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So here in 2011, we have the same challenge with cloud. (The majority of) Dell’s customers do not know how to operate a hyperscale data center because there is no commonly accepted pattern. That’s where the cloud operation model comes into play – we have cloud proven hardware and cloud proven software, but we had been missing a description of the operational cloud mojo.
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IDC forecasts that over the next five years, Asia Pacific spending on IT cloud services will grow fourfold, reaching USD$ 4.6 billion by 2014. Spend on cloud computing will accelerate through the forecast period, with a forecasted CAGR of more than 40% across the region from 2010 – 2014¹. InstaCompute will free up considerable financial and managerial resources in the transition from a capex-heavy, on-premise model, to a pay-as-you-use model with hourly and monthly billing options and the choice of multiple payment methods. Customers can focus their energies on pursuing revenue generating growth opportunities, from their core business areas, while relying on Tata Communications to deliver the technology infrastructure to support their growth.
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Since I could not find anything, I decided to try to estimate the annual new datacenter construction market size using existing data already available in the industry. My calculations resulted in a projection out to 2020 that I believe is fairly representative of what we can expect. In addition, I also made the assumption that the industry will likely move from an average construction cost of $15 million per megawatt to something more like $6 million per megawatt in five years resulting in a flattening of year-over-year growth. The resulting white paper is titled Projecting Annual New Datacenter Construction Market Size. It also shares the steps I took to generate these projections and estimates that the United States and global datacenter markets will grow 50 percent or so by 2020 to $18 billion and $78 billion, respectively. These estimates were derived by combining my own data with the great work of my good friend Jonathon Koomey, and some of the initial Uptime Institute’s work o
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Do Enterprise Clouds have a future? Yes, but they'll ultimately tend towards niche (specific classes of SLAs, network speeds, security requirements etc). Their role is principally in mitigating disruption risks but the transitional costs they seek to avoid can only be done at an increasing operational penalty. It should be noted that there is a specific tactic where an enterprise cloud can have a particularly beneficial role: the "sweating" of an existing legacy system prior to switching to a SaaS provider.
Do Private Clouds have a future? Yes, they have a medium to long term benefit in mitigating transitional risks (such as issues over data governance) through the use of a commodity based model. However, be careful what you're building and remember the impact of private clouds will diminish as competitive markets develop in the public space with easy switching between providers.
Do Public Clouds have a future? Absolutely, this is the long term economic model and will become dominant
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There are two dimensions to this. Structural i.e. do telcos have relevant assets that would enable them to capture value going forward? And then cultural – are telcos capable of the DNA reset needed to compete with their emergent competitors (e.g. Facebook, Google, etc.)?
In my experience (W. Europe centric), telcos spend a lot more time agonising about the former while shying away from the latter. If they were smarter, they would do it the other way around.
Telcos themselves probably believe they devote plenty of management attention to the question of disintermediation. Every few months senior managements ask the question – the only thing that seems to change over time being the identity of the potential disintermediator (first Skype, then Google, then Apple, now Facebook) – and junior managers scurry away to look at the data, and then come back with the reassuring conclusion that with a bit of added effort, telcos can capture value by exploiting 'unique' assets like location, bill
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This is a graph of traffic to the website of the Australian Open tennis championship. As you can see, the traffic spikes in January every year and then all but disappears for the other 11 months of the year. It is also important to note that the height of the traffic spike is increasing year on year.
If the owners of this site want to be able to serve all the traffic at the top peak of the peak, they can spend a fortune on servers capable of handling that level of traffic but these servers will be almost entirely idle for eleven months of the year. The alternative is that the owners put the site on a cloud platform and dial up the resources associated with it, as and when needed. This is obviously a vastly more efficient option for the site owners. However, that doesn’t mean that cloud computing itself is Green or efficient.
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According to London-based market research firm, Informa Research, an average smartphone (globally) consumes a mere 85 megabytes of data every month. Nearly 13 percent of world’s phones qualify as smartphones, and these phones are generating two-thirds of all traffic on mobile cell networks, Informa notes. For instance, so far in 2010, an average iPhone user consumes 196 megabytes of data each month, while an average Android phone consumes about 148 MB per month.
Informa predicts that over next five years, there is going to be a staggering 700 percent increase in data consumption every month. Actually, I think they’re being conservative, and it might not take that long. T-Mobile USA CTO Neville Ray turned me on to the concept of a Gigabyte phone earlier this month when we were chatting about industry developments.
A Gigabyte phone is one that pushes monthly data consumption to a gigabyte or higher, mostly because people use the wireless web more frequently. Sharing photos, watching vi
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Ray pointed out that during this holiday season, T-Mobile USA would have twice the number of Android devices for sale in comparison with other U.S. carriers, a sign perhaps, that BlackBerry and Nokia might be on weak footing with the Bellevue, Wash.-based phone company. According to research reports earlier this month, Android-based smartphones are now 44 percent of the U.S. market, crushing RIM’s BlackBerry OS. According to Canalys, Symbian (with Nokia being its main proponent) has 33 percent of the worldwide smartphone market. Canalys noted that Apple pushed ahead of RIM, which has seen its share of the total smartphone market decline.
Yesterday I wrote about the concept of a Gigabyte phone, something Ray talked about extensively in a conversation with me. “We’re seeing now the emergence of the gigabyte-per-month smart phone, which is very, very exciting and a great opportunity,” he said. “You’re seeing some of these very capable smart phones emerge, and in several cases, we’re seei
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Perspectives on Cloud Computing: What is Telecom’s Role?
Wednesday, September 29th at 12:00 PM
Everyone in the Telecom and IT industries seems to have their heads in the Cloud. It’s a feeding frenzy these days. But according to Gartner, there is “real benefit rather than hyped expectations and potentially transformational technologies that will hit the main stream in less than five years”.
What does that mean for us and how can we tap into it? Info World recently compiled a rough breakdown of what cloud computing is all about from an IT perspective. Components included: SaaS (software as a service), utility computing, web services in the cloud, platform as a service, MSP (managed service providers), service commerce platforms and internet integration.
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I have just spent a week in Korea and Japan meeting with customers on the subject of Cloud. I can tell you, the subject is red hot out there right now…I believe telco’s have a unique opportunity today to work with enterprises in these areas. Not only will it help them increase the traffic in their networks, but it will also allow them to foster long-term relationships with their customers. When interviewed about their fears concerning the public cloud, CIO’s are typically highlighting security and availability as two key issues. Traditional public cloud providers do not provide satisfactory service level agreements. Telco’s wanting to deliver cloud services to their customers can easily do that by using high speed interconnects between their datacenters. They can run that on their existing fiber channels with limited extra investments, making 99.99% SLA’s in reach of any customer. Also as they are local, they can ensure those datacenters are within the appropriate boundaries for compli
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Launched 2005, GE's now familiar Ecomagination campaign has seen green sales quadruple, accounting for about $20 billion in annual sales today and is among GE's fastest growing business lines. GE is no stranger to capital-intensive industries that measure project lifespans in years or even decades, so Immelt emphasized that Cleantech is surely going to go through some ups and downs in terms of public and market sentiment. "Clean energy will have a long time horizon," he said. "This will be a $150 billion market by 2015 or 2020. And it's global."
Immelt acknowledged that "green" fatigue is a factor, especially since the public and policy makers have been inundated with hype around the promise of technology to fix the environment and energy problems. "Words matter. Brands matter," he said, emphasizing that the label "green" has lost its mojo. "The word 'green' has cheapened the clean energy movement. It makes it too precious for the common man. 'Energy security' would have been a better
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A new study from Pike Research forecasts that LEDs will account for almost half of a $4.4 billion market for lamps in the commercial, industrial and outdoor stationary sectors by 2020.
Almost 18 percent of global electricity use goes toward lighting, and lighting in the U.S. consumes a fifth of the amount at an annual cost of more than $40 billion. With their ability to produce the same amount of light as traditional bulbs while consuming less energy and lasting far longer, LEDs represent a strong opportunity to cut expenses and reduce electricity use.
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A 2009 study (PDF) by Massachusetts-based Groom Energy Research estimated that approximately 60 companies worldwide offer GHG accounting software, and more than US$46 million was invested in GHG accounting software start-ups in 2009.
According to a recent report by Colorado-based Pike Research, the global market for GHG accounting software and support services grew by nearly 84 percent from 2008 to 2009, representing a total market of US$384 million. They predict the market will achieve 40 percent compounded annual growth through 2017. Australia's S2 Intelligence reports that worldwide spending on green accounting systems will total US$595 billion through 2015, including both GHG accounting software and environmental accounting software more broadly.
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Aggressive and sustained investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy would allow the U.S. to retire existing coal-fired power plants and a quarter of the its nuclear capacity by 2050.
The upfront costs would be modest — $10 billion in 2020, or $2.20 monthly for the average residential customer, but by 2040, the savings would begin reaching consumers' pocketbooks. Deploying existing high-efficient technology across every sector, such as lighting, HVAC and water heating, could cut electricity use by 15 percent from today's requirements.
All of this can occur independent of federal climate change legislation should Congress fail to pass an energy bill this year, according to Synapse Energy Economics, author of "Beyond Business as Usual: Investigating a Future without Coal and Nuclear Power in the U.S."
Renewable energy, such as wind, solar, geothermal and biomass, could grow to provide half of the country's electricity needs, said the report
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But there’s one solution to the climate crisis that we don’t need to wait for — energy efficiency.
The opportunity is enormous: A 2009 McKinsey report estimates that by 2020, the United States could reduce its annual energy consumption by 23 percent through energy efficiency measures alone.
This would cut greenhouse gas emissions by over a gigaton — that’s a billion tons — and cumulatively save companies and consumers over a trillion dollars.
Energy efficiency is doable right now, it’s cost-effective, and it’s absolutely critical to slowing climate change. But it’s not happening fast enough. To truly take energy efficiency to scale, we need a national movement that captures the imagination of people from dorm rooms to boardrooms across the country.
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As a result, in three to five years, there will be a second big enterprise IT migration from private to public infrastructures.
Don't believe everything you hear about private clouds. Just because you've finally fixed IT doesn't make you a long-term cloud computing provider. Plan accordingly.
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Private clouds are better than nothing but an investment in a private cloud is an investment in a temporary fix that will only slow the path to the final destination: shared clouds. A decision to go with a private cloud is a decision to run lower utilization levels, consume more power, be less efficient environmentally, and to run higher costs.
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Pictured below is Georgina Teye. She sells plastic housewares — baskets, bowls, mugs and the like — at an outdoor market in Somanya, Ghana. She'd like to install solar-powered lanterns at her shop, which is also her home, so that she can remain open later and so that her three children can study at night.
I'm loaning her $100.
I made the loan through a startup nonprofit called Energy in Common.
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It’s no secret that Google has been ramping up its enterprise offerings. The company has made a strong push for the adoption of Google Apps, launching the Apps Marketplace, allowing Apps users to add other layers to their environments from companies like Socialwok and Zoho. Today, Google is taking it one step further. At Google I/O today, the search giant has announced that Google App Engine, a platform for building and hosting web applications in the cloud, will now include a Business version, catered towards enterprises. The new premium version allows customers to build their own business apps on Google’s cloud infrastructure. Google is also announcing a collaboration with VMware for deployment and development of apps on the new cloud infrastructure.
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A group of investors argued heatedly about the value of open versus closed technology on a panel today at Google’s I/O conference in San Francisco. Dave McClure (pictured), a partner at Founders Fund, kicked things off with a provocative statement: “Open is for losers.”
McClure was answering a question from moderator Dick Costolo of Twitter, who noted that one of the big values celebrated in the tech community is openness, yet one of the hottest platforms, the iPhone, is completely controlled by Apple. In fact, McClure couched his answer by saying he was “channeling Steve Jobs.” He said that it’s important to have open standards as a foundation for technologies, but after that, proprietary technology motivates people to pursue “cool products and cool ideas.”
I think that the Sea to Sky Highway is going to become known as one of the most amazing road-bike rides in the world. The Whistler Granfondo is going to be a blast. Great training ride day today. 16k warmup and then 3 16k sprints.
Click the map to follow along!
Does this mean I'm now a cover model? 
Backbone Magazine has just published a great overview of the cleantech sector in Canada that contains quotes from a number of notable people in the space including Kirk Washington (Yaletown Venture Partners), Victoria Smith (BC Hydro), Rick Whittaker (Sustainable Development Technology Canada), Raul Pacheco-Vega (UBC), Helen Goodland (Lighthouse Sustainable Building Centre) and me. Thanks to the Globe team and Lisa Manfield the author for a great article. You can either jump to the article, to the table of contents of this issue, or to a list of all of the issues.
Architectural Design, Business, Complex Systems, Energy, Environment, Media, Politics, Society, Sustainable Development, TA Speaking & Media, Technology, Transportation, Urban Planning, World Affairs
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In recent studies, Lux Research predicted that the green buildings market will grow from a current $144 billion to $277 billion in 2020, and the Continental Automated Buildings Association forecast significant growth in the systems market, pegged at $20 billion in 2009, over the next five years.
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The Pretence of Knowledge
The particular occasion of this lecture, combined with the chief practical problem which economists have to face today, have made the choice of its topic almost inevitable. On the one hand the still recent establishment of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science marks a significant step in the process by which, in the opinion of the general public, economics has been conceded some of the dignity and prestige of the physical sciences. On the other hand, the economists are at this moment called upon to say how to extricate the free world from the serious threat of accelerating inflation which, it must be admitted, has been brought about by policies which the majority of economists recommended and even urged governments to pursue. We have indeed at the moment little cause for pride: as a profession we have made a mess of things.
It seems to me that this failure of the economists to guide policy more successfully is closely connected with their propensity t
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reen building currently accounts for five to nine percent of the retrofit and renovation market activity by value, which equates to a $2 billion to $4 billion marketplace for major projects, according to a new report from McGraw-Hill Construction. By 2014, this share is projected to grow to 20-30 percent, making it a $10 billion to $15 billion market for major retrofit projects, according to the SmartMarket Report.
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The market is expected to grow by leaps and bounds, however. Pike Research projects 250 percent growth to $19.9 billion by 2020.
About 80 percent of the current market is tied to projects in the institutional and federal sectors, spurred by the injection of nearly $11 billion in incentives, grants and lending opportunities through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).
“Private commercial buildings are the next frontier,” said Research Analyst Jevan Fox. “However, private building owners still lack the proper financing structures and incentives to take advantage of this opportunity.”
In a scenario where more PACE financing becomes available, at the same time as companies face higher costs from cap-and-trade legislation, Pike Research estimates the market would balloon to $37.6 billion by 2020.
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