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Amazon Reserved Instances and Cloud Capacity Planning  
# Saturday, March 21, 2009
 
Amazon's announcement of discounted pricing for EC2 customers who make long-term commitments is welcome news. Cheaper is better.

One way to look at this change is to see it solely as a price reduction, something focused on addressing customer concerns. But adding reservations also addresses Amazon's own concerns.

Here's the issue: Customers want to see EC2 and similar public cloud platforms as an infinite pool of compute resources. Rather than building out your own data center to handle peak loads, you can instead count on your cloud provider always to have enough capacity. The providers themselves encourage this view, since it's one of their strongest economic arguments.

But can a cloud platform really provide infinite compute resources? Of course not. Relying on a cloud provider for peak computing resources doesn't make the capacity planning problem go away: It just moves it out of your data center and into the cloud. And the people who run cloud data centers now face this problem in a big way. As more firms depend on them, they need to predict more accurately what their aggregate demand will be.

With the original EC2 approach of VMs on demand, this is essentially impossible. While a cloud capacity planner might make some inferences based on previous demand, number of new customers, and other variables, accurately predicting the future is tough when anybody can request a bunch of new VMs with no warning.

Reservations make it easier. By knowing more up front about a customer's likely usage, cloud platform planners can make better decisions. Since having too much capacity hurts the cloud provider's profits, while not having enough capacity at times of heavy demand is really bad for business, knowledge about future usage has enormous value.

So yes, Amazon is lowering prices. At the same time, though, they're improving their own ability to make intelligent investments in their business.

As the innovator, Amazon is once again defining our expectations about what a public cloud platform is and how it should be priced. Because reservations are so valuable to the people who run a cloud platform, expect the idea to spread.

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Introducing Windows Azure  
# Thursday, March 19, 2009
 
Microsoft's Azure Services Platform has various parts, but the one that's generated the most interest so far is Windows Azure. I've written an overview white paper on Windows Azure that's available here.

The paper overlaps some with my earlier paper on the entire Azure Services Platform. This one is focused entirely on Windows Azure, though, which lets me spend more time on things like the fabric. The paper also talks a bit about the recently announced changes to Windows Azure, such as support for unmanaged code. If you're interested in cloud platforms, you might find this overiew useful.

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The Most Important Profession in the World  
# Saturday, March 14, 2009
 

The Wharton School of Business has created a list of the top 30 innovations in the last 30 years. The complete list is here, but here are the top ten:

1. Internet, broadband, WWW (browser and HTML)
2. PC/laptop computers
3. Mobile phones
4. E-mail
5. DNA testing and sequencing/Human genome mapping
6. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
7. Microprocessors
8. Fiber optics
9. Office software (spreadsheets, word processors)
10. Non-invasive laser/robotic surgery (laparoscopy)

Notice what they all have in common? Every single one is dependent on software. Some of them, like email, are purely software. Some, like microprocessors, exist solely to run software. And the rest, like mobile phones and MRI, rely heavily on software.

Going deeper into the list doesn't change this. Innovation number 11 is open source software, 14 is GPS systems, 21 is graphical user interfaces, and number 23 is RFIDs. Almost every one of the 30 innovations relies on code in some way.

For anybody who works in software, the takeaway should be clear: We work in the most important profession in the world.

Innovations are what underlie growth in productivity--the ability to do more with less--and productivity growth is what raises everyone's standard of living. Quality improves too, through better medical technology and more. In the most literal sense, the work we do is the most important factor in making the world a better place.

Ever feel like you're just writing another app, just doing technical marketing for another faceless corporation, or just supporting another piece of meaningless code? Don't. Our efforts have been a primary force in improving the world for the last several decades, and this isn't about to stop. All of us who are engaged in software are in fact doing the same thing: We're creating the foundation for a better world.

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