Friday, November 9, 2012
Truth
I read a really salient quote yesterday, one which exemplifies the benefits of the cloud: "Work is an activity not a location."" Author unknown.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
How the Election Could Affect Cloud Services
With yesterday's election behind us, I started wondering how the different presidential candidates might influence the adoption of cloud services. Not directly, mind you. And obviously this is pure speculation; no crystal balls here. But here goes.
The Case for Mitt Romney
Romney's economic policy, based on traditional republican views of tax cuts, with a slant toward larger cuts for the wealthy, believes that the trickle-down effect creates jobs. Additionally, tax incentives for businesses may have sparked economic growth, or so the theory goes. In short, more small businesses, more people employed, more wealth. And these things might spur capital spending. That said, there is a chance that such an influx in capital might actually slow the growth of cloud services. Besides the obvious advantages of uptime, scalability and elasticity, one of the financial benefits of the cloud is that you can reduce your capital expenditures in exchange for a predictable monthly operational spend. If there is more capital available then there is a chance that businesses would reverse course and start buying hardware again. On the other hand, there might be more businesses to adopt the cloud.
The Case for Barack Obama
One of cornerstones of Obama's 2008 campaign was to invest in renewable energy and reduce carbon emissions. While his achievements in this area have been arguably weak, and he has been widely criticized for the country's investments in failed green energy companies such as Solyndra. However, focus on new technologies and green energy might mean tax incentives to businesses that reduce their energy consumption and to those, such as cloud services providers, that invent and foster such energy reductions. That could be very positive for the adoption of cloud services. But, one could argue, that the growth of the businesses that demand those very services might be slower under the president's watch.
Would the selection of a president make a difference in the cloud? It's hard to say. In either case, cloud services are here to stay and their growth, I believe, will continue to be strong over the next four years.
The Case for Mitt Romney
Romney's economic policy, based on traditional republican views of tax cuts, with a slant toward larger cuts for the wealthy, believes that the trickle-down effect creates jobs. Additionally, tax incentives for businesses may have sparked economic growth, or so the theory goes. In short, more small businesses, more people employed, more wealth. And these things might spur capital spending. That said, there is a chance that such an influx in capital might actually slow the growth of cloud services. Besides the obvious advantages of uptime, scalability and elasticity, one of the financial benefits of the cloud is that you can reduce your capital expenditures in exchange for a predictable monthly operational spend. If there is more capital available then there is a chance that businesses would reverse course and start buying hardware again. On the other hand, there might be more businesses to adopt the cloud.
The Case for Barack Obama
One of cornerstones of Obama's 2008 campaign was to invest in renewable energy and reduce carbon emissions. While his achievements in this area have been arguably weak, and he has been widely criticized for the country's investments in failed green energy companies such as Solyndra. However, focus on new technologies and green energy might mean tax incentives to businesses that reduce their energy consumption and to those, such as cloud services providers, that invent and foster such energy reductions. That could be very positive for the adoption of cloud services. But, one could argue, that the growth of the businesses that demand those very services might be slower under the president's watch.
Would the selection of a president make a difference in the cloud? It's hard to say. In either case, cloud services are here to stay and their growth, I believe, will continue to be strong over the next four years.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
It's Time the PSTN Grew Up
As I write this, five days after Hurricane Sandy dealt a devastating blow to the east coast, there are millions that cannot read it because they still have no power. The effects of the storm will be felt for years to come. And in the wake of Sandy there will be many lessons to be learned. One of those lessons is that it is finally time that the Public Switched Telephony Network (PSTN) grew up.
Back in the 1990's when the FCC granted competition in the local telephone market (in exchange for local carriers' ability to get into the long distance game) it became necessary to devise a way to know where to route a "ported" local number. Thus the notion of local number portability (LNP) was born. And to achieve this, a ported number would use a Local Routing Number (LRN) which is used to uniquely identify on which switch a number resided, and therefore where to route a call. Hurricane Sandy magnified the weakness in this approach.
One of the largest examples of such a failure was a Verizon switch in lower Manhattan that lost power due to flooding. With the switch, a Nortel CS2K (which is essentially a DMS with an IP head end), out of commission for several days so were the thousands of numbers that were served by it. The PSTN was designed to allow multiple routes, or trunks, to get to any given switch in order to give redundancy to the weakest link in its chain: the transport. And within the switch itself all hardware is redundant. But it still assumes that switch will always be up. An epic single point of failure.
In an IP world it has become possible for a number to be hosted virtually anywhere; you can literally serve a number across the globe from a server in your basement. Smaller competitive phone providers have been serving distant locations (probably not across the globe, but certainly across state lines) since LNP began. And Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSP) have extended this reach. In many - perhaps most - cases these ITSP's will still home a number from a single location. Some redundant Voice over IP (VoIP) architectures allow for geographic redundancy; that is, that single point of failure may now be spread over thousands of miles, or truly all over the world. To take it a step further, large scale IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) networks allow an even greater level of geographic redundancy and roaming. Though they still rely on a centralized IMS core, that core can be geographically disbursed.
Verizon and the other large carriers have already invested in such VoIP architectures. So, how could such a failure occur? Why are we still being served by switches that were designed in the 80's and refitted for LNP in the 90's? The answer is simple. They want to squeeze as much out of their existing investment as possible. I am not saying it is easy to migrate to the new architecture or that it can happen over night. But it can and should happen.
It's time.
Back in the 1990's when the FCC granted competition in the local telephone market (in exchange for local carriers' ability to get into the long distance game) it became necessary to devise a way to know where to route a "ported" local number. Thus the notion of local number portability (LNP) was born. And to achieve this, a ported number would use a Local Routing Number (LRN) which is used to uniquely identify on which switch a number resided, and therefore where to route a call. Hurricane Sandy magnified the weakness in this approach.
One of the largest examples of such a failure was a Verizon switch in lower Manhattan that lost power due to flooding. With the switch, a Nortel CS2K (which is essentially a DMS with an IP head end), out of commission for several days so were the thousands of numbers that were served by it. The PSTN was designed to allow multiple routes, or trunks, to get to any given switch in order to give redundancy to the weakest link in its chain: the transport. And within the switch itself all hardware is redundant. But it still assumes that switch will always be up. An epic single point of failure.
In an IP world it has become possible for a number to be hosted virtually anywhere; you can literally serve a number across the globe from a server in your basement. Smaller competitive phone providers have been serving distant locations (probably not across the globe, but certainly across state lines) since LNP began. And Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSP) have extended this reach. In many - perhaps most - cases these ITSP's will still home a number from a single location. Some redundant Voice over IP (VoIP) architectures allow for geographic redundancy; that is, that single point of failure may now be spread over thousands of miles, or truly all over the world. To take it a step further, large scale IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) networks allow an even greater level of geographic redundancy and roaming. Though they still rely on a centralized IMS core, that core can be geographically disbursed.
Verizon and the other large carriers have already invested in such VoIP architectures. So, how could such a failure occur? Why are we still being served by switches that were designed in the 80's and refitted for LNP in the 90's? The answer is simple. They want to squeeze as much out of their existing investment as possible. I am not saying it is easy to migrate to the new architecture or that it can happen over night. But it can and should happen.
It's time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)