The Pervasive Data Center

We've been hearing a lot about thinner client devices of late. Netbooks are a hot topic, whether or not they're really a distinct category of device. I've wondered if there might not be a role for a sort of ebook-on-steroids. And Google's Chrome OS, pitched for a browser-centric world, had the digerati all in a flutter a few weeks back.

A lot of this activity reflects a general move away from software that is locally installed and run on a traditional PC to software and services housed on servers out on the network--in the cloud, to use the lingo du jour. It's enabled in no small part by increasingly pervasive networks including wireless ones of various kinds.

However, although cloud computing tracks improvements in networks, it doesn't necessarily sync up so cleanly with the parallel improvements going on in computers themselves. As a commenter put it in a recent post of mine: "The thing that I don't understand about the move to "cloud-based services" is that it seems at odds with Moore's Law. Specifically, devices are going to have more & more processing power, disk space & memory - why would you want to offload processing to the cloud?"

This is a deceptively deep comment and one that touches a lot of basic architectural questions about how we will run software and where we will run it.

One thought is that we're not really running counter to Moore's Law. Rather, we're moving the increased number of transistors that Moore's Law gives us from the client to the server. We're making clients thinner (and therefore more portable, cooler, and so forth) and the servers fatter.

There's some truth in that with mobile phones perhaps offering the clearest illustration.

But, for more notebook-like clients there's a lot of processor and graphics horsepower on the local computer that's going to waste much of the time. And, in any case, telecommunications infrastructure places hard limits on bandwidth for a given time of place, but we can dial up and down our local compute horsepower by selecting devices with different characteristics. So it makes more sense to favor local processing much of the time.

In fact, the fundamental thing that thinner clients and cloud computing tackle isn't really the movement of computing off the client but rather the movement of "state" off the client--which is to say data, applications, and customizations specific to a given user.

As a practical matter, most clients still store some amount of state. In the days of  old, terminals didn't store anything locally. Sun's Sun Ray line comes closest to replicating this experience in modern thin clients. However, even browsers store cookies and can be configured with extensions and plug-ins that will vary from one installation to the next.

And, for most purposes, this is probably a reasonable enough state of affairs. Our personal devices are personal anyway; we just want to get away from having to load and manage custom software for each individual task that we want to do. Shared, public clients are a different matter, of course. However, in this case, a lowest-common-denominator software load (such as a browser) is typically sufficient.

There is clearly a lot  of work left to do and battles, both technical and political, left to fight to arrive at the best architectural models and programming practices for this new generation of client-server computing. For example, do "rich Internet applications" live in the browser a la Microsoft's Silverlight or is a separate framework such as  Adobe's AIR a better approach? Where do .NET and Java fit in?

These (and many others) are not small questions. Application writers need to understand at a very granular level the environment for which they're writing. And there is very much a tension between richness of the client experience and the degree to which we can standardize and simplify that client.

There's a bit of an anti-Netbooks meme making the rounds in blogs and on Twitter and the expected push-back from their fans. From where I sit, this is fueled partially by the conflating of product and product category, partially by competitive sniping, and partially by genuine consumer confusion. Let me try to tease those threads apart.

I've been skeptical from pretty much the beginning that there was a bright line distinction between Netbooks and other inexpensive, small form-factor notebooks. And it's this lack of a truly standalone category that analyst Michael Gartenberg is writing about in his provocatively titled "Netbooks R.I.P."

"What's in a name?" Shakespeare asked, adding "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." While some perceive the netbook as a new product category -- a class of device that's never existed -- I would have to beg to differ. A netbook is merely a laptop with the pivotal axis based on price first and foremost... Sure, my price-oriented definition might sound heretical to those who view the netbook as an ode to cloud computing, ubiquitous usage scenarios, and freedom from Microsoft OS tyranny, but that's not how the market has shaped out.

The current generation of Netbooks tends to have certain defining characteristics--specifically Intel Atom processors and the Windows XP (or Linux). But, as Gartenberg notes, a 7-inch screen also used to be a defining characteristic. Now many Netbooks come with 10-inch screens. Come Windows 7 and future processor generations from Intel (and AMD), I expect any clear distinctions that exist today to rapidly blur.

That's not to say that analysts and product managers won't create a bucket for small, price-focused notebooks. They may call that bucket "Netbooks." They may call it "Value Ultraportables." They may call it "Fred."

IT industry people like to chop markets into named categories for reasons of their own, even if as a fellow analyst said at a recent meeting: "the average consumer calls everything a laptop anyway."

One reason that the nomenclature fight around Netbooks is more intense than such battles tend to be is that the distinction between Netbooks and other ultra-portable notebooks is also a fault line in a competitive battle between Intel and AMD.

For Intel, Netbooks have been the big product category win for its Atom processor. (If a somewhat serendipitous win. Atom was originally more focused on a new class of "Mobile Internet Devices" (MID), a product category that so far hasn't taken off.) For its part, AMD has focused on an incrementally higher price and processing power point with its Athlon Neo platform (found in the HP dv2).

As a result, it's in Intel's interests to promote Netbooks as something new that is both apart from and incremental to the notebooks that use higher-end (and higher dollar) Intel parts. At the same time, it's in AMD's interest to denigrate Netbooks as underpowered and not real PCs.

Finally, there is a continuing trickle of evidence, such as this NPD Group report, suggesting that consumer satisfaction with Netbooks isn't all that great.

Like James Robertson, this latest report struck me as a bit curious. Many of the people I know with Netbooks are almost excessively fond of them. However, it's fair comment that most of the people I know as also geeks, are attracted to the new and different, and understand what a Netbook class of device can do--and what it can't. It doesn't stretch credulity to imagine less educated consumers taking a $300 notebook home and then being dissatisfied because it's not a general replacement for a $1,000 notebook.

Highly portable notebooks without the road warrior premiums historically associated with portability are a great advance for consumers. But I'm also excited about the devices that new screen technologies and widespread wireless connectivity could enable. The possibilities in this space are great. Netbooks are just a flavor of notebook.

One of the questions related to client computing that I've been exploring of late is whether we're likely to see a mainstream mobile device or devices emerge between a smartphone and an ultra-portable notebook.

My Illuminata colleague Jonathan Eunice and I debated this subject on a video recently--mostly in the context of long battery life, instant on/off mini-notebooks of various sorts. The HP Jornada 820 of the late 1990s is one possible prototype for such a device, suitably updated for a wirelessly connected world. The stillborn Palm Foleo is another take.

I'm perhaps more skeptical than my colleague that we'll see the right intersection of technologies, costs, and use cases to support a mainstream mobile--but not pocketable--computer that's not a full notebook but has other attributes that make it compellingly better for people on the go.

(This is the point where someone jumps up and yells "NETBOOKS!" To which my response is that Netbooks are not really a category. Leaving aside for the nonce an apparent weakening of their most faddish popularity, Netbooks are really just cheap notebooks. Low price is their distinguishing feature, not battery life or anything else that makes them particularly suited to throwing in a backpack. Even their weight is little different from the best of the ultraportable notebooks.)

Of course, in a sense, we have lots of tweeners today. We have digital cameras, portable gaming consoles such as the Nintendo DS, and e-ink based e-book readers like Amazon's Kindle. But these are all optimized for very specific purposes; they're in no sense general purpose computers or even subsets of computers optimized for mobility.

However, a recent post by ZDNet's Jason Perlow "Forget Kindle DX. How about the ZuneBook?" got me thinking. Might some form of  tablet one day be a tweener of choice?

Let me be crystal clear about one point. I'm not talking about tablet PCs as we know them today. They have their adherents but most people find that it's hard to use them for many of the things that PCs are good for (like writing using a keyboard) while simultaneously carrying over notebook baggage such as weight, relatively short battery life, longish boot times, and so forth.

Rather I'm thinking of something that is physically thin, light, easy to read in sunlight, instant on/off, multitouch screen, wirelessly connected using both Wi-Fi and cellular networks, and about the size of an 8.5-inch by 11-inch pad of paper. I imagine a software environment that isn't necessarily general purpose but could be extended to at least some degree. Google Android or Windows Mobile might be possibilities. Think of it as an e-book reader on steroids.

Such a device isn't possible today even if you leave out the question of what it would cost if it could theoretically be built. The display is the real killer. A color, e-paper, multitouch display is a few years out. OLEDs will improve on existing LCDs on several dimensions--notably, in this context, battery life and thickness. However, OLED technology still doesn't get you to the same easy-on-the-eyes-even-in-sunlight point and all-day-plus battery life as e-paper.

But it seems an interesting direction for device makers to explore. Once the foundation technologies are available, it's something that could deliver qualitatively different experiences than either a pocketable smartphone or a notebook with a keyboard. And that's the sort of compelling differentiation that a tweener device will need to make it big.

LAS VEGAS--The Day One keynotes at Citrix Synergy 2009 were about users and desktops. Today was nominally about data centers and clouds--of which there were a variety of announcements. However, Citrix's XenClient ("Project Independence") loomed large as well.

Of the products discussed on stage, XenClient is perhaps furthest from being a fully realized product. But is also offers an intriguing window into how the PC as we know it is likely to fundamentally change over the coming years.

XenClient is a "Type 1" native hypervisor that sits on a PC and hosts one or more guest operating systems. This approach contrasts with the "Type 2" hosted hypervisors that are far more common on PCs today.

There are good reasons why we tend to see native hypervisors on servers and hosted hypervisors on desktops. Native hypervisors are higher performance, especially when it comes to interacting with networks and disks. As a result, it wasn't until native hypervisors like VMware ESX Server and Xen came to market that x86 virtualization started to seriously move beyond useful but relatively narrow uses such as in test and development labs.

The downside of native hypervisors is that, because they sit directly on top of a system's hardware, they have to take over a variety of the functions that an operating system usually performs. For example, a native hypervisor has to deal with things like power management and needs to know how to talk to graphics cards and chips, network and storage adapters, and other system hardware.

(Depending upon the virtualization architecture in question, some device interactions can be passed through to the guest operating systems, but the point remains that a native hypervisor is exposed to hardware details and idiosyncrasies that are masked if the hypervisor is hosted on an operating system.)

The great diversity of client hardware relative to server hardware therefore makes running native hypervisors on a PC tricky business.

It's also been the case that vendors haven't exactly pushed client-side virtualization--in contrast to using application virtualization to deliver software to clients--in a broad way. Hosted virtualization products handle specific use cases such as security (VMware ACE), running Windows applications on Macs (Parallels Desktop for Mac, VMware Fusion), and software development (VirtualBox, VMware Workstation). Start-ups are also tackling the security angle with alternative approaches. RingCube uses containers. Neocleus uses a Xen-based native hypervisor.

But no large vendor has seriously pushed a broad-based Type 1 hypervisor for the client. Microsoft, for its part, has been publicly skeptical about the idea. (Not especially surprising given that Microsoft has only reluctantly embraced virtualization--in part because native virtualization takes over some of the traditional tasks of the operating system.)

That changes with XenClient, a project that Citrix has collaborated on closely with Intel.

Here's how Citrix describes XenClient and its vision for desktop computing:

XenClient is a strategic product initiative with partners like Intel, focused on local virtual desktops. We are working together to deliver on our combined vision for the future of desktop computing.

This new virtualization solution will extend the benefits of hosted desktop virtualization to millions of mobile workers with the introduction of a new client-side bare metal hypervisor that runs directly on each end user's laptop or PC. This together with an innovative back-end desktop management solution for creating, delivering, and updating corporate desktop computing environments will transform the way corporate desktops are delivered and managed, giving IT all the security, simplicity and cost savings of centralized management, with an unprecedented level of performance, personalization and freedom for end users.

To net it out, Citrix is pushing for a future in which a hypervisor is a standard abstraction layer for every cleint and server--just the way that x86 architectures of all stripes are architected and built. Think of it as a BIOS on steroids if you will.

Citrix's interest here is obvious. After all, its strategy is to make money from managing virtualized environments. Thus, continuing with a theme from Synergy's first day, XenClient--like XenServer--will be free when made available later this year.

Intel's interest here is that XenClient is specifically targeted for systems with vPro technology. vPro includes:

• Intel Virtualization Technology (VT)--hardware assists for improved virtualization performance
• Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT)--formerly called LaGrande, provides hardware-based rooted security
• Intel Active Management Technology (AMT)--hardware management technology

Intel's Pat Gelsinger said in his keynote that vPro is ramping quickly--he claimed it was in 60 percent of the Fortune 100--but Intel is doubtless actively seeking more reasons to get businesses to upgrade to their latest and greatest client platforms.

The vision here seems a sound one. After all, IT vendors have essentially been adding layers of abstraction to mask complexity since the beginning. Even an operating system is an example of abstraction (actually many of them rolled into one software package). And use cases involving personal PCs used to access corporate networks or protected VMs that run security scanners seem far less esoteric than they did even just a couple of years back.

The question is more one of time frame. When do compelling uses get made available by software vendors in largely transparent ways for end users who are not developers or otherwise ready, willing, and able to explicitly manipulate multiple virtual machines on a single client? It isn't this year but there's a lot of reason to believe that this is the direction the client is headed.

LAS VEGAS--The consumerization of the Web will be as disruptive to distributed computing as distributed computing was to the mainframe. That was the central theme of Citrix Systems CEO Mark Templeton's keynote speech at this week's Synergy 2009 conference.

Mark Templeton, CEO, Citrix Systems

(Credit: Citrix)

This is an oversimplification, of course. Over the years, companies have run their business software in many different ways--not all of which are easily categorized as either mainframe-like or PC-like. One whole era of computing architectures during roughly the 1980s commonly went by the term "client-server." However, if we think of how distributed computing in the enterprise has evolved, this broad-brush statement makes a lot of sense.

That's because the enterprise PC isn't really a personal computer any longer. The administrative and security requirements around desktop and notebook devices running an increasingly complex stew of locally installed software have seen to that. In many enterprises, they're stringently locked down as a way to protect their often fragile software payloads from corruption.

This is a drum that virtualization and cloud-computing specialist Citrix has been pounding for quite a while. Writing after Citrix iForum (Synergy's predecessor) in November 2007, I noted:

We've seen and heard a lot of praise for the democratic impulse associated with this particular phase of computing that often goes by the Web 2.0 moniker. Anyone can post. Anyone can publish. Anyone can photograph. Your vote matters in social media.

And alternative ways of accessing and running applications have indeed made it easier to do things outside of a strict IT framework. In his closing iForum keynote, Citrix CEO Mark Templeton used the phrase "making the personal computer personal again" for this idea.

It's perhaps not too surprising that the proffered solution to this problem is a variety of technologies that Citrix collectively describes as application delivery. The framework to think about it is something like a satellite TV system. A controller, a delivery network, and a receiver transmit and receive the bits; they do so independently of the actual end-point device (i.e. the TV) and the content, so long as those adhere to certain interface standards.

One could use such an architecture to deliver enterprise applications to a truly personal notebook, an employee's personal system rather than an IT asset. Although still relatively uncommon in an enterprise context when it comes to PCs, it's a fairly common model with smartphones, though we're starting to see the beginnings of such an approach in the PC space too.

What this means specifically in a Citrix environment is that Citrix Delivery Center "head-end controllers" such as XenApp and XenDesktop advertise services--that is, applications that are available for users to run. New services or service updates are then loaded or streamed to a client.

One of Tuesday's major announcements was Citrix Receiver, which the company describes as "the first universal client for IT service delivery":

Under the hood, Citrix Receiver is a lightweight universal software client with an extensible browser-like "plug-in" architecture. Receiver comes standard with a variety of optional plug-ins that communicate with head-end infrastructure in the Citrix Delivery Center product family such as XenApp, XenDesktop, Citrix Access Gateway, and Branch Repeater.

These plug-ins support functionality such as online and offline app usage, virtual-desktop delivery, secure access control, password management, app acceleration, multimedia acceleration, service-level monitoring, and voice communications. This model enables IT to effectively operate as a service provider to their own employees, proactively and transparently monitoring end-user experience from a central location.

Receiver is available for Windows, Macs, and iPhones. Citrix also plans to support Windows Mobile and Symbian operating systems. It's also working with Open Kernel Labs to support Android. In all cases, Receiver is free.

In general, as with XenServer, Citrix' strategy is to make its money from the management and delivery software infrastructure rather than all of the base-level components.

The final announcement of the day was Dazzle. It's built on top of Receiver and accesses the same head-end services. It is, in a sense, Citrix application delivery meets Web 2.0.

I mean that in a somewhat metaphorical sense. But Dazzle is a self-service application store for employees that very deliberately and consciously mimics the conventions and approach of something like the iTunes Store. Web 2.0 and cloud-computing attributes, like self-service, device independence, and remote access are what help so many consumer applications make traditional enterprise apps look a bit shopworn by comparison.

And that's what Mark Templeton was talking about when he said the enterprise application delivery model is being disrupted by the consumer Web.

I've been critical of past Microsoft advertising.

The low point may have been calling customers and potential customers dinosaurs for not upgrading to Office 2003.

But Microsoft advertising, in general, has been at best inconsistent, in that it has often spoken to the needs and desires of Microsoft--as opposed to the needs and desires of its customers. (In all fairness, this is hardly a problem unique to Microsoft's advertising or, indeed, to the advertising that comes out of the the tech industry overall.)

But the company's latest, from the Crispin Porter + Boguksy agency, nails it.

As Philip Elmer-DeWitt summarizes:

Her name is "Lauren," and she's making the Apple (AAPL) guys nuts...She's the young, hip, Volkswagen-driving redhead who stars in the latest Microsoft (MSFT) TV campaign. Told that if she can find a 17-inch laptop for under $1,000, she can keep it, Lauren ends up--to the Mac aficionados' dismay--with an HP (HPQ) running Windows Vista.

The message? Sure, Macs are fine. But who can afford one in these times?

The Apple fan club is up in arms. A lot of the reaction is pretty silly and dwells on the fact that the star of the spot is actually an actress and that the events shown are staged. Shocking and surprising, I know.

As for whether the comparison of the 17-inch Apple and HP laptop is completely fair and apples-to-apples? Well, of course it isn't. We're talking advertising here. There has to be a degree of credibility, yes, but absolute objectivity? Hardly.

Best line: the sighingly delivered, "I'm just not cool enough to be a Mac person."

From an advertising perspective, the commercial does have a weakness. It essentially sets the Mac up as the aspirational brand, the laptop that would apparently be Lauren's first choice, if it weren't for its cost. This ad wouldn't fit especially well with a more free-wheeling era.

But this is not that era. And a value message strikes me as a good one for Microsoft in this context, especially as delivered in a light, humorous, and gently hipster-mocking way.

LAS VEGAS--Just like its predecessor a year ago, Silverlight 3 is clearly one of the stars of the Microsoft Mix conference under way here this week.

Silverlight is a Web browser plug-in for Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser. (Silverlight also supports Firefox and Safari browsers and Mac OS X in addition to Microsoft Windows. A primarily Novell-developed plug-in, Moonlight, runs on Linux.) Its initial iteration was narrowly focused on media. However, Silverlight's direction is toward enabling a broad class of "rich Internet applications."

So, for example, Silverlight 3 will allow developers to create lightweight Web application experiences that exist outside the browser and offline. Although it retains a strong focus on media, Silverlight is thus starting to look more like a full-fledged rich Internet application.

I'll discuss Silverlight generally in more detail in a future post. More immediately, I want to focus on one demo that I found to be particularly compelling because it addressed a problem that no one has yet cracked in the Web space yet.

The demo, given by David Anthony of Bondi Digital Publishing and Scott Stanfield of Vertigo, came during Wednesday's keynote speech (see video). Bondi has been working with various publishers to put the back issues of magazines online. Vertigo designs and codes software for Microsoft environments; it has been particularly emphasizing visually rich applications built with Silverlight.

Last year, Vertigo's Hard Rock Cafe memorabilia project was a big hit. It used Silverlight's Deep Zoom feature to allow users to dive into and around a digital display of photos, clothing, art, letters, and so forth connected to a variety of rock musicians. Give it a try; it's easier to experience than to explain.

This year's demo also featured Deep Zoom--combined with Silverlight 3's support for deep linking. That is, bookmarking a page within a rich Internet application. (Technically, deep linking is a server-side feature associated with .Net that Silverlight 3 simply exploits.) This demo may not have had quite the "ooh" factor of the Hard Rock one, but I think that it suggests more interesting and more generally useful possibilities.

This year, the project was putting back issues of Rolling Stone magazine online. The basic concept was to show an "entire issue as though pages had the staples torn out of them" with the addition of search and bookmarking features. Thus, you could "flip" through an issue, and dive in to look at detail, if something caught your eye. It's essentially an attempt to replicate the "zero boot time and random access" of a paper magazine as closely as possible.

That's all very nice, though I have to wonder what sort of business model there is around viewing back issues of magazines.

But this--or something like it--could have enormous potential for things like catalogs.

Think about it. What's the nice thing about the user experience associated with a paper catalog? Well, one big thing is that you can flip through it and dive in for a closer look, if a photo or a description catches your eye. Essentially, catalogs are great for browsing.

Contrast this with the typical online catalog. They're great for searching. If you know more or less what you want, search can quickly filter out the almost infinite things that you're not looking for. But casual paging, seeking serendipity? Not so good.

To give just one personal example, I like to flip through the many catalogs that Sierra Trading Post sends to my home, advertising the various overstocks and otherwise heavily discounted products that it sells. I find trying to do the same on Sierra's Web site a poor substitute, unless I'm actively seeking something in particular.

The sort of experience I saw on the stage with Deep Zoom would seem to combine some of the best of the browsing and searching experience. It improves on aspects of a paper catalog; it has search, and the amount of low-level detail isn't constrained by the limits of the printed page. At the same time, it brings browse ability of the digital domain.

It's sometimes a mistake to attempt to mirror the physical world in our computer software. But the way we interact with physical objects is often more than just ingrained. It can just plain work well too. And if we can augment that physical experience in the process of translation, all the better.

[UPDATE 3/19/09: Clarified Silverlight platflorm support.]

Given that I travel a fair bit, I'm personally interested in the evolution of the devices that we carry with us on the road.

On the one hand, I don't want to be a parody of Dilbert, carrying a bag full of gadgets that have to be charged, synchronized, and corralled. On the other hand, I'm inclined to agree with this statement from a column by travel writer Joe Brancatelli:

And where, I wonder, is my convergence machine, the one that makes calls flawlessly around the world, doubles as my music play, triples as a fully functioning portable computer, and fits in my pocket?

Forget it, says (Phil) Baker, (columnist, author, and inventor of the folding travel keyboard).

"One device will not be sufficient," he says. "We will continue to carry both a pocketable smartphone and a lightweight notebook for serious computing. Trying to combine both in a single device is like combining a toaster and microwave."

I suspect that many of us still carry biases from the computing days of yore, when the base components of computers were expensive. As a result, we tend to bias our thinking toward a few general-purpose devices rather than a few specialized ones.

One such specialization is clearly pocketability. There are many functional compromises, once you drop below a more or less full-size keyboard and screen. On the other hand, there's a major mobility step function between something that fits in a pocket and something that fits in a backpack or briefcase.

And even this divide isn't the whole story. Specialized devices will continue to be better at doing specialized things. They may not do them better enough for the casual user, but if you're really dedicated to gaming, reading, or photography, a Nintendo DS, a Kindle 2, or a digital SLR, respectively, may well be worth the extra cash and the extra clutter.