Is Cloud Computing Green?

The short answer is yes, the long answer is no.

The short answer deals with the better utilisation of computer resources within the data centre, the potential for allocating virtual resources to more energy efficient services and for reducing the massive sprawl of physical resources (and all the energy hence consumed in manufacturing, cooling and distribution.). Overall, cloud computing offers the potential for more energy efficient virtual resources.

The long answer concerns componentisation. The shift of common and well defined I.T. activities from products to standard components provided as online services should lead to a dramatic explosion in innovation.

Standardisation always creates this potential.

If you consider writing an application today, the reason why it's a relatively quick process is because we have relatively standardised and stable components such as frameworks, databases, operating system, cpu, memory etc. Imagine how long it would take to write a new application if you first had to start by designing the CPU. This is componentisation in action, the rate of evolution of system is directly related to the organisation of its subsystems.

Cloud computing is all about providing standard components as services (it's pure volume operations). The problem of course is that we will end up consuming more of these standard components because it's so easy to do so (i.e. in old speak, there is less yak shaving) and it becomes easier to build new and more exciting services on these (standing on the shoulders of giants).

We might end up providing more efficient virtual resources but we will end up consuming vastly more of them.

In the short term, cloud computing will appear to be more green, in the long term it will turn out not to be. However, that's to be expected, our entire history of industrial progress continues to be about the constant creation of ever more complex and ordered systems and the use of stable subsystems simply accelerates this process, whether they be bricks, pipes, resistors, capacitors, databases or whatever.

Whichever way you cut it, our constantly accelerating process of creating greater "perceived" order and the constant reduction of entropy (within these systems and the future higher ordered systems that will be created) ultimately requires one external factor - a greater energy input.

Cloud computing will be no different and our focus will have to be on the source of that energy.

How long?

The simple solutions to environmental degradation are less consumption or fewer people.

The past twenty years have definitely taught us that less consumption is out.

I wonder how long it will be before we see the first examples of bio-terrorism based upon environmental concerns (whether individual, group or sponsored by a state).

History has taught us that despite the monstrous, unethical and vile nature of murderous acts such as genocide and eugenics, a madman's reasoning has often been used to justify these same acts in terms of some "higher purpose".

I have little doubt that there are madmen in our society today.

On a positive note, I'm very encouraged by Barack Obama's promise of $150 billion for clean energy research. I'm a little less impressed that this is over ten years. Still, it's a step in the right direction.

I wandered lonely as a cloud ...

First wander ...

Over the last few days, there has been a lot of to and fro between Tim O'Reilly and Nick Carr over cloud computing. I'm sure more is to follow.

The debate over network effects at the hardware (what is commonly called Infrastructure as a Service) level of the stack (from bare bones to virtualised images to operating system) is of little value to me. The shift of the computing stack from product to services will inevitably accelerate the process by which these lower level orders of the computing stack become invisible. The lower levels will find themselves pushed to a low-margin standardised high-volume business based entirely upon open source.

What interests me is that the argument for portability, interoperability and transparency in the "cloud" will inevitably shift to the framework (development platform, messaging system, database, templating system and so forth) level of the stack (or what is commonly called Platform as a Service).

The framework layer will consolidate to a few large marketplaces with each marketplace based upon a standard framework. A few of these frameworks will be proprietary but most will be open sourced. For each standard framework there will be many homogeneous providers with portability between them.

This framework layer (which Tim hints at) is where the real battleground is. This is where the real network effects are. This is where the trillion dollar company exists. Why on earth do you think I started Zimki back in 2005-7? Why do you think MSFT is releasing Azure?

Anyone still needing help to work out where all this is heading, just think about Ballmer's comment on enabling "Microsoft partners to create their own cloud infrastructure", think about a marketplace of ISP's all providing the same framework, think about how over the last decade the lower levels of the computing stack have become invisible to most developers and then go read my old blog post.

However, a marketplace based upon a proprietary cloud technology vendor has lots of attractions from the acceleration of innovation (through componentisation) to the more mundane capex to opex conversion. James Governor said in a recent tweet that "no amount of assertive statements from thought leaders will prevent customers from adopting proprietary technology". He is absolutely right. This is a gilded cage that some CIOs are not going to walk but rush into.

My only advise is that if you're the CEO of a company and your CIO is talking cloud, find someone with a senior level background in manufacturing to check their reasoning. If you hear the words "lacks second sourcing" then consider upgrading the CIO. It'll pay in the long run.

[For reference, my reasoning for Zimki was derived from Tim's earlier work on Infoware and the Open Source paradigm shift]

[Dennis Howlett has a really interesting piece on this whole topic.]

Second wander ...

When I worked for Canon (2001-2007), along with Zimki, utility computing and open source, I used to write endless reports about the dangers of mobile phones to the camera business, the future of 3D printing & fabrication technologies along with being fairly vociferous against SED. I've always believed it to be dangerous to focus exclusively on the core or with what you are comfortable with. That's a lesson I learned from reading Schumpeter.

This is especially true during recessionary times. It should never be forgotten that such times do create opportunities, not just for industry but government as a whole.

Despite the neocons desperate denials, as we've seen from the banking fiasco, the laissez faire school of economic lunacy has turned out to be a house of cards. However, there is always a silver lining. Our Government appears to be slowly turning away from the mumbled dribblings on money supply of those Chicago School ephors and back to an eminently more sensible and direct Keynesian approach of investment.

This is good news ... assuming it lasts.

Beyond the positive buy-out and part nationalisation of banks and the promises of public building works, the government should look towards bolder measures including the wholesale plunder and pillage of the weakest industrial sectors to the benefit of society.

The building industry and auditing professions are prime-time to be pushed towards nationalisation and bought up on the cheap and invested in. There are lots of measures such as the enforced auction of land banks with unused planning permissions which could be introduced in order to assist with this transfer.

Furthermore, since lots of parents are no longer sending their little darlings to those expensive private schools, a quick dropping of the charitable tax status plus a few extra regulatory burdens should force a few of these schools towards bankruptcy. Picking these up on the cheap would be an excellent way to bolster the national education system. This is to say nothing of the potential to buy-up private hospitals on the cheap.

If the government sets her mind to it, it could make a nice little earner. Despite the nay-sayers professing doom should the government take such action, there will always be plenty of entrepreneurs keen to rebuild after we get through these tough times. A bit of piracy might also help with social mobility, for people to go up others also have to come down.

A Keynesian approach of control, intervention and ruthlessness and a mix of the skull and cross bones combined with a healthy dash of "ahoy there, me mateys!" is what we need. In the long run, it is also the only sensible way forward.

[Update Nov 2012 - Alas those pesky monetarists weren't quite as dead as I hoped QED QE.]

Third wander ...

As any biologist or sociologist will tell you, the fastest growth of any population is normally the generation before it collapses due to environmental degradation. The "golden" age always happens just before the fall. It happens with populations from bacteria to wolves. It also happened with the Mayans and the Romans.

We're next.

The laissez faire ephors would have us praying to the invisible fable that is the pareto optimality whilst we burn and plunder natural resources and ponder how we can turn the vast reserves of methyl hydrates into a viable source of fuel. I'd rather trust to reason than such gods of future-discounting lunacy.

This is why the latest debate that the worldwide limit of 450 ppm CO2 (a level which will cause runaway climate warming) is not achievable in economic terms is just madness. We've discounted the future long enough. Without a hospitable environment there are no future trillion dollar companies. Without a hospitable environment there is no economy.

Our choice is simple. Either we choose to do something on a grand enough scale or we choose to let nature decide our fate. Whilst many are hopeful that serendipity will conjure up some magic to solve our problems, I fear that many Mayans and Romans probably did the same.

Whilst I'm all for a gamble, if the upside is more gadgets and the downside is possible extinction ... it just doesn't seem worth it.

Bad news ...

Despite what is often repeated, global climate has long been suspected to change rapidly. Modern evidence suggests that at the end of the Younger Dryas there was a rapid series of temperature increases, including a 2 to 5 degree change that occurred in 1-3 years.

No-one really understands how these changes occur and what events trigger it. The huge reserves of methyl hydrates stored below sub-sea permafrost are suspected of being a possible tipping point for a rapid change in global climate.

It should be remembered, that approximately 55 million years ago the Arctic sea had an average temperature of 20ºC and there was severe extinction rates in marine life. The cause of this is generally attributed to vast releases of methane from methyl hydrates.

In certain circles, it was believed that a sea temperature rise of around 5 degrees could start a massive scale release of methane. We already know that the Arctic region has seen a 4 degree increase in the last decade.

According to the Independent, researchers have seen areas of the sea foaming with gas bubbling through "methane chimneys".

This is not good.

The problem is that whilst we talk about how we discount the environment in market economics and how we should solve this problem with financial instruments, the environment simply doesn't care. The environment gets to set the rules, not our economic or political system.

Our first duty should be to the environment, everything else is inconsequential. Instead of doing this, for the past twenty five years we've been hoping that technology and the market will come to our rescue.

We've been leaving it to chance.

Let's hope our risk assessments have been somewhat better than the wizards in the financial community, because this is one toxic asset which no government can bail us out of.

Waste not, want not ....

This is fascinating, bioproduced hydrogen (ok, it's anaerobic rather than a photo bioreactor) used to run a generator. Nanologix seem to be involved with some interesting projects.

There's money in that goo ...

Just came across this paper on photobiological hydrogen production using green alga.

Ok, after being completely stunned by the simple beauty of this process, I immediately came across DIY versions.

My immediate questions are, is anyone doing this on a large scale and if not, why not?

Additional Note =====

As soon as I get home, I come across OpenWetWare and a diagram of a photobioreactor. Later on, I was looking for a book on complex adaptive models and I came across my old Stryers BioChemistry and files of old genetics notes. Hmmm, looks like I've found my new hobby.

So, from now on :-

• Day Job = printed electronics and interactive books that make you go "wow".
• Speaking / Writing = underlying processes of innovation & commoditisation and the use of cybernetics in management.
• Hobby = use of genetic engineering in environmental science.

Bloody hell, talk about a lucky bugger.

More Food for Thought ...

Tom Raftery asks an interesting question: "What if electricity were like the Internet?"

Beyond the normal realm of politics, I'd expect that one of the obstacles to this ideas is transmission loss. However, even today, it is economically feasible to have transmission systems exceed a distance of 4,000 km and with high temperature superconducting materials (such as copper oxide materials or the recently discovered iron based superconductors) this could be almost lossless.

Considering the fluctuation in renewable energy supply and CO2 production being a worldwide issue, I'm surprised that we don't hear more about the ideas of a worldwide energy grid.

According to wikipedia, "the concept of an interconnected global grid linked to renewable resources was first suggested by Buckminster Fuller" in the 1970s.

There are even organisations such as the Global Energy Network Institute (GENI) who apparently have been working on the "viability of the interconnection of electric power networks between nations".

This subject deserves a higher profile.

I wish I had thought of that ...

I recently posted a question about how much much CO2 on average goes into the creation, maintenance and removal of a kilo of human flesh. Being a little bit on the large side, I'm looking for socially responsible ways of removing the additional mass.

Dennis Howlett continues this line of thought by asking how environmentally friendly is WiiFit. Are WiiFit fanatics a net contributor to CO2 emissions?

How much C02 per kilo of human flesh ....

There are many studies which show that livestock is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (from CO2 and Methane to Nitrous Oxide) and that our diet impacts emissions.

According to ABC News, Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin concluded that the average "American diet is responsible for an additional ton-and-a-half of greenhouse gas emissions a year from each of us".

I mention this because I'm a little overweight (a bit of a porker is the polite term) and that additional mass I carry is a consequence of unnecessary carbon emissions (i.e. food I didn't need to eat). My additions however are nothing compared to the Greenpeace wearing Kraken I witnessed hauling himself out of a Land Rover in Tonbridge today. I couldn't work out which caused more damage: the SUV, the extraneous mass or a combination of both. Was the t-shirt ironic?

Anyway for reasons of vanity I've decided to do something about my additional mass. Having caused environmental damage gaining it, I'd rather minimise the environmental cost of removing it. Whilst one obvious option is to spend time down the gym, I was wondering whether anyone has done a study of how much additional co2 such pointless exercise causes. I say pointless because there are usually no additional benefits to gym exercise other than the exercise itself.

What I'm looking for is exercise with some form of point, such as an allotment or forestry work or volunteer gardening. However, I'd still be interested to know what each kilo of my additional mass means in unnecessary and unsociable environmental damage caused.

XTech Review

Last week, it was my pleasure to give the first keynote at XTech 2008 in Dublin. Giving the opening talk at any conference is always a delight because you can then relax and enjoy the rest of the sessions.

The conference was exceptional and I thought I'd take this opportunity to thank Edd Dumbill and Expectnation for organising this excellent event. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

There were so many fabulous sessions that it seems unfair to highlight any in particular. However, I'll mention just a few:-

AMEE - The world's energy meter by Gavin Starks.
An inspirational talk on AMEE (avoiding mass extinction engine). Gavin and his team are focused on providing the world with a canonical source of information regarding energy consumption and carbon data. The work is essential, exciting and fascinating and the talk was delivered with real passion.

Data portability for whom? Some psychology behind the tech by Gavin Bell.
At any good conference, there is always one talk which stands out a mile from the rest, this was it. Gavin gave a breathtakingly good talk on the psychology of why non-geeks need data portability, asking the question:

"How can we ensure that we include their needs and expectations along side the buzzword tick list?"

Within our community it is all too easy to become wrapped up in the current technology and assume that everyone else is just in the process of catching up with the alpha geeks. This is an arrogant and dangerous assumption and Gavin did a great job of dissecting the issues. Awesome.

JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford.
One of best technical talks that I have seen in a long time. Who'd have thought that (value == null) only works because of two errors that cancel each other out.

Here Be Dragons: Knowing Where the World Ends by Leigh Dodds.
A wonderful exploration of the open data landscape and the issue related to exploring, finding and relating canonical sources of information.

Why you should have a Website by Steven Pemberton.
An illuminating talk on the issues around lock-in and data loss in web 2.0. The key issue that Steven was arguing for was that users should have their own web sites and aggregators should collect this data together. Whilst this directly relates to the issue of portability, I happen to agree with Gavin Bell that whatever solution emerges will need to be useable by non-geeks.

On a final note, there is always a presentation which I really shouldn't have missed. Judging from the video, it was truly spectacular.

Bare-naked Flash: Dispelling myths and building bridges by Aral Balkan
True showmanship at its best including the RickRoll of Jeremy Keith. Brilliant.

Why care about open source?

1. Without open source you will never get true portability in the utility computing world.
2. Without portability you will never get truly competitive utility computing markets.
3. Without a competitive utility computing market you will never overcome the adoption fears.
4. Without overcoming the adoption fears, you will never get a widespread reduction in energy consumption and material wastage (silicon is also used in photo-voltaics).
5. Reducing energy consumption and the environmental cost of energy production is good for ducks.
6. I like ducks.

Hence:

open source == kindness to ducks

closed source == cruelty to ducks

Well, almost ... :-)

Mystic Me .....

I scribbled this down a few days ago, however given my posts recently I thought I'd better announce my own Mystic Me "completely redundant cowardly custard predictions for 2008".

These are:

• XaaS and utility computing will become a more mainstream subject.
• Commoditisation of IT will become a hotter topic and there will be increasing concern as to its long term social and employment ramifications.
• More companies will adopt Enterprise 2.0 technology.
• There will be a greater convergence between the worlds of SaaS and SOA.
• There will be a security issue (loss of data or loss of service) with one or more SaaS vendors.
• There will be increased disruption in the traditional media industries brought on by the lowering of the barriers of entry into those industries.
• The rate of innovation of new web products will appear to increase.
• The 3D printer industry will continue to grow with the likely release of personal desktop printers
• Portability between service providers will become a more important discussion point.
• Green computing will be on the radar of an increasing number of execs.

There aren't actually meaningful predictions. Rather, they are continuations of existing trends now with new added vagueness. Enjoy.

Gartner calls for more duck friendly IT.

Well actually, not quite.

What they actually say, hot on the heels of those Anderson bods, is that IT should adopt more green strategies and how that SaaS has the potential to be much more environmentally friendly.

As a former active environmentalist (back in the early 1990s when I had hair) and as a proud keeper of ducks, I obviously support their move.

P.S.

Fabrication technologies also have the possibility to be more environmentally friendly as well.

Though I'm not involved with the environmental movement today, I obviously have concerns about such issues. At ETech in Mar' 2007 and OSCON we demonstrated a mashup of GoogleMaps and a Carbon offset calculator in Zimki. A more impressive system is Will Carter's OffSetr which uses Dopplr data and provides cumulative effects of your networks.

I do however oppose the idea of widespread use of tradeable carbon permits as this is a mechanism for social exclusion. A more equitable system would be based upon non-transferable personal share which gives rise to an annual carbon quota. That quota (or part of) can be sold on an open market, but the the right to that share cannot be transferred.

I am also fully aware that such as system is a bit of disaster for anyone living in the richer countries, as we produce far too much carbon per capita and under such a system we'd be forced to share more with the rest of the world.

I also believe that each country should pay for the cumulative damage it has caused so far.

I also believe that the likelihood of the richest countries agreeing to such things are relatively small, and hence any 3rd world country should avoid tradeable permits and pollute as much as is necessary to build their economies in order to avoid lifelong servitude and hence force richer countries to negotiate reasonably.

I'm fully aware of all the risks of inaction and I stopped working in the environmental field when it became obvious that change would only happen as a result of severe consequences. At which point it is a guessing game.

Still anything to improve the lot of ducks is a good thing in my book.

Utility computing is good for ducks ... OFFICIAL

Those boffins at Accenture Technology Labs apparently believe that utility computing is good for the environment (and hence as I said good for ducks - thx to Suw for the notes.). They even talk about a future spot market in computing resources.

Of course, resource brokers is old news to any readers here who hopefully are well versed in the impacts of commoditisation. I can't really claim any credit - I take my ideas from history, whether it's Petrarch, Schumpeter or McCarthy.

In any case "anytime you think of an idea it is likely that someone, somewhere else in the world is independently thinking or has thought of the same idea".

Damn, nicked that one too.

The only downside is the potential for more consumption but in the short-term it should hold some benefit. Longer term, we're going to have to solve those thorny energy production issues.

--- Update 6th October 2013

Many years later, at the Royal Society, we're still talking about utility computing and sustainability.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles ....

Fly around the world on solar power?

Travel to space in a balloon?

Sounds great, but I want a car which does 100 km per litre.

I saw the car in Berlin, it's absolutely wonderful but it looks like I'm going to have to wait until 2010.

Cats and Dogs ...

Rotten weather, constant rain - yes it's the end of June?

So far this year, the new batch of ducklings and the flowers have been early and April was more like June, May was more like July, June more like August and July?

Well, at this rate I'm expecting Autumn to start soon - from the looks of things, it certainly is heading that way.

Let's hope the leaves don't start falling in the next few weeks.

Web 2.0 catchup

The Web 2.0 Expo was fantastic, we had an excellent outing with Zimki as per Koby's post on our blog, overall great fun.

I gave two talks - one for Ignite, one at the Web 2.0 Expo itself - both seemed to go ok. I also met a large number of interesting people and listened to some very interesting ideas, you just can't ask for more than that.

We didn't get much take up on the carbon offset idea. We'll try that again at OSCON as I'm keen to encourage people to think about such things.

I saw many exciting ideas, talks, companies and products but I'll mention one in particular - BungeeLabs.

We launched Zimki, well its predecessor called LibApi, back in early 2006 with the service going public in Mar 2006. The idea was based around :-

• an online development environment which took care of all the "Yak shaving" which normally occurs with software development

• a "pay as you consume" model for charging for the use of our computing cloud

• the creation of a competitive utility computing market through the open sourcing of Zimki

Later that year Amazon's EC2 launched, we knew we had competition - so it's good to see another company enter the same market space. Why good? Well, it validates the market, it creates competition and I have to agree with Sha Agassi's sentiment that utility computing clouds are the most important developments in the software industry for the last ten years.

Agassi however refers to Amazon's EC2 directly whereas my view is the really important step is the establishment of a competitive utility computing market - not just one provider - hence the reason for open sourcing Zimki to try and kick-start this process (see my earlier posts on open sourcing Zimki, large scale disruption, utility based grids etc)

So how about the new kids on the block with their next-generation on-demand environment? What do they provide? A web-based IDE, on-demand scalable deployment, highly instrumented infrastructure and utility computations that combine computing, storage and network interaction - hey it sounds like another Zimki like concept.

Unfortunately they are not going to be into beta phase until May apparently - so it's not out yet, but it is direct competition at the same level of the stack - this is good news.

The IDE they demonstrated looks good, didn't get a chance to play with it myself and from Alex Barnett's blog they've got the concepts right - utility computing and removing "yak shaving" (note, must buy shares in the little company that makes our Yaks for us). Of course, I'd have to agree since we've been doing and talking about this for over a year, I wouldn't exactly call it revolutionary though. We didn't even think it was revolutionary back when we started and that was some time ago.

However a couple of disappointments for me. First they seem to have created a new language - BungeeLogic. I wish they hadn't, there is enough of them out there, that's why we chose JavaScript.

Secondly from what I was told by them, they are only open sourcing the connection component not the entire environment and engine. This is a shame, as the real value is to have many providers in the same space with developers freely able to move between providers.

Still, it's exciting though

3, 2, 1 ... Ignite ...

As soon as I arrived at the hotel in San Francisco, I was out of the door heading to a Werewolf game. It was a great evening organised by Artur Bergman.

I accused Brady Forrest of being the Werewolf! He said I was only accusing him because he'd turned down my talk for Ignite - I laughed and still said he was the Werewolf (I can't remember if I was right or wrong in the end?).

The following day, about four hours before Ignite, Brady and Jessie sent me an email and asked me to do a talk. I didn't have time to write a new talk to fit in the with standard process, which is 20 slides in 5 minutes automatically switching. So we agreed I could control the pace of the talk if I did 70 slides in 5 minutes!

So I was on for Ignite. 70 slides in 5 minutes, jet lagged, hungry and four hours to go! Arghhhh. I was still writing it whilst the other speakers were presenting.

It was a mix of my talk from FOWA and E-Tech

Well I did it ... a ducks, kittens with guns, commoditisation, utility computing, yak shaving and fabbing etc .. and it wasn't too bad, at least I didn't go down in flames - which could have happened oh, so easily.

Thanks to Brady and Jessie for letting me do this, crazy, but fun...

E-Tech was fab.

As usual E-Tech was an outstanding event - there were some excellent speakers, an interesting crowd and good conversations all round.

I'd like to have seen more, but there is never enough time. The talks I really enjoyed were :-

• Body Hacking, Quinn Norton. This is a really interesting subject matter, enhancing the human body and the potential social impacts of this. Wonderful.

• The Making of Virtual Earth, John Curlander. Captivating stuff on how to go about creating entire 3D images of the environment from a mass of 2D pictures. This is definitely one to watch.

• From Pixels to Plastic, Matt Webb. Well it's Matt and I couldn't miss one of his talks.

• JavaScript: It's Happening All Over Again! James Duncan. I work with James and so I know the talk, but I do enjoy his presentations and yes JavaScript is very cool.

• Spintronics, Kevin Roche. Harnessing quantum spin in modern electronics and methods of creating streams of electrons with the same spin. I was stunned by this.

• Haml: A Semantic Rebellion in Template Land, Hampton Catlin. It's always dangerous to use live demos but building your presentation in your own tool - crazy. It worked, it was great fun and Hampton presents with flair. Shame the room was pitch black.

The list could and should go on, but all I'll say is that if you've not been to E-Tech I would strongly recommend it for next year.

I also gave a talk on commoditisation (with ducks, Zimki and fabbing as usual).

Unfortunately there was a mini gale at the time, so the doors were blasted in on several occasions and also the room was located outside the main area, down a small track, through the woods and past the signs which said "beware of the dragons".

I'm very grateful and extremely surpised that people made the trek. Unfortunately we didn't get many people to sign up for our carbon offset site in Zimki . We'll have to try again later in the year.

Now this is fairly old, but I'd never seen it before until Craig Dwyer pointed it out to me. If you like Lego, you have to watch this.

Stats u like ... and some you shouldn't

Check out Swivel

Some interesting and some very scary data, see:-