Tying 3 concepts together (cloud, SOA & virtualisation)

Tying these three concepts together is easy, and hopefully clear, when depicted graphically.



Obviously this isn't the only option available, and it is highly simplified, but it works well at a conceptual level.

Access where and when you want it

Tired in Dubai (so excuse the grammar)
It is 02:45am in Dubai and I still have another two hours before my flight departs back to South Africa. I am tired but appreciating the fact that I can sit at a Starbucks, drink my espresso and make use of the free internet access.

It was a similar situation at Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul - free internet access with the coffee that I had paid for. This is a little misleading as you can actually sit anywhere and avail yourself of the free connectivity; but it is so much more pleasurable to have a decent cup of coffee at the same time.

So why the ramble? Well I am tired and bored. Reason enough. However, I was reflecting on how tremendously powerful it is to have access to information where and when you want it.

And as always I think about how this can work in Africa.

Challenges
There are several challenges in realising something similar in Africa, foremost of which are infrastructure, devices and literacy.

The infrastructure is coming - just look at the new submarine cables and the expansion of cellular companies across the continent.

The most dominant device is, and will continue to be, a phone rather than a personal computer. Cost is an important driving factor as is computer literacy.

A solution


Voice will remain the killer application for some time and therefore the technology that most excites me in this arena (wrt Africa) is the concept of a SpokenWeb. Here people can interact (in the language of their choice) with voice sites navigating voice links. The interaction models include publish and transact models.

Imagine sitting at a cafe in Nairobi and phoning a local voice site to gather information about your travels and publish your blog via voice. Naturally the "traditional" Web 1.0 and 2.0 applications and interactions will be available but the penetration will be significantly greater with voice and voice technologies.

The important difference with this concept is that the technology-based solution is design and deployed in a manner that truly meets the needs of the community and users.

In summary
It is always smart to remind ourselves that we should find solutions to problems rather than finding problems for our solutions. This applies to Africa as much, if not more so, than anywhere else.

A different way of looking at Africa

Came across these interesting maps at worldmapper.org.

The ICT data is slightly outdated (2002) but the overall impression is compelling.

Land Area
This map changed my perspective of Africa's land area in relation to the world.
Internet Users 2002
I love this map - it shows the massive potential within Africa.
Cellular Subscribers 2002
It would be great to have a current and projected (2012) map for cellular subscribers.

Cloud Computing vs Virtualisation

Another fairly common question - and worth answering as it is quite topical.



Both have a common objective of abstracting what you want to do from where it is done. There are some fairly clear differences though.

• Cloud Computing is a deployment architecture as I previously mentioned. From a consumer's perspective it means that the user is not aware (philosophically speaking) of where the service is executed (i.e. could be in any data centre, on any server, anywhere in the world as long as the SLA is met).
  

• Virtualisation by contrast is a term describes the decoupling of software from hardware (at its simplest level). The term can be employed more widely to refer to any level of abstraction, including data centres. Decoupling software enables a business to make deploy-time and run-time decisions about where to deploy a software stack. Benefits include resource maximisation, eg server consolidation, and resilience by moving a software stack between machines as and when required.
  

These terms and concepts will intersect as a service deployed within a cloud could be part of an application software stack that is virtualised on a hardware/resource stack.

Ideally the cloud platform itself is virtualised, in order to scale quickly, which many argue is a key characteristic of a cloud platform.

FinWeek: Rethinking the planet

Simon has written a great article on Smart Planet that was published in Finweek, a top South African business publication.

You can view the full article online.

Green is Green

Energy costs are fast becoming the largest data centre operating cost, whilst up to 85% of computing capacity sits idle in distributed computing environments. Datacentres are physical structures that require tremendous amounts of power and cooling in order to operate and it is easy to see how improving this can translate into “greenbacks” for the organisation.


Baseline
From my perspective there are several key areas that organisations should tackle, but first and foremost, it is critical for themto implement a system to measure and track energy use. This will provide the baseline for driving a strategy to reduce energy consumption; reduce the impact on the environment; and improve operational efficiency.

There are some key enabling technologies that should be considered as part of an overall energy efficiency programme; and those that most impress me the most are virtualisation, cloud computing and purpose-built data centres.

Virtualisation
Virtualisation, both server and storage, is probably the fastest and easiest way to drive energy efficiency. The concept is a simple one: Maximise available resources (processing and storage), whilst “switching on” new resources when they are required. The separation of virtual machines/resources from physical machines/resources is implementable today and the business case proven.

Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is an interesting element in this overall story. Whilst we are still in the early stages of cloud maturity and adoption, it is definitely worth investigating. A cloud is essentially a pool of virtualised computer resources that we access as services.

The cloud platform is green by design as it dynamically provisions, configures, reconfigures, and de-provisions servers as needed. This separation (as with virtualisation) of what we want to process versus where it is processed provides us with the opportunity to maximise processing efficiency and drive green computing.

Data Centres
Now onto the actual data centre itself as the benefits of scaling a datacentre diminish if it is too large and requires too much energy.

There is an optimal efficiency that can be reached in a datacenter by matching the machines to the building (or vice versa). We can attain maximum efficiency by optimising all of the components that reside in the physical building, and monitoring power and heat with sensors that feed back into the systems management capability.

We can take this one step further by designing data centres with the type and load of processing in mind. This is the concept of a purpose-built data centre and not the current paradigm of adding servers and cooling to an existing building. There may be even be a variety of different types of datacenters, based on their respective purpose, within an overall network of processing capability.


So green is green; from an eco-friendly and economic perspective.

Building a Smarter Planet in Africa

I am very passionate about IBM's Smarter Planet strategy and how we as technologists can use IT to solve some of the really big problems facing us within Africa.

However, this isn't just an eco-friendly make-over.

It is a dual agenda of reducing the impact that we have on the environment whilst maximising the benefit we can derive from available resources to drive business profitability whilst have a positive impact on society. Phew!

As such I wanted to share the video that I composed as an introduction to the speech that I delivered at the IDC Africa CIO Conference.

I hope that you enjoy it!