[LINK] Look to the clouds not the slates

[Tom Worthington]

According to media reports, Microsoft is to show Windows based slate 
(tablet) computers at the Consumer Electronics Show in January: 
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/8201171/Microsoft-to-unveil-new-slates-and-Windows-8-preview-at-CES.html>. 


I suggest not getting too excited by this. Microsoft have a long way to 
go to catch up to Apple with mobile devices. The Apple iPhone dominates 
the upper end of the smart phone market and Google Android the budget 
end. I expect the same will happen with tablets. Google are maturing 
their Android system for tablets.

In corporate terms what is happening with "Cloud" computing is perhaps 
more interesting than tablet computers. If you are using web based cloud 
hosted applications, be they from Google, Microsoft, Amazon.com, or 
someone else, then you don't need much more than a web browser in your 
desktop computers or tablets. It does not matter much what operating 
system is used on the client device as long as it has a web browser to 
access the corporate application in the cloud. You can then use the same 
corporate applications on smart phones, tablet computers, netbooks, 
laptops and desktop computers. You need not worry about the 
compatibility of your corporate applications running on all these 
devices nor arranging long term retention of data on them.

There are some news reports of the SA government considering cloud 
computing, after the success of some of the SA education sector's 
success with using a Microsoft hosted service: 
<http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/371731/south_australia_makes_moves_public_cloud/>.

Ian Foster from Argonne National Laboratory talked at ANU on using 
software as a service for large scale scientific computing recently: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/12/software-as-service-for-science.html>.

In my view using cloud computing for corporate services is a very high 
risk strategy, as it can result in loss of control of data. APRA has 
warned the banks about this: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/11/banks-warned-about-cloud-computing.html>.

A better approach is that suggested by Yusuf J. Mansuri, First Assistant 
Secretary, ICT Strategic & Corporate Services Division, Department of 
Human Services at "Cloud Computing Conference and Expo 2010" in Sydney 
in September, where he hinted at an Australian Government Cloud 
Computing Centre: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/09/australian-government-cloud-computing.html>

The idea would be to have a shared facility on Australian territory, so 
it is subject to Australian law and shared by organisations with 
compatible procedures and aims.

Universities would similarly be a group with common aims who could use a 
joint facility. We have more than enough technology to allow secure 
sharing of such facilities. The issue is if we have governance and 
financial structures up to the challenge. Previous attempts at shared IT 
services between universities have mostly failed as they depended on 
sharing development of new bespoke software. Sharing a data centre and 
hardware is much simpler. One obvious way would be to contract the 
service out to the private sector. But another would be to use a 
non-profit organisation like the National Computational Infrastructure 
<http://nf.nci.org.au/> and AARnet 
<http://www.aarnet.edu.au/about-us/history.aspx>.

Apart from saving organisations a lot of money (and CIOs a lot of 
worry), this central service approach will also save a lot of electrical 
energy and therefore carbon emissions.

However there are a lot of corporate issues to resolve in sharing a 
hosted computer system. One easy approach is to outsource the provision 
of a specific service which is hosted remotely. An example of this is 
when a educational institution changes to a new Learning Management 
System (LMS). Because the LMS provides a relatively self-contained set 
of services and uses a web interface, it can be easily provided by an 
external hosting service. The university just needs to provide a network 
for desktop and mobile web clients to access the remote service. They do 
not need to run a a money and energy hungry server, or maintain 
educational software on the clients. There are companies which 
specialise in providing LMS hosting. This allows the company to optimise 
their computer system to run just one type of software for multiple 
clients. Both ANU 
<http://information.anu.edu.au/daisy/infoservices/1802.html> and 
University of Canberra 
<http://www.canberra.edu.au/tlc/lms-renewal-project/lms-renewal-project> 
converted from an internal Web CT to externally hosted Moodle service.

The same can be done for accounting, CRM and other software services.

Blog post n this: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/12/look-to-clouds-not-slates.html>.



-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra