce site which is a self contained community site built around the idea of letting users enter in feedback; with documentation, of things that need to be fix for Win7 if it is indeed using the Vista codebase. Besides entering new submissions for the database users can vote on submissions and comment on them.

My hat goes off to Long on this endeavor and I think it has to be a great contribution to the whole Windows community. I really hope that as Long says that the developers at Microsoft are really paying attention this time because this is in my estimation the most valuable resource they have – the real Windows community.

Conversation Tags: Windows, Vista, Windows 7, community

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When you ask people what they use to search on the web with the answer invariably will be Google. In fact with some folks Google is the Internet as this is the installed browser’s default start page for many computers sold these days. With the largest market share in the search field where even a percentage point can mean billions of dollars it is easy to understand why companies are doing what they can to get even the smallest slice of the pie.

Primary amongst all these companies is Microsoft with their Live.com service and their MSN service which are their main forays into the search engine jungle. The problem is that next to no-one knows they are even in the game to begin with. For most you mention MSN and they think their email or some such thing as this is yet another of the company’s brands that has no identity. Then you switch to talking about Live Services and people give you a blank look.

As Kip Kniskern over at LiveSide said today in a post

… relating these tidbits to Live Search, we begin to see the problems Microsoft is facing.  Live Search hasn’t “raised the bar” up to this point, in fact it has struggled mightily to reach the bar that others have set.  Microsoft has been overly worried about trying to control the conversation, and not worried enough about “walking the walk”.  It hasn’t been consistent, and in fact isn’t up until this very day, when it can’t get behind a brand and get on with it.  The real problem with the Live Search brand isn’t the name or the logo, it’s that what the logo stands for hasn’t been defined, and frankly hasn’t been very good.

While Kip is being nice when suggesting that Live Search hasn’t raised the bar I would suggest that they don’t even know where the bar is or what the bar looks like. From the market place point of view it is a product that is dead in the water and seen by some as to be circling the bowl.

I wrote a post a while back where I suggested that Microsoft needed to really rethink their whole strategy around their search to the point of starting a skunkworks project that would be much like the old start.com project. My points raised then are just as valid now

- a small core group of developers – no big multi dimensional teams

- keep the project away from the marketers and lawyers

- come up with a verb name but not one of these stupid Web 2.0 type ones

- UI team come up with simple interface and I mean simple – K.I.S.S. to the extreme

- stay away from the main tech blogosphere for at least 6 months

- when project is ready for live testing tell the MS marketing arm to piss off and head to the colleges. Get the students involved – listen to them. Not just about results but also the coolness .. the look .. the name .. and most importantly how they integrate it into their language.

The most important thing to remember is as I said in that post

This is not the marketplace of early adopters, or the bloggers, or of the marketers. No - search is the interface - the new language - of the people. All of the people.

As long as Microsoft keeps trying to throw things against the Live wall to see what sticks then they are going to go nowhere and Google will continue to dominate in search.

Conversation Tags: Microsoft, Google, Live, search

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