Telematique, water and fire.

The (Futile) Search for Fungibility in Cloud Computing

While catching up on some reading (typical for early Saturday mornings), I came across a number of posts about the Cloud Computing Camp held earlier this month in London. Among them, this post from Phil Wainewright re-surfaced a point that's irritated me for years. It's a point that Phil (and others like Dan Farber) seem willing to ignore for the sake of a nice looking metaphor.

Phil, Dan and others rightfully take issue with the notion of "utility computing" in which one draws (in an on-demand fashion) compute power from a commercial source ... At this point, some overzealous commentator (not Phil, and not Dan) invokes the "electricity grid" and "power utility" image, from which we draw electricity with the simple act of plugging into a wall socket and paying the bill at the end of the month.

What's irritating is that so many people fall into this trap, and try to make the case that there's no standard definition of units (like kilowatt hour or barrel of oil) on which to price. The discussion (or argument) which then ensues seems pointless to me. The mix of CPU-RAM hours, GBs of storage and MBs of communication are simply not sufficient to describe and distinguish the use of "utility compute resources".

If I were to turn the metaphor on its head, I would be looking for such a highly configurable, individually customized source of electric power, that it might sound like:

I would like to purchase and have delivered to 1234 Elm Street, Anytown USA the following service: three-phase, alternating current at 47 cycles per second, with a deviation of no more than 2 cycles per second in any 5 minute interval, beginning with 2.245 amps during the daylight hours in Kyoto (adjusted seasonally) and scalable in night time to as much as 3.14159 amps.

The point is that, independent of finding a convenient pricing unit, the resource(s) we make use of from a compute utility are rarely, if ever, fungible when we go beyond the most basic parts of the infrastructure.

Utility computing, cloud computing, and (oh no!! he's going to say it!!) grid computing are examples of mass customization, applied to the definition and delivery of a production facility -- a factory. The value of the service resides in the ability of the customer to (easily and successfully) specify the requirement, act as his own "designer" of the facility, and then make use of it. The price point has a lot LESS to do with the cost of an hour of dual-core 1.8 MHz X86 with 8 Gigs of RAM, and a lot more to do with the configuration, operation, administration and management of the customer's "personalized" product facility. There are damn few standard pricing units for the construction and use of a factory.

There.... I feel better now.


fungible - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

being of such a nature that one part or quantity may be replaced by another equal part or quantity in the satisfaction of an obligation

Mass customization - Wikipedia

Mass customization, in marketing, manufacturing, and management, is the use of flexible computer-aided manufacturing systems to produce custom output. Those systems combine the low unit costs of mass production processes with the flexibility of individual customization.

De-nebulating "Cloud Computing"

While catching up on my reading (which is pretty daunting when Google Reader tells me that my "high priority" collection of virtualization and utility computing feeds is over 1000 new posts), I came across Alistair Croll's nine sector view of cloud computing.

Taking a look at that post, prompted me to revisit John Willis' post from February and the wealth of high quality comments he elicited. John's post, and now Alistair's, represent great "locations" in the blogosphere at which knowledgeable advocates and the loyal opposition convene to bring clarity to the conversation. What I also enjoy is that I've had and continue to have the privilege of knowing personally and working with so many of the participants.

I'm struck, as well, by what seems to be a gap ... or maybe several ... in their lists. And, being an amateur taxonomist and incorrigible entrepreneur, I view a gap as a puzzle to be solved and a potential market to be served. I'll take the time over the next few days to reflect on the gaps, and then pose a couple of questions and see if I can add to the fun. I'll be gratified if the result adds to the conversation established by John and Alistair, as well as those raised by James Urquhart, Greg Ness, Bert Armijo, Dave Durkee, and Rich Wellner (among others). (I'm most appreciative of Bert's most recent posts as well as the fun poked at the Cloud Computing Expo's Twenty Experts Define Cloud Computing piece.)


Inside the Cloud: 9 Sectors to Watch - GigaOM

There’s already a ton of activity taking place in the cloud computing space, so much so that it can be hard to know who to watch. In many cases, it’s too early to pick winners. But there are distinct sectors of the IT industry that are particularly well suited to the on-demand, pay-as-you-go economics of cloud computing. Here are eight segments — and one company that’s a segment all its own — that we’re tracking closely.