The old saying is “everything that goes around, comes around.” It is perpetually true for IT. When I started in IT thirty years ago, the IBM representatives were trying to convince all of us young arrogant radicals that the distributed PCs were evil, and that the big mainframe was the only economic answer. They claimed that PCs only used 1% to 5% of the available CPU cycles and wasted storage by requiring us to have copies of everything everywhere. In addition, it cost more to store 1 MB of data on a PC ($20.65/MB in 1982) when compared to a mainframe shared storage system ($.63/MB). Yes, only 63 cents and the cost per CPU cycle was equally weighted in favor of putting the next set of applications on the mainframe with its cheap terminals. But we persisted in going forward with this PC technology anyway.

In the mean time, we spent the last 30 years educating the entire industrial working population on how to use the computer, re-invented network-based printing and spooling, re-invented shared storage—now its called a SAN (Storage Area Network)—and are looking at cheaper end user equipment called thin clients (we called them dumb terminals 30 years ago).

So the corporate culture is coming around again. Now, the corporate prestige of “everyone a PC expert” is gone. People are willing to release their personal grip on the physical technology, realizing that the real value is in what we do with the information. Analysis of information is what creates corporate importance for the professional, not controlling the hardware.

So here comes the full cycle. We are again realizing that centralized management of information is economically the best way of controlling the rising costs of IT, de-duplication of data is not only cheaper in a “mainframe”-like environment called a “virtual Machine” (VM), but it’s easier to control its safe keeping with centralized backup procedures. And all of this is more economic when managed with a centralized staff of professionals in a managed, secure data center.

After 30 years, it has come around! Oh yeah, 30 years ago they called “Virtual Machines”…“Virtual Machines.”

John Boyd

Every year our technology budgets are asked to do more with less, deflation. But in fact, IT budgets have actually grown steadily by 3-5% over the past 30 years, inflation. IT professionals have reduced the cost per megabyte, cost per CPU cycle, cost per megabit transmitted; but the reality is that we are just using so much more of each that the cost does not go down, instead, usage pressures our budgets to climb.

Over-consumption? In some respects. In storage, we are now seeing that new technologies are available to reduce the amount of information we store without making people decide what to keep and what to delete…we all know that we are either pack rats with our information, or just afraid that we will delete the last copy of the funniest email ever!

We have over-consumed in CPU cycles too. We have listened to each of our vendors that threatened us to put their application on an individual server so that the “other” application would not interfere. Well, most of the time, they are the “other” application that was written in haste and without regard for sharing a common environment. This has created a glut of servers congesting our data centers and inflating our use of power to have billions of CPU cycles sitting idle in each individual server, not willing to share the excess with another.

Well, we said inflation is good! And it has been. We now have budget constraints from inflationary use of technology that are driving new solutions. Now that we have created the financial pressures where the current methods of computing are inflating costs out of control, the industry is responding with new methodologies to deal with the environment.

The technology to control the over-consumption of storage is called “de-duplication” on SANs, and it can reduce storage requirements 10-fold.

The CPU challenge is managed with Virtual Machine Technology that allows everyone to play in their own space and not interfere with the “other” application on a common server. This reduces the number of servers and the power required by a factor typically quoted at 5 to 1.

And the over consumption of the network? The cost per bit transmitted is still getting cheaper…so the motive to create a solution to conserve must wait.

See, Inflation is good!

John Boyd