Please stop talking about private cloud

Written December 5th, 2012 by
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Peter Black

Peter Black

I made a presentation at yesterday’s conference on Developments with the Digital Oilfield in London. The title of my talk, “Why private cloud is a cul-de-sac of doom”, was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and intended to be mildly provocative. However, I had a serious purpose, in that the words and terms we use to describe things are important in creating clarity and driving ideas. Misusing them dilutes their power and ultimately diminishes opportunities. In that context, the term “private cloud” is one that has minimal value and causes confusion.

In my talk, I referenced the NIST definition of cloud computing, and my version of the three key elements that embody the transformational impact of the cloud:

  • A usage-based payment model, whether that’s per user, per cycle, per cpu, or whatever
  • Rapid elasticity, or the ability to seamlessly grow and shrink your demand without needing to stop to add new hardware or software
  • No barrier to exit or entry

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Why low cost is not enough

Written January 25th, 2012 by
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In a recent posting to LinkedIn, comments from an oil company contact were reported to the effect that high levels of investment in hydrocarbon allocation systems were unsustainable. The poster invited people to consider whether it was time to concentrate on value for money. I won’t link to the post, partly because it was on a closed group, but also because I wanted to focus on the general issue that it raises, rather than the specifics of the post.

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Get Console for iPad

Written December 14th, 2011 by
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While we’ve been building out our new redundant infrastructure for energysys.com, I’ve been using the Get Console iPad app quite extensively, in combination with the Redpark C2-RJ45 console cable. The latter seems expensive to me, and the lack of protection of the RJ-45 pin is disappointing given it will probably be thrown in a bag with other cables, but it does the job.

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Choosing DigiCert over Verisign

Written September 9th, 2011 by
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Our current SSL certificate is provided by Verisign, and we’ve had it for three years now. It’s coming up for renewal, and we wanted to add extended validation(EV). The cost on the web site made me pause, but you can’t go wrong with Verisign can you? Besides, it had to be worth contacting them to see if we could cut a deal, as we wanted to go to EV, and probably get another certificate too. Hmmm…

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The cloud: Why not, not why

Written September 7th, 2011 by
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When I do presentations of energysys.com, and I show how good it is and how it can transform a company’s business, I’m often asked whether it can be installed locally, and why we’re delivering our solution in the cloud. The answer to the first question is “no”, but the second question requires a more considered response. Why, indeed, do we deliver our solution for production reporting and allocation in the cloud?

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Why saving is so last century….

Written July 7th, 2011 by
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When Palm, Inc produced the Palm Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) way back in 1996, they were revolutionary in many ways.

First and foremost, they simply worked. Pop your Palm in the bundled cradle, press the button, and your calendar, contacts and other information were in sync with your desktop, and you had a complete backup.

Secondly, the Palm really was small enough to slip in the pocket. The Psion Series 5, which came along in 1997, was a brick in comparison, though the fact it had a keyboard was sufficient to convince many of its merits. Personally, I found the Palm’s weird, shorthand notation for text entry to be easy to learn and extremely fast.

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Java Returns to the Mac

Written November 12th, 2010 by
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As I discussed in my recent blog post, Oracle and Apple have reached an agreement that ensures the continuation of Java on the Mac. In essence, Apple are going to drop the majority, if not all, of their code into an OpenJDK project, and this will allow Oracle to supply future versions of Java on Mac OS X.

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The Dyson Airblade is impressive

Written November 2nd, 2010 by
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If you live in the UK (I’m not sure how far these little beasties have travelled) then you’ve almost certainly encountered one of Dyson’s Airblades in a toilet or rest room near you. In the past, not that many years ago, hand dryers were weak and wimpy affairs, which seemed designed to do little more than push the water up your arms so that the sleeves of your shirt or jersey would absorb the moisture. No real drying went on. Then came Dyson, with his big engine and novel “no rubbing” design.

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Java on the Apple Mac [UPDATED]

Written October 4th, 2010 by
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The recent announcement by Apple that the “Java runtime ported by Apple and that ships with Mac OS X is deprecated” has caused some concern and rather extreme responses. As a company that has recently invested heavily in Apple hardware for our development team, it might seem that we have fallen victim to the latest idiosyncratic or autocratic move from Apple and Steve Jobs. However, while I do think the story has implications, I don’t think it’s particularly troubling or consequential, except to those for whom the announcement is reinforcement of whatever particular world view they support (for example, is it proof that Java is dying, or evidence that Apple doesn’t understand the enterprise, or developers?).

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Oracle versus Google

Written August 15th, 2010 by
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James Gosling clearly joins the wider development community in condemning Oracle’s decision to pursue Google over alleged wilful patent violation. It’s hard to argue with such esteemed commentators, and I do share an aversion to software patents, though less so to closed source (and I do understand they’re linked). However, I do think that most of the arguments reflect a particular world view, and it’s definitely not one that Oracle shares.

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