信息技术全球化
2011年01月06日
Computing services are both bigger and smaller than assumed
计算服务比我们所认为的更大也更小
Information technology goes global
信息技术全球化
Dec 29th 2010 | from PRINT EDITION
CLOUDS bear little resemblance to tanks, particularly when the clouds are of the digital kind. But statistical methods used to count tanks in the second world war may help to answer a question that is on the mind of many technology watchers: How big is the computing cloud?
云,尤其是电子云,同坦克之间毫无联系。但是,第二次世界大战中,用于计算坦克数量的统计方法却可以用来回答许多科技观察家头脑中挥之不去的问题:云计算到底有多大?
This is not just a question for geeks. Computing clouds—essentially digital-service factories—are the first truly global utility, accessible from all corners of the planet. They are among the world’s biggest energy hogs and thus account for a lot of carbon dioxide emissions. More happily, they allow firms in developing countries to leapfrog traditional information technology (IT) and benefit from advanced computing services without having to build expensive infrastructure.
这并不是一个仅仅针对奇客的问题。云计算—本质上是数字服务工厂—是第一个真实的全球公共设施,你可以从世界的任何一个角落同它连接。它们是世界上最耗能的物体之一,二氧化碳排放量非常大。可喜的是,它们使得发展中国家的公司跳过传统的信息技术(IT),无需耗巨资修建基础设施就可以利用先进的计算服务获益。
The clouds allow computing to be removed from metal boxes under desks and in firms’ basements to remote data centres. Some of these are huge, with several hundred thousand servers (high-powered computers that crunch and dish up data). Users pay for what they use, as with electricity. As with electricity, they can increase their usage quickly and easily.
云将计算从桌子下的金属盒子里和公司的地下室以及偏远的数据中心中解放出来。有一些是由好几万个处理器组成的大家伙(高性能的电脑用于处理和存储数据)。同电消费的模式一样,使用者支付他们消耗的量;同时可以迅速又便捷地增加使用量。
The “cloud of clouds” has three distinct layers. The outer one, called “software as a service” (SaaS, pronounced sarse), includes web-based applications such as Gmail, Google’s e-mail service, and Salesforce.com, which helps firms keep track of their customers. This layer is by far the easiest to gauge. Many SaaS firms have been around for some time and only offer such services. In a new study Forrester Research, a consultancy, estimates that these services generated sales of $11.7 billion in 2010.
“云中云”有3个明显的层面组成。外层云被称为“应用层”(Saas, 同sarse的发音相同),包括基于网络的应用软件,如Gmail, 谷歌电子邮件服务,Salesforce.com,可以帮助公司掌握客户情况。到目前为止,应用层的价值最容易估算。许多提供应用层服务的公司已经运营了一段时间,但他们只停留在提供此类服务上。弗雷斯特研究公司是一家咨询公司,它在一份新的研究报告中预测,2010年这些服务创造的价值是117亿美元。
Going one level deeper, there is “platform as a service” (PaaS, pronounced parse), which means an operating system living in the cloud. Such services allow developers to write applications for the web and mobile devices. Offered by Google, Salesforce.com and Microsoft, this market is also fairly easy to measure, since there are only a few providers and their offerings have not really taken off yet. Forrester puts revenues at a mere $311m.
里面一层是“平台层”(Paas,发音同parse相同),它是云中的操作系统。开发人员使用该服务为网络和移动设备编写应用软件。Google,Salesforce.com以及Microsoft 都可以提供此类服务。由于只有少量的供应商,他们所提供的服务还没有真正起步,所以该市场也很容易估算。弗雷斯特估计它的利润仅为3.11亿美元。
The most interesting layer—the only one that really deserves to be called “cloud computing”, say purists—is “infrastructure as a service” (IaaS, pronounced eye-arse). IaaS offers basic computing services, from number crunching to data storage, which customers can combine to build highly adaptable computer systems. The market leaders are GoGrid, Rackspace and Amazon Web Services, the computing arm of the online retailer, which made headlines for kicking WikiLeaks off its servers.
纯粹主义者称,最有意思的一层—唯一值得被称作是“云计算”—是“基础设施层”(Iaas, 发音同eye-arse)。基础设施层提供从数字运算到数据保存的计算服务,消费者可以将二者结合起来建立一个高度适应的计算机系统。该市场的领跑者是GoGrid, Rackspace以及Amazon Web Services。其中Amazon Web Services属于亚马逊在线零售商的计算部门。而亚马逊由于中断为维基解密提供服务器的服务成为各大报纸的头版头条。
This layer is the hardest to measure. It is growing rapidly and firms do not report revenue numbers; nor are they very forthcoming with information, arguing unconvincingly that this would help their competitors. Amazon, for instance, only reveals that it now stores more than 200 billion digital “objects” and has to fulfil nearly 200,000 requests for them per second—impressive numbers but not very useful ones (an object can be a small file or an entire movie). Rackspace says it operates nearly 64,000 servers globally, but notes that only some are used for IaaS.
这一层的价值最难估算。它的发展非常迅速;公司既不披露收入水平,也不公布信息;他们的理由是这样做会帮助竞争对手,这种说法让人难以信服。例如,亚马逊仅公布它现在存储超过2000亿个数字“物体”,每秒要解决将近20万个请求—数字之庞大让人印象深刻,但却毫无用处(一个物体可以是一个小文件或是一整部电影)。Rackspace称,全球范围内,它所运营的服务器大约有6.4万个;但只有一些被用于基础设施层。
This reluctance to share information has inspired analysts and bloggers to find out more, in particular about Amazon. That is where the tanks come in. During the second world war, the allies were worried that a new German tank could keep them from invading Europe. Intelligence reports about the number of tanks were contradictory. So statisticians were called in to help.
这些公司不愿意分享信息的态度反而激发了分析人士和博客作家的深挖细究,特别是针对亚马逊的探究行动。这时就需要坦克上场了。第二次世界大战中,同盟国担心,一种新的德国坦克可能阻止他们侵入欧洲。关于坦克数量的情报相互抵触。于是,统计学家应邀前来帮忙。
They assumed that the Germans, a notoriously methodical lot, had numbered their tanks in the order they were produced. Based on this assumption, they used the serial numbers of captured tanks to estimate the total. The number they came up with, 256 a month, was low enough for the allies to go ahead with their plans and turned out to be spot-on. German records showed it to be 255.
他们认为,德国人是众所周知的有条理的民族,他们用生产的先后顺序对坦克进行编号。基于这种假设,他们从缴获的坦克的序列号推测坦克的总数。他们的结论是,德国人每月生产256辆坦克。数量之少足以让盟国继续推行他们的计划。结果证明,这一数字非常精确;德国的记录是255辆。
Using this approach, Guy Rosen, a blogger, and Cloudkick, a San Francisco start-up which was recently acquired by Rackspace, have come up with a detailed estimate of the size of at least part of Amazon’s cloud. Mr Rosen decrypted the serial numbers of Amazon’s “virtual machines”, the unit of measurement for buying computing power from the firm. Alex Polvi, the founder of Cloudkick, then used these serial numbers to calculate the total number of virtual computers plugged in every day. This number is approaching 90,000 for Amazon’s data centres on America’s East Coast alone (see chart).
博客作家盖罗斯(Guy Rosen)和一家旧金山新企业Cloudkick (最近被Rackspace收购)使用这种方法,得出了至少部分亚马逊云大小的详细估算。罗斯先对亚马逊“虚拟计算机”的序列号解密(虚拟计算机是一种计量单位,用于向公司购买计算能力);然后,Cloudkick的创始人亚历克斯(Alex Polvi)使用这些序列号计算每天连接亚马逊数据中心的虚拟计算机总数。仅美国东海岸一处,这一数字就接近9万个。
The results suggest that Amazon’s cloud is a bigger business than previously thought. Randy Bias, the boss of Cloudscaling, a IT-engineering firm, did not use these results when he put Amazon’s annual cloud-computing revenues at between $500m and $700m in 2010. And in August UBS, an investment bank, predicted that they will total $500m in 2010 and $750m in 2011.
这一结果表明,亚马逊的云业务比以前认为的要大得多。Cloudscaling是一家信息技术工程公司。该公司老板兰迪白额斯(Randy Bias)没有使用上述结论,认为亚马逊云计算2010年的收入在5亿美元到7亿美元之间。瑞士联合银行(UBS)是一家投资银行,它在8月份预测,亚马逊云计算2010年的收入是5亿美元,2011年会到达7.5亿美元。
These numbers give at least an estimate of the size of the market for IaaS. Amazon is by far the market leader with a share of between 80% and 90%, according to Mr Bias. Assuming that Cloudkick’s and Mr Bias’ numbers are correct, revenues generated by computing infrastructure as a service in 2010 may exceed $1 billion.
这些数字至少可以帮助我们预测基础设施层的市场规模。白额斯称,到目前为止,亚马逊是该市场的佼佼者,市场份额在80%到90%之间。假设Cloudkick以及白额斯的数字正确,计算基础设施服务在2010年产生的利润也许会超过10亿美元。
So how big is the cloud? And how big will it be in, say, ten years? It depends on the definition. If you count web-based applications and online platforms, it is already huge and will become huger. Forrester predicts that it will grow to nearly $56 billion by 2020. But raw computing services, the core of the cloud, is much smaller—and will not get much bigger. Forrester, reckons it will be worth $4 billion in 2020 (although this has much to do with the fact that even in the cloud, the cost of computer hardware will continue to drop, points out Stefan Ried of Forrester).
那么,云到底有多大?它在未来,比如说10年间会发展多大?这就取决于它的定义了。如果你计算网络应用程序以及在线平台的话,它的规模已经很大了,而且还会变的更大。弗雷斯特估计,到了2020年,它的产值将达到560亿美元。然而,云的核心—基础的计算服务—相对小得多,未来也不会变的很大。弗雷斯特认为,它的市值在2020年是40亿美元(弗雷斯特的斯蒂芬里德指出,虽然它同这样的事实密切相关:即使在云里,计算机硬件的费用持续降低)。
At any rate, the cloud is not simply “water vapour”, as Larry Ellison, the boss of Oracle, a software giant, has deflatingly suggested. One day the cloud really will be big. Given a little more openness, more people might actually believe that.
无论如何,云绝不仅仅是“水蒸气”—软件巨头Oracle的首席执行官拉瑞诶里森(Larry Ellison)令人气馁地建议道。总有一天,云会变得庞大。让云的信息更加公开化一些,事实上更多的人也许相信这一天终会到来。
from PRINT EDITION | International
