On Cloud 9 – digital everything

This is the Lightning Talk I gave for Sydney Cloud Camp, held in the Google Australia office last week. It's about convergence of cloud computing and digital everything. It’s a very happy convergence, so I’m calling it “cloud 9”, symbolising a good place to be.

First, what do I mean by “digital everything”? Digital everything is just that, the digitisation of everything, at least, everything that is digitisable. There are of course things that don’t lend themselves to digitisation. For example, it may be some time before humans can ingest digital food! But many, if not most, of our informational and creative needs can be satisfied digitally. Digitisation is a form of de-materialisation, i.e., separating the bits from the material.

We’re already seeing it for media such as music and books, and more recently transit information and newspapers. But what if even more things were digitised? In business and government alike, let's face it, paper processes still dominate. Think of all those wasted directories that you use as door jams, and all that legal paperwork, that has yet to be digitised. The pace will pick up over the next few years, as it becomes main stream to collaborate around rich media, video, and complex business applications. But there's still a bunch of physical things out there just waiting to be digitised!

So where does the cloud fit in? First, what do we mean by the cloud? I'll define cloud computing as the intersection of "software as a service" and "utility computing". SaaS is about deploying applications as a service. Utility computing is about packaging computing resources (compute/storage/memory/network) as a metered service, similar to a traditional public utility.

Digitisation needs both aspects of the cloud. Without the cloud, digitisation means that information gets squirreled away on machines scattered around the globe. It’s pointless. The SasS aspect is what makes digital things accessible and useful and the utility aspect is what makes it scale affordably. The cloud also makes it possible to collaborate using digital information in new ways. For example, how many people ever collaborated using a physical street directory? In contrast, digital maps, naturally lend themselves to collaboration and have given rise to powerful mashups. Google Maps is a great example of this, with over half the traffic now coming from mashups on other web sites.

I also believe that the environmental benefits of cloud computing and digital things are significant. Digitisation is very green, for two reasons. First, and simplest, more digital things means fewer physical things, which in turn means fewer (precious) resources to move those physical things. Second, more digital information means more informed users. For example, when everyone has a detailed understanding of their home energy use or home water use, we can find all sorts of ways to save energy and lower power and water bills. Google PowerMeter is a great example. The cloud itself is also inherently green, because it leverages demand variability to achieve higher computer utilisation, also known as elastic computing. Higher computer utilisation in turn means doing more computational work with fewer machines, fewer idle machines, and lower energy costs, etc.

Digital everything will also profoundly affect education. Any person, anywhere, anytime should have the tools to explore the great works of history and culture. A doctor in the remotest part of Borneo will have access to every medical textbook every written. Or a schoolgirl in the outback will be able search all of Shakespeare’s works. It's "distance learning" on steroids.

Digital everything can also be a powerful force for democracy. Giving people the power to share and search the world’s information will continue to break down barriers and bring communities together. Of course, we need to guard against digital things becoming exclusively the realm of some digital elite or "digerati". Never has the adage, “information is power”, been truer. So it’s imperative that we, as a society, ensure equitable access to the world's information. Here in Australia, the proposed National Broadband Network (NBN) has great potential to level this information playing field, providing we get the regulatory settings right.

The cloud of digital things will improve the environment, education, democracy and more.

What can you digitise that will make lives better?

Posted by Alan Noble, Head of Engineering, Google Australia and NZ