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This Cloud (Computing) Doesn't Have A Silver GDP Lining
For many decades, the IT sector was the goose that laid the golden eggs of US fixed investment, with CapEx spending on IT rising as a percentage of GDP every year since 1954: after all spending on improving overall efficiency and productivity seemed like the ultimate and best CapEx investment (at least before Bernanke's ZIRP came along and made dividends and stock buybacks the only excess cash allocation option), where compounded CapEx investments would generate returns orders of magnitude higher than the allocated capital. Or so the thinking went until the Internet boom. As can be seen on the chart below, the advent of the "next big thing" in IT (sorry, not iPhones) - Cloud Computing - may well have been the next step function in IT investments, but due to the decentralized nature of the high-capacity broadband and high levels of utilization, may represent the first time in the past 60 years of US economic history, where incremental investments in the Cloud will no longer be GDP "accretive". This can be seen be the lower CapEx spend on cloud in the past decade (2.9%) compared to the GDP CAGR which at least according to official US sources rose at a 3.9% rate.
So if IT, that primary historic use of CapEx funds, isn't the key driver of fixed income spending in a future in which the tapped out US consumer will be unable to maintain their share of 70% of US GDP allocation, what is?
Alas, that is indeed the $64 question.
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Maybe I should sell a telephone and buy some heating oil with that money.
"Baby, it's cold outside!"
What really doesn't have a silver lining (for the cartel) is physical silver supply, as 16% of US annual silver supply just vaporized in a massive landslide at Rio Tinto's Kennecott mine!
http://silverdoctors.com/10-of-us-annual-silver-supply-just-vaporized/
This will have a DIRECT IMPACT on the Sunshine mint's ability to source silver for blanks for the US Mint- meaning a massive shortage of ASE's is imminent.
Kennecott produced up to 5 million ounces of silver annually- total US production in 2012 was 30.625 million oz!
But cloud computing gives a huge gain to the DHS.
Improvements in efficiency can have negative impact on GDP? The horror!
Quick, let's go back to the past 100 yrs of designing crap that falls apart and needs to be constantly repaired!
And we need to get back to the good ole' days when economy was based on reliable things, like massive waste of natural resources.
I know 2 guys that are experiencing problems with the sarcasm parser...
Precisely WHY anyone with any knowledge of computing (using Excel & Word don't count!), are NOT simply gonna hand over their private data to a third party that may or may not share said data with a Govt entity inimical to their best interests. If cloud computing wants to really take off, encrypt ALL data with 4096-bit keys. Keep private data private!
I'm sorry, but when I read that the company has known, and warned many people, for months that this landslide was coming, I gave you the downtick for your hyperbole.
Had to give you a downtick for your stupid idea that this was public knowledge that a slide was coming. I am glad that no one was hurt.
All you downtickers (trolls) are probably unhappy that several dozen people didn't die from this slide!
Calm down Jimbo...
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=24746033&nid=148
Google. It's fun.
I was wrong to state "months". My bad.
BTW, I didn't junk either of your posts.
Oh, and YES, I am glad no one got hurt.
Sorry you assumed any other wise.
Quite an impressive slide! The pics bring that whole mess to light. Glad they caught the earth movement ahead of time and no one got hurt.
How come rio tinto waited 4 days to announce...to the public anyway.
Government intervention has squelched productivity.
Deregulation turned the banking system into a whore/gambling/drug house.
Removing Sarbanes-Oxley turned the banking system into a subsidized gambling den that would not be permitted to fail. Very different from what you are describing.
Implementing Sarbanes-Oxley turned the banking system into a subsidized gambling den that would not be permitted to fail. Very different from what you are describing.
There. Fixed it for you.
Ummm...SOx was enacted in 2002.
Casino imples risk of loss. Implied bailouts elimiating turned it all into worse tha a casino, by eliminating risk.
He said, Govt intervention has squelched "productivity". There is no productivity in banking, on the other hand, any business that actually "produces" something is regulated into extinction.
OK, that's a thesis, and one that often leads somewhere when developed. But, how does it apply in this case?
What government intervention brought about lower capital expenditures in relation to the shift towards centralized networked data stores ('the Cloud')? Extra points if you don't mention that the government is behind Google and Facebook, because that's not the Cloud we're looking for—CapEx here relates to the use of funds by businesses to handle IT infrastructre needs, not for consumers' free uploading of kitten videos to YouTube for the NSA to scan.
Further, what's the loss in productivity here? Lower CapEx does not necessarily mean lower productivity. If there's no further perceived need for expenditure (businesses are already saturated with computers, don't foresee actual benefits from new spending to upgrade/change their systems) or, on the other hand, if the efficiency dividend from cloud computing is sufficiently high to achieve the goals of capital expenditure with far fewer expenditures, then CapEx is not going to increase while productivity remains undiminished.
Commodities bitchez!
When?
Yesterday, for those that figure into the new world order. In my book that would be PM's, agriculture, energy.
The best time to purchase will be after the next great global margin call and before the hairbrained deposit insurance solution- in existing or conjured up currency- is unveiled involuntarily.
Buy when there is blood in the streets.
Not a very appealing proposition when the blood is your own.
All your data are belong to us !
Cloud Computing Explained;
"Here, put all of your private shit on our servers, we won't look at it, we swear."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS2Z19yTuPI
+1 As Insightfull as it gets
Cloud computing comes with all kinds of problems:
It makes sense for some specialist applications (for example Virtual Private Servers - pretty much just computer servers hosted by somebody else that you can access and manage remotelly) and for some specific uses in companies that are so small they can't afford their own servers (for example, for e-mail), but that's it.
Even then, I would avoid the big-boys like the plague, since they don't give a shit about you as a small company (if they loose your data or their systems are down for weeks: though luck) and you never know where your data ends up being stored.
+ a big 1
When you can put 128 GB on a flash drive (from Best Buy: approx. $140), I do not see the need for ANY but the largest data users to use the Cloud. And those same data users could probably just buy all the 1 TB HDs they need for a LOT cheaper.
If I am wrong, tech people, I invite corrections!
Shop around and buy a 2 or 3 tb drive for the same money.
Thumb drives are safer that dvd for backup. I've had at least a dozen dvd's become unreadable in the last 3 years, but I'v only lost one uSB to the unreadable errors demon. And that one was corrupted by someone yanking it before windows was done writing to it.
The only thing I store online is the spam in my free email accounts.
One caveat would be the amount of time it would take to write 128GB of data to a flash drive, especially if it's USB 2.0. USB 3.0 is significantly faster, by at least a factor of 10.
Depending on one's needs and level of technical expertise, one could add 8 TB of storage in a single external cage, connected to a PC via an appropriate eSata connection, for less than $600. That's a serious amount of data and ought to be sufficient for most non-business needs. My first (personal) hard drive contained 10 MB and was priced around $2500, but that was with an employee discount. My, how times have changed.
Think about how long it takes to upload 128 GB to Amazon. Then tell me how much that costs.
May as well be burning that $600 given the trust you give to the company that designed the Operating System hasn't put some secret sauce (back door hax) on the thing.
If your going to make your own storage then I would want nothing less than a good quality box with a well supported Open Source Operating System (example Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, chuck on LAMP for your own web domain plus webmin for configuration requirements and any newb can be a l33t administrator). Anything more than that would need a dedicated IT team for more exotic custom company software.
Even just handing the poor meatsack delegated with IT admin duties this tutorial will have most businesses up and running within the week for less than the likes of Dell/HP/IBM will cost - http://woodel.com/
TL/DR: Anything less than your own Hardware, and a reasonable OS setup (Open Source GNU/Linux <whatever the terminology there> based is best in my experience) is begging for trouble.
When you can put 128 GB on a flash drive (from Best Buy: approx. $140), I do not see the need for ANY but the largest data users to use the Cloud. And those same data users could probably just buy all the 1 TB HDs they need for a LOT cheaper.
If I am wrong, tech people, I invite corrections!
Yep, you are wrong. As is the person above you.
Guess I should quit as the CTO of my Tech Startup then.
I should probably also give back my credentials as a decade-long specialist in high performance, distributed computing (you know, cloud computing as big companies do it). Shame for all those sucker large companies that paid me tons of money for that expertise.
We used to run our little shop off of a dedicated in-house server and then back it up to the cloud. Now we do the opposite- run off the cloud (Rackspace) and back up to our in-house servers nightly (even though Rackspace does it's own internal backups). Kinda backwards, but as it turns out our in-house servers are less reliable than our internet connection. We have bad power where our office is and even with good double-conversion power filter/UPS systems it's still an "equipment eater" kind of location. Plus logging into the cloud from home is a crapload easier and more reliable than remoting into the office server after hours or over the weekend.
And you have no concerns that ALL of your data processed by, or stored in, "the cloud" is open to prying eyes and theft?
Yeah, centralizing personal data and property ALWAYS works well for the individual.
(/sarc)
It really depends on what you're doing.
If what you're doing is running your own VPS machines remotelly, it's no big deal. You choose what server applications you run and manage them yourself so all you really have to worry about is what data do you put out there and who do you put it with. For example, for my company we have a VPS hosted in Holland even though we're based in the UK at the moment, simply because, unless you're a big boy with political connections, the UK government and legal system are far less trustworthy than the Dutch ones.
Cloud hosted services (for example, e-mail or CRM) on the other hand are a far bigger risk. Mostly you have to worry about vendor lock-in and where is your data stored (personally I would avoid the US like the plague: they're very well known for industrial espionage and computer laws in the US are draconic due to the power of the copyright lobby).
Well, I could easily find some flaws in your reasoning but I'm inclined to agree, because 'Cloud computing' is nothing but a hype word used by the industry to push the use of centralized network architecture... and well, you know opinions about centralization on ZH...
Better buy 2TB HDD and install P2P software (decentralized architecture is more resilient, bitchez).
AND I would NEVER, NEVER store my personal information on the 'cloud'. What, me paying e-bills? FUCKED!
+100
If the data is not in your hands... YOU don't own it!
See also the Onion's spot-on take on the cloud:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ntPxdWAWq8
Thats the whole goal of Cloud computing, to reduce the IT spending of organizations. By virtualizing their servers and loading the virtual image to a remote data server, CPU power can be leased as needed, not bought and left sit to idle. It is essentially fractional reserve computing. As long as everyone doesn't want their computing power at the same time, hosted services work fine.
The gamers will show'em "fractional reserve computing".
The hosting industry has practiced overselling as long as it has existed. Bandwidth is metered and sold in 95th percentile increments to allow for burstable connections.
There is nothing new under the sun, or so a wise man once posited.
Once upon a time there was something called timesharing, wherein a mainframe computer served multiple independent users. Same concept, really, as Cloud computing. In theory, however, putting everything out in the Cloud should provide both data redundancy (can't accidentally lose data) and a failover capability (one piece of hardware fails and another takes its place pretty seamlessly). Those were not really part of timesharing, although they are now possible on in-house systems as well as in the Cloud.
Yeah, it is... They said that about gold too.
Like bankers, Cloud providers overcommit. You're not really getting the 8Gb RAM, 3GHz system you ordered. You're getting a fraction of one. The more they overcommit, the more money they make. There's a problem though... It's a commodity business. The hardware is commodity, the operating system is now commoditised, the apps are commoditised and the cloud platform is well on the way to being commoditised. Which means the margins for cloud providers are going to be thinning. You'll see the problems start as the boom fades and the technology refresh comes round in a couple of years.
Just like fractional reserve banking actually.
After all, this is both what made the internet significant and potent: Centralization.
Centralization is the antithesis of what the internet is about.
Cloud Computing - A marketing term from something that has existed for decades.
Just another con in a world filled with con games.
Keeping things internal, especially confidential data or potential reputationally risky information, while using a mature clustering middleware with low cost commodity hardware, and virtualization where it can meet the processing and IO requirements, is also a nice way to do it.
I thought over-head cam engines in the 1980s were pretty innovative until I was aboard a 1930 diesel submarine with two engines with over-head cams.
I am also impressed by the number of disc brake patents patenting technology from the 1800s.
You won't need as much money because of all the value being delivered cheap by the cloud.
That's the theory, anyway. And there is some truth to it.
Peskily though, you still have to eat somehow.
I can't imagine why a technology innovation from the 1960s isn't producing massive GDP growth in the 2010s. Maybe if they went back to calling it a "mainframe" they might be able to sell more of it?
Bravo. I kept asking how this is different from main frames and just got blank stares.
Bravo. I kept asking how this is different from main frames and just got blank stares.
Scale for one thing.
Every trend nowadays seems to invariably work toward making the average individual less self-reliant and more dependent on a centralized system.
Cloud computing is totally wonderful. Without all my data on their Cloud, the NSA has to backdoor hack into my laptop at a measly 3 Mbps, but with all my data on their clouds, they can scan it with their favorite algorithms and download it to their own hard drives in a mere millisecond. We should all give Big Brother a helping hand. The NWO needs YOU! And don't forget to get microchipped at your local flu injection center.
The internet has built industries into major financal contributors to GCP - porn and gaming.
I need to weigh in if only because I've been on the phone with IT all fucking week trying to get a new laptop.
There's no way in god's holy ball sack that the cloud couldnt be accretive. Maybe not to the government-Keynesian drivel called GDP (or better yet GNP because it doesn't matter whether the cloud is located in the US or not). But certainly to individual firms. And it certainly can offer a major competitive advantage to smaller firms with a lack of capital but a really good idea.
There are three bottlenecks in my organization: legal (that fucking line between advising me on risk and being an "approval" was blurred long ago by the people with the Book-It degrees), regulatory (whatever), and IT. I can live with legal and regulatory. The IT realm is just too much. The priotization meetings, the systems change requests, the temps who go to India for 2 months out of the year, the fucking licensing fees (like another employment tax if you ask me), the business case development to change a drop down menu on the CRM. I've had requests out for 3 years to get basic stuff done. And what do you end up doing as an analyst? You just ask for raw data and create your model or database outside the system. Which create a database and IT wants to run it and optimize it for you (meaning break it).
And here's the other part: say "IT systems overhaul" to anyone in my industry and they want to puke. And I can hear the consultants now "but it doesn't have to be that way!" Yes it does. Whoever the gen x IT moat building cat herding rancher is, he/she managed to put some inflated title to the position and has the status quo advantage. You're left with "fuck it, let's dump the whole thing and throw it on the cloud. Give the individual VP a shared services number that includes their IT development budget so they can run their business unit."
Just because I might not spend as much money on IT would not be a bad thing. Might make a lot of gen X'ers freelance workers, but your health insurance is so expensive now that you're not far off anyway.
LOL @ the gen X'er dig... since it's the gen X'ers that built your damn glorified outsourcing / managed hosting service for you. It sure as hell wasn't boomers, they were too busy reading the manuals on VCRs to keep it from flashing 12:00 all the time.
If you're wondering why all those IT guys you pushed into "freelancing" are on the other end of the phone discussing SLAs / AUPs / billing / etc with you... yeah, that's why. While you're at it try to pay on time next month so we don't have to shut your quota off. Fucking boomer deadbeats.
Way to go on assuming. I'm gen y.
I would get rid of IT in a heartbeat.
Why don't you call a few meetings, get some buy-in, ask for a business case, and then ignore me for 2 weeks before responding to an email in a quippy, passive aggressive way next time?
The next step is automatons creating automation. This technology isn't available yet, so no new spending in that area, really...
Look... I've been programming for about 10+ years. Nothing has changed. You even need less of me to get the job done, and every new project is built specifically to get rid of the need for more people.
I run automations and etl's, maintain a front end and back end system, alone, for a company who processes 5 million patient records a month.
Just me, and I do about 3 real hours of work a week.
I run automations and etl's, maintain a front end and back end system, alone, for a company who processes 5 million patient records a month.
Just me, and I do about 3 real hours of work a week.
Ah, the future for every industry.
We don't necessarily need "jobs", I guess.
Yeah, just cut out all the middle and just employ the cloud servers in printing and distributing $$s! Sometimes the "answer" is right on the tip of your Internet connection!
BUT! I just want to know whether this is bullish for FB! (oh yeah, </sarc>!)
A business I work for is moving to a cloud data storage and software solutions. After a few black outs wiped our data and restoring it from backup turned to be a hideous process, cloud just makes sense. However, we ve learned that most cloud service providers in our industry (everything but CRM's, those are fairly good.) do not deliver what they promised and their software packages are subpar to those run locally. My point is, why cloud prospect is awesome, one has to venture with care .. be aware, lol.
Cue MSM articles about the 'liabilities', 'disadvantages' and 'innovativeness' of cloud computing.
the tapped out US consumer will be unable to maintain their share of 70% of US GDP
Send the Federal Gov't to China or Somalia we don't need them or want them any longer.
The greed of the GS gang over at CNBC have apparently stimulated them to accept BitCoin
http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/MTGOXUSD/tab/2
Of course the quote is wrong but it hints that the greed that drives central banksters will cause them not to attack BitCoin but instead to personally hoard it.
Cloud Computing for math is just.....
Pi in The Sky...From my own firsthand experience, the cloud appears very deflationary.
The cloud instance you're renting is a VM. There's probably only one physical multi-core processor for dozens of VMs. Not like the old days for Intel, with a processor on every desktop and in every server.
Instead of everyone having on-site IT staff, there's a handful of folks in the data center. They don't really troubleshoot much of anything.
If a VM fails, a new one gets spun up. If it fails enough times, it fails over the cluster. If the cluster fails over often enough, it gets moved to a new physical server, and so on, all under automated control. A human technician might need to be involved if a server or rack of servers has to be blacklisted.
I use this example because I happen to know the pricing... An adequate on-premises 10 user SQL Server license winds up costing about $2700. A comparable installation in the cloud costs about $30 a month, with free bandwidth within a data center and 10 free web roles.
Basically, Amazon is setting the marginal price for cloud services. Margins for everyone I've seen are sub-10%, usually closer to 6 - 8%.
The cloud is a huge margin-killer and job-destroyer. You can argue whether that's good or bad, or whether cloud computing will actually prevail over on-premises, but that's what I'm seeing among the companies I talk to.
Given the margins they've grown accustomed to, I put Oracle in the dead pool first. I am literally not seeing a single startup using Oracle's technologies.
Bingo +1 - no start-up these days is going to pay the "Oracle tax" to get off the ground. Cloud computing is also highly deflationary for _hardware manufacturers_ - look at the numbers for Dell and HP lately, abysmal.
Its not just an "Oracle Tax" per se, in terms of licensing fees paid to Oracle. Its also the poorer overall quality of Oracle's software.
It's beautiful.
Replacing fathead Joe Nobodies with an automated system is not deflationary it frees up Joe Fathead to go and get a proper job.
It's the basis of creative destruction and ever increasing productivity.