A nearly forgotten jewel

Just back from a week in Dublin with Alan McCreery and Kathy. We stayed in Finglas once again, just like 1986 but in Clune Road instead of Ballymun Avenue. That was the year I found out that U2 were something really special. This song travelled with me all over Germany for the next few years on the car radio. Just today I stumbled upon a video from that time.  

Last Saturday (21.06.14) the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity gave Bono its inaugural Lionheart award for his work with RED. The award recognizes a person or organization "that, through innovative use of commercial brand power, has made a significant and positive difference to people or the planet."

Boundaries und Grenzen

One of the most popular home computers ever made was the Commodore 64 in 1982. The "64" was the amount of memory it had--not 64 Gigabytes or 64 Megabytes, but 64K. 

The thing is, the amount of available memory was right there, in the name of the machine. All the people who developed for the machine knew exactly how much memory it had. Any time a developer whined or made excuses about how little memory there was, he was telling us something we already knew, making excuses where no excuses were needed or welcome.

With unlimited time, unlimited money and unlimited resources, of course you might do something differently. But your project is defined by the limitations and boundaries that are in place when you set out to accomplish something.

You build something remarkable because of the boundaries, not without them.

Cloud Computing, Strategie Europe 2020

"One of the core messages we have been taking to the European Cloud Partnership (ECP) is the call to put data protection, ownership, and control, in the hands of cloud users. For cloud to succeed, and realise its potential, it is essential that customers own and control their data at all times. Recent news stories have brought this topic to the fore. Customers, governments and businesses, large and small alike, have concerns about the security, ownership and privacy of their data. If they are not addressed, these concerns have the potential to undermine the pervasive adoption of cloud computing and the resulting benefits to the business community.

At AWS we decided on day one (2006) to put this control in the hands of our customers. They own the data – they choose where to store the data and their data would never be moved to optimise the network. This means that European customers using the AWS Cloud can choose to keep their data in Europe. We also give customer’s tools and techniques to encrypt their data, both at rest and in transit, and manage their secret keys in such a way that it is the customer who completely controls who can access their data, not AWS or any other party. Content that has been encrypted is rendered useless without the applicable decryption keys.

I believe that many of the elements needed for cloud computing to be successful in the region focus on values that are core to all of us as Europeans. As a Dutchman, I hold European values in close regard - values such as the right to a fair and democratic society, and a strong protection of privacy and freedom. Cloud computing –done right– enables broad expression and realization of these European values, especially when combined with a business model that puts customers first. One of the key themes of the ECP’s vision document is the call for a cloud computing framework that focuses on customers and empowers Europeans.

According to a study from the center for economics and business research, the expected cumulative economic effects of cloud computing between 2010 and 2015 in the five largest European economies alone is around €763 billion. Analyst firm IDC notes the cloud economy is growing by more than 20% and could generate nearly €1 trillion in GDP and 4 million jobs by 2020."

- Werner Vogels CTO, Amazon Web Services.