GOOG, AMZN, AAPL are the media distributors, MSFT lost this ability in the DOJ/EU court

February 10, 2010 Dave Ohara

I am back in the bay area for a couple of days coming from Seattle, and it hit me after visiting a company yesterday that Google, Amazon, and Apple are the top companies in each of the areas – Search, eCommerce, Media who combined are defining media distribution. What Microsoft lost in the DOJ/EU court cases is the ability to be in control of Windows as a way to define the user experience on PCs for these areas. If Microsoft didn’t have the consent decree restraints it could be more powerful in search, ecommerce, and media.

But, even if Microsoft had not lost the DOJ/EU court cases would they have moved to Mobile, Search, and e-reader type of devices like its competitors?

Microsoft VP recently left Microsoft to Amazon to work on the Kindle.

Mike Nash, Corporate Vice President of Windows Platform Strategy, will be leaving the company in February. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed his departure when I asked. From the e-mailed statement:

“We can confirm that Mike Nash is leaving Microsoft in a couple weeks. In his 19 years, Mike made an impact in number of key roles at the company. We appreciate his service and wish him well.”

Update: Nash will be joining Amazon.com to work on the Kindle, I hear. I’ve asked to see whether Nash will be replaced. No word back yet on that one…. Microsoft officials declined to comment (at least for now) on when and if that will happen.

There have been plenty of people who have left Microsoft to go to Google as well.

But, few who leave Microsoft to go to Apple. I know plenty including myself who left Apple to go to Microsoft, but not the other way around.

Google, Amazon, and Apple are all trying to define the new media experience which as much as the content creators are in despair, I think throughout history the distributors, those who owned the channel defined the business model.

The content Publishers used to own the channel, now it is in the hands of Google, Apple, and Amazon. Whoever who can define the best business model will win.

Data Center as a Thermodynamic System

February 5, 2010 Dave Ohara

Thanks to a conversation with Stewart Young from OSIsoft where we were bouncing around different ideas and the latest Green Grid meeting it hit me. As much as The Green Grid and folks there discuss power and cooling systems is there a different way to think about how to green the data center.

By its nature The Green Grid with its vendor members will organize itself around those things that sell the vendors products. PUE drives energy efficiency benchmarking which gets people to upgrade equipment. Energy efficient servers the same.

So, let’s go to a different holistic view of the green data center problem. Looking at the Data Center as a Thermodynamic System.

In thermodynamics, a thermodynamic system, originally called a working substance, is defined as that part of the universe that is under consideration. Anything under consideration is called a system. A hypothetical boundary separates the system from the rest of the universe, which is referred to as the environment, surroundings, or reservoir.

If the data center is the system and the boundary is the physical connections to the rest of the surroundings does this work for data centers.

A useful classification of thermodynamic systems is based on the nature of the boundary and the quantities flowing through it, such as matter, energy, work, heat, and entropy. A system can be anything, for example a piston, a solution in a test tube, a living organism, an electrical circuit, a planet, etc.

Data Centers are closed systems.

Closed systems are able to exchange energy (heat and work) but not matter with their environment. A greenhouse is an example of a closed system exchanging heat but not work with its environment. Whether a system exchanges heat, work or both is usually thought of as a property of its boundary.

Data centers are actually composed of bunch of thermodynamic systems. Like:

[edit]Psychrometry

Psychrometry is the study of air and water vapor mixtures for air conditioning. For this application, air is taken to be a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen with the other gases being small enough so that they can be approximated by more of nitrogen and oxygen without much error. In this psychrometry section, vapor refers to water vapor. For air at normal (atmospheric) pressure, the saturation pressure of vapor is very low. Also, air is far away from its critical point in those conditions. Thus, the air vapor mixture behaves as an ideal gas mixture. If the partial pressure of the vapor is smaller than the saturation pressure for water for that temperature, the mixture is called unsaturated. The amount of moisture in the air vapor mixture is quantified by its humidity.

…

Diesel Cycle

The Diesel cycle is the idealized cycle for compression ignition engines (ones that don't use a spark plug). The difference between the Diesel cycle and the Otto cycle is that heat is supplied at constant pressure.

Heat is supplied reversibly at constant pressure in 1-2.

Reversible adiabatic expansion during which work is done in 2-3.

Heat is rejected reversibly at constant volume in 3-4.

Gas is compressed reversibly and adiabatically in 4-1.

An example of Thermodynamic Systems in Data Centes is Syracuse University Data Center. When you watch the video it discusses many ideas you would use if you looked at the data center as a Thermodynamic System.

Maybe we need more thermodynamic engineers working on data centers? How many data center design firms take a thermodynamic system approach? Low PUE is the current topic, but what happens if you do as IBM did and brought power generation on site and change the boundary of the system?

Religion of Apple, Steve Jobs says Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Mantra is ‘Bullshit,’

February 1, 2010 Dave Ohara

Being an Apple user is a religious experience for some, believing surrounding yourself with iPhone, iPods, iTunes, Quicktime, MacBook, and Apple TV will make you a better person. Seriously, I’ve seen this many times. I worked at Apple from 1985 – 1992, and joined “at that time” evil Empire Microsoft 1992 – 2006. Now I am independent of these religious views, and watch as many technologies are debated on almost a religious level.

The Economist has a cover story on “The Book of Jobs”

Tablet computing

The book of Jobs

It has revolutionised one industry after another. Now Apple hopes to transform three at once

Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

Illustration by Jon Berkeley

APPLE is regularly voted the most innovative company in the world, but its inventiveness takes a particular form. Rather than developing entirely new product categories, it excels at taking existing, half-baked ideas and showing the rest of the world how to do them properly. Under its mercurial and visionary boss, Steve Jobs, it has already done this three times. In 1984 Apple launched the Macintosh. It was not the first graphical, mouse-driven computer, but it employed these concepts in a useful product. Then, in 2001, came the iPod. It was not the first digital-music player, but it was simple and elegant, and carried digital music into the mainstream. In 2007 Apple went on to launch the iPhone. It was not the first smart-phone, but Apple succeeded where other handset-makers had failed, making mobile internet access and software downloads a mass-market phenomenon.

The religious tone of the article continues as the author discussed the Power of Jobs.

As rivals rushed to copy Apple’s approach, the computer, music and telecoms industries were transformed. Now Mr Jobs hopes to pull off the same trick for a fourth time. On January 27th he unveiled his company’s latest product, the iPad—a thin, tablet-shaped device with a ten-inch touch-screen which will go on sale in late March for $499-829 (seearticle). Years in the making, it has been the subject of hysterical online speculation in recent months, verging at times on religious hysteria: sceptics in the blogosphere jokingly call it the Jesus Tablet.

The enthusiasm of the Apple faithful may be overdone, but Mr Jobs’s record suggests that when he blesses a market, it takes off. And tablet computing promises to transform not just one industry, but three—computing, telecoms and media.

Preacher Steve makes another claim that is caught in Wired Magazine – Google’s “Don’t be Evil” Mantra is Bullshit.

Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Mantra is ‘Bullshit,’ Adobe Is Lazy: Apple’s Steve Jobs (Update 2)

By John C Abell

January 30, 2010 |

Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/googles-dont-be-evil-mantra-is-bullshit-adobe-is-lazy-apples-steve-jobs/#ixzz0eIsdbKCy

…

On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.” Audience roars.
Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/googles-dont-be-evil-mantra-is-bullshit-adobe-is-lazy-apples-steve-jobs/#ixzz0eIsnUlct

Then there is an Adobe statement about Flash which reminds of the Adobe Type Manager’s problem in the Mac OS.

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.
Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/googles-dont-be-evil-mantra-is-bullshit-adobe-is-lazy-apples-steve-jobs/#ixzz0eIsw6YKj

The Economist closes on death and resurrection.

If Mr Jobs manages to pull off another amazing trick with another brilliant device, then the benefits of the digital revolution to media companies with genuinely popular products may soon start to outweigh the costs. But some media companies are dying, and a new gadget will not resurrect them. Even the Jesus Tablet cannot perform miracles.

It looks like Steve Jobs is rallying his troops to fight a Holy War of Mobile – Google and Flash are his enemies.

Private Clouds Dead or Alive, views from James Hamilton and Mike Manos, logic vs. emotional

January 24, 2010 Dave Ohara

I’ve been thinking about what to write as a response to James Hamilton’s blog post on Private Clouds are not the Future. It is well written and logical in its efficiency.

Last week Alistair Croll wrote an excellent InformationWeek article arguing that “the true cloud operators will have an unavoidable cost advantage because it's all they worry about. They'll also be closer to consumers (because they have POPs everywhere and partnerships with content delivery systems), and connecting with consumers and partners will become an increasingly essential part of any enterprise IT strategy.” Have a look at Private Clouds are a Fix, Not the Future.

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.

But I am glad I waited, because Mike Manos posts his response to James’s posts and makes the case for private clouds.

Private Clouds – Not just a Cost and Technology issue, Its all about trust, the family jewels, corporate value, and identity

January 24, 2010 by mmanos

I recently read a post by my good friend James Hamilton at Amazon regarding Private Clouds. James and I worked closely together at Microsoft and he was always a good source for out of the box thinking and challenging the status quo. While James post found here, speaks to the Private Cloud initiative being what amounts to be an evolutionary dead end, I would have to respectfully disagree.

I agree that there is more than the technical and economics benefits of shared clouds. Human nature in trusting others and risk management are big factors in cloud computing adoption.

But this brings up one of the key criticisms that this is not just about cost and technology. I believe what is really at stake here is much more than that.

Mike has a perspective many don’t.

In my role at Digital I have visibility into tens of data centers, across hundreds of customers that span just about every industry. There is not, nor has there been a massive move (or any move for that matter) to become more efficient in the utilization of their resources. We have had years of people bantering about how wonderful, cool, and how revolutionary a lot of this stuff is, but world wide Data center utilization levels have remained abysmally low. Some providers bank on this. Over subscription of their facilities is part of their business plan. They know companies will lease and take down what they think they need, and never take it down in REALITY.

and Mike Repeats a standard view that most likely many top executives have when looking at technology adoption like cloud computing.

The cloud is an interesting place, today. It is dominated by technologists. Extremely smart engineering people who like to optimize and solve for technological challenges. The actual business adoption of this technology set has yet to be fully explored. Just wait until the “Business” side of the companies get their hooks into this technology set and start placing other artificial constraints, or optimizations around other factors. There are thousands of different motivators out in the world. Once they starts to happen earnest. I think what you will find is a solution that looks more like a hybrid solution than the pure plays we dream about today.

Is the Private Cloud Dead or Alive?

I vote alive.

GreenM3 reaches 1,000 RSS reader level

January 21, 2010 Dave Ohara

On Tues Jan 19, 2010 I reached 1,027 RSS Readers subscribed to GreenM3. Thanks for visiting and subscribing!

When I started this blog 2 years ago thanks to a good nudge from my friend Bob Visse who lives social networking at MSN, I started discussing the “green data center” topic. Things have morphed to broader issues effecting data centers like cloud computing.

At first it was hard to blog, but now I have so many ideas that I filter things down to issues that get me thinking and questioning what is going on in the data center industry and the the approaches are sustainable and greener. Then I use GreenM3 to capture the ideas and share in an open source manner.

What seems like a more difficult approach has actually freed me to think more broadly and I am now up to 1090 posts.

Part of what keeps me going is the social network effect. And as Eleanor Wynn from Intel identified I act like a “meme.” Memetic engineering is defined here.

Definition

According to the theory, the effect a meme has on society is based on the application of the meme after understanding the qualities essential to the meme. For example, Rolando, Burchett and Sokol expand on their concept and explain that "Race" and "Racism" are memes incorporating several other memes, some of which have positive connotations in societies that reject racism. According to the theory Memetic engineering is simply put, the analysis of an individual or individual's behavior, the selection of specific memes and the distribution or propagation of those memes with the intent of altering the behavior of others. A memetic engineer doesn't particularly have to consciously make the decision to alter another individuals behavior. It can happen unconsciously when specific behavior is observed, transmitted and then replicated within the observer. The process of creating and developing theories or ideologies based on an analytical study of societies, cultures, their ways of thinking and the evolution of their minds. Memes themselves are neither good nor bad. For example Race is an ideology that is made up of several memes. When a Meme is introduced, those concepts begin to take on their own process of evolution based on the person who adopts the ideology internalizes it, and reintroduces it into society causing it to spread like a virus.

According to the above theory, typical memetic engineers include scientists, engineers, industrial designers, ad-men, artists, publicists, political activists, and religious missionaries.

If you don’t quite get the concept of Memetic engineering and memes, it took me a while too. But, after a few months I get it, and substituted the Managing “M” in GreenM3 for Memetics.