Amazon's Cloud-Computing Guru Honed Skills Fixing Lamborghinis

Amazon.com (AMZN) Vice-President James Hamilton's schooling in computer data centers started under the hood of a Lamborghini Countach.

Fixing luxury Italian autos in British Columbia while in his 20s taught Hamilton, 51, valuable lessons in problem solving, forcing him to come up with creative ways to repair cars because replacement parts were hard to find. "It's amazing how many things you can pick up in one industry and apply to another," Hamilton, who has also been a distinguished engineer at Amazon since 2009, says in an interview.

Hamilton is putting these skills to use at Amazon, where he's central to an effort by Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos to make Amazon Web Services, which leases server space and computing power to other companies, as big as the core e-commerce business. He's charged with finding ways to make data centers work faster and more efficiently while fending off competition from Microsoft (MSFT) and IBM (IBM), his two prior employers, and AT&T (T).

Revenue from the kinds of cloud services offered by Amazon is likely to surge to $56 billion in 2014, from more than $16 billion in 2009, according to research firm IDC. Amazon's Web services brought in about $500 million in revenue in the past year, according to estimates from Barclays Capital and Lazard Capital Markets, or about 1.5 percent of Amazon's $34.2 billion in sales. The company doesn't disclose revenue from Web services, also called cloud computing.

MARGIN CONCERN

As they pursue growth, Hamilton and his team will have to ensure that Amazon's investment in Web services is well-spent. Investors pummeled shares of Seattle-based Amazon on Jan. 28, the day after the company said it would boost spending on data centers and warehouses, fueling concern that margins will narrow.

Although still relatively small, Amazon Web Services is growing at a faster rate than the company's core business, and it's more profitable, says Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst at Caris & Co. Web services may generate as much as $900 million in sales this year, and operating margins could be as wide as 23 percent, compared with 5 percent margins in the main business, Aggarwal says. "There aren't many companies with an incremental business that's more profitable than their core business," he says.

Hamilton, who has filed almost 50 patents in various technologies, is tasked with developing new ideas in cloud computing, which lets companies run their software and infrastructure in remote data centers on an as-needed basis, rather than in a computer room down the hall.

He spends much of his time shuttling between departments, encouraging teams focused on storage, databases, networking, and other functions to work together. One aim: devising ways to squeeze costs out of multimillion-dollar data centers and pass those savings on to customers such as Eli Lilly (LLY) and Netflix (NFLX).

NASCENT INDUSTRY

Hamilton and the teams must figure out how to build the business on the fly. Cloud computing is so nascent that engineers can't rely on case studies or past industry experience to guide their decisions, says Lew Tucker, chief technology officer of cloud computing at Cisco Systems (CSCO). "This is not in college textbooks yet," says Tucker, who has followed Hamilton's work as an industry peer. "These architectures are new and evolving every day."

Google launches Person Finder for Japanese quake victims

Computerworld - Google was quick to launch a version of its People Finder service to help people find each other in the wake of the devastating 8.9 magnitude earthquake that hit Japan Friday.

The service, set up to work in both English and Japanese, is designed to let people inquire about others, as well as post information - where they are, their condition -- about themselves or someone else.

While Google notes on the site that it cannot verify the accuracy of any of the information put into the Person Finder app, all of the data is available to the public.

At 10:30 a.m. ET Google announced the new version of its People Finder service on Twitter early Friday morning.

Google also posted a tsunami warning on what is its generally sparse search home page. Just below the search bar, Google has written, "Tsunami Alert for New Zealand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Hawaii, and others. Waves expected over the next few hours, caused by 8.9 earthquake in Japan."

As for its Person Finder, this isn't the first time that Google has quickly launched a new version of it in the wake of a tragedy.

In February of last year, Google created a Chili-centric version after a massive earthquake hit that country. And in January of 2010, Google created a Person Finder in the wake of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti.on Friday, the new app already had 7,200 records available.

An Easy Way to Speed Up Your Computer

A feature called ReadyBoost has been available since Windows Vista and it can help increase the performance of most computers. It basically uses any type of portable media such as a thumb drive, SD card, external hard drive, and CompactFlash as a cache for the operating system. ReadyBoost devices can typically be accessed 80-100 times quicker than your standard hard drive, this means that programs run faster and even your boot time can be decreased.

Ready to get started?

STEP 1:
The first thing you want to do is find a thumb drive or other media device that you are no longer using. Insert the device into your computer and then go to Start > Computer and“right-click” on the device and select “Format”. Even if the device is empty we want to make sure it is using the NTFS file system. Select “NTFS” from the file system and then hit “Start”. Your device is now using NTFS.

STEP 2:
“Right-click” on your device again and select “Properties”.

Step 3:
From the Properties menu select the “ReadyBoost” tab at the top of the menu. Then select“Dedicate this device to ReadyBoost” and hit “Apply”.

Your device is now using ReadyBoost and should look like the image below.

How Cloud computing transforms emerging markets...

After much talk, cloud computing is finally gaining traction in developed nations. Corporations are gradually moving more applications to cloud data centers where they can take advantage of pooling of computing resources, more efficient use of data processing power and increased flexibility. Of course, the cloud model is already standard for consumer-oriented social networking Web sites.

But the place where I see cloud computing having a transformational effect on societies and economies is in emerging markets. In places where money isn’t plentiful, the ability for companies, governments, and universities to share resources offers the opportunity to bring massive computing power to bear in ways that were not possible before.

One of the biggest opportunities will be in mobile services. Carriers will increasingly use clouds to develop innovative new services, launch them, and scale them up to handle millions of users–services such as banking and small-business listings. A First of a Kind collaborative research project announced today between IBM and the Indian state of Karnataka, home of Bengaluru, India’s Silicon Valley, demonstrates the opportunities that are unleashed when you combine clouds with mobile. Pay close attention. This could be the beginning of a technology revolution–and could lead to a social revolution, empowering the world’s poorest billions of people like never before.

With the help of IBM, the Karnataka Vocational Training and Skill Development Corporation is creating what IBMers call an “opportunity marketplace.” Using cloud computing, the mobile Web and IBM’s Spoken Web technology, they’re setting up a system that will allow employers and training organizations to connect, potentially, with millions of job candidates. On the surface, the system is simple. People seeking employment will create profiles and search listings by using the keypads on their mobile phones and responding to voice-based navigation prompts (No smartphone required). When an opportunity match comes up, they are alerted via an SMS. In the background, a cloud computing setup handles voice recognition, skill matching and data analysis that enables employers and government officials to understand supply and demand trends.

The beauty of the system is that it will serve not only Karnataka’s high-tech community but millions of people in villages out in the country–where many people are illiterate or semi-literate. The Spoken Web technology makes it possible for such people to tap the power of the Internet without being able to read and without having access to computers and Web connections. “Our system empowers people. They know where the opportunities are. They can plan and get the training and go after them,” says Gopal Pingali, head of the IBM Global Cloud Center of Excellence, who also leads this project.

If this system takes off, think what it could do for India. The country has 700 million people who are under the age of 35, and many of them are now considered to be unemployable. Partly it’s because they don’t have skills and partly it’s because they don’t have convenient ways of finding the millions of new jobs that are being created in India’s fast-growing economy. The country has set a goal of improving the skills and employment status of 500 million people by 2022. It’s a huge mission. Without systems like the one being developed in Karnataka, it’s difficult to see how this goal can be reached.

State government leaders immediately embraced the technology when IBMers presented it to them during a tour of IBM Research’s lab in Bengaluru last September. The skills development agency was formed in 2008 and given the task of finding jobs for five million people in five years. “Our goal is to empower our citizens and create employment opportunities in the state by creating a  conducive environment for all stakeholders. This platform will help us expand our horizon and reach people in the most remote parts of Karnataka,” says Dr. Vishnukanth Chatpalli, the executive director of the agency.

The system is being launched this month in two districts and is expected to expand later to eight more. Gopal considers this to be a research project conducted in the real world. IBM scientists will continually refine the system as they learn more about how people want to use it.

These are early days for applications that combine cloud computing with mobile communications in emerging markets, but its already clear that experiments like the one in Karnataka have implications for India, Southeast Asia and Africa. This could be the beginning of something really good all over the globe.