BPM-EAI

Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll - was his pen name) a mathematics professor in Oxford University, wrote in his famous book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland“[1] some strange occurances in curious places.

To reassure herself that she understood the strange happenings, Alice says: “I’ll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is - oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate.”

In his notes to Carroll’s book, The Annotated Alice[2], a mathematician Martin Gardner provides a nice explanation for Alice’s bizarre multiplication table. He proposes that Alice is simply using bases other than 10. For example, if we use base 18, then 4 X 5 = 20 will indeed be written as 12, because 20 (base 10) is 1 Unit of 18 and 2 Units of 1. [1X18(1) + 2X18(0)].

As a different base of mathematics is used for representing numbers in computers, like binary and hexadecimal for internal computations and calculations; and different formats like ASCII, Unicode, ISCII, ISFOC etc for displaying them to humans; We need to look at a different models of computing for hosting applications on the cloud and a different computing model for the internal functioning of the application to be hosted.

Another example to emphasis the need for different model of computing would be from the world of first Cloud - the power grid. Alternate Current (model of power) is used for transmitting power over long distances, while Direct Current (model of power) is used for operating electronic appliances internally. It may sound nontechnical to use the term model of power for AC and DC, but used the same for simplicity’s sake.

Suppose we think of an application’s core functionality, say CRM/Accounts/Human Capital Management etc to be the DC of application, and then we need to be consider the aspects like Billing, Pay-per-use, Security, and Data Integrity as the AC of the applications.

I am not aware of what the AC/DC of the future applications are going to be, but just trying to draw similarities for those who are building applications with Cloud as platform. Of course, there are many platforms and tools readily available for creating applications specific for the clouds, but most of them are targeted towards individual user, like mails, social networking, document/video/content sharing etc.

While corporate customers would look forward to Enterprise Class of applications on Cloud platform, with robust security, flexibility to tailor, to migrate from one platform to another on need basis, or totally in-house the application with data etc. we will live to see more interesting developments in times to come.

At Infosys, our R&D unit SETLabs along with ThinkTank have thought about the future needs of enterprises and are focusing on Cloud Computing. For more information about Infosys’ offering on Cloud please refer to this link.

[1] ISBN-10: 0451523202

[2] ISBN-10: 0393048470

Posted by Anil Prasad Kurnool at 5:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The cloud computing concept cuts across verticals. And another one which goes along in utilities is Smart Grid. What do they have in common? Cloud computing being consumer focused at this time and even though smart grid aspires to be a consumer focused technology it is likely to get onto the cloud to get into mainstream.

Today, there is no visibility on the chain of power generation to determine how and where it's being used and whether its delivery is as efficient as possible. Like today's data center for computing purposes there is no equivalent in Utilities to effectively manage power. The data level / technical implementation include real-time alerts and other notifications based on the urgency of the event and require attention immediately, whereas bulk transactions can be process at higher time intervals. With the shift to cloud computing as an upcoming change in the industry, part of this shift attributes to the opening of cloud platforms. This means managing demand better, participation by consumers, which means better analysis and management of power demand; giving consumers higher control such as being able to generate their own energy, being able to sell the extra energy by sending it back to the grid. Optimizing assets and operating efficiently that can control the players of the grid to save un-used electricity meaning more distribution of power generated. One of the main features for the grid is self-healing that can be achieved on the cloud. If anything goes wrong at one place, network should be able to route through other sources. Moreover, making the grid hacker-proof as much as possible and ensuring innovation through new products, markets and services. The idea is how much can the cloud be leveraged than only using web services. However, cloud computing not only provides more computing resources based on demand but also provisions new services and capabilities as needed by individual customers. Implementation of smart grid will mean utilities needing to store much more data about customer usage, meter information, readings etc. than now.

Not forgetting the customer, getting them involved, provide them access to the data that is being captured by the utility, that too real time is essential for the entire solution to be effective. If it's for a "Smart" cloud it would dynamically manage the capacity as it relates to power, just the same way when user demand changes. This capability provides both the customer and the utility with benefits. These issues all point to the greater need to understand how we're using our valuable resource. I believe that the future strength is the ability to maintain the level of growth which depends on successful adoption of Grid.

Posted by Raksha Kadam at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)