The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) is holding its Forecast event in San Francisco in June, and I’ve been invited to moderate the panel discussing Virtual Machine Interoperability. As moderator, I’ll be far more interested in facilitating insights from panel and audience than in wittering on about what I think, so I wanted to use this blog post to begin getting some of the issues clear in my mind. What is VM interoperability, and why does it matter? From time to time, I write about Open Data. This has nothing to do with that. The Open Data Center Alliance is interested in data centres, not data. The Alliance was established back in 2010 with Intel driving things forward, and now claims over 300 member organisations, including the likes of BMW, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Deutsche Bank and Marriott Hotels. According to the ODCA website, we came together to deliver a unified voice for emerging data center and cloud computing requirements. Our mission is to speed the migration to cloud computing by enabling the solution and service ecosystem to address IT requirements with the highest level of interoperability and standards. Much of the Alliance’s work involves identifying customer requirements and capturing these in a series of usage […]
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The Cloud and Quantum Mechanics
A computer exists that’s been able to solve complex problems set for it by Google and NASA 11,000 times faster than any traditional supercomputer. And those were the simple problems.
On harder problems, it was 33,000 times faster and on the really hard problems it was reportedly 50,000 times faster.
It’s a so-called quantum computer build on the principles of quantum mechanics and Google and NASA thought enough of the thing to buy one at a cost of maybe $10 million-$15 million and set up a Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
There they’re going to try to advance machine learning, which, as Google says, is all about building better models of the world to make more accurate predictions. And that, from Google’s point-of-view, includes understanding spoken questions and what’s on the web so it can build a more useful and accurate search engine.
Other people want to use it to cure diseases and create effective environmental policies, both of which need better models, and they’ll get a chance because the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) will get time on the machine and make it available to researchers from around the world.
Together they’ll try move from theory to practice, building real solutions on quantum hardware.
Google says hopefully, “We actually think quantum machine learning may provide the most creative problem-solving process under the known laws of physics.”
The machine they’ll be working on was built in Canada by D-Wave Systems, where Egenera founder and former Goldman Sachs CIO Vern Brownell is CEO.
It’s a second-generation machine. D-Wave only sold one of its first-generation 128-qubit D-Wave One commercial systems. That went to Lockheed Martin, which recently upgraded it to the new D-Wave Two machine Google and NASA are getting.
D-Wave sees the technology being heavily applied to the cloud. In fact it talks of a quantum cloud with a few high-end traditional servers at the back-end. Coincidently enough Google figures the best use of quantum computing is to combine quantum machines with the traditional machines in its clouds.
The D-Wave computer works by considering complex problems in terms of optimal outcomes. It can just consider more possible outcomes simultaneously and shake out the one that meets all the variables faster and with the least expenditure of energy than any other modern computer.
It considers the problem in terms of energy states and applies quantum physics to magically come up with the answer.
The technique is called quantum annealing.
And a quantum computer isn’t like a standard computer that represents data in bits that are either on or off, 1 or 0. Nope, a 10-quantum bit computer, or 10-qubit computer, can simultaneously represent data in 1,024 states,
Inside the D-Wave Two box are now 512 problem-solving qubits and its superconducting processor reportedly has to be cooled to near absolute zero.
NASA and Google reportedly mean to upgrade to 2.048 qubits sometime in the next year or two.
D-Wave has been working the kinks out of the esoteric widgetry since 1999 and in the process has gotten at least $61 million – well, maybe it’s closer to $100 million – in funding from such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos through his venture arm Bezos Expeditions, In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture boys, and of course Goldman Sachs.
Other believers who contributed include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Harris &Harris Group, the Business Development Bank of Canada, BC Investment Management Corporation and Growth Works Capital among others.
The NASA-Google machine is currently being installed at Moffet Field and should be in use by fall. It is expected to be considered by financial services, healthcare and national security.
D-Wave just set up a US company in Palo Alto earlier this month to overcome any national security objections to dealing with a Canadian concern. It hired Bo Ewald as president and head of global customer operations.
Bo has run SGI and was president, COO and CTO at Cray Research, CEO and chairman of Linux Networx, e-Stamp, and most recently Perceptive Pixel. He started his career at the Los Alamos National Lab.
The company has also hired Steve Cakebread, another SGI veteran, as CFO. He used to be president and CFO of Salesforce.com and after that CFO of Pandora.
See http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2013/05/launching-quantum-artificial…..
SAP, HANA and the Cloud
SAP, the third-largest software company in the world after Microsoft and
Oracle, says it’s moving all data into main memory and all systems to the
cloud.
The company’s newly announced HANA Cloud Platform is going to be
the foundation of its whole cloud portfolio, creating a single point for its
cloud-based technology, including application development and integration
services, database and analytics services.
The Top Five SaaS Risks and How to Mitigate Them
You may have heard that cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models can turn software technology into a pay-as-you-go utility that businesses can “plug in to” and use like electricity?
Perhaps — however, software technology is far more varied, nuanced and diverse than electricity. You don’t win customers by having better electricity than your competition. Software, by contrast,…
Elliott Management Puts NetApp in Play: Bloomberg
Activist shareholder Elliott Management, the hedge fund that pushed Novell
and BMC into selling out and has Compuware on its list, is muscling in on
NetApp.
According to Bloomberg it has taken a “significant” position still under 5%
in the data storage house, meaning to push for changes to the board and a
cash return strategy.
Business Transformation with Cloud – Is Your Organization ‘Cloud-Ready’?
Organizations across the world are increasingly starting to see the benefits of moving more and more services to the cloud. The focus on the cost-saving potential of cloud is rapidly shifting to completely transforming the business with cloud. As organizations are investing enormous sums on technology they are starting to realize that in order to maximize the return on investment and accelerate the business transformation process the first area of focus should be people. By ensuring the organization is ‘cloud-ready’ the organizational adoption will be much faster and much better. A workforce ready and eager to maximize the potential value and benefit will more readily embrace a cloud strategy.
Supporting CIO Strategies and Priorities from the Cloud
A recent Gartner study states that the function of the modern CIO is in flux and that his or her future focus must incorporate digital assets (aka cloud-based data and applications) to remain relevant. Towards the goal of riding the sea change a compiler of stacks to a broker of business needs, security from the cloud is used as the example of this new prioritization and strategic thinking.
Team Collaboration Over the Cloud
We are all familiar with collaboration in a local area network (LAN) environment, which was fulfilled by a Windows File Server or some device that provides a network share. This is a device in the office that people can all map a network drive to the
Don’t Believe the Hype: Getting to the Promise of Big Data
Companies around the world are collecting massive amounts of data everyday that’s sitting around and not being utilized. Take for example the fact that companies collect demographic and location-based data via mobile devices all the time, but have to figure out how to monetize that data. In this session, Joyent CTO and founder Jason Hoffman will examine the state of Big Data, taking a look at what we’re doing now to discussing what’s on the horizon, as companies prepare and realign their business strategies for new streams of revenue.
Greatest Hits Rundown of Everything Google Offered at Google I/O
On Wednesday, Google held its annual developer-focused conference, Google I/O, in San Francisco, California. As expected, the tech giant made tons of big announcements, highlighting updates to existing products and showcasing new programs and hardware. All of the conference’s biggest announcements have been highlighted on this site already, but if you’re looking for a greatest…