The Dictator is Ruling the House of Information Technology with an Iron Fist

The ENIAC mainframe was introduced in 1946. As the first electronic computer it was a huge leap forward in how humans got work done. At the time of its invention the ENIAC was the best way to crunch numbers in the world, yet only a very small and very exclusive group of people had access to it. This is truly the era of the “haves” and “have nots” as far as Information Technology is concerned. Through the subsequent 50 years we’ve gone through phases of making IT available to a wider audience. In the 70s most large companies and universities had a mainframe or access to one. However, as a percentage of the business population this was still a pretty exclusive group, who mostly had limited access to a shared resource. In the 80’s we began the era of distributed computing. Now pretty much any company or individual with a little cash could have full time access to some level of compute capability, from desktop PCs to mainframes, minis and towers.  At this point while technology access is fairly widespread, barrier to entry is still pretty high. The average cost of a desktop was $2,500 and software and support could add another $1000. The average mom and pop shop or home computer user couldn’t afford that kind of spend on something that would be used for writing letters or doing the occasional spreadsheet. 

Fast forward from the 80’s to the year 2000 and the Dictator is Now Allowing Peaceable Assembly

By 2000 the relative cost of a PC had dropped to under $1000 as compared to the late 80’s prices vs. income and inflation. As you might have guessed, this dramatically broadened the accessibility of computing. There is also the little thing called the internet that came to life between the 80s and 2000. The internet lowered the barrier to entry by making information and applications available to anyone who could get on the internet and had a computer or could rent time at an access point terminal. This combination of yearly decreases in the cost of PCs and wide access to the internet continues to this day, making it a little bit easier for the average Sue/Joe to take advantage of the benefits of readily available IT tools.

What’s the Problem with This Form of Government

Unfortunately while the pool of “haves” has increased dramatically every decade since the 50’s, there are still a large number of businesses and home users who are still “have nots” or at best “have a little”. There are myriad reasons for this continued disparity of ownership;

-          Not everyone has easy access to a broadband connection yet, especially in developing parts of the world. (Like a big portion of the undeveloped world called the US of A)

-          In major parts of the world there is no support for owning and using a computer. You couldn’t get the power or the broadband necessary to put it to use

-          The big kicker is SOFTWARE! The cost of software has either held steady or increased with inflation over the years, even as every other aspect of technology has decreased markedly.

Cost of Hardware Over Time*

The above graph is relative pricing for computers and peripherals. Generally speaking the price of a PC has dropped roughly 15% per year over the last 12 years.

Why is the cost of Software still so High and why is that a Continued Roadblock to Wider Adoption of Information Technology

Today we buy software and hardware based on a 100% or 24/7/365 use model. We continue paying for the Oracle license, or for Microsoft Word, regardless of our use characteristics. The average user of any one software package only spends a few minutes or certainly no more than a few hours a day. Paying for 24/7 vs. “paying as you need” means that in most cases we’re paying 5-10X what we really should be paying. How can a 50 person company that is running on a shoestring budget afford world class IT tools, if they have to pay for them even when they’re not being used? Imagine if your finance person could log in to Oracle for an hour a day and 8 hours on the last day of the month and only pay for their use? A perfect example of where this paradigm is beginning to change is in office productivity tools. As a small business or home user you can get access (unsupported) to office productivity tools that have most of the features that the comparable Microsoft products do. While the Google option isn’t perfect, it is certainly a giant leap in the right direction towards democratizing IT. Think about all those pirated copies of MS Office that get spread around. True, it’s a shame that they aren’t being paid for, but it’s probably also true that most of those copies would never have been purchased anyway. Things are pirated for a reason and in many cases it is because the buyer would never be able to justify ownership at full price.

  A Small Sampling of the Per License Cost of Some Common Software Packages Over Time

Information on software prices was retrieved from a number of different online sources, and then averaged.

Cloud has the Potential to Make the Land of Information Technology a True Democracy

The advent of cloud is no smaller an opportunity for global business and change than the introduction of the internet. We haven’t begun to understand what new businesses will be created and what business models will change as a result of the wide spread access to cloud based IT services.  However, this change won’t happen by accident. There are still many evil doers out there who are attempting to derail our train to democracy. 

I don’t want to play the name game, but I will say that many of the biggest IT vendors in the market are working very hard to make the cloud business as usual. They’re looking to maintain their margins and lock in their customers. This effort is completely contrary to many of the benefits that should be assumed as part of using  or implementing cloud services.

Be very wary of big IT vendors bearing gifts of “cloud” solutions, “best” hardware platforms, and long contracts.

By its very definition Cloud is a “pay as you need it” IT model. If you’re getting locked in to long contracts, and you’re still making hardware purchases, you’re heading down the wrong road.  Cloud has created a model that should remove the final barriers to a truly democratized IT model. A small business owner should be able to buy the service they need, in the quantity they need. They should also be able to buy a package of IT services that allows them to mimic much larger organizations.  The home user or the user in undeveloped countries should be able to access technologies and solutions through the phone, or similar handheld devices and they should only have to pay for what they use. Maybe an engineering student could really use a tool like Visio, but really only needs it for an hour a day during one semester. Instead of paying $500 for a copy that will rot on his/her computer, they can pay $10 a month for the access period that they need. This same opportunity is true for the world over. Anyone, with even the most basic of access can now work with and experience the benefits of information technology. This “equal access” to IT creates a democratic world, which allows each of us to succeed or fail on our own terms.

Why Democratic IT Equals Amazing Opportunity

Like the micro loan programs being employed in India brought opportunity to the unserved masses, cloud can bring tools and technology to a whole new set of customers who would otherwise have been denied. Cloud also has the potential to provide a much richer application landscape, giving businesses and home users capabilities that have historically only been available to large enterprises. Imagine what this new found access and capability se

Watching the Scale, It's Not Just For Humans Trying To Lose Weight!

Dieting, the mere thought of it makes me shudder. I could easily diet if there was just no food around! What are the triggers that make us go on a diet, well there are the obvious things; appearance, health, energy level and maybe a desire to get out and enjoy the planet a little more.  How are these things any different that managing our data centers, infrastructure or basic facilities more effectively? The simple answer is there isn't a difference. The only reason it's not as obvious is that we don't have simple visibility into the real performance or health of our facilities and infrastructure. As humans we have friends and family who can say "Mark it's great to see you, looks like life’s been treating you well", or worse "why are you married to that guy, he's getting old and fat?". Then there’s the mirror, the scale and the doctor, assuming our lack of breath from walking up the stairs or fear of trying on last years suit wasn't enough. And therein lies the problem, the data center, your cloud, and or your facility don't have that simple visibility that we do.

The sophistication in our current tools and the metrics should enable most organizations to put the equivalent of a health metering, management and reporting solution in place. So why haven't we? The reasons are myriad and range from a lack of concern for the issue to not having the right organization in place to identify and implement improvements. A while back I did a blog about why data centers are slow to improve and this story has some direct correlations. In that blog I point out the issue of visibility in the sense that if there isn't someone responsible for owning the data center then the chances of real improvement being made diminish dramatically. This same concept might eventually apply to the “Cloud”. If you build a cloud and don’t know what it’s supposed to look like when it’s done or when it’s running at peak/off peak utilization, how will you know you’re getting your monies worth? I’m guessing you’ll need to have a person responsible for ensuring success.

So, what to do, what to do, I guess we could just wring our hands and hope for a miracle. Unfortunately, I've never been very good at the whole waiting for a miracle thing. I've got this old fashioned belief that I need to take responsibility, what a concept, responsibility, there I said it again.

I just got off the phone with a friend in the EPA who believes like I do, that we need to get in front of the issue that faces us today, we can't wait for regulation or the famous miracle. We need to take responsibility for our environments and develop a level of visibility that can shame us into action. This visibility should take the form of an environment health, improvement, metering and management solution. The risks are in every facet of our infrastructure from the buildings to the data centers and yes, even the cloud. I know, I said it, you could even be wasteful using the cloud, who would've thunk it?

I guess the next question is where, what & how, OK, three questions.

• Where - on the building, including power, water, & waste, especially e-waste. In the data center, measuring PUE, DCIE, or EUE and on the Cloud measuring “useful work per watt” or something like that.
• What - software tools that can provide a sophisticated view of how your environment is running against goals, in comparison to benchmarks and or other assumptions of efficiency.
• How - install the tools and use them to provide analysis, dashboards (the scale) and reporting (Global Reporting Initiative, Carbon Collective, Cap & Trade, or customers & partners).

Over the last few years I've been looking for or helping to develop tools that could help with some of the problems outlined above. One of my first hair brained ideas was to create the equivalent of a "Gas Gauge" for the cloud. The thinking was that you could monitor one screen to tell what the health (from an efficiency and capacity standpoint) of your Cloud or virtual infrastructure is. We have those tools for buildings and even for buildings that house compute infrastructure, tools like CSRware. These tools with minimal regular human intervention can help you ascertain whether a given building is performing as expected or whether you're using more or less energy or water than you should be. You can compare buildings against each other and define targets, metrics and reporting. This is what a health management solution really looks like. It's not a "fix the problem" solution (stop eating for two weeks and then go back to normal), it's a tool that helps to ensure you get on track and then stay there, kind of like a diet with teeth! This capability can be applied to a campus or to the data center facility or both. However, the real problem with effective use of resources (understanding whether we're a little or a lot over weight) is that you need to be able to quantify what it is that you're producing. In the cloud and in generic IT infrastructure there is the distinct risk of over provisioning. As humans we have an amazing ability to use up what ever extra (space, power, roads, food, money, bandwidth) capacity we create. 

So I guess what I'm saying is fairly straight forward. We need to establish measurable objectives for ourselves, our infrastructure and our buildings, baseline where we're starting and measure our progress. I'm sure this isn't a foreign concept, but it's amazing how rarely it gets applied to IT, data centers and buildings. If you're just starting out and you've been inspired by someone (even yourself) to make a change for the better, I suggest starting small. Bite off something small that's got a strong 80/20 ratio. A tool like CSRware's solution is a great example, low cost and quick implementation, which is especially important for facilities that are already in operation. If you're looking for a more complete solution for a new facility then be sure to invest properly in the right monitoring and metering solutions (Energy Wise from Cisco, Foreseer from Eaton, Tivoli from IBM, etc.) that can help feed a CSRware type tool. On the cloud and virtualization front there aren't any good tools that I'm aware of yet. I think VMware is working on something, but I don't have the details and I know several groups are trying to create the all knowing data center infrastructure solution.

Time will tell, I just hope we can convince the majority of business owners before it becomes regulation. If you know a small to medium business owner pass this along, they are often the most at risk because they don’t have the scale that makes facility or Cloud operations an obvious target for the CFO. The fact that they don’t have the “scale” doesn’t mean they can’t benefit themselves and the planet by focusing on using what they have more effectively.