Digital Garbage in the Cloud

Earlier this week I was at my brothers birthday celebrations and I counted 20 digital cameras in a crowd of 60 people, and maybe an equal number of cameras on the mobile devices .

The shutterbugs were busy creating digital footprints of their presence in the party and also recording the event for posterity.

Set the clock back by three decades when we had the Kodak Instamatic as the camera of choice with 16/24/32 photos on film, subsequently the polaroid and then the SLR cameras.

Photography needed patience, money and expertise and was not a shutterbug activity.

Photos were an art of craft and photography was an expensive hobby.

These days you can click as many photos as you can, there are no limits, you can also shoot digital videos until you run out battery or memory in your camera (not film :-).

I would estimate about fifty digital photos in each camera and there were 20 cameras, which adds up to about 1000 digital photos. Each digital photo is about 20kb in size, so 20,000 KB of data was created by this small event.

The avid shutterbugs need to clean their cameras and share with the world the party and their art on Google+. Facebook, Picasa, Tweeter, blogs and other cloud services which offer free digital storage. Most of the photos will remain in the cloud again to be shared and distributed among friends and family and after a while at rest when the next event is captured by the shutterbug.

This is the new Digital Garbage, photos, email, documents, digital artifacts of any nature, all pushed into the cloud in a state of rest.

How long will the cloud service providers bear the cost of archiving digital garbage in the cloud,imagine the cost of storing this data securely and safely. It is time that companies made users pay for retaining their digital garbage in the cloud.

Let us raise a toast to clutter free Cloud environment.

Photo Courtesy : Ajay Gopal

RIP Public Cloud Computing Adoption

Sunset of Public Cloud Adoption

Public cloud computing adoption has slowed down especially in Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS).

The big hardware and data center companies have been aggressively pushing private and hybrid clouds to retain their marketing share.

Fewer data centers are being closed and the Board is informed that the organization is already using cloud computing.

The private and hybrid cloud allows the IT leader to maintain status quo, declare to the world that the cloud adoption is complete in a secure environment.

Bigger and more efficient data centers will be built for private clouds, when you have your private cloud you are more secure, the public cloud means you have delegated your data and security to a third party.

The CEO is delighted now he has a private jet and also a new technology acquisition one's own Private Cloud :-).

The Compliance and IT Governance teams will continue to push for private clouds, it keeps everyone employed the IT Team and the compliance team; blame it on Security and Governance of the Cloud.

The system integrator, data center equipment vendor and the IT industry are delighted with the deployment of the Private Cloud and will continue to push for the private clouds and additional benefits will include green computing and secure computing environment.

RIP Public Cloud Computing Adoption!

The Markets Will Bounce Back

The global economy will bounce back by end of this year, and it will be business as usual in the financial markets.

Many jobs will be shed and a lean and mean workforce will bring back normalcy in the markets by end of this year.

There is no alternative, if business as usual is not achieved in financial markets the world will plummet into a self destruct mode.

Political leaders across the world will bury their differences and make concessions and compromise their economies to put back the financial markets and the global economy back on track.

The good days will be back again for the survivors in the financial sector, for those who have been annexed it will be a new career, though many will return as the markets gain momentum.

The Bulls are the Losers , the Bears are the Winners.

Is it Pyrrhic Victory for Financial Markets ? (#OWS)

The past decade has seen major upheavals in the financial markets especially Banks, Rating Agencies and Hedge Funds and also in internationals organizations like the IMF. It has been a bloody cocktail of greed, power and sex.

Many financial leaders have been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, some have hired the best lawyers and have set themselves free, the regulators struggle to bring order given the clout of the players in the Financial Markets.

Financial Markets have had numerous bailouts all across the world from governments and political leaders who have supported the status quo instead of stepping in to stem the rot that has set in the financial markets.

Suddenly free markets and capitalism do not seem sexy, rather We the people have stepped into the streets and are advocating Socialism again.
The global Occupy Wall Street Protests highlight the anarchy being faced by common citizens and highlight the divide between the haves and have not.
Suddenly America which exported Arab Spring to democratize the world finds itself in a spot when it feels the heat of protests and is clumsy in handling the crisis.
Is it a Pyrrhic Victory for the Financial Markets which have been dodging reform and stricter regulation for more then a decade?

(Pyrrhic Victory : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory)

Bringing In Voluntary Change will be an Uphill Task

(Photo courtesy :Ajay Kumar)

It is time for the Financial Markets to voluntary change their attitude and bring in more transparency and self regulation in their operations rather then wait for the regulator and the layman to tell them what to do.
Else global free financial markets which has propelled the world in nurturing innovation and sustaining excellence is on a self destruct mode!

Blackberry Outage strengthens the Bond between RIM and Business

Blackberry has become the standard for business mobility today be it a SOHO, SMB or Enterprise.There are many outstanding features that make Blackberry Business's favorite mobile device a few key features are:
a. Innovation
b. Reliability
c. Security
d. Business Applications
e. Ease of Use.
BB eats breathes and lives Business in its phones and also provides awesome compliance which has resulted in Bond based on TRUST between RIM & Business.
This weeks BB outage would not have affected Business that had reliable Business Continuity Plans; rather  the BB disruption has been a good test of their business continuity planning and technology resilience in adversity.
BB has gone beyond messaging, the BB devices today support some of the most intuitive business applications for quick deployment and acclimatization.
Business leaders will return to their Blackberry Phones with a vengeance this weekend and those that deserted Blackberry in this crisis should review their Business Continuity Plans and get back to their BB devices.
The Blackberry Outage has strengthened the bond between RIM and Business. 

SAP Business ByDesign - agile and different

I had an opportunity to explore SAP Business ByDesign the new offering from SAP which bundles agility, adaptability and on demand deployment in the cloud.
It was wonderful to see the new avatar of SAP and to discuss their strategy in delivering business solutions from the cloud.

The  Agile and Different Avatar of SAP will rain in prosperity for Business. 

(Photo courtesy Ajay Kumar) 

Surprise was there was no reference to ERP in their brochures or by their sales people. the SAP Business ByDesign is a business collaboration tool, which is flexible and can be customized and rolled out in weeks rather then in months. 

This is really fresh breeze blowing from Germany in the month of Oktoberfest.

Accelerated adoption by business of this solution will bring business agility and strategic advantage to them. 

“Bharat Badal” National Cloud Computing for Rural India

India lives in its villages" - Mahatma Gandhi.

Background

This is article espouses the need for building a “Bharat Badal” a national cloud computing infrastructure for India which will benefit the rural India and bring the information technology within its grasp.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal Management effort or service provider interaction.

Cloud computing transforms computer processing, data storage, and software applications, allowing them to be delivered as a utility. Just like people tap into existing infrastructure for water or power, companies can now tap into a variety of services - applications, platforms, raw computing power and storage - all via the Internet. 

Key Drivers of Cloud Computing

The key drivers of cloud computing are:

–      Cloud is a Disruptive Technology.

–      Citizens will benefit from faster, cheaper, better and reliable applications on the cloud.

–      Economic Value Addition will be the  Driver for Cloud Adoption.

–      New cloud service models will emerge to drive growth and reduce costs.

–      Get educated first, educate government leaders second and then identify the cloud strategy for the citizen.

–      The Cloud will mature into a commodity pushing down prices of services.

Rural India:

The real India lives in its villages and smaller towns and therein lies the future of India; some of drivers are : 

•          Rural India constitutes 69% of India’s population.

•          86% of Rural population earns less than Rs. 100 per day

Here are   some highlights from the IMRB/I-Cube report  (as of March 2008) ; India’s ‘Rural population: 568m; Rural Literate Population: 368m; Rural English-Speaking Population: 63m; Rural Computer Literates: 15.1m; Rural Claimed Internet Users: 5.5m; Active internet users: 3.3m The opportunity is that there  are more mobile phones than Radio in Rural India (100million subscriber base).

Rural India has been ignored for more than 60 years and the Cloud will bring the change that is required to bridge the divide between rural India and urban India and will improve the Indian rural economy.

The government of India through BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd)  is providing broadband connectivity up to the Taluk level which makes data connectivity a reality for rural India, this will allow rural India to log into the cloud.

Cloud is Gandhi Engineering

The term “Gandhi engineering" was used by NY Times in an article on the Tata’s Nano and it defines Gandhi Engineering as “a mantra that combines irreverence toward established ways with a scarcity mentality that spurns superfluities”

The cloud computing is a marvel of Gandhi engineering and encompasses  

Low cost ; High operational efficiency ;  Elasticity  and Scalability.

Advantages of Cloud Computing for Rural India

•       Low start-up costs make cloud computing especially attractive for rural India.

•       Ease of management. No worry about keeping licenses or for that matter power and air-conditioning to run the data centers or purchasing additional hardware.

•        Scalability make rapid rural penetration a reality; one can easily expand the number of users and locations at a modest cost  .

•       Device and location independence. The way you access a cloud could be your desktop. It could be someone else's computer. It could be a mobile phone. It could be a solar powered touch pad.

•       Lastly the BSNL broadband project for rural India will provide the data connectivity.

What can be done for Rural India using the Cloud

The cloud will allow information technology to be infused to the smallest hamlet of India and make access to information available to the poorest of the poor to give them a better life by empowering them with knowledge derived through the net book or mobile phone connected to the cloud.  The Cloud will make the following services affordable and accessible at a low cost:

–      Citizen Government Interface

–      Citizen Benefits

–      Weather Forecast

–      Banking & Money Transfer

–      Tele Medicine

–      Commodity /Stock Exchange Prices

–      KYC and Credit Bureaus

–      Agricultural Information

–      Citizen Interface Portals

–      Knowledge Sharing  & E learning

–      Real Time communication

Bharat (the rural name for India)  will benefit by taking the Cloud to Rural India because:

•       The cloud will drive down costs of e-Governance, Education, Medical Care & other Government computerization initiatives.

•       The cloud will bridge the great divide between Rich Urban India and Poor Rural India and will give the same level playing field to all Indians.

•       Lastly the cloud will enable non- English speaking literate Indians to join the information revolution and participate in governance and the future of the country by allowing them to transact on the web in the Indian language of their choice

 

Bharat Badal

India must work on a public private partnership to built of a National Cloud Infrastructure named as “Bharat Badal “ pan India with data centers in five cities, this can be subsequently expanded nationally by connecting to the cloud infrastructure built by the State Governments of India.

The cities where the cloud data centers could be located are  Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengalooru. 

The Bharat Cloud is the solution for empowering the non urban Indian citizens with the power of Information Technology.  

Bharat Cloud will ensure a prosperous and digitally connected India and will bring economic and knowledge growth across the nation and will also be instrumental in unifying India.

Note: This article was published by Information Week sometime ago.