Waffle House: Cloud Computing Pioneers?

For those of you not familiar with the pervasiveness of Waffle Houses in the Southern United States, you would be hard pressed not to find one just when you have a craving for a late night waffle. I probably have more knowledge of Waffle Houses than most and was recently struck by how much their business model resembles the new application architecture in cloud computing.

All Waffle Houses are nearly identical in layout and capacity; wouldn’t know if you were in Jacksonville or Atlanta from the inside of a Waffle House. They are placed with careful study based on capacity demands. You may find two at a single exit and great clusters of them where the need exists. Waffle House scales demand not by building different sized restaurants, but simply by adding another block of capacity.

We hear the term “horizontal scaling” when it comes to both the underlying cloud infrastructure and applications that run in the cloud. Application writers will scale to meet client demand via applications that can simply add another block of exact functionality instead of trying to scale internally. This is where the power of elasticity comes into play. I don’t suppose Waffle House knows how to quickly spin down a restaurant, though.

Cloud computing is the natural evolution of many technologies that have been around for years. And with Waffle House, we can see how even the non-technical world acts like a cloud.

For another great cloud comparison check out, Revving up the ‘NASCAR Cloud’

Along with cloud computing, online video seems likely to go down in history as one of the most important transformational technologies of the 21st century – overhauling long-standing business models as well as consumer (and employee) behaviors. A new study from research firm In-Stat shows that 45% of U.S. broadband households now prefer to obtain at least some of their digital entertainment from online video services. And the recent rumors that online, free content provider Hulu might shift its own model to become an online cable provider, offering various “Internet channels” for a fee, is a shocking testament to how dynamic this market still is.

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What is the President’s goal for mobile broadband in America?

I was thinking recently about the President’s stated goal to bring mobile broadband to 98% of Americans in five years – not just from the standpoint of network coverage, but also the detailed level of how Americans could benefit from it in terms of applications for healthcare, public safety and other uses.

How could mobile broadband transform healthcare?

It’s not a far stretch to go from a doctor using Skype to have a video consultation with a patient who is in a remote area or unable to travel today to doctors providing patients with diagnostic tools that patients use in their homes and can automatically communicate back to the doctor’s office via SMS without the patient doing anything in the near future. People can already keep tabs on their blood pressure using their iPhone and use ‘smart’ pill bottles that provide reminders to take medications, so we’re well on our way.

What is the Internet of Things (IoT) or M2M communications?

This move to a world of proliferating connected devices goes by different names – the ‘Internet of things’, the ‘invisible web’ or its more common nickname: M2M (machine-to-machine) communications.

Why does M2M matter for networking and cloud services?

Aside from sounding like something from a Terminator movie, this trend will be a major driver of performance networking and cloud services as the sheer number of devices connecting and communicating across networks will ramp up considerably and will require even more applications, storage and other content hosted and delivered from the cloud and cloud services (with appropriate security, QoS, etc).

Will everyday devices like refrigerators be connected to the Internet?

Will we get to the point where I have an Internet-connected refrigerator in my home than can automatically sense if I need milk, eggs or other staples based on its own sensors and then automatically text me a shopping list of needed items when I walk into the grocery store (based on geo-location info on my smartphone)? I hope so, because I always forget to make a list!

Are cars the next big app platform?

It seems every consumer electronic device is going app crazy, from smartphones to Internet-connected TVs, but it looks like the next target of app store envy is likely parked in your driveway – or will be in a few years. A Gartner analyst is forecasting that more than half of all new premium cars in the U.S. will support apps by 2013 and mass market cars will reach that level by 2016.

Connected cars was a big theme at CES that I mentioned in my blog, Bandwidth Tsunami from CES, including some Ford executives talking about how their goal isn’t to create the apps or the connectivity for them – simply to improve the integration and user interface for existing smartphones or other devices within the car itself, which makes total sense.

How is Rhapsody leading the connected car experience?

A great example is Rhapsody.com, the number one digital music service and an Internap colocation customer. Rhapsody subscribers have access to ten millions songs and tons of Internet radio stations housed in our Seattle server colocation facility, so they can listen to just about any song or genre available. And with access on mobile phones via a Rhapsody app, subscribers can connect their smartphones in their car to enjoy their customized playlists instead of spinning the dial and hoping for something good on FM or satellite radio.

What does the future of in-car connectivity look like?

Based on subscriber reviews and feedback, they envision their smartphone will be the only device they’ll need in their car as it can provide hands-free access to phone calls, music, GPS directions and other apps down the road (such as verbally updating Facebook and Twitter and geo-location services). Some car manufacturers are going so far as to turn your car into a mobile hotspot using existing 3G USB modems – plug it in and passengers in the car get Internet access. Is anyone up for streaming NetFlix movies in the backseat?

How does Internap support the growth of connected car services?

To me, it’s amazing to think that I could be driving around Atlanta with my iPhone plugged into my car listening to songs on my Rhapsody playlist that are streaming from the Internap server colocation facility…while sounding like I’m playing the CD in my car. When you combine hosted apps, services and content in the cloud being accessed through mobile devices in cars with better interfaces for drivers, it underscores the potential for this market and importance of network performance for the high-quality delivery of all that communications and content on the go.

Voxel is expanding one of our two main New York datacenters with an additional cage. In less than two weeks, we’ll be bringing our first “MicroPod” online at 111 8th Avenue. This expansion space supports almost 1000 servers and can’t come soon enough – we’re really low on inventory!

We’re using the latest and greatest hardware platforms from both Supermicro and Dell, with the smoking Intel Nehalem processors. This will give our clients the ultimate in performance and flexibility. Mixing and matching VoxCLOUD and VoxSERVER, they can grow from a virtual machine with a single core, all the way to a bare metal dedicated server with 12 cores, DDR3 ECC RAM with 144GB of memory, and next generation solid state disks. After we’re done, we leave the rest to our software. Building out a new space like this takes months of planning, and hundreds of hours of hard work. Our software takes just a few hours for every server to be automatically powered on, stress tested, and put into inventory. To quote Hannibal from the A-Team:  “I love it when a plan comes together!”.