Russ Daniels
VP & CTO, EDS, an HP Company, Hewlett-Packard Company
On The Cloud
Some of the most intriguing technological innovations are often subtle—but hugely significant. Russ Daniels, chief technology officer for EDS at HP, is working on the elusive phenomenon of cloud computing, a term that’s getting a lot of hype lately.
Essentially, cloud computing is a new label for two long-standing industry themes, Daniels explains: utility computing and pervasiveness/ubiquitous computing.
Both trends contribute to a future HP describes as “Everything as a Service,” as customers shift from buying technology to consuming services enabled by technology. For instance, imagine a world in which you conduct business through a wireless connection to the “cloud,” easily connecting to and interacting with your customers, suppliers, and partners, while interacting through a range of devices and circumstances as you move through your day.
Daniels is one of the visionaries working out the details of this complex and exciting IT shift. When he began working for Apple Computer in 1981, he also had a vision: “I shared the conviction that personal computers would change the world. And, in fact, they did—in ways that are often overlooked. We wanted to make computer technology available to individuals in order to address a significant imbalance in the world, because back then, only the government and large institutions had this power.”
Almost 30 years later, Daniels still upholds that vision. What he brings to the table now is an equally imaginative view of the way technology seeps into and improves our day-to-day existence. This is where pervasiveness and ubiquity come in.
“Every aspect of human experience will be enhanced by technology-enabled services,” Daniels predicts.
He uses the example of GM’s OnStar, which allows their customers not only to buy a car, but to buy a service that provides directions, maintenance reminders, and emergency help. “These are relatively simple services built on a relatively limited set of capabilities,” he points out. “In the future, car manufacturers could differentiate the experience of their customers in richer and richer ways, perhaps suggesting the best place to stop for gas, based on schedule, destination, brand preference, price, and proximity to your favorite coffee chain.”
Of course, this new reality would require customers to share information about their schedules, credit card statements or even bank accounts. In other words, such services depend on access to certain personal information. Some people fear that this information might be misused, but Daniels points out that when weighing the balance of convenience to privacy, we should keep in mind that a lot of digital information already exists about our personal preferences. That’s why Amazon knows just which books to recommend to us when we log on to its website.
“We all leave digital traces of our preferences and behavior patterns,” says Daniels. “The cloud allows technology to discover preferences and patterns and recommend something you didn’t know you wanted.”
The problem is that although these digital traces exist, only third parties (like Amazon) currently do anything with them. Through a sophisticated use of cloud technology, however, that information will be able to “do something more clever” for us as well, according to Daniels. It will create value, but only if we accept the service it has to offer.
“We have to understand how technology impacts real people, and real people exist in a context,” Daniels says. He compares this context to a biological ecosystem in which exchanges of information affect each and every organism and energy is expended on certain resources and behaviors. Understanding the intricacies of these context-based ecosystems of data—the flow of information and interactions—will form the core of cloud computing.
“Technology is the easy part,” Daniels explains. “It’s the social considerations that are more complicated. We need to offer solutions that meet peoples’ social expectations and needs in appropriate ways.”
