Ashutosh Nilkanth's Blog

Technology industry forecasts are an interesting exercise. I find it somewhat similar to “science fiction”, only that industry forecasts gauge a shorter capitalist term, and they are more analytical (less fiction for the Board of Directors, Investors, and Stakeholders).

Back in January this year, as part of an ongoing hacker^[1] community discussion at Hacker News, I made a forecast that “around 2009 Q3, the tech industry will be the first to recover from the downturn (before real-estate or auto).” That may seem unrealistic at the moment, although technology innovation and entrepreneurship is evolving. A recent NYTimes article also reaffirmed this trend, as many laid-off folks are doing startup’s, which is a great sign.

What I also predicted in that HN discussion was that “a new product/service will be released by Sun or IBM, that will gain major traction among the hacker community.” And that does seem to be taking shape, with the conjunction between two technology giants — IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems. IBM is in talks to buy Sun in a bid to add to their Web heft. It does make sense — in terms of their business and technology landscapes. But what surprises me is Sun’s new mantra of calling itself a “cloud computing” company. I feel it comes a little too late, from a company that was at the forefront of networking computing just a decade ago.

Will Sun be able to make a dent in the cloud computing space? I have my doubts. Not that Sun is technically incapable in any way, but I don’t think the business execs at Sun understand cloud computing from a hackers perspective. The real market for cloud computing is among the hacker community. Hacker’s build technology startup’s, and most modern-day technology startup’s need the power of cloud computing for on-demand scalability as part of their SaaS architecture. But hackers also need far more flexibility and assortment in their cloud computing architecture, which is generally not seen with high-end players like Sun. Pricing is another critical factor among the frugal hackers. Also, competing against the likes of Amazon (AWS) and Google (AppEngine) in the cloud computing space will not be all that easy for Sun. Sun can very well cater to Fortune 500 companies, some of whom already have a Web-enabled infrastructure equivalent to cloud computing, but AWS and AppEngine are already in the process of aligning better to the needs of the hacker community.

There’s a brighter side to Sun’s cloud computing strategy for startups though. As Stacey Higginbotham wrote at GigaOm:

Both IBM and Sun are working with startups to build out an open cloud computing platform to connect a variety of clouds, from Amazon’s to GoGrid’s to internal clouds. Sun is already working with RightScale and Zmanda to offer cloud services and management for its cloud and others. Clark outlined a similar strategy yesterday on behalf of IBM, and mentioned RightScale and Aptana, as other providers of the management layer for the cloud.

How this alliance between IBM and Sun shapes up, and how it might change the cloud computing space remains to be seen.

Update (10 April 2009): IBM withdraws offer for Sun Microsystems. Deal collapses.

Update (20 April 2009): Oracle acquires Sun.

Footnote [1] The term “hacker” generally raises eyebrows, as someone involved in computer security/insecurity. But, the term “hacker” also reflects a programmer subculture mainly notable for technology innovation and the open source movement.

There’s something rather allegorical about people who do just one small thing all their lives, but do it better than anyone else.

So bloody true. Whether it’s the Omelette Man, or the Joker, they both suffer from the same quality of being persistent. I’m humbled, when I come to think of it — they have a purpose.

You see, one fateful review in the Lonely Planet guidebook, mistakenly described him as an omelette shop, even though he had originally been making many foods. This review changed everything, and now he cracks open about 1000 eggs a day.

I went to a train station today and learned that the distance between railway tracks is always 143.5 centimeters or 4 feet and 8.5 inches. Why this absurd measurement? I asked my girlfriend to find out and this is what she discovered. When they built the first train carriage, they used the same tools as they had for building horse-drawn carriages. And why that distance between the wheels on carriages? Because that was the width of the old roads along which the carriages had to travel. And who decided that roads should be that width? Well, suddenly we are plunged back into the distant past. It was the Romans, the first great road-builders, who decided to make their roads that width. And why? Because their war chariots were pulled by two horses, and when placed side by side, the horses they used at the time took up 143.5 centimeters.
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Have you ever met someone who has lost their job due to a recession? Did they have a family to support? A mortgage for their dream home to pay? Did it all make you any more cautious?

We realize for obvious, that during a recession there is a higher probability of wide-spread job cuts, which impacts household spending, and consumer demand, and manufacturing, and investment, and well, innovation. I’m no expert at global economics, so I would leave the grunts of a recession to the economists, but what really prompted me to write this rant is the blurry sociological outlook that comes with an economic downturn.

The question I asked a friend the other day was whether a recession triggers long-lasting behavioural changes in people, due to all the financial realignment during a recession? I wonder how an economic downturn affects the culture and lifestyle of an urban society in a longer run. Do we enjoy lavish dining during a period of recession? Are we as frantic about bigger Plasma TV’s? Does personal entertainment still call for vivid extravagances?

Over at Hacker News, a few months ago someone asked if anyone who lived through the Japanese price bubble of the 90′s would care to share their experiences? I felt, one of the responses in that discussion was an interesting allegory of sorts:

It was terrible. People were forced to eat raw fish for sustenance. They couldn’t get full-sized electronics, so they were forced to make tiny ones. Unable to afford proper entertainment, folks would make do by taking turns to get up and sing songs.

For some the sound of a recession springs fear due to the uncertainty ahead, for others it springs frugality as a way of course-correction. In our minds, a recession can also question our future aspirations and the life-style we wish to lead. I think, a recession is a perfect time to gather our thoughts together and answer some of these questions, because believe it or not, there will be more of these in a life-time.

As one of my senior colleagues mentioned to me during the the early 2000s recession, “I have started appreciating recessions… they give me an opportunity to change wilfully instead of forcefully.”