Is the Cloud cleaner than client/server? Really?

There are some that are questioning the footprint of big cloud companies. See the article below from the Mercury Observer for a perspective on that. I'm not too sure I agree with the thinking though. It's pretty green to be free of huge air conditioned server rooms in every building on the street.

What do you think?
----------------------------

Cleaner clouds needed at Apple, Amazon and Twitter, Greenpeace says

By Jeremy C. Owens

In their race for the cloud, tech companies are leaving a trail of pollution from dirty energy sources, Greenpeace said Tuesday in a report that accused some of the world's biggest tech companies of failing to make clean energy a priority.
Cloud computing allows users to store and access data, programs and more on remote servers, preserving computing power. To offer this service, however, requires massive data centers that suck up electricity around the clock.
Three tech companies with popular cloud offerings -- Apple (AAPL), Amazon and Microsoft -- were singled out in Greenpeace's report for using coal and other fossil fuel energy for their data centers.

"Three of the largest IT companies building their business around the cloud -- Amazon, Apple and Microsoft -- are all rapidly expanding without adequate regard to source of electricity, and rely heavily on dirty energy to power their clouds," Gary Cook, senior IT policy analyst at Greenpeace International, wrote as the first key finding in his report.
Companies received letter grades in four categories in the Greenpeace report, and Amazon was given an "F" in three of them -- energy transparency, infrastructure siting and renewables & advocacy. The Seattle-based tech company received a "D" for energy efficiency and globalgreenhouse gas emissions.

Apple, which began offering its iCloud service to consumers in October, received three "D" grades and an "F" for infrastructure siting, or the locations companies choose for their data centers; the only company besides Amazon to score worse than Apple was San Francisco-based Twitter.

According to Greenpeace, Apple gets the highest percentage of its energy from coal out of the 14 tech companies studied for the report, 55.1 percent, and was the only company said to have received more than half of its electricity from coal. The No. 2 company in terms of proportion of coal usage, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), measured at 49.7 percent.

Greenpeace said in its report that Apple and Amazon had told the environmental advocacy group that its estimates of facility power demand were incorrect, but refused to provide alternative estimates.

In a written statement to Bloomberg News, a spokesman for Apple said Greenpeace had misstated the amount of power it will need for a massive data center the Cupertino company is building in western North Carolina. According to Apple, the data center will need 20 megawatts of electricity at a maximum, while Greenpeace estimated it would need as much as 100 megawatts.
Apple also pointed out that the North Carolina data center is "on track to supply more than 60 percent of that power on-site from renewable sources including a solar farm and fuel cell installation which will each be the largest of their kind in the country."

Singled out for praise in the Greenpeace report were three Silicon Valley companies: Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) and Facebook.
"Yahoo and Google both continue to lead the sector in prioritizing access to renewable energy in their cloud expansion, and both have become more active in supporting policies to drive greater renewable energy investment," Cook wrote.
Google had the highest overall grade with an average score of a "B," including one of only two "A" grades given in any category, for its use of renewable energy and advocacy attempts. Yahoo was right behind Google in Greenpeace's grading system, with three "B" grades and one "C."

Facebook was cheered for committing to ensuring the use of renewable energy in the future, including "the construction of its latest data center in Sweden, which can be fully powered by renewable energy."

5 things that are driving cloud adoption in business today

Cloud – Starting to Grow-up in 2012

Cloud – Starting to Grow-up in 2012

By Dave Rice

There is an old and very simple axiom, which applies to the Cloud just as it did to its predecessor — on-premise technology solutions.

The less complex a technology is to use, the more likely it is that it can be sold directly.

And conversely, the more complex the technology, the more likely it is that it will be sold through the channel which has the capacity and the resources to be able to fill the complexity gap between provider and end-customer. This is true whether or not a technology is a product or a service or both.

The arrival of Cloud means that many solutions that were heretofore too complex for customers to use without the assistance of in-house IT and / or the channel, are giving way to simpler services enabled via the Cloud, leading to a greater number of direct relationships between Cloud service providers and end customers then at anytime in the past.

The characteristics of simple versus complex services that result in either a direct or an indirect sales opportunity:

The ability for Public Cloud Service Providers to produce simple, direct and automated services for end - customers lays the groundwork for another major transformation. Cloud Service Providers are beginning to master the social media techniques that will allow them to gain an acute awareness of customer technology consumption behavior, which in turn will lead to greater refinement and automation of services and related processes.

This direct feedback mechanism can provide a much more profound understanding of how customers actually use these services, an insight that was never possible with traditional on premise solutions, creates for the first time the potential to drive ease of use into every aspect of the service, considerably more standardization and deeper penetration into customer bases as a result of more targeted and precise software development.

All of this offers a great opportunity for Cloud Service Providers and End-Customers of any size and part of any industry the opportunity to reap significant benefit at a lower cost, but it will inevitably result in fewer traditional service, support as and product opportunities for in-house IT organizations and in turn, the channel as well.

As an example, take a traditional on premise range of related support activities, a product upgrade involving version and release changes, testing, configuration management, training and change management which formerly rested on the backs of in-house IT organizations or in some cases 3^rd parties in the channel to manage using discrete tools and management practices.

With the advent of Public Cloud Services, the burden of these activities switches to the Cloud Services Provider who performs the service on behalf of thousands of customers and must therefore determine how these activities can be embedded into the service itself, so as to make it a turn-key experience for the customer. The Cloud Services Provider must contend with how to factor these capabilities into the cost and delivery of the overall service offering.

Really...Why? Business in 2011 and beyond.

So, I find myself in the middle of a really cool training session. The class is being run by webinar with a live instructor and it is 8 hours a day, Monday through Friday. Yes 40 hours of webinar. Oh joy! Truth be told, I am getting ready for today's session now. I've got 2 hours before class. What to do before I am forced to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours? I know...blog :)

Here's my "really....why?" moment. There are 16 students in this class and it is going really well. We're learning about a Cloud-based software business suite and how it is changing the lives of businesses and business people around the world. In the middle of the class, a few of us are taking advantage of the "private chat" feature of the webinar software.

As I am home, feet up on my patio table, with birds chirping and rabbits running, I get the answers to my question:

"My boss says I have to be here in the conference room because that's where business is done", says one. Another offers, "I was told that I would be paid for my time only if I took the class from my desk.".

Really? You're on a class about THE CLOUD. Really? Why? It occurs to me that Cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms and software have been created in order to detach us from the need, the expense, the leash to our servers and our offices. If I may be so bold, to detach us from the past.

We are in a new environment with new rules and, more importantly, new employees. TrueCloud CEO Dave Rice likes to say that "if we try to keep today's employee satisfied with old technology and old rules, it simply will not work." The days of sitting down a new employee in front of a putty colored screen and a new ergo keyboard and wishing them good luck are gone! The days of your development genius going home early and pushing through a huge project at 1AM, filled with enthusiasm and Mountain Dew are here.

My advice? Get on the bus. Let the technology work for you. We must unhinge from our old in order to get to the new. We must be more willing to accept the new paradigm, the new tools and the new spirit that Cloud and SaaS permits us.

Now, I am not a proponent of complete telecommuting for everyone in every case, but a day or two outside the office is refreshing for everyone. It builds trust. It builds the feeling of independent ownership and more importantly, it builds success.

OK...I need to get my coffee brewing for today's session. I'm wearing shorts and a T-Shirt, my stereo has Pink Floyd oozing from the speakers, I have a bagel in the toaster and I'm ready for whatever the Cloud has to offer. Are you?

Please Insert 25 Cents

Do you remember life before cell phones?  When you had to go home to listen to your messages?  When you carried change for a pay phone?

I confess -- I was a late adopter of the cell phone, skipping the brick entirely.  I also missed the early flip phones -- so small they fit right in a pocket … of a large backpack or fanny pack (yikes!).

Work demanded that I carry the phone after being one of the last with a beeper.   They were no longer willing to tolerate the guy running the website having a 10 minute search for a phone after being paged.

Once I had the phone, everything changed.  It was so convenient, being able to contact people quickly.  Calling ahead for reservations, or talking with family.  Getting directions without pulling over at a gas station.

The cell phone changed our lives, changed them to the point of it being difficult to remember when we didn’t have them.

Cloud computing is doing the same.  Services like Apple’s iCloud are making us forget how cumbersome it was copying music, pictures, and other files between our devices.  The loss of a hard drive is no longer catastrophic, provided you use a cloud backup system like Carbonite.

For business, software like NetSuite makes it easy to get real-time access your business system and eliminates the headaches associated with servers and IT upgrades.  Google and others provide email and office productivity (documents, spreadsheets, chat, calendar, etc.).    There are many more services, covering everything you need to move your business to the cloud.

Like the cell phone, cloud computing is changing everything.   We will quickly forget the time before cloud computing because it just makes things so much more convenient.

If you are a late adopter like me, give us a call and we can help your business take advantage of the cloud.  But please… don’t call from a pay phone.

Sorry. 1 year. $2 Million.

Carnac the Magnificent was a Johnny Carson character (here is a refresher).  He gave the answers first, and then revealed the questions.  

Unfortunately Carnac is alive and well in businesses everywhere, where the not so funny joke in the IT organization to the answers “Sorry. 1 year. $2 Million,” address the questions:

• Can our current systems do this important thing?
• How long will it take to change the systems?
• How much money will it cost?

Earlier in my career I worked with a Fortune 500 company.  The company wanted to add additional currencies to their systems to purchase from some European vendors.   The answers I had to deliver to the CEO were “Sorry. 1 year. $2 Million.”

Our Canadian company was required to have a website with French Canadian translations.  The answers I gave to the Canadian company President were “Sorry. 1 year. $2 Million.”

We in the IT Department knew our systems were holding the company back.  We knew the business needed to be more nimble.  But knowing did not make the underlying problem go away.

Sure there were cases where we could be nimble and efficient.  There were also occasions where the systems could easily perform certain new tasks.   Far too often, however, the answers resulted in too much time and too much money.

Since we started TrueCloud in 2008, one of the most refreshing results is that we no longer say “Sorry. 1 year. $2 Million.”
   

A client called recently with a need for additional currencies.  He asked the standard questions of can it be done, how long it would take and how much it would cost.

My answers: “Yes. Do you have 10 minutes now for me to talk you through it? We don’t charge clients for this small of a job.” 

To the client needing a multi-language website, the answers were “Yes. It will take a few hours to import the translations. Your biggest cost will be having someone translate your content.”

Many companies, big and small, are still trapped with stifling IT systems.  If you company is among them, please take the time to look at some cloud computing alternatives.  In the cloud, the answers are usually:

“Yes. A few hours.  An affordable amount.”

The Cloud Effect...Who is Threatened by it?

I've been finding myself defending "The Cloud" and the use of it lately. It's kind of a surprising phenomenon since it seems that just last week "Cloud Computing" was a buzz phrase that needed to be spoken in order to get your "coolness card".

The folks I have been chatting with are (again surprisingly) Information Technology folks. One said to me just Monday, "If this Cloud thing really takes off, people like me will become dinosaurs." Another mentioned that he felt more than a little anxious about not being the source of sales info at the company.

As I put on my corporate hat, I do understand it. Business folks have carried a double-edged sword around for a while now. You know the weapon. It's the one where, on one hand we love having an IT Director follow us around in case we need a new report or want to see data in a different way; and on the other hand, we get to complain that the system won't let us do anything without waiting days, weeks or worse to get my result.

My two friends are basically reporting that they have become accustomed to the lives we've made for them. That of the "single source" of information. Now, as Cloud-based ERP and CRM systems are seeing double digit growth, information is much more readily available for business owners and CXOs. Cloud-based business suites such as NetSuite are configured to a business' needs and the configuration can be changed at the user level. It's truly a freeing experience.

The "Dinosaur' mentality would make you believe that IT jobs will be going away in direct proportion to the advancing Cloud.

As CIO Magazine's Bernard Golden tells us, "The net effect is that any loss of jobs caused by the move to cloud computing will be more than made up by the overall growth of computing that the cloud causes and the resulting growth of jobs associated with cloud environments and applications."

(Mr. Golden's article can be found here: http://www.cio.com/article/692542/The_IT_Jobs_Cloud_Computing_Will_Create?page=3&taxonomyId=3112)

The truth is that IT professionals, at least the best ones, were never really valued to their access to the information. It wasn't and isn't even their ability to configure or code to get the information out of the systems. The biggest and most valuable attribute of a solid IT citizen is that, in many cases she just understands how the business works better than the department heads running the business. The IT pro knows where the processes breakdown, where the profit is made, what moves and how it moves. They know where the bodies really are buried. The Cloud does not eliminate their importance. It amplifies it!

With owners and CEOs having more information and configuration abilities at their fingertips, they can stop waiting for their IT person to "get me that". The same owners and CEOs are now realizing that they have a tremendous source of knowledge and expertise. New roles are being created and the old roles are evolving. Last year's Database Analyst is next year's Capacity Planner. Last quarter's Director of Applications is this quarter's VP of Business Process.

It's an exciting time. It's been quite a while since we'had a change as large as what Cloud Computing is going to make to international business in the coming decade.

Put your seat-belt on and open your arms to new possibilities. They are all around us. We only need to open our eyes and minds to them. "Cloud" will be a cool word for some time. I have my Coolness Card. Do you?