Tidal Computing

Written by Douglas Couch

Sunday, 21 February 2010 21:36

It's a pretty well accepted phenomenon that computing follows some kind of multi-year tidal flow. Like some kind of odd werewolf in response to the moon we follow a course, sure that it's the *best* way to do something only to be convinced of the opposite a few years later.

One example of this is the ebb and flow of computer support at a university (and perhaps elsewhere too). Departments hire support people to handle their computing needs. Sometimes they're people in the department who just happen to be good at computing and sometimes they hire experienced IT personnel but usually they are paid less and only appreciated when they come to the rescue and recover lost data or fix the printer. At some point a manager decides this is an inefficient way to handle things. "A few experienced central computer support people can handle all of these departments more efficiently and with a lot less cost." A decree occurs and all the computer geeks come back to Central Computing like salmon swimming upstream to the pool of their birth. Chaos ensues. Perhaps organization actually occurs and efficiency is gained, but at some point, possibly years later, someone, out in a department, realizes how nice it would be to actually have his own computer guy working just for him. And the cycle starts all over again.

Something I thought I'd never see again (like bell bottom jeans) is a return to "dumb terminals" or "thin clients". When I started in computer support over 15 years ago it was everywhere. In every business office there was at least one little green screen terminal with a serial connection to The Mainframe. Most of the business of the enterprise was managed through these terminals and PC's were really only used for some basic word processing and solitaire. Individual PC power slowly started outstripping the combined capacity of the big iron until it really didn't make sense to *not* use all that power. Enter PC bloatware and the heyday of the office suites. Everyone has the incredible capacity to do amazing things right at their desk and they can *still* play solitaire!

Now, amazingly enough, I'm witnessing another low tide! The enormous computing capacity of our personal computers has seemingly outstripped itself. We can buy systems with the equivalent of 4 processors and what seems like limitless memory and storage. What we are finding is that although we may need this kind of power from time to time the large majority of our day is spent browsing the web, editing documents, and... of course playing solitaire. For some of these low power apps the computer we just bought is overkill. So what do you do with all of that spare power? Nothing usually... it just hangs out there and heats up the room and draws a few more amps from the outlet.

That's where all the new terminal services/desktop virtualization comes into play. You get all the benefits of huge computing power when you need it, but when you're not using it then Jane in Human Resources can use it to create a new brochure about fairness in hiring processes. I'm seeing groups dipping their toes in the water and a few "proof of concept" projects are spooling up to see how things go. With economy, energy efficiency and "greening" becoming key words in every enterprise the thin client's day may be coming once again. Now we can buy small, cheap, low power computers that don't need an upgrade until they break. We can put one of these on each employee's desk to save money and power and move the high end computing back into the machine room. Whether it's the old standby of Windows Terminal Services, new VMWare Desktop Virtualization or the open source Linux Terminal Server Project there are some excellent options out there. We can put our applications on central servers, our data in "the cloud", and get our mail and news from Google(tm).

I'll be interested to see how this all plays out. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to call central support to restart my terminal session... my solitaire game is locked up.

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Last Updated on Sunday, 21 February 2010 22:32

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