“But Sinclair, cloud delivers value because of the economies of scale it brings through aggregation, etc., etc., and so on,” you say? Perhaps, but the value of cloud computing has much more to do with its definition in the abstract and less so to do with its availability in a public form factor.  James Urquhart recently wrote “Why definitions of cloud are creating ‘false’ debates,” where he hypothesizes (accurately so) that the difference of opinion is that some characterize “cloud” as a business model, while others as an operations model.

Clearly, when looked at from the business model point of view, the concept of cloud makes significant sense in a public fashion. But as an operations model — a model where resources are pooled together behind abstractions that dynamically manage applications and resources — it has significant positive implications in the enterprise. This might be easier to explain through an analogy of sorts.

Let’s suppose, for the purposes of this thought experiment, that the bus (the big automobile that carries lots of people) has yet to be invented. A politician notices the inefficiency of always using a car that fits no more than four people, particularly in the case where lots of people are going back and forth between two cities — the politician’s home city and a neighboring city. This politician decided that the cities should operate a municipal (or public) mass transit service to transport a significant number of people per trip between the two cities, for some small fee per person. The politician commissions the invention of the bus to transport 50-100 people at a time. The idea of offering this as a public service is powerful, and as the number of passengers grows, it starts to experience significant economies of scale.

All is well, until some suggest that the bus itself is useful in contexts outside of public transit. Schools want their own buses to pick up and drop off children; prisons determine buses are a good way to transport large numbers of prisoners; someone wants to start a luxury tour service via bus; and movie stars that hate to fly feel buying a bus is an effective way to travel along with their friends, family and staff.

The politician becomes angry, stating that all of those use cases are best satisfied via the public transport system she developed, and these “private” uses are “false mass transit services” because they could never reach the economies that the public service offers. Furthermore, she argues, these proponents of “private mass transit” are getting in their own way because the public transit system is not only cost effective, but safe and generally on time, and all of the constraints that these other use cases point to in usage of public transit are merely “excuses.” The fact of the matter is, to a bus-rider, riding in a bus provides the same end utility regardless of how the bus is provided – they get where they want without having to drive a car.

Does this seem awkward and familiar at the same time? It does to me. The problem is that the politician is lumping the invention of the bus — the technology necessary for public mass transit to work – and the public mass transit system itself into a single cohesive model, and taking the stance that the real marginal savings of public mass transit is the only economic output to take into consideration. Others have decoupled the bus from the public transit service, saying that although there is huge value in public transit, the bus itself adds so much value to a huge number of use cases (such as prisoner transport) that are ill suited for public mass transit because of constraints.

Without the bus, those “private” use cases are still using four-passenger cars for all their transport needs. However, the bus solves a significant number of problems relating to moving large numbers of people relatively efficiently without having to adopt public mass transit. Similar to Urquhart’s assessment, the problem in this bus analogy is that someone is focused on the public-transit business model while others are focusing on the operations-model efficiencies that the bus can bring to other use cases.

Confounding cloud computing from a service point of view with the technology that enables cloud services is terribly misguided. The fact of the matter is that tge technology behind cloud services is extremely valuable on its own, just like a bus is extremely value outside of the public mass transit context. Take Platform as a Service, for instance. PaaS provides a tremendous amount of agility through…

1. The pooling of resources (servers, load balancers, etc.) into a single abstract pool of resources
2. Automation of devops workflows, thereby increasing time to market
3. Utilization boosts (in multitenant environments)
4. Simplified management around previously complex topics (e.g., scaling out, etc.)

This value has nothing to do with economies of scale or outsourced IT, but has everything to do with a paradigm shift in the deployment and management of applications. If an organization chooses to layer a PaaS tier – a private PaaS - atop its own infrastructure, whether it be dozens, hundreds or thousands of servers, it will experience genuine value. The technology developed to supply PaaS is much more useful than just the fact that it’s offered as a service — it can drive a whole new era of efficiency as a layer in the private cloud stack, on top of an enterprise’s existing infrastructure.

This is why “false cloud” articles, like one by Phil Wainewright titled “Private cloud discredited, part 2,” disturb me. They are too myopic in terms of debate basis, focusing on economies of scale and not much else, and fail to separate the invention of cloud enabling software layers like PaaS (the bus) from their first use in the public cloud context (public mass transit). Just as throwing away the bus in any context other than public mass transit system makes little sense, dismissing the massive efficiencies achievable by deploying technologies like private PaaS would be crazy. As David Linthicum put it in a recent post: ”[M]any fail to accept there may be times when the architectural patterns of public clouds best serve the requirements of the business when implemented locally — in a private cloud.”

Sinclair Schuller is co-founder and CEO of Apprenda.

Image courtesy of Flickr user KB35.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• Infrastructure Q1: IaaS Comes Down to Earth; Big Data Takes Flight
• Infrastructure Overview, Q2 2010
• Does Diversification Equal Domination in the Cloud Stack?

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GigaOM — Tech News, Analysis and Trends

During the 1950′s and 60′s, forced emission was used to amplify microwaves. Ion implantation was used along with methods of chemical vapor deposition from the gas phase. Gun spraying was also utilized aside from plasma detonation. The late 60s made way for the development of the following technologies: infrared radiation, plasma, ion beam, coherent photo beam, high power density direct beam, and solar energy. The most recent technologies were used as basis for the newer techniques applied in surface engineering.

Vibratory bow finishing is not only used for superfinishing yet it is also used for genetic deburring. Energy and motion transfer efficacy in metal-to-metal contact areas improves with the use of enhanced surface engineering strategy. In less complicated terms, friction is decreased.

The traditional ultimate metal finishing operation utilized in metal-to-metal contact surfaces is grinding and this method results to an unidirectional pattern. Grinding with finer grinding wheels is repetitious, expensive, and ineffective as it results in a floor that has more, closer-spaced rows of shorter height asperities. When utilized for the first time elements that underwent grinding have smaller areas of initial metal-to-metal contact at asperity peaks.

But during this process, asperity processing occurs in a chemically accelerated vibratory finishing procedure. Just as one example, when parts need to be refined, such as automotive camshafts, gears, bearings rings/pinions, or valve springs, are settled into a vibratory machine containing high-density, nonabrasive media.

Nevertheless, isotropically prepared metal parts have an improved metal-to-metal contact pattern, because asperities have been eliminated. And the result? A smoother area along with an equally diffused contact stress. This is the outcome of an improved contact pattern. For maximum performance in terms of friction, noise, heat, wear and tear, gear bearing, and turbine industries should use isotropic superfinishes. Especially prosperous on parts that operate in high contact loading, metal-to-metal applications, this proven surface engineering process is currently utilized by many industries.

In summary, no matter how the gears are produced it will eventually corrode, which can result to a catastrophe. Deterioration is a rare event that takes place once in a while making it very hard to discover with normal visual inspection. Surface engineering with super finishing can help slow down the development of deterioration.

We’ve been hearing for a long long long long loooooooong time now about how fuel cells are going to be the batteries of the future, since they’re instantly rechargeable with a shot of booze. But like so many promises (::cough:: ::cough::) they haven’t quite materialized yet. Toshiba, though, has just released an actual fuel cell charger in Japan. Unlike the Medis fuel cell charger that we reviewed back in February, Toshiba’s Dynario charger can be topped of with concentrated methanol, which is the whole point of fuel cells… You can just keep refilling them. In about 20 seconds, 50 mL of methanol reacts with oxygen in the air to charge a battery in the device with enough juice to recharge two mobile phones via USB.

As cool as the Dynario is, it’s still very much a first stab at commercializing this kind of technology, nowhere near Samsung’s fantastical 160 hour laptop fuel cell. Only 3000 Dynario units are for sale, and so far, they’re only available in Japan… Toshiba will see how well they work out before committing to further distribution. If you want one, you can find them online at Toshiba’s Shop1048 for $328, plus another $34 for 5 cartridges. Is the neatness worth the cost and inefficiency? No, but for the sake of the technology, I hope these sell like hotcakes. Hotcakes filled with concentrated alcohol. Mmmmmm…

[ Press Release ] VIA [ Engadget ]

In a certain sense, that claim is valid. How many RSS readers are available on the App Store? Ranging from free to several dollars in price, these kind of apps allow users to subscribe to liberal websites like The Huffington Post, or its right-wing counterparts. iSinglePayer’s creator pushes the Drudge Report app as an example of this alleged inconsistency.

To be honest I haven’t read what Apple publicizes as criteria for getting an app approved for the App Store. What’s clear for me though is the company’s consistent stance that they exercise control over the App Store to protect the users’ experience, to keep them from using apps that may severely affect the iPhone’s operation from a user-friendliness standpoint.

So what does that have to do with refusing an app on the grounds that it’s “politically charged”? Perhaps the availability of iSinglePayer on the app store may offend some of health care reform’s opponents, but how is that related to user-friendliness? There are also Bible apps officially available for the iPhone and iPod touch; using the same logic behind iSinglePayer’s disapproval, shouldn’t these be disallowed, on the grounds that they’re “politically charged” for atheists?

Again, the App Store is Apple’s creation, and they’re free to do what they want with it. But this whole issue (or “issue”, depending on how you look at it) is another situation that has left observers scratching their heads—and future iPhone developers wary of investing time and money into the App Store ecosystem. What do you think?

Post from: The Gadget Blog

By Evan Ackerman

There are any number of potentially useful and/or incredibly stupid light-up USB accessories that owe their glowyness to various flavorings of LEDs. That’s cool, I’m down with that, I like the futuristic look as much as the next geek. But retro is rapidly becoming the new futuristic, and this USB light fits the bill neatly with a light bulb that is, in fact, a light bulb. You know, the old school vacuum + filament + heat + inefficiency + if it breaks you have to clean up really carefully or you’ll get shards of glass in your feet kind. Numerous disadvantages aside, the one redeeming factor if incandescent bulbs is present in this USB powered version… Namely, the ability to cast a warm and pleasing glow, which (I imagine) provides a nice counterpoint to the inevitably harsh and unyielding photons that are being pumped out by whatever device this little lamp is plugged into.

For about $14, you get the lamp plus two spare bulbs, one of them frosted (if you’re into that kind of thing). Each bulb should last about 300 hours, giving you decades (well, 0.01 decade) of pleasing illumination, and a replacement set of three is only about $6. It all can be yours, from where else but Japan.

[ JTT (Translated) ] VIA [ New Launches ]

Back long ago people had to just use a stone tablet and a chisel like metal block and a piece of rock to etch images into things. This was horribly ineffective and slow. People would often have to work for days on end to just write a few little words. This must have been immensely irksome and annoying because of it’s inefficiency. In addition to taking a long time, this method was ineffective because of the faint writing that it produced. To make a word deep enough to actually read people would have to go very far into the rock, rendering the process horribly draining.

After the rock and chisel on stone tablet method, people began to use feathers and papyrus, or paper, to write things and make images. Ink back then was generally made up of select items, allowing for different colors. This is equivalent to the current times pen and paper. In fact, feathers, or quills as they are otherwise known, were much like pens because they couldn’t be erased and required ink. This was a far more effective system of imaging and writing because it didn’t take days to write a page. This was a popular way of imaging and writing in Europe and America for an extremely long time .

Finally, the precursor to current technology was the printing press. The printing press was invented in Germany by goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg in 1440. Although several parts of the world (most of Asia) already had this technology, Gutenberg was the inventor who introduced the item to Western Europe. The printing press replaced most forms of block printing on a global scale. However, eventually the printing press became irrelevant as all things do and it’s place was taken by offset printing, which was developed in 1903 by Ira Rubel.

Printing, imaging and writing technology has always and will always be very important to the world. Without the invention of such cutting edge items as the printing press and offset printing, the world would still be stuck in the dark ages with using stone tablets or papyrus and quills. Because of the invention of these things it has been far easier for people to mass produce prints and images, an important part of the world.