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The News – 08/08/01
IBM
Legitimizes P2P
IBM is investing $4 billion to build 50 computer server farms
around the world to try to turn computing into a utility like electricity
or water. Based on the peer-to-peer (P2P) computing concept variously known
as grid computing, distributed computing, or hive computing, IBM will allow
users to purchase supercomputer-grade computing power that is produced by
combining the resources of dozens or hundreds of relatively inexpensive
servers. IBM will use an Open Source distributed computing system from Globus, a cooperative effort involving
several universities, NASA, and the Argonne National Laboratory.
To say that this validates the hive computing approach is an
understatement. There are various dot-com startups trying to develop the
hive computing market, including DataSynapse,
Parabon, Distributed.net, and United Devices. Many have found it
tough sledding. Two of the most publicized early entrants, Popular Power
and Process Tree, closed their doors earlier this year. These and other
hive computing companies are listed in the P2P for Business
Directory.
The target market for hive computing currently includes
companies with large computing needs – companies that otherwise would need
to buy expensive supercomputer time. These include companies in the life
sciences (gene sequencing, protein folding, cancer cures), oil exploration
(crunching massive geological databases), meteorology (climate prediction),
automotive and aerospace (crash simulation, virtual wind tunnel tests,
design rendering), entertainment (animation, special effects), and
financial (derivatives pricing) markets. However, if hive computing is
legitimized and becomes affordable, the market could open to pretty much
any large enterprise and used for such mundane tasks as nightly database
updates or payroll processing. There’s more on hive computing in my white
paper, The
Buzz About Hive Computing.
Of course, there are also many darker applications, such as
nuclear weapons design and encryption-breaking. Indeed, any privacy or
security scheme that depends on bad guys not having access to tremendous
computer resources should be rethought. In fact, an early demonstration of
the power of hive computing was the 1997
breaking of RSA’s 56-bit encryption key by a network of thousands of
computers linked over the Internet.
Also, not every large computing application will be
appropriate for a hive computing solution. Any application requiring real
time response or tremendous coordination between resources will not benefit
from loosely federated hive clusters due to the amount of network latency
(delay from transporting information across the Internet or other network)
inherent in such an approach.
What the IBM announcement means is that the idea of computing
as a service has really arrived. IBM’s $4 billion investment is one more
step toward a future where computing is no longer a place you go (to sit in
front of a keyboard and monitor) but rather a service of the environment
around you. In this case, supercomputing has become not a tremendously
expensive investment in hardware, air conditioning and raised-floor data
centers, but something you buy by the piece. Businesses with large
investments in computing capacity and any business with CPU-hungry
applications should definitely explore this new trend. Even companies
without accelerating computing needs should be aware of hive computing. Be
on the wave or under it™.
Wall Street
Journal (requires subscription)
Briefly
Noted
- Shameless Self-Promotion Dept. Correction: I'll be speaking at the
Minnesota Entrepreneurs Club pre-meeting workshop at 5:30 p.m. on
Tuesday, August 14th in St. Paul, MN, not the 7th as
previously announced. The meeting is at the Minnesota
Business Academy. My topic is “Will You Have to Have It? What
You Need to Know About Future Tech and Your Business.”
Also, the P2P for Business Directory has been listed on the University
of Tennessee's P2P
Information Page.
MN Entrepreneurs
- VenueMaitred Networks People: Alert SNS Reader John
Gehring sent along information about a new service that will debut at
the Wireless World 2001 trade show in New York in late September. VenueMaitred (stupid name
alert: Wouldn’t VenueMaitreD be better?) is a suite of wireless
information tools for conference-goers and other travelers. It uses
the 802.11b protocol, AKA WiFi™ or WLAN, to connect users to
information and services at hotels and conference venues. But of more
interest is the possibility of enhancing business networking and even,
dare we say it, dating. Cruising a tradeshow and cruising for a
simpatico companion are very similar. Both are terribly random, except
at least prospects at trade shows have business cards. The chairman of
Wireless World 2001 puts it this way: “I could see Hooters or college
bars setting up a wireless LAN, or cruise ships. If people had more
pocket PCs and every bar has a wireless LAN, you could be walking down
the street and you might pass a bar, search the profiles of the people
there. You see that there are 30 girls with certain vital statistics,
all looking for someone like you. It is amazing, the implications it
could have.” There’s no need to point out that Wireless World Chairman
Jonathan Sarno is a guy, is there?
mCommerce Times
- More Signs the Patent Office Doesn’t Get It: Alert SNS Reader Andrew
Hargreave sends along news that antivirus vendor McAfee was recently
granted a patent
on software as a service. The patent covers both the business and
technology models used to deliver software services through a browser.
CEO Srivats Sampath gloated, “You either work with us, or you work
around this patent.” Here we go again. There have been a number of
extremely broad patents granted since the early ‘90s. Quarterdeck’s
patent on swapping memory and Compton NewMedia’s patent on multimedia
spring to mind. More recently, Amazon got a patent on the idea of
clicking once to buy a book. In general, time has cured these
incredible goofs by the USPTO. We can only hope it will again.
InfoWorld
- Don’t Get Gatored: There’s a new, rather unsavory, ad practice
becoming popular on the Web. Named for the software plug-in that started
it all, gatoring means to pop up a window from a rival Web site when a
user visits a competitive site. For example, users who go to 1-800-Flowers.com
see a pop-up ad offering a discount at FTD.com. The culprit is the
Gator plug in, which is a password and user ID management program that
users download and use with their browsers. Unbeknownst to many of
these users, Gator has sold keywords to advertisers and pops up ads
when the user visits a related site. But the practice is not limited
to Gator. Other companies such as TopText, eZula, and Microsoft all
have similar technologies. Microsoft’s version, Smart Tags, was profiled in an
earlier SNS. To make matters worse, it can be hard, if not impossible,
to remove these obnoxious plug-ins once installed. LavaSoft makes a program
called Ad-Aware that
can help uproot the little buggers.
ZDNet
Can’t Get Enough of ME?
In the unlikely event
that you want more of my opinions, I’ve started a Weblog. It’s the
fashionable thing for pundits to do, and I’m doing it too. A Weblog is a
datestamped collection of somewhat random thoughts and ideas assembled on a
Web page. If you’d like to subject the world to your thoughts, as I do, you
can create your own Weblog. You need to have a Web site that allows you FTP
access, and the free software from www.blogger.com.
This allows you to right click on a Web page and append your pithy thoughts
to your Weblog.
I’ve dubbed my Weblog
entries “Stratlets”, and they are available at www.stratvantage.com/stratlets/.
Let me know what you think. Also check out the TrendSpot for ranking of
the latest emerging trends.
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