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Chrome OS: In the Cloud in less than 7 seconds

Seven seconds. That is the amount of time it takes to boot up a computer with Google’s Chrome OS. After four months of announcing their intention to develop their own OS, Google previewed Chrome OS last Thursday at Mountain View headquarters. However, it will not be available until a year from now, but it represents a fundamental component in Google’s strategy towards building internet based applications, also known a cloud computing. This means that computers will work without the need of heavy proprietary OS installed, with all the data available and synchronized in the cloud. At the end of the day more web use translates into an increase of revenues for Google. That is the reason why Chrome OS has been designed to allow the user to log on faster, eliminating all the stacks performed  by traditional OS with a more PC centric focus. It seems that the free Chrome OS targets low-cost netbooks that mostly run Windows XP and the new Windows 7 today. Moreover, some analysts forecast that low-cost notebooks will be offered by service providers in a analogous ways to the mobile market, where Google is already gaining momentum with Android. Nevertheless, it has to been seen if users are going to trust all their data to Google servers.

What is Google Chrome OS?

Android anyone?

I believe it is time to discuss the effect of the Operating Systems in the mobile space. To date, for the majority of users the operating system in the mobile device has been an indistinguishable part of the device; in fact, for many people, it is hardly noticeable that the usual stack we are accustomed to live with in the PC world (hardware, operating system and applications) is also present in the mobile phone we carry in our pockets, or purse, as it may be he case.

We know from observing the PC industry that the operating system brings invaluable service to the users and developers alike, as it allows for the same application to be able to run in a myriad of different hardware as long as all have the same operating system. In fact, the operating system is the “adapter” that allows the same application software to be compatible with the hardware of many different producers. The “adapter”, if it is able to turn into a “universal adapter”, harnesses huge value capturing power for its owner, as it becomes an indispensable tool for any user. Not for nothing Windows has become the most purchased software program in the world: it is a platform that allows developers to efficiently deploy software for most computers build around the Intel architecture. The value Windows has brought to the IT industry is unquestionable, as it has been its ability to generate wealth for Microsoft.

In the mobile space, and in the smart phone in particular, we have not had to worry too much about operating systems because users have not been installing and running applications on them at the same rate that they do on their PCs. We used to buy a smart phone, the applications were already installed (email, calendar, or whatever), and we used them right away. Different operating systems could coexist as long as manufacturers provided customers with complete solutions and these customers were not looking around for third party applications to run on their devices. But this is changing rapidly. Smart phones are becoming powerful computers and the possibility to have mobility-based applications that solve real business needs is a reality. In this context, it is unavoidable that the market will converge to a single “connector” that will avoid the painstaking effort that current developers have to endure to rewrite their applications for different devices, as they have to do now.

It is clear then, that following the PC model, the stakes are high to try to dominate this market. The owner of the winning operating system will be able to rip enduring long-term profits simply by maintaining a good product in the market at non-abusive prices. Who will win? This is an interesting question. The table above presents the Q3 2009 shipments of the different operating systems compared with those a year ago. Symbian, riding the lead of its owner Nokia in devices, leads the pack with 46.2% of the shipments, followed by RIM (Blackberry) with 20.6% and Apple with 17.8%. Symbian and Apple have increased slightly their market share from a year ago, while RIM has increased it drastically (a whooping 5.4% larger share) at the expense of Microsoft that has dropped its market share of shipments from 13.6% to 8.8%. Of notice is the irruption of Android form Google, that went from not existing a year ago to 3.5% this past quarter. Given the different strategies of the parent companies, the war will be fought between Symbian, Microsoft Windows Mobile, and Android. Why? RIM and Apple are closed platforms; they run only on the hardware developed for their companies, the Blackberry and the iPhone, and they are unlikely to be licensed to run on various hardware, so their abilities to become “the universal connector” is inexistent unless the complete market turns their way and we all end up carrying either a Blackberry or an iPhone, unlikely.

Having said that, the only systems that can run on multiple hardware platforms are Symbian, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, and Google’s Android. Of those, the first two are licensed for a price and when the final user buys a phone, they also purchase the operating system, and a certain amount goes to the rightful owner of the system, much the same way as we do when purchasing a PC. When buying an Android phone, the cost associated with the operating system is zero, as Google makes it available to the developing and hardware community for free. Zero cost, a very sophisticated graphic interface, more than adequate developer tools, and a free killer application like the Earth Navigator (see previous blog post) makes Android my favorite candidate to win this battle. Needless to say that Google, not being a charity, has its own agenda for giving away such a potential money machine. This agenda includes eventually dominating the content distribution and advertising market in mobile, much the same way it dominates in the Internet. Additionally, if a "free" operating system becomes the winner, the purchaser of the device will have extra money to purchase additional third party applications or phones with more capabilities, which also makes the Android a favorite for manufactures and developers alike.

In any case, the next few months will be crucial to see the new devices and applications on Android, their acceptance by the market, and the evolution of these market shares. Then we will be able to bet on the winner with more probability to guess right.

 

 

Going Rogue with Google Docs

A few days ago Palo Alto Networks, a leading manufacturer of enterprise firewall solutions, released its latest semiannual end-user application usage report. The report is based on the analysis of the network traffic that passes through Palo Alto Network’s firewalls deployed on the edge of corporate networks. In other words, the study reflects objective application usage data, not self-reported usage common in this type of research. While there is a bunch of interesting findings in the study, the one that caught my attention was a 300% increase in the use Google Docs (measured as the number of sessions and the bandwidth consumed). The report also states that the use of Google Docs was registered in 82% of the participating companies.

This is huge, isn’t it? But wait a second, how did I miss the big news that enterprise adoption of Google Docs had skyrocketed over the last 6 months?  The Google Apps for Business page doesn’t seem to suggest anything out of the ordinary – the standard sluggishly growing list of adopter companies. The usual suspects, TechnoCrunch, Mashable etc., seem to be silent on the issue as well. So, there must be something else in play here. But what is it?

What we’re dealing here, I think, is unauthorized use of GoogleDocs initiated by employees.  Or the way security folks would put it “rogue” deployments of Google Docs. A 300% jump in rogue deployments -that can’t be good, can it? But why do employees start using GoogleDocs on their own? GoogleDocs is no YouTube, Facebook, or even Twitter for that matter. You can’t really do much with it for fun. It is a personal productivity suite, an online collaborative workspace, and most people would use it …well, for work. What this suggests, perhaps, is that employees turn to Google Docs when a particular project or task requires them to collaborate with others inside and outside of the organization in an easy and unrestricted fashion. They need to be able to start such collaboration pretty much on-demand, but the current enterprise business apps infrastructure at most firms has very little to offer in that department. Hence, a 300% jump in the use of Google Docs.

There is no question that IT departments have the means necessary to shut down the use of Google Docs or other similar cloud apps from within corporate networks. But would this be the right thing to do? As individual users have become accustomed to simple, customizable, and unrestricted ways to connect and interact with people online in their personal lives, they will increasingly expect a similar degree of flexibility and control at work. It doesn’t have to be Google Docs, but the need for an integrated collaborative user-driven enterprise platform has arrived and is here to stay. It’s time now for corporate IT to step up to the plate and work together with the users to put such a platform in place. Everybody will win in the end - the users will become more productive, the company – more agile, and the IT department – well, the IT folks as usual will remain the “unsung heroes”.

The Hardware Battle in the Clouds

As is evident from a recent article in The Economist (as well as several of the past posts on this blog), cloud computing is becoming very prominent in the information technology world. Companies are scrambling to provide new cloud-based services, and people are doing more tasks in the cloud as more cloud systems become available.

However, the cloud-based software that we often hear about is only part of the innovation happening in this area. Hardware makers are also creating new systems to support cloud computing companies. Only a small number of companies (such as Google) are configuring their own cloud-server systems. Many companies are acquiring their cloud systems from traditional hardware providers such as HP, IBM, and Dell.

These providers have had made significant changes to their products in order to meet cloud companies' need for more compact, efficient, and scalable sets of servers. Cloud computing companies prefer economical systems that are optimized to perform a single task, and traditional servers are often built to be robust and flexible, making them too costly and complex for cloud systems. Hardware companies have responded to these new needs by stripping redundant parts from their servers, which works out since the reliability of individual computers in cloud systems is not of key importance, and by making hardware smaller and more efficient.

All the large cloud hardware providers have made it clear that their systems focus on efficiency and scalability. However, they have each also highlighted potentially differentiating strengths of their systems in their marketing materials. Dell has advertised their ability to provide solutions that can support private and public cloud systems, IBM has pushed the fact that their cloud servers are extremely power efficient, and HP has highlighted how easily their web-server systems can scale. The success of these manufacturers with their cloud systems is not clear yet; however, it is known that Dell already supplies hardware to a number of the key cloud companies (including Microsoft), and so they may have an early lead in the cloud computing hardware race.