A Google data center outside Atlanta (Google Photo)
Welcome to this edition of Mostly Cloudy, which sums up everything you need to know about the week that was in cloud computing! In this edition, we’ll take a look at whether or not cloud providers are living up to the earth-friendly image they like to portray.
This Week in Cloud: It’s not easy being green
As every year comes to a close, Time picks a person or concept that it believes defined the year. Sweden’s Greta Thunberg, who needs no introduction at this point, was selected this year to highlight the threat poised by dirty sources of energy and the righteous anger of the young people who would like to live as long as the old people who want things to stay the way they are.
Our little corner of the world is an enormous consumer of energy, and as we’ve talked about over the year, cloud computing is really still getting started. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google all swear they are committed to using clean energy sources for their massive data centers, and this week Wired checked into how well they are doing.
The verdict? If it weren’t for renewable energy certificates, none of the Big Three cloud providers would be even close to sourcing all of their energy from clean energy producers. Purchases of RECs allow companies to offset their consumption of energy from dirty sources by supporting green energy production, which allows them to say things like “we use 100 percent renewable energy!” when they actually use a much smaller percentage of energy obtained from renewable sources.
This dance is a little shady, but proponents argue it gives clean-energy producers the incentive to set up shop, and that is of course the real problem. We’re lucky up here in the the Pacific Northwest, in that we get so much of our energy from hydropower (which has plenty of its own caveats), but renewable energy sources still represent a fraction of overall energy use in both the U.S. and around the world.
A Microsoft data center in the U.K. (Microsoft Photo)
Google, built by people who burnt a giant wooden man in the desert every year to prove they were forward-thinking stewards of the planet, has been ahead of the game when it comes to finding cleaner sources of energy to power its advertising machine. According to Wired’s report, Google has 5.5 gigawatts of clean electricity in its portfolio, which is more clean gigawatts than claimed by AWS and Microsoft combined.
Its larger two competitors have invested in clean energy sources over the past few years, but still trail Google by a large margin. Wired ranked Microsoft’s commitment to green energy usage higher than AWS, citing projects such as its undersea data centers and experiments with battery technology, which would allow data centers to hoard power generated by solar or wind energy during calm days and nights.
AWS has seemed the most indifferent to this goal over the years, hamstrung in part by its reliance on its US-East data center complex in Northern Virginia, where the electrical grid still cranks out the juice the dirty old-fashioned way. It ranked far behind the other clouds on Wired’s scorecard, which certainly wasn’t helped by the fact that the company declined to make anyone available to talk about its efforts in this area.
One hallmark of modern life is that instead of looking to our elected representatives in government to solve the great problems of the world, we look to corporations. Government investment sparked a huge expansion of electrical power across the U.S. during the Great Depression, but 80 years later, it shows little interest in taking the steps required to reduce carbon emissions.
Earlier this year at a event hosted by Microsoft in Redmond, Azure chief Scott Guthrie drew a cloud computing analogy comparing companies that build and maintain their own data centers to factories in the industrial revolution that had to build their own power plants before reliable electrical power grids were available. He then joked that he actually has to have an electricity department to run Azure, a team that figures out how to procure the electricity needed to power Azure data centers around the world and manage its clean energy investments.
If the governments of the world continue to ignore the consequences of Al Gore’s inconvenient truth, it looks like it will fall upon people like Guthrie to make sure their growing energy-hungry companies are supporting the production of clean energy. That will require more than purchase of credits; cloud companies that are serious about reducing carbon emissions should consider building their own clean energy power plants, taking a cue from the industrialists of the early 20th century.
Alternatively, they could pay more in taxes. Either way, massive investment is going to be required to make sure people like Greta Thunberg, who is 16, will enjoy the same quality of life that allowed the technology revolution to flourish.
And Now, A Word…
If you’re a Mostly Cloudy subscriber looking for a good deed to do around the holidays, I have a modest proposal for you.
My mother-in-law, a thoroughly wonderful person devoted to her Southern Oregon community, is looking to raise money for a new computer for the Phoenix Counseling Center, a nonprofit agency she works with that offers substance abuse and mental health counseling to the Rogue Valley. The agency wants to implement electronic medical health records for its patients, but does not have the computing power required to pull that off, and operates on a shoestring budget.
PCC needs a desktop computer, two monitors, a document scanner, and a few other accessories to help make sure it can provide efficient service to the people of Jackson County. This will cost around $1,100, and the agency is looking for your help.
If you or your company is interested in helping PCC, just reply to this email. For all the crazy technology we talk about in this newsletter, don’t forget that basic computing power can make a huge impact on the lives of people who just need a break.
Around the Cloud
DHS’s Jeanette Manfra to join Google's cloud division (CyberScoop)
Cybersecurity will always be a concern for companies that use the internet, which is, of course, pretty much all of them. Google Cloud just hired well-regarded cybersecurity professional Jeanette Manfra, and she “will be global director of security and compliance as part of a new security team at Google Cloud,” according to CyberScoop.
Google announces new general-purpose VMs for GCE (ZDNet)
AWS’s Graviton2 reveal last week at re:Invent might have been the most significant announcement of the week, promising an interesting price/performance balance. Google’s new instances promise “the lowest total cost of ownership of any of Google's VMs,” according to the company, thanks to some of its own technology.
Capital One to Shut Down Its Last Three Data Centers Next Year (Data Center Knowledge)
Capital One has been one of the most enthusiastic proponents of public cloud computing for several years, security incidents aside. The financial giant is on track to eliminate its last data centers next year, and it expects “a substantial reduction in operating costs” once those buildings are closed.
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins Talks About His Big New Bet on Chips (Fortune)
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins (Cisco Photo)
Cisco is one of those old-school tech companies struggling for ways to stay relevant in the new era, helped along by the slow pace of data center conversions. It’s a little hard to understand why large data center customers would want to buy chips from Cisco, which doesn’t have a huge track record in this area just as a new era of custom silicon dawns.
Forget quantum supremacy: This quantum-computing milestone could be just as important (ZDNet)
If you’re unimpressed by the current state of machine learning, quantum computing could change your mind. ZDNet takes a look at how a city in Portugal is using quantum computing to study its public transportation system, and the early results are interesting.
The Evolution of AWS’ Serverless Container Platform: Fargate (The New Stack)
I had hoped to post something more in depth about Fargate coming out of re:Invent 2019, but The New Stack beat me to it. Fargate is a very interesting service for companies that want to containerize their applications and have relatively basic needs, and this article explains how it all works.
Russian police raid NGINX Moscow office (ZDNet)
It’s starting to look like doing business in Russia is going to get harder and harder for tech companies, a week after the country decided to ban sales of gadgets without Russian-made software installed. NGINX is the technology behind a large percentage of web sites on the internet, and it was just acquired this year by Seattle’s F5 Networks for $670 million.
Atlassian launches new serverless cloud development platform (Techcrunch)
Fresh off its move to AWS over the past few years, Atlassian is planning to use one of its crown jewels — the serverless Lambda service — to power a new development platform that plays nicely with its existing developer tools. The new product also promises to make it easier to build user interfaces, which is something a lot of developers struggle to do well.
Oracle stock drops as revenue falls short (CNBC)
Oracle still makes a lot of money, but it is not making a lot of progress. Grand poobah Larry Ellison announced during the earnings call that Oracle no longer plans to hire a co-CEO to replace the late Mark Hurd, which sort of makes sense given that Larry’s outsized power over the company’s direction.
Salesforce promotes Bret Taylor to president and COO (Techcrunch)
Salesforce President and COO Bret Taylor (Salesforce Photo)
Salesforce, founded by ex-Oracle spiritual wanderer Marc Benioff, now has two co-CEOs and one president and chief operating officer, after elevating Bret Taylor to his new gig. Taylor is a very interesting tech product guru, having worked on Google Maps, Friendfeed (acquired by Facebook) and Quip (acquired by Salesforce).
As computing explodes at the network edge, cloud providers and telcos jockey for the lead (Silicon Angle)
If history is any indication, betting on the telcos is a wrong move. Still, this article takes an interesting look at how cloud companies and pipeline companies are going to have to find some way to work together as demand for real-time applications forces computing power to the edge of the network.
AWS outperforms rivals in test of cloud capabilities (Tech Republic)
The results of this test by Cockroach Labs were a little more nuanced than the headline might imply, but also underscore that AWS is on top of the cloud market for a reason. This is one aspect of the cloud market share talk that a lot of people don’t realize: different clouds specialize in different things, and companies that have unique needs might choose a particular cloud for reasons that don’t apply to other companies with different application requirements.