Cloud Computing

Leave a comment Posted on cloud, Cloud Computing, cloudprivacy, tableaupublic

4 Brave souls or fools?

I recently asked my friends on Facebook and Twitter to help me fill out a survey. I have a secret admission: my intention was not to create or propose a new Netflix / Hulu / iTunes functionality. My intention was to see how many of my friends, who are relatively tech savvy, would reveal their propensity to share personal data
with an online video service. And it turns there are 4 brave souls who would share data! I want to raise
my glass to these 4 brave souls, and yet, part of me thinks they should be more hesitant.

Question 1:

To be fair, 100% of the survey respondents said yes to whether or not they had a Netflix / Hulu / iTunes service. This was satisfying to me, because I would expect no less of my friends. If someone did mark it as a no, I would have lost my mind trying to figure out who is still living in the 20th century. They probably chose not to fill the survey … so the final results here may be biased 🙂

Question 2:

The second question was also a filler question. Most of the people I know watch 30 minutes to an hour off an online video service.

Question 3

The third question is where it gets interesting. Let’s call this functionality S. I want to see this Functionality S in Netflix / Hulu / Movies on iTunes because I always fall asleep watching an episode or a movie before my wife does. And then going back the next day to watch the program means you have to watch the entire program from the start or struggle with streaming it to the exact spot (which I neverget exactly correct). Any small help in getting close to the spot where I fell asleep would help. I admit this is a very trivial problem; however, introducing ease of use in any product has always made it a great sale.

So what did my friends say? Apparently they agreed in majority. 70% of my friends thought it would be beneficial to have this option. 30 % said no, and no one skipped this question. I don’t know how many of the 30% have no partner / husband / wife. That is a piece of data I didn’t want to collect for obvious reasons.

Question 4:

For the next question, however, the tables turned. A large majority (greater than 80%) said no in regards to sharing any information about your partner / husband / wife to enable the Function S with the online service. In fact, some of you (slightly greater than 15%) might have been so turned off by the idea that you skipped this question. There were only 4 individuals who would share this data! Are these 4 brave souls or fools?

Side note: I wonder if anyone noticed that it was on the next page on purpose, to make sure there is little bias on the previous item from this question.

Thoughts:

I completely agree with the notion that sharing private details with an online video service can be difficult. However, I have to ask myself, most of the avenues where I asked the question are social media-based online services (cloud based services). These are online services where we are already exchanging this information. And with data mining and big data tools, being able to predict some of the semi-private information about your family has become easier. We all tag our spouses and partners on Facebook and Google+ pictures. Most of us exchange our family and partner’s geo data in our pictures and tweets as well. So what’s the harm in providing the partners’ basic information to an online video service?

The question becomes, are these 4 people actually smart to trade off functionality and ease of use for exchanging data that is already available? Or have they just given up the privacy and acknowledge that in this day and age it is not possible to maintain? And for the rest of us, why are we exchanging private data with sites like Facebook and Google+ but not others?

Results

Dashboard 1

By the way, I don’t get to see the personal information of any of the respondents.

Credits:

I produced the graphs using Tableaupublic.com. For a deeper dive of the results, you can view it at https://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Onlinevideoinfosharingsurvey_0/Dashboard1?:embed=y&:showTabs=y&:display_count=yes.

Leave a comment Posted on Apple two step verification, Cloud Computing, Cloud security, tradeoffs

How to be personally secure in the cloud world (Part 2)

Interestingly after publishing the last blog, I started getting blog views from the Russian Federation. The image above shows the last 7 days of views, before this blog was published.

Here is part 2 of the discussion with Jeremy (Background: I recently had a chance to talk to a friend, Jeremy Guthrie, who has been in the Information Technology / Internet Service Provider business for 23 years, concentrating on networking and security architecture).

What about the tradeoffs of over-securing?

Jeremy: One of the most dangerous things you do every day is get into your car and drive somewhere. But we all do drive or use some sort of transportation daily, because of the fact that there is a risk and a tradeoff. So don’t over secure yourself so much that you hurt your online experiences substantially.

For example, let’s think about the Apple iCloud breach from this summer. Apple and other providers could have done way more to protect the information that was stolen. However, these providers also have to consider the tradeoffs of various levels of security vs. usability. For example, you can gain more security by using multi-level authentication or varying degrees of password complexity or user logouts after X number of logins. This also means it could make their cloud services difficult to use and cumbersome. So this security situation is a tradeoff between convenience and usability vs. security. If you have to attract a large user base, you have to make the product easy to use. Regardless, the provider should be transparent about how they protect their data across their entire online interface. Your choice is whether you want to leverage their additional tools to secure your data and post your data there.

My thoughts: Apple has implemented two-step verification for Apple ID, which is the user ID used with iCloud. It is not turned on by default. Here is a link to turn it on: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT5570

Anything else we should watch out for?

Jeremy: Be careful about exchanging too much information on websites associated with different political / charitable causes. While the websites might try to secure the environment, these are generally targets for groups of hackers who want to malign the website / cause. Thus you are providing an unnecessary target on your information.

Another Interesting phenomenon currently developing is the Apply Pay feature and how it will impact your financial services. For example, before when your credit card was stolen and unauthorized transactions were made through it, the bank would help you out in most cases and take your word for it. However, now that the credit card credentials are on your phone, if it gets stolen for a certain time period before you realize the phone is stolen, will the bank hold you responsible for proving whether this item was stolen? Effectively, the phone is still authorized by you to make the payments on your behalf. And if you thought TouchID was not vulnerable to finger print spoofing, think again. The onus would shift to you to prove that the phone was stolen, in a time period when you don’t actually have your phone in your possession. Just something to ponder.

Interesting reads Jeremy recommended about security:

  • Freakonomics blogs and podcasts about security offer an interesting take on security, risk aversion and the costs related to it
  • Science of Fear – Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn’t–and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger by Daniel Gardner is about tradeoffs
  • Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA’s Spytechs, from Communism to Al-Qaeda by Robert Wallace is a look into how far people will go to get information.
Leave a comment Posted on Cloud Computing, Kitchen, Small Business, Uncategorized

Kitchen Cloud, huh?

Cloud for the small business owner: Kitchen Cloud, huh?

I would like to get back to the “as a service” discussion from a previous post. Recently I watched an episode of Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods America. The episode centered on NYC and late night food and culinary practices in NYC. Of specific interest to me was the story of Hana Kitchens. As Andrew Zimmerman puts it on their website, “These are the people that are going to be the titans of the food industry in the years to come.” Well then, what does Hana kitchen provide? According to their website: “At Hana Kitchens it is our mission to be the resource providing the means and the support and business advice to culinary entrepreneurs and to be a collective that has the tools and equipment to offer both apprentice and professional alike.” http://www.hanakitchens.com/about/

Basically, they provide advice and industrial styled kitchen space and equipment on rent on an hourly basis to chefs and businesses that want to produce culinary delights.

Let’s make Hana Kitchen cloudy

Let’s think of a scenario: You are a patisserie chef, who is just starting out in NYC, wanting to start a business making pastries for the local bakeries. You just graduated from a fine culinary school, you have the talent and the knowledge of how to cook, and have an idea of products you want to produce on daily basis. What you probably don’t have is cash or funds! As a patisserie chef, what are the activities that you should be spending time on? Should it be: refining your recipes, trying new recipes, making a perfect batch of goodies, gaining new knowledge of food, learning new tricks of the trade? Or should it be paying individual bills for the kitchen like electricity, gas, etc., managing the equipment, and, if anything breaks down with the equipment, fixing it? Isn’t that a waste of chef’s brain and time? This is what Gartner or other advisory services call “concentrating on your competitive advantage.” A chef’s competitive advantage is recipes, his / her knowledge of the food and presentation of the food. Not the kitchen equipment and oven. Yes, good tools definitely help in the process, but if your recipes are not great and your knowledge of the food is lacking, then great equipment can’t replace it. What are the first major costs you have to incur when you start the business? You have to basically rent a kitchen space and buy all the equipment. This means, whether you are working or not producing pastries, you own that piece of equipment. It is not being used. Plus to own all of this equipment, you will probably have to ask a bank for money or use some of your own. if you are rich enough or have money lying around, more power to you. However, if you don’t, like most new small businesses don’t, then aligning your sales and cash flow to the use of your resources is very important. You can’t tie up cash in equipment that is not being used a lot of the time.

Step in Hana Kitchen. They allow you to rent kitchens for 6 to 8 hour shifts that allows you to produce a batch of goodies to send out and sell to bakeries that day. This means you are not using your money to invest in this business, but actually getting your customers to pay for kitchen. Plus someone else is managing the kitchen, keeping it up and running for you. You don’t have to manage it, pay individual bills, and maintain the equipment. You get to concentrate on refining your recipes and building your competitive advantage. Keep in mind, Hana kitchen has to provide a certain level of good equipment. It can’t be terrible experience for a chef.

Thus Hana kitchen is a Kitchen Cloud!

 

Lessons for a small business owner

So what does it teach a small business owner? Small business owners have to traditionally do a lot of the stuff themselves. Cloud based tools just help you perform the tasks automatically, without reinventing the wheel. This helps you to concentrate on creating competitive advantage and aligning your expenses to your revenue. The competitive advantage is very important because almost always a small business is competing with large businesses for customer attention.

There are multiple cloud services to help perform different business functions. If you need to produce documents and balance sheets, use Google Docs (free) or Office 365. Use Dropbox / Box.com / Google drive / Microsoft OneDrive (all of them have a limited free services) to exchange documents with your customers rather than buying your own storage and sharing setup. Here is a link to some small business storage services, where you can back up and store a lot of the information: http://business-cloud-storage-services.toptenreviews.com/

There are ton of tools like Intuit Quickbooks / Fresh books / Intuit payroll etc. to help you manage the finances, do payroll, manage expenses, etc. If you need processing power, use a cloud provider like Amazon or Rackspace or Microsoft rather than buying servers. Use Adobe Connect, Webex or GotoMeeting for meeting with your customers. Use Gliffy for making diagrams like org charts, floor plans, etc. As you grow, use Salesforce.com for your business. For accepting payments, use PayPal or Square on your phone as and when you can.

List of tools:

Here is a slightly older, albeit a good starting list of tools: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361500,00.asp

The basic idea is that there are a lot of tasks involved in support functions like finance, documentation, accounting, storage, etc. that are required in running a small business. Large business can afford to perform these functions on their own, and with a large support staff. If you’re competing with them, don’t try to do it all yourself. Try to compete based on your competitive advantage, and for support tasks that don’t add to your competitive advantage, use a cloud based tools.

What is the advantage? Cloud services are normally priced by consumption like resource or per user, so you can align them to your cash flow and sales. The image below helps to summarize these facts and puts some items really well. Look at the numbers: 98% have technology as a success factor, but 42% do NOT have an IT department. I think the majority of the rest 58% probably have a small 1- 5 people department. This is where it is essential to use cloud services to your gain.

small-business-the-cloud-png.jpg

Update on Hana Kitchen

Eerily similar to the major cloud providers’ growth strategy, Hana Kitchens is looking to establish itself on both coasts of the continental US. Their next destination is LA. Given the way they are able to breed new culinary ideas coming out of their kitchens, I think they will be titans of the food industry.

There is a similar communal kitchen here in Madison WI called FEED Kitchens, but it has a non-profit bent: http://feedkitchens.org/

Leave a comment Posted on Bandwidth, Cloud Computing, Cloud Costs

How Cloud Computing evolved

To understand the evolution of cloud computing, we must simplify the definition of cloud computing. According to PC Magazine, “In the simplest terms, cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of your computer’s hard drive. The cloud is just a metaphor for the Internet. It goes back to the days of flowcharts and presentations that would represent the gigantic server-farm infrastructure of the Internet as nothing but a puffy, white cumulonimbus cloud, accepting connections and doling out information as it floats.”

One of my favorite parts of this definition is that “cloud is a metaphor for the internet.” Cloud computing really embraced the concept of internet and took it to another level. As the price of internet (processing ability and space or storage) dropped because of technological advances, it became easier and more affordable to deliver applications and services through the cloud. For example, twenty years ago, if you loved your music and wanted to have a big collection, you had to set up a music library in your home with bunch of CDs in a big stack that would use up shelf space in your place. Now you can have all your music in the iTunes cloud delivered as a music service and access it from your phone. No more need for racks and racks of CDs/ cassettes / tracks. This is because it became very cheap for companies to store tons of data and customers got easy, affordable internet access to download the music as and when it was required.

Let’s do some math:

A typical song can vary between 1.5 megabytes to 5 megabytes in size (1 byte = 8 bits). Look at the graph below. The cost of internet is declining at an 18% rate, while bandwidth capacity is growing at 32%. When I started using the internet, I started out with a 2400bits per second modem. At this rate it would take me about 4 hours to download a song. I was super excited when I got to break the 9.6 kilobits per second barrier with a brand new modem. Today I have 30 million bits per sec coming to my place. At this speed, I can download a song in less than 30 seconds.

Bandwidth exponential growth vs. cost decline

What does all of this mean? Numbers sound great, but the impact on our lives is significant. All of the reduced time in downloading meant that if I wanted to listen to a song right now, I could download it on my phone, as and when required. It means Apple can provide the ultimate music experience of delivering you a product as and when you want it.

 Imagination or Internet running wild

10 years ago, most people couldn’t fathom having all their music on their phone because it took too much time to download. Today not only can you download the music you want on your phone but you can see movies (Netflix), podcasts and sports (NFL RedZone by Verizon) at today’s internet speeds. Now imagine if Google Fiber came to your house. As described by Google:

“Google Fiber will provide an Internet connection speed of one gigabit per second (1,000 Mbit/s) for both download and upload which is roughly 100 times faster access than what most Americans have. Google Fiber says its service allows for the download of a full movie in less than two minutes.”

The Guardian recently published a great article on the effect of the 1 gig internet coming to small town America. Way to go, Chattanooga!!

What can you do with that sort of connectivity? What opportunities come to your mind?

 

Taking this to the business level:

In the past when a business required IT resources like processing power and storage, the business purchased it for the longer term (3 – 5 years). The problem was the business was required to buy the processing and storage for peak times rather than average workload times. Most businesses have some sort of varying demands or cyclical nature to the demand for their products. There will be lean times and there will be times when excessive demand has to be met. In the past, buying IT resources was always a compromise between meeting excessive demand or letting business go and not meeting demand during excessive demand times. However, the way IT products were designed and the pricing of these resources was such that customers had to buy these for multiple years. This meant that you were paying for IT resources meant to meet peak demand for three years, while your peak demand might only be for 10 – 25% of the time. Take for example the retail industry. Their peak demand time starts Thanksgiving Day and ends Jan 1.I In the past they had to buy resources for the whole year or for 3-5 years. This meant that any given time, most IT workloads didn’t use the capacity of the IT infrastructure and resources deployed by IT.

See the graph below for Scenario 1. Month 1 is when the resources are bought and deployed. Month 36 is when they are end of life. Blue area shows actual demand for resources varying in a cyclical manner. A good way to show the waste is by considering the green area, which is a subtraction of the peak demand and the customer demand. Most of the time, the capacity is being wasted while it is already paid for. It also meant that at any given time IT resources were only used to a certain limited percentage. What a waste of money.

 

Wasted Capacity 1

As processing power, storage and bandwidth charges dipped significantly and the use of internet grew, it was possible to deliver the processing power and resources required at peak time through the internet. Walk in the concept of cloud. Now you could afford to ship off your processing workload to a cloud-like environment. Take it a step further, why not have the entire applications sit in the cloud and just give your employees or customer access to it? In the cloud, you get to consume resources as and when you want it. Instead of buying everything up front, you get to consume the resources based on when you need them. You can ramp up your resources as and when required, meaning that you can actually match IT resources to the peaks and troughs in demand. Imagine the implications of that for a business, the cash flow impact, the ability to not worry about day-to-day IT issues. See the scenario 2 below. The upfront investment is limited to what you require to start out. Cloud capacity is used to match customer demand, thus reducing wastage of IT resources.

Matching CapacityFeel free to leave a comment 🙂

Next week:

Kitchen cloud, huh?

Leave a comment Posted on Cloud Computing, Definition, What is Cloud

What is Cloud?

What is Cloud?

For a technical definition of cloud computing please see the National Institute of Science and Technology’s definition of Cloud Computing. In my opinion, Cloud is a term that refers to anything that is delivered “as a service”. The term “as a service” means you use it when you need it, but you don’t have to own it to use it. You probably also shouldn’t care about how it is delivered as long as it meets your requirements.

For the sake of simplicity, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are cloud services that provide interactions to their customers as and when required. Just 20 years ago, if you wanted to send your favorite pictures to grandma or to your friends, you had to buy a physical album, and mail it to them. Now this whole process can be turned around in seconds, and can be viewed all over the world. No more buying an album—Facebook provides that facility as and when you want it.

Impact on Business

Let’s translate this into a business scenario: cloud computing communication options like Webex, Slideshare, etc. have revolutionized business interaction. Now you can work from home, airport, hotel room, or coffee shop and interact with your customer. This changed the travel industry as more and more businesses required essential travel only. Just a few years ago, when you wanted to present an idea or pitch a sale to clients or management in different offices, you would have to travel around the country, schedule travel schedules and get everyone in the same room. Now all you have to do is make sure the calendars are aligned and the presentation can be worked on. Does that mean human interaction is dead? No! The level of the human interaction has significantly increased because of the increased frequency of online touch, and our ability to use services as and when you want them in the cloud. In these scenarios, cloud acts like a tool to increase human interaction. And like any tool, it is how you use it that makes the difference.

Real World Examples

For example: In 2009, a US based retail business customer came to the organization I was working for at the time with a problem: they faced major competition from online retailers and their in-store shopping model had taken a beating. To compete in their industry, they needed to completely revise how their customers were interacting with their organization and buying products. However, given their older systems and their past performance, they did not have the budget available to make a major upfront investment in building solutions to make their customer experience better, let alone retrain their staff to implement and manage those new solutions. And considering the timing: 2008-09 recession period, this was also not a good time to get managements / investors to make major investments in any business. We helped them deal with this situation by delivering to them a cloud based solution for e-commerce. We kept the upfront investments down by replacing this with on-going costs which matched their usage of resources and sales. Retailers in America love this because 3 months out of the 12, they have a great spike in sales and then most of the year, can be slim pickings at best. The impact was that retail business was able to survive the recession, able to come out leaner and meaner, and able to face competition from the online retailers in their industry.

In another case, we recently had a small business come to us that competes with the organizations much bigger in size and scale, in their industry. Their major issue was that they had no idea how well their discount campaigns worked. While larger companies can typically tell how their campaigns are working, this small organization didn’t know if the customers who were cashing in the discounts, were loyal and how quickly were they interacting with their organization due to these campaigns. This was primarily because the organization could not combine customer data (from loyalty email registrations) to data from sales. Plus the small business had a very limited technical staff, so deploying any IT solution to help combine the multiple data sources, was next to impossible. So we developed a cloud based solution where we managed the solution, and combined the data sources and delivered reporting on the impact of discount campaigns. In this case, we were managing the whole IT solution in the cloud, so that the customer could derive the business value, and limit their attention to business problems.

In the end, one of the lessons to be learned is that cloud computing a tool to solve problems. At the end of the day, it is a hammer, but it needs its nail: a business or personal problem, that must be solved to make it valuable.

 

Feel free to leave a comment 🙂

Leave a comment Posted on Cloud Computing, Introduction

About Cloud Sommelier

I have worked in the cloud computing industry, in various positions, from Governance Consultant to Product / Program Manager to Sales, for the past 5 years. This also means very few people really understand what I do—and this includes my wife. I can’t recall exactly when this conversation happened, but I think it was during our drive to Orlando, Florida from Madison, Wisconsin. I guess long drives tend to bring out the questions.

 

My Wife: What exactly is your new job all about?

Myself: Well, I am responsible for cloud presales for my company in North America.

My wife: But what does it mean?

Myself: My company deals with data warehousing and big data technologies. Basically it is a way of collecting, organizing and analyzing information about our customers’ business so they can help grow their business. I help put this technology in the cloud, so that customers …

My wife: But why is the cloud part of your job?

Myself: Cloud is an easy way to deliver information. You can deliver it quickly. I basically combine different elements of the cloud to bring together a solution for the account teams and customers. I advise them on what things they should have in their cloud, what cloud solution would suit them and how it would work. And how these different aspects come together. What could suit their needs and wants, and help them run a cloud based solution …

My wife: So you are a Cloud Sommelier.

Myself: That’s one way to put it.

 

And that is how this idea started…

What is this blog about?

This blog is about helping people understand what cloud is and how it affects our lives, from the point of view of someone who works with it every day. Over the years whenever I have had conversations about cloud computing, I have heard a lot of comments and questions: What exactly is the cloud? How safe is it? I don’t like the cloud so I don’t use it. It’s not for my business (big or small). My focus is to address a lot of these issues and considerations around cloud computing with this blog. I would like to hear from readers about what you want to read around the topic of cloud. I will try to share with you with my personal advice, opinions and my experiences, and I would love to hear yours.

In addition, I will welcome guest bloggers on a semi-regular basis to express their opinion about cloud computing topics. I will rely on people I know in the industry to express about their thoughts about cloud computing or any topic they want to bring to the readers.

A special thanks goes out to my wife Nikki for the motivation, and my friend and writer extraordinaire Laura Schaefer for editing my blog! She is a co-founder of wordchum, writes travel books for kids and the author of The Teashop Girls and its sequel The Secret Ingredient (out now!).

 

Feel free to leave a comment 🙂