Bob McKee blog

A walk in the "Clouds" ...
14th February 2011

If you live in the US - and watch television at all - your concept of "The Cloud" could be - someone who's upset with the picture they're getting of their uncooperative family, or - the grandfather who wants to see how his grandson is enjoying his birthday gift, or - the husband and wife who are stranded in an airport waiting for a delayed flight - - - and in everyone of those cases their answers lie 'in the cloud'. "Let's go to the cloud ..." is what each of them exclaim - and the solution to all their problems are instantly presented (usually along with a spinning wall or desk or something). Like so much of US advertising - this is both a bit misleading - and more than a bit disingenuous ... So, just what is this "Cloud" thing anyway ... ???

As I understand it - it's using an accessible network  - either yours or someone else's (like Amazon) for computing power (private or public / internal or external - 'clouds'). Applications are 'virtualized' and become 'virtualized appliances' on this accessible network.

So what's in it for you? More computing power without having to invest in the computer power. Basically, this has the potential of  providing lots more organizations with the ability to access more and more powerfully advanced computer software without having to lay out as much for their computer hardware infrastructure.

Let's look at Wikipedia for a minute and see what they have to say:

Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared servers provide resources, software, and data to computers and other devices on demand, as with the electricity grid. Cloud computing is a natural evolution of the widespread adoption of virtualization, Service-oriented architecture and utility computing. Details are abstracted from consumers, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them. Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption, and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources. It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the Internet. This frequently takes the form of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through a web browser as if it were a program installed locally on their own computer. NIST provides a somewhat more objective and specific definition here. The term "cloud" is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used in the past to represent the telephone network, and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents. Typical cloud computing providers deliver common business applications online that are accessed from another Web service or software like a Web browser, while the software and data are stored on servers.

Most cloud computing infrastructures consist of services delivered through common centers and built on servers. Clouds often appear as single points of access for consumers' computing needs. Commercial offerings are generally expected to meet quality of service (QoS) requirements of customers, and typically include service level agreements (SLAs).

Graphic 1

Characteristics

The fundamental concept of cloud computing is that the computing is "in the cloud" i.e. that the processing (and the related data) is not in a specified, known or the same place(s). This is in opposition to where the processing takes place in one or more specific servers that are known. All the other concepts mentioned are supplementary or complementary to this concept.

Generally, cloud computing customers do not own the physical infrastructure, instead avoiding capital expenditure by renting usage from a third-party provider. They consume resources as a service and pay only for resources that they use. Many cloud-computing offerings employ the utility computing model, which is analogous to how traditional utility services (such as electricity) are consumed, whereas others bill on a subscription basis. Sharing "perishable and intangible" computing power among multiple tenants can improve utilization rates, as servers are not unnecessarily left idle, which can reduce costs significantly while increasing the speed of application development. A side-effect of this approach is that overall computer usage rises dramatically, as customers do not have to engineer for peak load limits. In addition, "increased high-speed bandwidth" makes it possible to receive the same. The cloud is becoming increasingly associated with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as in many cases they cannot justify or afford the large capital expenditure of traditional IT. SMEs also typically have less existing infrastructure, less bureaucracy, more flexibility, and smaller capital budgets for purchasing in-house technology. Similarly, SMEs in emerging markets are typically unburdened by established legacy infrastructures, thus reducing the complexity of deploying cloud solutions.

Economics

Cloud computing users avoid capital expenditure (CapEx) on hardware, software, and services when they pay a provider only for what they use. Consumption is usually billed on a utility (resources consumed, like electricity) or subscription (time-based, like a newspaper) basis with little or no upfront cost. Other benefits of this approach are low barriers to entry, shared infrastructure and costs, low management overhead, and immediate access to a broad range of applications. In general, users can terminate the contract at any time (thereby avoiding return on investment risk and uncertainty), and the services are often covered by service level agreements (SLAs) with financial penalties.

According to Nicholas Carr, the strategic importance of information technology is diminishing as it becomes standardized and less expensive. He argues that the cloud computing paradigm shift is similar to the displacement of frozen water trade by electricity generators early in the 20th century.

Although companies might be able to save on upfront capital expenditures, they might not save much and might actually pay more for operating expenses. In situations where the capital expense would be relatively small, or where the organization has more flexibility in their capital budget than their operating budget, the cloud model might not make great fiscal sense. Other factors having an impact on the scale of potential cost savings include the efficiency of a company's data center as compared to the cloud vendor's, the company's existing operating costs, the level of adoption of cloud computing, and the type of functionality being hosted in the cloud.

Among the items that some cloud hosts charge for are instances (often with extra charges for high-memory or high-CPU instances), data transfer in and out, storage (measured by the GB-month), I/O requests, PUT requests and GET requests, IP addresses, and load balancing. In some cases, users can bid on instances, with pricing dependent on demand for available instances.

Deployment models

Graphic 2

Public cloud

Public cloud or external cloud describes cloud computing in the traditional main stream sense, whereby resources are dynamically provisioned on a fine-grained, self-service basis over the Internet, via web applications/web services, from an off-site third-party provider who bills on a fine-grained utility computing basis.

Community cloud

A community cloud may be established where several organizations have similar requirements and seek to share infrastructure so as to realize some of the benefits of cloud computing. With the costs spread over fewer users than a public cloud (but more than a single tenant) this option is more expensive but may offer a higher level of privacy, security and/or policy compliance. Examples of community cloud include Google's "Gov Cloud".

Hybrid cloud

See also: Cloud storage gateway

There is some confusion over the term "Hybrid" when applied to the cloud - a standard definition of the term "Hybrid Cloud" has not yet emerged. The term "Hybrid Cloud" has been used to mean either two separate clouds joined together (public, private, internal or external), or a combination of virtualized cloud server instances used together with real physical hardware. The most correct definition of the term "Hybrid Cloud" is probably the use of physical hardware and virtualized cloud server instances together to provide a single common service. Two clouds that have been joined together are more correctly called a "combined cloud".

A combined cloud environment consisting of multiple internal and/or external providers "will be typical for most enterprises". By integrating multiple cloud services users may be able to ease the transition to public cloud services while avoiding issues such as PCI compliance.

Another perspective on deploying a web application in the cloud is using Hybrid Web Hosting, where the hosting infrastructure is a mix between Cloud Hosting and Managed dedicated servers - this is most commonly achieved as part of a web cluster in which some of the nodes are running on real physical hardware and some are running on cloud server instances.

A hybrid storage cloud uses a combination of public and private storage clouds. Hybrid storage clouds are often useful for archiving and backup functions, allowing local data to be replicated to a public cloud.

Private cloud

Douglas Parkhill first described the concept of a "Private Computer Utility" in his 1966 book The Challenge of the Computer Utility. The idea was based upon direct comparison with other industries (e.g. the electricity industry) and the extensive use of hybrid supply models to balance and mitigate risks.

Private cloud and internal cloud have been described as neologisms, however the concepts themselves pre-date the term cloud by 40 years. Even within modern utility industries, hybrid models still exist despite the formation of reasonably well-functioning markets and the ability to combine multiple providers.

Some vendors have used the terms to describe offerings that emulate cloud computing on private networks. These (typically virtualization automation) products offer the ability to host applications or virtual machines in a company's own set of hosts. These provide the benefits of utility computing -shared hardware costs, the ability to recover from failure, and the ability to scale up or down depending upon demand.

Private clouds have attracted criticism because users "still have to buy, build, and manage them" and thus do not benefit from lower up-front capital costs and less hands-on management, essentially "[lacking] the economic model that makes cloud computing such an intriguing concept".

In a few weeks I'll being going over to Asia - and - will be presenting "Super Freakin' Fashionomics" to a number of audiences ...

So, let's just take a second and consider the sub-topic above - - regarding the Economics of the Cloud ...

Read that paragraph a few times - the economics of "Cloud Computing" make sense.

Consider the ability to offer superior computing solutions to your organization without having to tie up your operating capital or tie up your lines of credit because you made an CapEx expenditure - that is now sitting on your Balance Sheet and reducing your ability to borrow ... The Cloud makes sense - and there are many key applications that are a great place to take that first Walk on a Cloud ...

Bob

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High Profile Vehicles ...
7th February 2011

Here in the US - when there are issues with high winds - the people who administer the motorways will issue warnings for "high profile vehicles" … obviously a high profile vehicle is any vehicle that provides a large flat surface that could be at risk when hit broadside by high wind gusts …

Mid last week in Chicago - we had a pretty nasty winter storm … 20+ inches of snow - which wasn't the bad part - it was the very high winds - the winds gusted to 70+mph …

When watching the local news - it was almost funny (ok - it was hysterical) to watch all these people trying to make their way threw the city - walking with the new 'business carry all' - - the backpack …

Whether they realized it or not - they had all become "high profile vehicles" … they were fine walking into the winds (well - as fine as you can be walking into a 70+ mph wind) - but as soon as they turned and the wind had a chance to hit them broadside - they were blown away …

It was almost like watching carton characters - people were walking along - struggling a little - but walking - - then a slight turn - - the wind would hit the backpack and whoosh - - away they would go - sailing with the wind … then along would come another - and whoosh - another one gone …

If we have the textile technology - that affords the creation of swimming suits that help the swimmer be propelled through the water - why have backpacks pretty much remained the same since their invention … ??? Why hasn’t someone created a backpack that will no longer turn a person into a high profile vehicle - a backpack that would be well designed - hold all the stuff that we cram into a backpack - with nice external pockets - that was light but rugged - - and - - would shed wind like a fish sheds water when swimming upstream … ???

Maybe a Teflon coating would do it - maybe a surface like the shark skin swim suits - - - I don't know - I'll leave the technical part to someone with much more textile knowledge than I have … hey - maybe it could also be made from a renewable / sustainable material - something both eco-friendly and technically advanced … so, there you have it technical textile guru's … the challenge has been made …

Good Luck ….

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HELP ... !!!
28th January 2011

The Travel Wardrobe ...

This is going to be a little different. I need some help and suggestions - - - - ok, please - I NEED YOUR HELP…!!!

If you follow my rambling blogs - or - follow me on Twitter ((yep, just started trying to do that) Fashion_Bob ) you know that I travel a little bit. Honestly, I travel less today (in the software industry) than I did yesterday (when I was in the apparel industry) and my travel used to be more focused. It was simpler - go to x y z countries in Europe, Asia, North or South America to work with suppliers - place orders - follow up on orders - check quality - develop new products -  etc. . But, an example of my software travel has me going from Mongolia (practically the Arctic)-  to Singapore or Jakarta (practically the Equator) - to Christ Church New Zealand (practically Antarctica) all in the same trip. All in different seasons / times of their year - temperatures - and weather patterns. Now - let's add in the fact that I need to have items for Casual - Business Casual - and Traditional Business attire for the various events and activities that have been planned.

Now, just for the record - with my nearly 30 years in apparel (much of which was in sourcing) and my - almost 12 years in Fashion Software strategy - I've gotten pretty good at the 'balancing act' required.

But, my question is "How would you pack for that" … ??? You may have some much better ideas that I have.  I'm a pretty good packer - on average my trips to Asia or Europe are about 3 weeks long - and I generally do that using just a carry-on bag and briefcase / backpack.

Here's the wrinkle - I'm looking at an upcoming schedule that will have me in Asia between 5 and 6 weeks. I have to pack for that - with multiple countries and weather patterns - Chicago to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Shen Zhen, Shen Zhen back to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Manila, Manila to Singapore, Singapore to Qingdao, Qingdao to Shanghai, Shanghai to Guangzhou, Guangzhou to Xiamen, Xiamen to Fujian, Fujian to Zhejiang, Zhejiang to Hong Kong, then finally Hong Kong back to Chicago.  And, of course, the objective is to do this with just a carry-on and backpack - and living within the company guidelines for hotel laundry services. Let me also add to this scenario - that I have every bit of high tech - low weight / low space clothing known to man.

As I see it - two of the biggest problems are shoes and a coat - followed very quickly by Suits and Sport Coats. If you haven't followed me - or - you haven't figured it our - I live in Chicago - and in January and February you really need a coat just to get to the airport without hypothermia - but - what do you do with it then? (I'm in LA right now - when I left Chicago it was very (very very) cold - so I wore a coat - a nice heavy wool coat (Andrew Marc of course). But, today in LA it's supposed to get up to about 75 or 80 degrees (Fahrenheit) so, I folded up my coat and I put the coat into my carry on - - - oh - - - now what do I do with everything else that was in there on my way to LA … ???). So, how do you get around the coat thing? Then what do you do for the suit / sport coat thing - coordinated separates maybe ? Black and Tan - mix and match … ??? Then of course - dress shirts, casual shirts, casual pants, what about jeans (how can I do this without jeans?) ... ???

So you see my dilemma - I NEED HELP …  but you know - as I look this over before sending it on to you - - maybe it can be done - and if any of you remember Sean Connery in "Entrapment" - "It's impossible - but, doable" …

Oh, and did I mention - I WANT TO DO THIS WITH ONLY A CARRY ON SUITCASE" … !!!

Please don't bother to tell me about my misuse of punctuation … it's used to make or strengthen a point - not to fall in line with the Microsoft spell and grammar checker … I was impressed by e.e.cummings and Kurt Vonnegut as a young man - both of whom made liberal use / misuse of the rules for punctuation.

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"does my butt look big ... ???"
25th January 2011

I don't imagine that it's easy to be a designer of jeans. As you may know - for a few years (a couple decades ago) I worked for the company that made Billy the Kid and Bill Blass Jeans in El Paso, Texas. In those days - the tighter the jeans were - the better the public liked them. Most were 'boot cut' and most were '5 pocket' zip (or button) fly.

The obsession for tight was - simply put - to answer the question "do these jeans make my butt look big" … ??? The tighter the jeans - the better they helped to define curves of the behind.

Today it seems that designing jeans is more about destruction than construction. The post production 'wet processing' and 'dry processing' takes more time - and costs more money than building the jeans to begin with. To build a pair of jeans generally takes  20 - 30 SAMs (standard allowed minutes) - the washing, bleaching, buffing, scouring, painting, sanding, drilling, stenciling, etc - easily doubles (or more) the amount of time it takes to completely finish the jeans.

So, being an 'old' jeans guy - I have a couple questions for you 'in the now' jean designers out there … and - don't be bashful (also don't be offended) but:

• Do you come up with some of these processes because you're bored by working with just denim all the time?
• Do you ever think about the fact that most of us own destroyed jeans - but each one of those points of destruction has a story or memory  attached or "behind" it?
  • Does it bother you that the jeans of old - and their destruction were generally an expression of 'individuality' … ???
    • And - today's jeans (being pre-destroyed) mean that large numbers of people will express their 'individuality' - - - all in exactly the same way …

• And - and, who on earth came up with the idea of moving the rear pockets several inches below the waistband … ??? (now I'm getting to my main point).
  • The pockets now fall right where the curves should be - where they used to be - butt - the curves seem to be gone - buried beneath multiple plies of 14 3/4 oz. (or other) denim …
    • What's the deal - what's the plan - what's the point … ???

If someone today would ask - that age old question - "do these jeans make my butt look big" - the answer is YES - HUGE - GIGANTIC - - "you might as well make it a billboard - in fact I've seen smaller billboards" - - - Oh, I 'guess' some brands are even doing that with their jeans now too … making them into a BIG 'juicy' billboard.  Think twice before you put on that item with someone's logo plastered across your backside …

• Please write back - let me know how wrong I am on this …

Bob

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iPads & Portals
18th January 2011

Buyer / Supplier communication is at the crux of today's push for supply chain collaboration. Without this communication you're going to spend all your time just guessing about what's going on - and what's going to happen next.

Realistically - you have to make it easy - as most marriage counselors will tell you - the easier it is to communicate - the more likely it is that communication will happen.

I hear lots of comments from Brand Owner companies about their suppliers and supply chain partners. Most believe that their suppliers live in the technological dark ages - but - when these Brand Owners are talking to me - they forget that I work on both sides of the aisle. I not only talk with Brand Owners on a regular basis - but - also with loads of suppliers - in every corner of the world. And in many cases - I can tell you that nothing is further from the truth. Many (if not most) suppliers are technologically well ahead of their Brand Owner supply chain partners. They've had to be - they have been working to drive cost out of product since the beginning of time - and most realized that meant embracing labor saving technologies.

So, Supplier Portals are not an 'if' - they are a 'must have'.

I read an interesting comment that came from NRF - it's related specifically to retailers "Shoppers won't wait for retailers to give them technology solutions. They will source it themselves. Technology advances are occurring because the consumer demands it, not because software companies are selling it." Great comment - and - that's what collaborative commerce is all about - passing information through the supply chain to keep Brand Owners and Suppliers in synch with what the consumer is demanding.

A good case in point might be the Apple iPad. Apple knew they had a 'winner' - but - never could have predicted the overwhelming demand that the product received. It was only through a well organized and well coordinated supply chain - communicating at lightning speed - that demand for this incredible "game changing" device was able to be quenched.

Now imagine if you could only merge a supplier portal and an iPad - wow, cool … customer driven technology (pardon the clumsy product segue …).

http://www.lawson.com/wcw.nsf/pub/Fash_AFF273 (be sure to watch the video)

Bob

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