Global Governmental Cloud Computing

[Reuven Cohen]

I've just had arguably one of the highlights of my career this week
when I had the honor of representing both my country and company
keynoting the Westminster eForum in London. My trip was sponsored by
the High Commission of Canada in the UK as well as Foreign Affairs and
International Trade Canada. Yup @ruv, Goodwill Ambassador for Cloud
Computing, strange I know.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Westminster Forum Projects in the
UK, it is the predominant governmental public discussion Forum in
Great Britain. It enjoys substantial support and involvement from key
stakeholders within UK Parliament, government, regulatory bodies,
industry, consumer's organisations and other interested groups. The
forums organize senior level seminars on public policy in these
sectors. Each Westminster Forum Projects forum is structured to
facilitate the formulation of 'best' public policy by providing policy
makers and implementers, and those with an interest in the issues,
with a sense of the way different stakeholder perspectives
interrelate. Usually this is through impartially-framed, inclusive
discussion conducted either in public or under the Chatham House Rule.
Forum events are frequently the platform for major policy statements
from senior Ministers and regulators, opposition spokesmen and leading
opinion formers in industry and interest groups. Events regularly
receive prominent coverage in the national media and trade press.

During both my keynote and the ensuing Q&A session it became quite
clear that the future of Cloud Computing is clearly found within the
rise of regionalized cloud providers both from an economic standpoint
as well as from a policy, compliance and regulatory one. A reoccurring
theme had to do with the impact of geopolitical data governance and
privacy as relating to remote cloud based environments. It is also
clear that the UK government is fully committed to embracing all
aspects of cloud computing with the recent launch of data.gov.uk as a
great example. But major issues still remain.

One issue is that of the so called digital divide, something I liken
more towards a "information divide" where the urban populations have
much greater access to information via better Internet connections
than the more rural populations. Like many established economies, the
UK suffers from a legacy communications infrastructure which makes
modernizing IP networks problematic at best. In direct contrast other
areas of the world like South Korea where a significant portion of the
population has fibre to their homes are at a distinct advantage when
it comes to equipping their populations with latest and greatest cloud
based infrastructure, and more importantly applications.

Another one of the points I raised during my keynote is "Information
is Power" and faster you can collect, organize, analyze and utilize it
-- the more competitive you will be as both an individual and
collectively as a country. In my usual fashion I was blunt, the fact
is currently many Western Countries are losing this new data centric
arms race to places like China. To remain competitive in the 21st
century the West will need to embrace this new data/cloud centric
world with policies and laws that make working in the places like the
UK and beyond less restrictive -- again assuming a certain level of
oversight.

Another point I raised was around information technology as the great
democratizer . What I mean is we can't always agree on the politics of
the various government around the globe (i.e. The Socialized
Capitalism of China), but what we can agree on is that access to
information, even information this heavily restricted provides a level
of empowerment never seen before and at the end of the day,
information wants to be free.

[Sam Johnston]

Ok, I'll bite as enough's enough... setting aside the question as to why the UK would feel it necessary to import a "Freelance Web & Graphic Designer For Hire" from Canada with the likes of Simon Wardley right under their nose, I'm quite convinced your claims that "the future of Cloud Computing is clearly found within the rise of regionalized cloud providers" and subsequently that "the emerging group of thousands of regional [providers] collectively will greatly out power that of any single Amazon deployment" are completely and utterly without basis. Where's the proof? And no, the tiny Swedish ISP you referenced in your followup post (Amazon EC2's Greatest Threat is Cloud Regionalization) does not make for a convincing argument - back up your assertions with facts or don't make them in the first place (especially when your "keynote" follows the "keynote" of the very company whose position you are deliberately and disingenuously undermining).

In my personal opinion your "regional cloud providers" have a snowflake's chance in hell of competing with the likes of Amazon who (in addition to having a multi-year head start, an enormous [global] customer base, substantial capital, economies of [massive] scale, custom-designed hardware and software and operational efficiency that would blow your mind) use open source infrastructure and are thus free of the [significant] virtualisation tax that proprietary vendors like Enomaly and VMware seek to exact from them. That's a fine business strategy that's worked very well for others in the past, but it doesn't give you any right whatsoever to get up in front of the "the predominant governmental public discussion forum" which "enjoys substantial support and involvement from key stakeholders" and claim that "the future of Cloud Computing is clearly found" right where your (fundamentally insecure) product happens to be today.

Keeping this thread somewhat on-topic, your random diatribe about interoperability is completely unbecoming of someone claiming to be the "instigator" of any interoperability forum: "As for interoperability, well it turns out that in an emergent market interoperability is mostly dictated by the platform with the broadest level of deployment. Not who's most open or who's cheaper or even who's technically better. It's who's the most pervasive and at the end of the day it's the install base that matters most." (You may have given up on the idea of an Open [Inter]cloud but I know I'm not alone in saying I haven't).

Finally, I'd suggest "Collapse of the dragon" as a useful counterpoint to the outlandish claim that "Western Countries are losing this new data centric arms race to places like China".

Sam

PS: NNTR - I'm over it, have a bunch of skiing to do and far more important projects to focus on.

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[Michael Mudd]

As a long time resident of China (both the mainland and Hong Kong) I
can assure all that 'the West' has nothing to fear about an
'information arms race'; with China. The Chinese government is
creating the worlds biggest Intranet which is intended to insulate
China from the rest of the world. The 'Great Firewall of China' as
such is not a threat at all, quite the opposite - its an opportunity
to show the strength of openness and interoperability in forward
looking technologies of which Cloud Computing is one.

Michael R K Mudd 麦米高,The Open Computing Alliance, Hong Kong SAR, China
www.opencomputingalliance.org

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[Sam Johnston]

On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 7:07 AM, Michael Mudd <asiait...@gmail.com> wrote:

As a long time resident of China (both the mainland and Hong Kong) I can assure all that 'the West' has nothing to fear about an 'information arms race'; with China. The Chinese government is creating the worlds biggest Intranet which is intended to insulate China from the rest of the world.

This touches on a far more important discussion that needs to be had - the various negative effects of ill-conceived Internet censorship on the fledgling cloud computing industry (indeed it's hard to imagine a *positive* effect that filtering of any type can have). This would have been a far more important message to get across at this critical point in the negotiations than the selfish "regional cloud provider" pipedream. As an Australian expat planning to return at some point in the future I am very interested in the discussion taking place down under (as embarrassing as it is) and hope that serious consideration be given to our competitiveness both as an importer and exporter of cloud services. You too should be worried about this because western governments tend to track such "advances" closely (there are already widespread discussions underway as you can see from Wikipedia's Internet Censorship articles) and those of countries like Iran are more than happy to use them to justify their own far-reaching censorship programs. That said I have little faith in our ability to come to a sensible decision with the "War on [Terror|Child Pornography|Beastiality|...]" well under way so I am glad that Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Pirate Party Australia are doing a great job on my behalf (as a member of both). Yesterday's eBay listing of "Carrier Grade Filtering Technology - Barely Used" is a light-hearted look at some of the issues, but nobody is talking about cloud computing and later it will be too late.

Here's the relevant section from my recent post "A word on the Australian Internet censorship scandal" (which is worth taking a look at even if just for the pic of cute furry animals):

Another consideration that has not been covered anywhere near enough is the performance impact on cloud computing services. Web interfaces like Facebook, Twitter and Gmail are extremely sensitive to latency introduced by proxies and raw computing services like Amazon's S3 are sensitive to bandwidth limitations. Then you have the problem of platforms like Google App Engine, Google Sites & Microsoft Web Office which are both difficult to identify (they have many IPs which are not disclosed and difficult if not impossible to enumerate) and which host content for a massive number of customers. If even one person shares a document deemed obnoxious to their sensibilities then the performance will be reduced to unacceptable levels for everyone until it is removed (and then some).

It is my contention that censorship is completely incompatible with cloud computing, and that this alone is reason enough to scuttle it. In the mean time Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) has just landed themselves a new life member and I encourage anyone who cares about their future and that of their children to join as well (my friends in the USA may want to take a look at the EFF and Europeans the FFII).

I completely agree with your observation that:

The 'Great Firewall of China' as such is not a threat at all, quite the opposite - its an opportunity to show the strength of openness and interoperability in forward looking technologies of which Cloud Computing is one.

Thanks for your efforts in this area with the Open Computing Alliance.

Sam

[tluk...@exnihilum.com]

>> "the "War on [Terror|Child Pornography|Beastiality|...]"

The government's idea of using Internet censorship to battle these things in the 21st century is as ridiculous as if they had tried to battle their Communism "boogey-man" in the 1950's by preventing people from using the telephone to talk to each other.

TJL

-----Original Message-----
From: "Sam Johnston" [sa...@samj.net]
Date: 02/13/2010 05:46 AM
To: cloud...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Global Governmental Cloud Computing

On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 7:07 AM, Michael Mudd <asiait...@gmail.com> wrote:
As a long time resident of China (both the mainland and Hong Kong) I can assure all that the West has nothing to fear about an information arms race; with China. The Chinese government is creating the worlds biggest Intranet which is intended to insulate China from the rest of the world.

This touches on a far more important discussion that needs to be had - the various negative effects of ill-conceived Internet censorship on the fledgling cloud computing industry (indeed its hard to imagine a *positive* effect that filtering of any type can have). This would have been a far more important message to get across at this critical point in the negotiations than the selfish "regional cloud provider" pipedream. As an Australian expat planning to return at some point in the future I am very interested in the discussion taking place down under (as embarrassing as it is) and hope that serious consideration be given to our competitiveness both as an importer and exporter of cloud services. You too should be worried about this because western governments tend to track such "advances" closely (there are already widespread discussions underway as you can see from Wikipedias Internet Censorship articles) and those of countries like Iran are more than happy to use them to justify their own far-reaching censorship programs. That said I have little faith in our ability to come to a sensible decision with the "War on [Terror|Child Pornography|Beastiality|...]" well under way so I am glad that Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Pirate Party Australia are doing a great job on my behalf (as a member of both). Yesterdays eBay listing of "Carrier Grade Filtering Technology - Barely Used" is a light-hearted look at some of the issues, but nobody is talking about cloud computing and later it will be too late.

Heres the relevant section from my recent post "A word on the Australian Internet censorship scandal" (which is worth taking a look at even if just for the pic of cute furry animals):

Another consideration that has not been covered anywhere near enough is the performance impact on cloud computing services. Web interfaces like Facebook, Twitter and Gmail are extremely sensitive to latency introduced by proxies and raw computing services like Amazons S3 are sensitive to bandwidth limitations. Then you have the problem of platforms like Google App Engine, Google Sites & Microsoft Web Office which are both difficult to identify (they have many IPs which are not disclosed and difficult if not impossible to enumerate) and which host content for a massive number of customers. If even one person shares a document deemed obnoxious to their sensibilities then the performance will be reduced to unacceptable levels for everyone until it is removed (and then some).

It is my contention that censorship is completely incompatible with cloud computing, and that this alone is reason enough to scuttle it. In the mean time Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) has just landed themselves a new life member and I encourage anyone who cares about their future and that of their children to join as well (my friends in the USA may want to take a look at the EFF and Europeans the FFII).

I completely agree with your observation that:

The Great Firewall of China as such is not a threat at all, quite the opposite - its an opportunity to show the strength of openness and interoperability in forward looking technologies of which Cloud Computing is one.

Thanks for your efforts in this area with the Open Computing Alliance.

Sam

--

[Rao Dronamraju]

Micheal,

Aren't "the great firewall of China" and openness are antonyms?....

As you said, they are building an INTRANET not INTERNET....as you know in the internet/web speak, INTRANET is a corporate net CLOSED and NOT OPEN, like the INTERNET.

Also you say, the west has nothing to fear....what about all the reports (I am not with NSA, so I do not know for sure) about chinese state supported hacking of western web sites.

The great wall of china may be one of the WONDERS of the world but
The (communist) great firewall will be one of the great BLUNDERS of the world:-)

-----Original Message-----
From: cloud...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cloud...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Michael Mudd
Sent: Saturday, February 13, 2010 12:08 AM
To: cloud...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Global Governmental Cloud Computing

[Derik]

agreed, all this boils down to political ideologies.

In essence, when the Internet pipes are state owned such
"great" (fire)walls of nation-states become state owned too. When
ideologies crack the political systems and societies, state owned
media becomes the means to "crack" down and suppress such cracks. In
those old days, these things were similar to trade barriers, control
of the shipping channels, pirates and whatnot.

If indeed information is money and wealth, such free flow of
information enables free flow of money and wealth. Thus, the free flow
of capital built amazing economies and a few world wars. Obviously,
such flow of capital in an uncontrolled manner gave us our US economic
meltdown that ripples thru the global ecconomy.

Ultimately, ecconomic realities will build or tear down these walls.
In the short haul, all this will drive nation-states to build out such
defenses that matching offenses will be created. Thus, the future of
cyber defenses and offenses seems logical and then out of such
darkness will emerge the light.

As technologists, we need to participate in all things socio-political-
economic idealogies in each of our nation-states. Some of us may
indeed be "political prisoners" for standing up to whatever ideology
we believe. I already see many in the Internet pipes and media as
already being suppressed and wacked, albeit in some geographies. All
the same, I have also seen some unsuppressed crap being exported to
the world. Obviously, my crap is defined differently than other's
crap. All the same, some of us technologists will work the cloud into
such nation-states.

After all, anything is possible in the cloud, even securing and
hacking it.

Derik Pereira

@Derik66

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