Is a Cloud Computing World Flatter, Faster, and More Fun? Lanham Napier of Rackspace Thinks So
Napier, CEO of the $780 million hosting company Rackspace, spoke with Techonomy’s Adam Ludwig about the present and future of cloud computing.
What’s so compelling about cloud technology?
When I was a kid, my first computer was an Apple I. every application ran locally. Now, with broadband, you can deliver exponentially more computing power and run exponentially more apps. the scale of the capabilities is what makes cloud computing compelling.
Cloud is an adrenaline shot for this age because it creates so much access and choice for customers. it used to be that businesses bought the software and servers, hired all the IT people, and ran it all themselves. with cloud it’s about service at a cheap price that you can access from anywhere when you need it. Manufacturing plants used to make their own electricity, but now of course they buy it from utilities. Data and software are going in the same direction with the cloud. with computing as a service, the pace of change can move at Web speed. our customers have software they want to run in the cloud, and we enable that for them. We take responsibility for the infrastructure environment for their applications.
Talk about the history of Rackspace and how its service has developed.
Rackspace was founded in 1998 by three students from Trinity University in San Antonio. It’s a classic American story of people who came out of college wanting to start a company. their vision was based on the idea that people still needed help getting online, so they went into the hosting business.
We started investing in cloud technology about six years ago with the advent of virtualization, which enabled the pooling of machines so you can aggregate larger chunks of compute power. From a customer’s perspective, everything we do is cloud.
If you look at the history of IT, companies want to create products, get customers hooked on them, and then leave them. They’re like drug dealers—they even call their customers users. the most influential, powerful technology companies, like Microsoft and Oracle, have created products and locked customers into them, making it difficult for them to migrate. they wanted to create inelastic demand so they could keep raising prices. then they charge a maintenance fee. It’s driven by the technology itself, not by customer outcome. We don’t think that way. Customers should have a choice, and it ought to be pleasurable. they should have fun with the technology they buy, not fear it, and their selections should be based on outcome. those outcomes differ from case to case. sometimes it’s uptime, sometimes it’s hits, sometimes it’s scalability.
If you want to go to a six Flags theme park, you go to their website and you can purchase tickets—it’s a classic online business model. We helped them figure out the right tech components they needed to utilize, scoped out the architecture, and we make sure it runs. We’re creating Web-scale, reliable technology with a human being helping you to make sure it runs right. When we open-sourced our cloud technology, a lot of people thought we were crazy. But it’s the only way of providing this new kind of service.What do you mean you open-sourced it?
It’s a project called OpenStack. it started as a collaboration between Rackspace and NASA, and is now the largest open-source cloud system out there. There are over 100 companies and organizations involved in the OpenStack ecosystem, and more will be coming on board. if you go to the site, you’ll find open-source software to download, and you can learn about dozens of other projects developers there are collaborating on.
Do you foresee broad adoption of cloud computing, and what do you anticipate the evolution and impact of the technology will be?
Broad adoption is happening right now, but we’re going to see the pace of innovation within cloud accelerate. It’s gone from trend to mainstay. But it’s still early days. We’re going to see rapid growth in technology and outcomes for a generation. It’s pretty exciting to be part of it. with a smart phone, you’re going to be able to have a supercomputer. it used to be that only IT managers at Fortune 500 companies could access that kind of power. When we think about the social platform and the compute platform, it will translate into a big boost in productivity.
In your opinion, what are the biggest innovations of the digital age?
Virtualization—moving data from a local platform to an aggregated virtual one—is the biggest enabler. Put simply, it allows us to pool and tap resources we weren’t able to previously tap. it took something that was rigid and discrete—information sharing—and made it flexible. the social platform that’s still being built out is also an incredibly powerful thing, allowing information to flow freely, making our world more meritocratic. Another innovation that goes hand-in-hand with these two is of course hyperconnectivity, in the form of ubiquitous wi-fi. In the early-to-mid ’90s, George Gilder talked about how broadband connectivity would enable a computing revolution, and that it would be one of the things that would bring big change by making information readily consumable with increased connection speeds.
Our ability to use tools has accelerated our evolution as humans. We’ve developed tools that have evolved into the new building blocks of technology, like the social platform and hyperconnectivity. these building blocks can then be used to create newer, more sophisticated building blocks for innovative, creative minds to play with. I think reconfiguring these building blocks in their infinite permutations and discovering new ones will enable an incredible productivity boost.
What’s a pre-Internet innovation that you think in retrospect has had a significant impact?
Broadcast television, and later cable television. When I was a kid, I remember the arrival of cable to my neighborhood, and what cable did was take broadcast TV and pump it up a notch. through this box I could go all sorts of places. That trained consumers to want to interact with a box. Now that box may be an iPhone in the middle of my hand, but it’s still a box.
What is the future of information storage and access?
We’re in the phase of rapid investing in the build-out and growth of the fundamental cloud infrastructure. There’s some heavy iron assembly going on right now just filling out the compute power that humanity requires. We’ll continue to see acceleration of investment in this build-out, along with accelerating adoption, because the old way is brittle. We’re putting so much data out there, the natural next question is, how secure is it? We need technology to mature it and make it as secure as possible.
Big providers have in some ways just been getting our data into a central place, which is actually making it more secure. So the next level of advancement is security, and getting the right level of authentication. I believe we are moving rapidly towards that.One of the sessions at Techonomy 2011 concerns the securitization of information. do you see us moving in that direction, and how will individuals participate in that kind of market?
I would say that we’re moving towards a data economy, and there are data economies already forming. right now your web behavior is being recorded and someone is monetizing it, but you aren’t really benefiting in any financial way from this monetization. I think over time we will see a power shift. Consumers are starting to have a lot of power, and they realize that. Consumer groups will form to give them more leverage to try to monetize their data that’s being collected. We’ll figure out how you can protect the earning power of your information. it might happen when enough consumers band together, capture their data first, and sell the data to a marketing company that creates credits in a consumer community. When you give your zip code at the grocery store, they’re tracking you, and that information has value. you should be compensated for transferring that value to the grocery store.
For more information about the Techonomy 2011 conference (Nov. 13-15), visit www.techonomy.com. you can also follow Techonomy on Twitter and Facebook.
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