Sensors are new Normal

From 2000 to 2012, we saw applications and services coming out of the transition of data sources moving from desktops to mobiles. Similarly now the data sources are rapidly moving from mobiles to the individual users themselves. The question is “what” promises this shift of data-flow gives us? Who is disrupting this? How it is being done? And what business models might emerge from all this? To answer these and other allied questions, we need to analyze it so that we can benefit from it.

Up-till now, we have seen that wearable computing contains computing sensors to be used on an individual user. These sensors communicate with each other. An onboard processor, whether centralized or de-centralized, is used to embody filters and algorithms to help gather the needed data. Post-processing of this data gives us decision-making choices on the individual data source as a whole or in partial. So the questions are such that how these sensors efficiently communicate? How they transmit the data to the processing unit? How processing unit takes this data and feeds to some server? How the data is get stored in the storage-units? How it is fetched again? How it is leveraged or benefited? Which algorithms are employed? And many more!!

The market is huge for sensors, and its potential to penetrate into the consumer market has been realized by explosion of mobile device growth. So far sensor technology has been focused on industrial grade applications, but the accuracy of measurement was an issue. Now due to new advancements in the physics and innovation of technology, sensors are both accurate and consumer-driven. Big players like Google, Samsang, GE, Apple, Honeywell and the like had a deep focus on technology innovation in 2012. Wearable computing, which was considered weird, is the new normal these days. Research firms are forecasting a mega growth in sensor density from this year onwards. We are already seeing wearable devices from Nike (Nike Fuelband), Adidas (Adidas Watch), Fitbit (Fitbit Flex), Moondial, Jawbone (Jawbone UP), Pebble, Recon Instruments (in collaboration with Intel), Ulocs True Revolution etc.

There are certain visionaries in the game as well. One such example is the concept of Networked society from Ericsson. Ericsson knows the fact that sensors will definitely penetrate in the next few years, and there would be an aggressive need for a reliable connectivity among them. So for this reason they are developing their platform to support this mega growth in the future. On the chip scale, Intel is another example which is innovating in the design of smart sensor chips e.g. Intel Quark Chips. These chips are ultra-small chips which can be used in wearable devices, skin patches, or in-abdomen sensors for medical data aggregation. Qualcomm is also introducing new chips which are solely targeted for the wearable computing field. Ulocs is making waves in the creation of a platform for movement tracking and analytics. GE’s Proficy Intelligent Platforms have already shown great promise in the analytics domain.

Sensors can measure temperature, humidity, motion, position, pressure, magnetic change, etc. Due to these huge possibilities they are being leveraged by all industries big or small e.g. Aerospace and Military, Industrial, Medical, Transportation, and Test & Measurements. Those companies which are targeting a generic platform, for any such measurement entity e.g. position, will have a big share in the next incoming markets. One such example is Ulocs. Ulocs provides a technology which can detect accurate position/movement of an object without the need of GPS or radio. This generic platform coupled with an analytics engine will create a great benefit in virtually all the vertical markets. Honeywell which produces sensors for control applications is leveraging the benefits of sensor application provisioning to these vertical markets, one of the big reason that its place is still secured in the Fortune 100 scale.

The top concerns for sensor penetration are the security and non-interruption or non-interference. Many companies are focusing on the non-interruption side of the sensor application to daily life e.g. Google glass is designed to be easily wearable with very less interference to the wearer (but still many have some reservations e.g. wars between head-mount and wrist-mount). But on the security scale, these sensors will generate a lot of data, which in wrong hands will create a new wave of “hacker productivity”, whether gray-hat or black-hat. There are very few companies which are solely targeting the security aspects of the data that is being generated. Many companies are focusing on the handling of this data to generate analytics e.g. the realm of big data analytics. Just like we have anti-virus or anti-spyware or anti-DDoS companies out there, we need to have some sort of endorsement to generate some new mechanism in order to target the sensors’ area specifically. One such focus that I see is the secure storage of the sensor generated data. But I think the focus should also be on the security of the link among the actual sensor, the on-board processor, and the storage location.

Gathering the sensor data points, putting it in the secure storage, and then using an analytics engine to derive the decision-making is already on the move, for the last 5 years, but on the industrial scale. Since companies are making new devices to be used in the consumer market, the dynamics of this data aggregation, storage, and analytics is to be changed significantly. We already know that sensors are being matured, algorithms are getting more accurate day-by-day, and sensor-data-focused databases are being evangelized, its’ time to create a disruption in the area of big data analytics for sensors.

Security as a Service — few words

I am going to write after a long time. Don’t know why I messed up my writing with my talking. In this post I would like to focus on an aspect that looks promising for service providers, that holds alot of thinking for service takers, and that demands alot of creativity when it comes to seperating on-premises security notions to the off-premises security notions. By default, what we assess from the bare term is that Security might not be dealt with weapons that one posses to tackle attacks. Why would someone think of getting security services that are coming entirely from outside? But when thought and provided in a manner that is much more intuitive than the notions of endpoint security or in-network access gateways, this new tool can give benefits to companies in search of a secure off-the-hook solution and new business models for the security service providers.
Costs for such a service should not be considered as benefit, because normally costs adjust themselves to come to a point where it becomes equally costly as compared to buying a solution without a cloud aspect into it. But reliability, and 24/7 access to a service that meets security can be a good starting point. Security assurance being the second parameter will be a good thing to consider. Two reasons which are provided by the security service providers for providing security-as-a-service are economies of scale and streamlined delivery mechanisms. What exaclty that means? Reach to SMBs? pick-your-own-profile type features? or what? In this respect all consumers have to do is to get educated. They have to know what exactly security-as-a-service offering implies, what it caters for, why its beneficial, and why they have to consider it in decision making. This is the responsibility of the service provider to provide needed documentation, demos, etc to educate the consumer. Since economies of scale means it might reach much more consumers, so an emphasis of education is a must have by the service provider.
I will end few words here. I hope to come back with a deeper look into that.
Till then have a nice time.

Cloud and indoor positioning- A recipe in the making

Cloud computing is reshaping the IT and Telecommunications landscape, and the way we think of provisioning. On the other hand indoor-positioning with its technology agility and innovative prospects for location based services, will enable new forms of developer productivity. The question is how far mobile location can benefit from cloud computing?

Environment
Telco clouds are now on the move, and many telecom companies are building infrastructures around cloud computing e.g. SAIL (Scalable and Adaptive Internet soLutions) project to enable networks of the future. The other noteworthy dimension is M2M and cloud computing. Cloud computing is core value proposition for smart phones, and thereby for M2M. The connection has already being made and analysed by companies like Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks (M2M Cloud Platform-Cumulocity).

Developers
The second aspect is that developers now love to work in the cloud especially in a multi-cloud environments. The reasons for that are ease of provisioning, resource utilisation, and scalability in the cloud. Developers like to work with APIs creating new applications and services that don’t die with load fluctuations on the network.

The new mix
Right now location-based-services companies are utilising cloud largely for storage. Apart from storage what computational and platform benefits LBS can gain from? One such approach must be provisioning of a service platform where developers can plugin their code through location-based enablements provided by companies like Qubulus using there industry leading Qubulus Positioning System. In this space new APIs targeting at developer productivity will enable a plathora of indoor positioning services. So the new mix is location-based cloud-enabled developer platform.
Now think of combining indoor positioning, M2M, cloud computing, developer agility, and unified service provisioning. Then the customer will be served best.

HP CloudSystem landscape!

HP CloudSystem

1. Utilizes HP CloudSystem Matrix, used for priavte cloud and IaaS
2. Especially optimized for HP ProLiant, HP Integrity Servers, HP Storage, and HP Networking
3. VMware, Microsoft HyperV and Integrity VMs supported
4. It helps you BUILD and MANAGE cloud services
5. Private, Public, and Hybrid Support
6. 3 Dimentions viz HP CloudSystem Matrix (Private Cloud), HP CloudSystem Enterprise (Hybrid Cloud), HP CloudSystem Service Provider (Public or Hosted-Private (SaaS-based) Cloud)
7. HP, EMC, and NetApps disk-arrays for storage
8. HP, Cisco, and Brocade Communications switches for Networking
9. Core of the system is HP Server Automation Software (SA)
10. APIs are due to be matured-Keep looking, they are making APIs to integrate with Public Clouds

HP and IBM both have quite agile strategies for enabling cloud computing. Waiting for a major public cloud vendor who bases itself on HP.

IBM IaaS Cloud Computing Offerings!

IBM unveiled its Cloud Computing Offerings on 7th April, 2011.
– IBMSmartCloud Enterprise:
a- VPNCubed Integration
b- Ideal for test and development activities
c- Public-private vLAN connectivity
d- Purchase Options
d1- Reserved Capacity
d2- Pay as you go
e- API available
f- IBM Tivoli Monitoring integrated
g- Multiple IP addresses per instance allowed (UPTO 4 either on internet, VPN, or MIX)
h- KVM based
i- Sharing of private images not allowed
j- Datacenters in US, Canada, Germany, Japan, and Singapore
k- 2-16 VPUs, 4GB-16GB RAM, 60GB-2048GB Storage (Ephemeral)
l- EBS like persistance storage availabe i.e. small (256GB), medium (512GB), and large (2048GB)
m- one VPN service is allowed in a single cloud delivery center (region)
n- Example cost calculatioin (5 RHEL5.5, 1 256GB persistant storage, 100GB data transfer IN/OUT both, 10 IPs, 1 VPN, NO premium support ==== 1,165 USD)
o- 1 reserved-capacity unit (NONE PAY-AS-YOU-GO) ==== (64 vCPUs, 96GB RAM, 9600GB storage, 6 (1,850 USD) or 12 (1300 USD) months commitment period)
p- Can build custom virtual images using ICCT (IBM Image Construction and Composition Tool) (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/cloud/library/cl-buildcloudimageICCT/)
q- Check technical articles in technical library at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/cloud/

IBM will be launching IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+, lets see what new things that will bring.
Apart from this IBM also provide two other offerings in the managed domain called IBM Managed Backup Cloud, and IBM Smart Business Storage Cloud.
Thanks

Verizon-Terremark Cloud Computing Offerings!

Verizon-Terremark:
Cloud Products:

1. vCloud Express

a- Pay as you go
b- Get started with a credit card
c- scalable development platform

2. Enterprise Cloud TM

a- Robust Security Suite
b- Dedicated resource pools
c- Integration with Private Networks

3. vCloud Datacenter

a- Hybrid Cloud Compatible
b- Dedicated resource pools
c- Manage with vCloud Director

Terremark Enterprise Cloud TM
a- vmware enabled, clustered hypervisor, HA,
b- Yearly subscription based, means NOT pay-as-you-go
c- Basic package contains 5 GHz and 10 GB RAM
d- Multiple NICs allowed
e- Switches can be created, bridge and routing facility
f- All the functionalities of vCloud Express included
g- Maximum server size allowed is 4 VPUs and 16 GB RAM
h- VMware .vmdk files cannot be exported from private network to Enterprise Cloud (Not yet supported)
i- LAN-LAN connection from private network to Enterprise Cloud can be made
j- Integrated HA firewalls availabe, Private vLANs
k- Infinicenter Management Console
l- No auto-scaling as in AWS (readers! please confirm)

vCloud Express:
a- API access available (RESTful)
b- Web interface, CLI interface
c- Virtualization technology is VMware + clustered hypervisor with VMware vSphere and VMware HA
d- Up to 8 Virtual processor units, upto 16GB virtual ram
e- Hardware load balancing
f- Persistant storage available—just like Amazon’s EBS
g- Horizontal (add servers) and vertical (add RAM) server scaling
h- Blank server available to install OS from ISO
i- Only 1 NIC is allowed. (http://bit.ly/kYBf7o)
j- IPSec and PPTP supported

vCloudExpress Architecture

vCloud DataCenter
a- Enterprise-class solution
b- Hybrid Cloud
c- VMware vCloud Director Integration
d- Local VMware VMs can be run on this service
e- Available in limited beta
f- Would be an extension of Terremark Enterprise Cloud

Enterprise Heretic-A strong inference ‘implied for granted’ by Corporations

Moved to http://infoginx.com/enterprise-heretic-strong-inference-implied-granted-corporations

Cloud Projections for a near future-factualFiction

Hi all,
Cloud is now getting mature enough to tell the big bosses in big companies to take some big radical decisions, because its the big time now.
Introduction

So what should we expect from the rain-bucket i.e. cloud? I am going to write about what implications the current trending will bring, what sort of new models can emerge, what opportunities can come, and what threats might stream with it.
Mainframe to Client/server had a generational impact and a generational shift in mentality. It also shaped the world with its opportunities, and challenges. Then came the convergence and the life-of-all became inter-meshed. Then came the marriage of telecom sector with the IT sector. Then came the tilting of social-media from vertical to an awesome horizontal. Now its time to go back to the old days of electricity.

Cloud trends across multiple service architectures:

I am trying to think not to write in a manner that this blog-post becomes again a mundane appraisal of cloud computing. But an inspection to see the trends and what tweaks we can introduce and what implications that would bring, is the issue here.
The IT companies have no doubt set the trend for others to follow suite, and showed tremendousness business-case opportunity for those who were sceptic in the first place. Telecom sector along with its IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), SIP, SS7 Stacks or INs (Intelligent Networks), WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access), Femtocells, and LTE (Long Term Evolution) has mesmerised Operators to use their Pipes to service customers at other service levels e.g. finance, medical, engineering, etc. Now IT and Telecommunications sector has the opportunity to be in the same room, and play the metal for the audience. Lets try our IF mentality i.e. IF this happens then this can happen and IF not then that.
Cloud service providers will be able to make cloud data centers in each country in a near future, lets say 2-3 years. Currently we have few datacenters in multiple countries BUT China, India, Canada, Nepal, Mexico, Brazil, Pakistan, Russia still don’t have that much to office in terms of cloud provisioning for the public. So if that happens, it will push certain behaviour in non-IT sectors. Telecom companies that are in every country perhaps multiple in each country, will be able to make cloud applications/services which are specialised with respect to locality, aggregation, security, and performance characteristics. Added to this flavour will be the horizontal aspect of social media. Added to this is the ease of access and broadband speeds that consumers will have in two to three years will grant throttle perspective to cloud computing where SOA will gets its out-of-the-box access, creation, maintenance, and serviceability from enterprise level to bare metal consumer level.

Lets dig up the protos:

Spot Cloud, Storms in Clouds, intercloud, API explosion, and multiple implementations has already started a shift in academia to get to the standardisation stage for clouds. IEEE has opened its hands to get the standardisation outputs, IETF is on its DOING to get it standardised, and Orange, Ericsson Research Labs, and AT&T are moving in the directions of how to standardise their own or public implementations of clouds using their initiatives e.g. SAIL (Scalable and Adaptive Internet Solutions) by Ericsson.
Now comes the BIG V i.e. virtualization. Distributed virtualization is gaining more strengths and fluid nature and easy management of VMs will boost another layer of virtualization to be formed. This layer will have tendencies to form SOA models from within this layer. So the front ends to this will be used in enterprises to have their own machines flowing in their own distributed virtualization pool and a much more generic output will come with architecture independence. I will touch this somewhat later in a new post.

Security concerns never die

Security concerns as they are now in the market are pretty much natural but have lack of judgemental treatment. If enterprises will not solve this psychological milestone or cloudKnot, then we will see more PRIVATE then PUBLIC in the next few years. If they solve it then TESTING in the cloud will be augmented with application delivery with Telecom Pipes coming IN and OUT of the public clouds too. Currently not possible, but this radical step might be in the way. But be cautious, the main security threat will COME at that time. I guess the concerned guys know what this prick (myself) is writing here.

Have a nice day.
Enjoy

Is Cloud Consultancy Apocalypse coming in next few months?

Shlomo Swidler and Reuven Cohen wrote very good starup-posts on how to select the contractors for cloud consultancy, back in 2009, when the cloud-roar was in its infancy. Back then the topic of interest was around Amazon EC2. In this post I will try to generalize that to multiple clouds, and will look it in terms of whats happening 2011, 2 years after they wrote the articles.
They gave guidelines of how to select a cloud consultant. I would check out in further highlighting whats happening in the arena. So lets kick off.

Currently there is a big move of all sorts of enterprises to shift to cloud. Since many of these enterprises don’t have that level of cloud knowledge as a dedicated one OR who is working on it for a long time as the posts from the guys (Shlomo and Reuven) recommend them to be, the market for the cloud consultants is far more attractive now than before. And we see many good market players and startups jumping into the cloud consultancy. They are using all sorts of tiers, and many of them even can manage all the services in almost all the cloud providers.

So what dimensions are being picked up by these cloud consultants, and how they are specially valid for the current shift in enterprise tastes. Obviously the homework done by these cloud consultants is on the basis of some kind of need by enterprises, but whats the main thing that derives enterprises to focus more on consultancy than geting involved into geting experts in cloud management and provisioning. To become an expert they would have to go through some kind of learning curve and even then they have to trust their own employees for that. Infant trust is the kind of things in which most bigger enterprises don’t beleive normally. So the coming months could be some kind of a biggy for cloud consultants. But still one more thing is lagging. And that is how important and URGENT the need is for the enterprises to shift to cloud, specifically in 2011?

To answer this question we would have to dig user behavior and not the development behavior thats going on in enterprises. I may be wrong in here but would love to think it back. That analysis will also come, hopefully if I have ink left on my keyboard for tomorrow.

Behavior, Experience, and Band Wagon:
Migration consultants typically first go through the Cloud adoption assessments. These assessments weigh heavily on the correlation between the internal datacenters and cloud environments. I guess the weigh should be equal in terms of what user behavior, experience, and band wagon demands. They should include some kind of services level assessments too. Many of them do too. But the pronounced effect that tells an enterprise that its time to rely on consultants isn’t that powerful, to me I guess. One obstacle is the concerns of the enterprise to hide the secrets of the service that they are providing in their local datacenters. So a true augmentation of the Shlomo’s post can help these enterprises alot. But consultants have to push this kind of knowledge to the enterprises. Its their responsibility.

When a company thinks of adopting the cloud, they have to think in terms of some kind of shift in current strategies for

• development
• configuration and environment
• operations and monitoring
• provisioning and metering
• data auditing
• costing

So consultant fall in the above areas. They were individually targeting each section back in 2009, but now they have gone as far as providing consultancy in all or mix of these areas. Plus since multiple clouds exist, they can provide in multiple cloud environments. Even phased migration doesn’t mean that an enterprise get rid of the contractor after the last phase of migration. Now the game will turn towards TRUELY MANAGED SURVICES, atleast for the time when enterprise develops its own skills in cloud.

Knowledge of Business cases
While working with enterprises cloud consultants will be able to know deep enough of the business cases that are thinked of in enterprises. So it would be a kind of strange mix, where a cloud consultant will know you and your customers more than your enterprise does. I may be wrong but my braincells are tweeting me in this area. So this will help accelerates the consistancy in apocalypse.

Cloud consultancy dimensioning
Cloud consultants doesn’t need to think in only one aspect. They have Iaas, Paas, and Saas in the armory. And among these 3, they have so many sub-THINGS that you can’t imagine. Virt, I/O, scalability, performance, monitoring VMs, monitoring apps, security complience and much much more. And thats hell lot of stuff for the enterprise to learn in a few courses. They need experience. So we get the cloud consultant apocalypse on over hands.

Survival of the fittest
I hate the medical one, but love the innovative, and enterpreneurial one. Cloud consultants have to best to be picked up by enterprises. And they to provide the same kind of commitement to all sorts of enterprises whether small or large, because they use the same kind of tools for any kind of deployment and monitoring. So this consistancy will help competition, which will be the roar or cloud consultancy.

Startups in non-consultancy can benefit from being consultants
Startups, which provide their services in the cloud and manage those CAN make another tier of teir company where they provide cloud consultancy to smaller companies or NEW startups. Thereby creating a new form of cloud consultancy spectrum where they will be the enterprise at some future point in time, and will have the necessary skill to be in new frontiers of the cloud services or research. I hope some guys must have got my point.

Thats it for now. I would love to see comments.

Shopaholic’s approach to buying services from the Cloud

Compulsive shopping done in stores is the coolest thing for a guy like me. And discounts are like conditioning for the buying recipe. But what will I do if I were to buy services instead of hard-stuff. If I can transition then I can imagine how others simple-people-like-me can do the same.
So it would be good for those who are projecting billions of dollars in revenue from billions of connected devices and consumer-cloud-transformation scenarios.

1- Adventure + Need:

I would first look at the app. store then go through apps then would try each what meets my eye. Thats what I normally do. Not so beneficial SO I would have to transition my buying habits since it wastes my time too by going through trillions of apps out there. I would equate my adventure to my needs. I hate trial versions-and I hope/predict all my shopaholic friends do the same. So if companies out there can turn me in without the trial-version type service then I would be happy to take a look. So trial versions really kill my adventure part. Maybe they can give me a bit of a service or prep my need a bit BUT if they ruin my adventure then I am not buying it. So think a new strategy apart from trial versions.

2- LOVE-TO-GO-SHOPPING:

The best thing about the best-of-the-best stores is that they make YOU move. So If apps make me move that would be an awesome thing but thats an OPTION not a requirments from my-kinda-shopaholic. Let me give you an example IF you can’t find an example. Groupon moved me to move. Signing up on their service gives me more than sitting on computer/belly-top. BUT its kind of really hard for app developers who work inside cloud to make people move. So I would suggest partnerships with Groupon, livingSocial, and Google Offers. Concerned guys know what I mean.

3- B2B-to-B2C:

Shopaholic’s aren’t just the guls-n-guys who don’t have roles, they can be giving services to others. So a I would love to see a service that help me service others. For that Shopaholic is willing to pay and more than willing to pay if its pay-as-you-go. You know what I mean? Definetly.

4- Sharing is caring:

Shopaholic buys the things which others can see, comprehend, applaud, OR atleast take-notice. So apps developers have to think out-of-the-box to make such a kind of service that an end-user is able to do ‘Sharing is Caring’ kind of stuff. So social media, augmented reallity, and seamlessness is very very important for me.

Shopaholic will be back—right now gotta go on a Groupon Prix.