Just as the clouds in the sky have no geographic limits and glide over all borders, we might hope that cloud computing would also be an international phenomenon. At the very least, as the various countries around the world go increasingly digital, cloud computing and real-time data interconnectivity should begin to take on a greater significance worldwide. The question then comes to mind: Which countries are best prepared for cloud computing?

A few weeks ago the BSA Global Cloud Scorecard was released, the first report of its kind. The BSA (Business Software Alliance) positions itself as an advocate for the software industry, and its membership is made up of many leading firms such as Micrsoft, Apple, Oracle, Intel, Siemens, Sybase, and Dell. The Global Cloud Scorecard is an attempt to rate the top 24 ICT (Information and Communication Technology) countries in the world in terms of their readiness for cloud computing.

The results are interesting, indeed surprising in some ways. Although we would expect the more “developed” countries to be more advanced in their ability to support cloud computing, “troubling obstacles emerge when you examine the lack of alignment in the legal and regulatory environments in many of those advanced countries,” according to the report. At the same time, the strong desire for ICT in advancing countries like China, India, and Brazil doesn’t necessarily make them ideal environments for cloud computing either. Each country has its own legal dynamic that plays out in unique ways.

The 24 countries were evaluated in three broad areas:

1. The legal environment that ensures privacy and security, defines and restricts cybercrime, and upholds the rights of intellectual property.

2. Policies and support for international standards, e-commerce, and free trade.

3. ICT readiness of the general infrastructure, and policies for broadband Internet support.

The printed report provides the detailed scorecard for each country, by category, as well as some graphs for making quick comparisons. The website also features a page in which you can get a verbal summary of the situation, country by country.

Some of the trends that caught my eye included:

Japan is at the top of the chart, as the country is active in cybercrime treaties, IP laws, and international standards. They also have high broadband penetration, and plan to provide access to 100% of households by 2015.

Most European countries scored reasonably well. Germany is near the top, but may drop in the standings if they begin interpreting laws to restrict the flow of data across borders.

The USA is a leader in cybercrime laws, privacy protection good at the individual level, but inconsistent at the state level. The country has high Internet use, but broadband coverage is not consistent.

China, India, Brazil, and Thailand all exhibit a strong and growing interest in ICT, but some significant gaps in privacy protection and cybercrime legislation.

Although there may be a few setbacks, my guess is that all of the countries in the report will have made substantial improvements in their scores in the next few years, and there may be new ones added. We look forward to seeing next year’s report.

We’re hearing plenty of talk these days about smart phones, smart homes, and smart cities.  “Smart” in this sense means adding computing power to our phones, houses, or public facilities, and connecting them to a network or the Internet.  So in that context, what could “smart computing” possibly mean?  How do computers get smart?  And what does smart computing have to do with real-time cloud computing, if anything?

A few years ago Andrew H. Bartels wrote a white paper for Forbes titled Smart Computing Drives The New Era of IT Growth.  In this paper Bartels defines what he means by “smart computing” as “a new generation of integrated hardware, software, and network technologies that provide IT systems with real-time awareness of the real world and advanced analytics to help people make more intelligent decisions about alternatives and actions that will optimize business processes and business balance sheet results.“

Can we simplify that a bit?  How about saying that just as something in the real world gets “smart” by connecting it to a computer, computers get “smart” by connecting them to the real world, which ultimately helps us to make better decisions.

As we would expect in a white paper from Forrester Research, there are some well-thought-out projections on where this trend might take us.  It states that smart computing is the next big wave, a fourth wave coming after mainframe, personal, and networked computing.  Does that sound familiar?  We’ve heard people saying pretty much the same thing about cloud computing.  This should not be surprising, since Bartels identifies cloud computing as “one of the underpinnings of smart computing.“

What strikes me is how much benefit smart computing can gain from real-time cloud capabilities.  Consider this list of the Five A’s of Smart Computing that Bartels suggests:

Awareness means connectivity to the world, pretty much as we’ve seen in the Internet of Things – sensors, embedded chips, video, and so on.  Bartels says: “Unified communications technologies such as third-generation (3G) wireless networks will transport this data from these client devices back to central servers for analysis.“  In many scenarios, the closer to real time that the data transport takes place, the more useful the information will be.

Analysis is done using standard business intelligence tools, and Bartels points out the value of feeding real-time data into these tools: “Businesses and governments have already been using these analytical tools … But now, they will be deployed against the real-time data being transmitted from the new awareness devices.“

Alternatives refers to the decision-making process: evaluating alternatives and making decisions.  Bartels foresees a need for a significant increase in data transfer rates to keep pace with the real world in real time.  “The basic function of rules engines and workflow will stay constant — seismic leaps will be necessary in the data flow and analytical inputs in a world of vastly expanded real-time awareness.“

Actions are based on the results of analysis, either automatic or with human intervention.  In either case, Bartels suggests: “These actions will be executed through integrated links to the appropriate process applications.“  Real-time cloud systems can provide two-way data communication to support control functionality when required.

Auditability is a feedback system to ensure that the action has taken place, complies with legal regulations and company policies, and also provides some way to evaluate for improvement.  “Using data on activity at each stage, record what happened and analyze for purposes of compliance and improvement.“  A real-time cloud system should be readily able to support that capability.

To sum up, new technologies are necessary to support smart computing.  These include the ability to capture data from the real world and send it in real time for high-speed analysis and feedback.  This is what real-time cloud computing is all about.

The results of the recent presidential election in the USA came as a surpise to some.  Most of the pundits and forecasters on the Republican side had predicted a victory for their candidate, while those on the Democratic side were quite certain theirs would win.  A “Pundarts” graphic at the Slate.com website illustrates the relative success of these two groups in predicting the final outcome.

Right in the bullseye was Nate Silver, blogger for the New York Times, now hailed as the “golden boy of electoral statistics.”  He was spot-on this year, as he was four years ago.  No wonder that sales of his book The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don’t jumped some 850% the day after the election.

According to Silver, in spite of how important forecasting is to our daily lives, we are remarkably poor at it.  Those who are most successful tend to be more modest, less ideological, and to rely on empirical evidence.  The key is to be able to successfully sift through a sea of noise to detect the signal.  Much of that noise can be internal, coming from the pundits themselves in the form of personality traits, subconsious biases, and pride in being an expert.

While we don’t have much control over the human nature of forecasters, real-time cloud computing opens new possibilities for gathering empirical evidence.  Those currently using real-time systems already understand the value of real-time data.  Connecting to the cloud provides more depth and reach for these systems, as hard data and empirical evidence become more readily available, and up-to-the-second.  The growing availability of data, broad-based and timely, is moving us out of the realm of supposition into higher levels of certainty.

Take Nate Silver’s own success, for example.  He didn’t conjure up an imaginary all-knowing genie, or shake a Magic 8 Ball.  He certainly didn’t try to advance his own “expert” opinion.  He simply looked at the average of a number of polls.  He worked with the hard facts, considered historical precedence, and made reasonable guesses with a stated level of probability.  In addition to these, he was willing and able to adapt to rapidly changing conditions.

If you read his blog entries and other reports, you will see that as the polls changed over time, Silver changed his predictions as quickly as possible.  He was recalculating up until the day of the election, and even during the hours that the returns were coming in he was posting updates to his blog.

All successful forecasting, be it for the weather, the stock market, or business planning, ultimately relies on hard data.  In our ever-accelerating world we are becoming increasingly aware of the need for timeliness of that data.  The more recent the data, the better the forecast.  And in our growing interconnectedness, we are discovering the value of having full access to that data anywhere, any time.

The availability and speed of the incoming data are constantly increasing.  Where will all of this end up?  Will the past, present, and future eventually get compressed into real time, making data spontaneously available everywhere?  Are we ready to consider the possibility of going beyond the guesswork of forecasting, to realize a new reality, the certainty of now?

Not quite yet.  We’ll take up that topic soon.