It’s a really well-thought out system. And I say that having worked as a sysadmin for a number of years.

AWS simply takes all the fuss out of deploying, configuring and managing servers *and* infrastructure. Plus, you have the ability to launch servers from various  locations across the globe. Thus saving up on the cost of bandwidth and also better user experience for the end-user (less latency).

It’s a really well-thought out system. And I say that having worked as a sysadmin for a number of years.

AWS simply takes all the fuss out of deploying, configuring and managing servers *and* infrastructure. Plus, you have the ability to launch servers from various  locations across the globe. Thus saving up on the cost of bandwidth and also better user experience for the end-user (less latency).

Nice service by Amazon. Still learning. It’s a comprehensive offering, almost like an operating system itself and then some more.

Originally published on August 1, 2012

Building up on my last blog-post. Maybe my ideas are not so crazy after all.

I just had this crazy idea and maybe Vishwa Bandhu has something to do with it. This idea is semi-cooked and not even closed to half-baked. But then the comment becomes technically incorrect. Because an idea that is not close to half-baked is thus half-baked. Anyhow. 

Introduction:I’m thinking why doesn’t the industry (Tech Industry) take the entire cloud infrastructure and turn it around 180 degrees. What I mean is that the entire platform is hosted on the cloud and the operating system as a platform is accessible via any given machine [Adequately powered choice of hardware for the consumer]. I am thinking that this goes way beyond how Google has decided to launch theirChromebook offering. Details below.

Details:I just thought of this idea actually and as always I am excited about sharing it. I think I jumped the gun on this one, as in it isn’t completely fleshed out. But, conceptually and theoretically this idea is possible in a future state as it will require a lot of bandwidth. Hence the title of the blog post [PaaS and Optical Fiber]. But again, this is possible and apart from a common set of hardware/drivers and bandwidth requirements, I cannot think of any other major hindrance here.

The Real Details Really, the idea is as simple as what I have described above. So leveraging semantics and scenarios.  In a future state, you will have fat pipes (fiber connection) coming into your home. You would then go and  purchase a “universally compliant” piece of hardware from your local Bestbuy. This hardware would have the ability to run any given platform that you’d like. Be it iOs, chromebooks/android, windows, QNX.

This is something you can do today actually, but in order to do that you’d be leveraging Virtual Machines (Vmware, Virtualbox). And the platform specific data would still be sitting on your local storage.

But by placing the entire platform on the cloud, you have eliminated all the complexity out of the solution and you have also created enormous benefits for the consumer.

Viable? :Technically: Once you have gotten over the roadblock of a) the bandwidth issue and b) common standards for the drivers, then I cannot really think of any other roadblock in order to get this off the ground. Financially: I can see this as being a financial incentive for the consumer. And making money off of hardware is increasingly turning into a game of diminishing rates of return for companies involved in the business. It’s all about the eco-system and multiple streams of revenue generation. So that’s your answer. Companies could band together and work on providing a common hardware for something like this. Or conversely, each one of them could still choose to be a player in the hardware business, but they would then also offer the ability to render the entire platform from a competitor on their physical device. And in a utopian future state environment, you could run two separate PaaS platforms on the same piece of hardware and concurrently at that.

Pros and Cons:Pros first:

1. Game changer product & the subsequent benefits disruptive of a nature
2. Will prove to be a great catalyst for mass scale adoption of fiber. More consumers = normalized rates for greater mass market penetration
3. Infrastructure jobs all across the continent/the world [To lay down that fiber]
4. Satellite upgrades = More R&D jobs
5. Platform upgrades = More developer related jobs
6. The actual benefits that wide scale adoption of fiber will bring with itself. Just think of the possibilities.
7. Building on that note, this will prove to be a positive disruption in so many different ways. With the availability of massive amounts of bandwidth, you could have real time face to face communication in High Definition. Just think about what that means for real time collaboration at work, for families, for education, travel, tourism and virtually any given industry.
8. Healthier global carbon footprint. Since geographic distances would become irrelevant.
9. Trillions of dollars worth of sales over the next 2 decades at the very least.
10. No more updates! Ever!  Since the platform resides in the cloud, it is updated in the cloud. Take that Adobe and Microsoft! Cumulatively this saves a lot of data flowing through the inter tubes as well.
11. Massive cluster and distributed computing platform in the background, running the entire show. Think of all the processing power that can be optimized and saved. This would also result into reduced carbon footprint, as data centers don’t really run on magic (Not yet at the very least).

Cons

1. Reduced face to face and in person communications.
2. The rural disadvantage. Generally, commercial fiber is usually restricted to heavily populated areas. (mostly urban). I don’t know how the satellite to fiber and vice versa implementation would pan out.
3. Privacy considerations. If everything resides on the cloud, then Zero day vulnerabilities should be avoided at all costs. Security, database slicing and ensuring that the data is secured (encryption) would probably need to be of military strength. And then, there is always big brother and it’s penchant for snooping in on your slightly out of control bachelor party pix.

So the mass scale availability of bandwidth by having readily available fiber connections isn’t exactly a new idea. Just ask the South Koreans. But marrying fiber connections with PaaS products that render entirely through the cloud. Now that is food for thought for all the big CEO’s in the Tech world. Cisco’s CEO is probably salivating just reading this and thinking how this would propel the entire world to update their networking gear.

Is this a good idea? Bad? Someone has thought about this already?