SPECIAL REPORT: “Let it rise: A special report on corporate IT,” by Ludwig Siegele, The Economist, 25 October 2008.

A nice special report with lotsa good analogies and explanations for the layman. This is stuff that Steve and I spend a lot of time talking about with people, so fun to see it packaged so nicely here. As always, simpler renditions infuriate specialists, but I can live with that.

“Let it rise”

A short history of computing, which I thought was funny, opens the first piece:

The beginning computers were human. Then they took the shape of metal boxes, filling entire rooms before becoming ever smaller and more widespread. Now they are evaporating altogether and becoming accessible from anywhere.

There. Saved you from reading some long history book.

The gist:

Now, this special report will argue, computing is taking on yet another new shape. It is becoming more centralized again as some of the activity moves into data centres. But more importantly, it is turning into what has come to be called a “cloud,” or collection of clouds. Computing power will become more and more disembodied and will be consumed where and when it is needed.

A string:

… data centres are becoming factories for computing services on an industrial scale; software is increasingly being delivered as an online service; and wireless networks connect more and more devices to such offerings.

All this allows computing to be disaggregated [perhaps my favorite word, as the grand strategist can only synthesize world views if he is exceptional at disaggregating complexity] into components—or “services”, in IT parlance . . .

The best example is Google, the biggest online search company by far, which now offers a plethora of web-based applications, such as word-processing or online spread sheets.

Learning to float

Companies too, have been moving into the cloud, albeit much more cautiously. Financial institutions in particular have for some time been building “computing grids.” Firms that provide enterprise software as a service (SAAS) over the internet, such as Salesforce.com and NetSuite, have been growing steadily.

Now, some sense of the actual hardware involved:

“Where the cloud meets the ground: Data centres are quickly evolving into service factories”

Listen to this description of a data centre in a box. It speaks to why Enterra is so excited to be working with Microsoft International re: Development-in-a-Box‚Ñ¢:

It is almost as easy as plugging in a laser printer. Up to 2,500 servers—in essence, souped-up personal computers—are crammed into a 40-foot (13-metre) shipping container. A truck places the containers inside a bare steel-and-concrete building. Workers quickly connect it to the electric grid, the computing network and a water supply for cooling. The necessary software is downloaded automatically. Within four hours all the servers are ready to dish up videos, send e-mails or crunch a firm’s customer data .

MS senior in charge says, “We’re building a global information utility.”

On goes the article to say:

Engineers must have spoken with similar passion when the first moving assembly lines were installed in car factories almost a century ago, and Microsoft’s data centre in Northlake [IL], just like Henry Ford’s first large factory in Highland Park, Michigan, may one day be seen as a symbol of a new industrial era.

Now the relating to SOA (service oriented architecture):

“Creating the cumulus: Software will be transformed into a combination of services”

Another good string:

To understand this new way of building applications [online], known as “service-oriented architecture” (SOA), think of a culinary analogy. Whereas the old chunk of software resembles a precooked meal that just has to be popped into the oven, the new architecture is more like a restaurant. It is a service in itself but also a combination of sub-services. There is a waiter who takes the order and conveys it to the kitchen. There is the cook who prepares the food. And there are the cleaners who keep the place tidy. Together they create the “application”: a restaurant . . .

Just as for the industrialization of data centres, there is a historic precedent for this shift in architecture: the invention of movable type in the 15th century . . .

Similarly, the concept of modularity has been around since the early days of computing. “Everything in computer science is just write less code. What is the technique for writing less code? It’s called subroutines,” said Bill Gates, Microsoft’s founder, in a recent interview. A subroutine is a part of a program that can be reused, just like movable type. The idea, says Mr Gates, has always been to apply this principle of a subroutine more broadly . . .

Now, thanks to plenty of cheap bandwidth and more and more wireless connectivity, computing is able to regroup into specialized services, or Mr Gates’ subroutines: “We now live in a world where [a] subroutine can exist on another computer across the internet.”

The explanation of SOA and algorithms that I offer in Great Powers is more user-centric, but I like this one just as much.

The article goes on to say that SOA, despite lotsa selling and PR, hasn’t really taken off in people’s minds, even as the pioneers on the web keep giving us more stuff that more and more people use routinely.

Does this mean software goes away? Not any time soon. It will be a software-plus-services world. New technologies build but rarely supplant existing ones in whole.

Now, for the final bit:

“Computers without borders: The cloud may be the ultimate form of globalisation”

Starts off with a description of data banking (like banking, but of data that is treated like currency), using Iceland as an emblematic example: a place to store archives.

The trick becomes the banking of data by country legal rule set. As one technologist puts it: “If we wanted to be on the safe side in terms of regulation, we probably would need 95 individual data centres.”

Point being, as cloud computing makes data flows and storage even more borderless, states will go to great lengths to keep borders relevant.

Then again, you’ll see “free-trade zones” for data centres where “common rules would apply.”

Overall, a very cool collection of articles that flows into my future world vision very nicely.