In fact, the looming cloud heralding the next stage of corporate computing, the same one that’s sent nervous naysayers into all manner of anxious fits, has a broad silver lining that these fretful types probably haven’t considered.

The Silver Lining

In a blessedly optimistic editorial published in late October, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Thomas L. Friedman makes the point that the oppressive economic climate currently shrouding the United States is actually conducive to bursts of creativity like no other time in recent memory. And this advancement will unfold, in large part, courtesy of the supremely affordable and eminently functional resource that is cloud computing.

The latest phase in the IT revolution, he says, is being driven by the convergence of social media with the proliferation of cheap wireless connectivity and Web-enabled smartphones—all of it operating under the facilitating miracle that is the cloud. The thousands of software applications stored in this cyber cell transform our handhelds into extraordinarily powerful devices that confer on their users the potential for unprecedented innovation. The cloud has lowered the barriers to entry like nothing else.

Startups to the Rescue

Specifically, goes the argument, this technology shift will clear the way for new companies of all stripes, from insurance brokerages to medical labs, to dip into a nominally priced technological asset and borrow its overarching infrastructure to create from within. With this exceedingly useful tool, entrepreneurs can find their feet more cheaply and easily than they could even five years ago. Where previous eras required serious commitments of capital toward promotion, real estate, labour and technology to establish an operation, the cloud has removed a substantial chunk from the imperatives. The savings to be realized from employing a cloud solution rather than the traditional means and their attendant call for application servers, database servers, various on-premise applications and a slew of expensive IT personnel are genuinely meaningful for a startup. The cloud’s arrival in our midst has delivered supercomputing powers to the masses and, said Friedman in an earlier column, produced a “DIY economy.”

S.O.C.I.A.L

As Friedman describes in this editorial, Marc Benioff, the founder of cloud-based software provider Salesforce.com, this phase of the IT revolution might be summed up with the acronym SOCIAL: S for “speed,” O for “open,” C for “collaboration, I for “individuals,” A for “alignment” and L for “leadership.”

“The emergence of the cloud,” goes the piece, “means than anyone can have the computing resources of Google and rent it by the hour. This is speeding up everything—innovation, product cycles and competition.”

Predicting the effects of new technology can be a challenge

Although it’s still early days, from a long-range historical point of view, the cloud has actually hovered above our various computer-powered preoccupations for a good few years now. Adoption rates for this game-changer motor ever forward, with bugs being identified and addressed, and capabilities being increasingly celebrated.

But it’s worth noting that we remain far from an end point in our understanding of, and appreciation for, this paradigm-shifting newcomer to our daily lives. The Microsoft-produced white paper, The Economics of the Cloud (TK), offers some insight on how this new age might evolve, and urges its proponents to take the long view and see the underlying economics as having the biggest impact on long term take-up rates.

What are the Future Prospects for the Cloud?

It’s always instructive to refer back to other examples of revolutionary design to gain a sense of the way a new advancement might unfold. The world’s first automobiles were described as “horseless carriages,” and they were designed just as their equine-powered predecessors had been—complete with whip holders—in spite of the revised absence of such requirements. “Engineers initially failed to understand the new possibilities of the new paradigm,” the paper points out, “such as building for higher speeds, or greater safety.” Just as in the early days of the car business, it’s difficult to predict where this novelty will take us, but it’s critical not to be hemmed in by restrictions that no longer apply.

Technical complexities and adoption hurdles steal most of the ink these days in literature covering the cloud, as was highlighted in our previous blog entry Calming (Mis) Conceptions about the Cloud. The Microsoft white paper points out the detriment to users’ exploitation of the technology such misinformation creates. Historically, however, it’s been underlying economics that have in fact had a much stronger impact on the direction and speed of disruptions, as technological challenges are resolved or overcome through the rapid innovation to which we‘ve become accustomed.

The cloud allows core IT infrastructure to be brought into large data centres that take advantage of significant economies of scale in three areas: supply-side savings (amortizing costs across multiple servers), demand-side aggregation (reducing variability) and multi-tenancy efficiency (amortizing costs across multiple customers).

Making the Most for your Business – Cloud Flexibility

Capitalizing on these economic benefits is the trick. Just as engineers had to fundamentally rethink design in the early days of the car so too will developers have to rethink their approach to this new era of application design. The concepts of multi-tenancy and demand-side aggregation will represent a formidable challenge for developers and IT departments after all; whatever their level of sophistication. And if you screw up, you could find yourself enjoying only some of the savings on offer, or, even paying more for application development than you currently do.

Onwards and upwards, then. And leave the whip holder in the dust.

I am honoured and thrilled to once again be singled out by Profit magazine and its Canada’s Top 100 Women Entrepreneurs list. For the fourth year running, I take a place on this annual inventory in the esteemed company of 99 other Canadian women who are making a mark in their fields.

Few Powerful Women In IT

A scan of the list reveals a lively mix of professional pursuits: manufacturing, finance, staffing, logistics and wine. That precious few of them fall in the information technology field is not a surprise. But it continues to be a source of personal disappointment.

In spite of some important inroads made on this front in the recent past, IT remains a field that is dominated by men, and that is sorrily underpopulated by members of the opposite sex.

Women in Technology Declining

Over the last two decades, female participation in the tech sector has declined pitifully. Enrolment by women in tech-related programs at postsecondary institutions has gone down (National Centre for Women and Information Technology stats show that a mere 15% of Ontario computer science students in 2008/09 were women), and retention of women in the tech force has become a real problem.

Meanwhile, if you’re among the thin population holding down this female fort, you know the drill: As a woman in tech, you’re regularly the only female in the boardroom, the only female leading a team, the only female at a sales rally.

A Rally for Women in IT

In light of this unacceptable reality, a roundup of the current state of women’s participation in IT.

• The Sultanate of Oman launched its first exclusive IT “knowledge centre” for women this week. The Women’s Community Knowledge Centre is part of a government-sponsored IT training initiative committed to developing skills across the country. By training women in these areas, an official at the announcement said, “we empower them with knowledge and by extension we help to educate their families.”

• The Association of Southeast Asian Nations Council of Women’s Organisations has passed a resolution to enhance the participation and contributions of women to the development of each country and region, including a boost to women’s involvement in business affairs, digital telecommunications development and information technology.

• A half dozen female IT employees in Malaysia were forced to resign from their jobs recently because they’re pregnant. All from different private companies, the six have filed complaints with an independent investigative bureau, the head of which has concluded that they were discriminated against with workloads that were overly challenging or not at all.

(Continued from Part I)

There is something about a new year that gets a person in a predictive frame of mind. A psychic to the stars I am not. But as a fairly successful company we have earned the right to claim some vision, I would think.

And so, without further ado, perched as we are on the brink of yet another decade, bereft of political stimulation thanks to prorogued news, weary of the effort required to stay abreast of the late-night talk-show scramble, I present my collection of predictions for the year ahead (complete with context from years past).

First off, take note. The Apple iPhone is going to take over the world. Or at least it’s poised to and would need to be victim to some serious natural disaster to tumble from its podium.

Are you listening, BlackBerry Jim and BlackBerry Mike? I’d respectfully suggest you plan for a massive comeback in 2010. FYI: The BlackBerry Storm was a very poor copy of the iPhone.  I still own a Blackberry, because typing 22 words per minute is not possible on the iPhone. Hint hint…

Still on the BlackBerry, it’s instructive, historically speaking, to reflect on the state of its earliest incarnation. Not pretty, and it was a single device, way back in its youth, for e-mailing alone—nothing else. Progress has been swift and effective here. I’d recommend some more.

And while we’re on about mobile technology and the distance it’s come, let’s hark back to the birth of mobile phones. I remember some of the very first: little more than enormous battery-carrying cases. And of course the Cantel 22lb Hammer!

Fast forward to today, when a mobile phone is less about facilitating conversation between two parties than it is about being the centre of the party. The latest cellphone is a phone, yes. But you almost sense that’s more a nod to conventional expectation than anything.

After all, this thing is also a camera, GPS, Bluetooth, MP3 player, time scheduler, Internet browser, alarm giver, video taker, note recorder and electronic mailer—that can place telephone calls as required. It has, in short, taken control of our lives.  And yet you still can’t turn the damn thing on when you’re in the air.

Next, let’s put the whole Dragon’s Den – Shark Tank debate to rest. Dragons are legendary creatures whose storied histories include no shortage of derring-do. Sharks? Well, they’re cold-blooded killers who always seem to be on the hunt for a decent meal. Hence, Dragons are cooler then Sharks. And the Canadians seem much more willing to close a deal than their American counterparts. Perhaps the spinoff show should have been called Chicken Tank. And why are Kevin O’Leary and Robert Herjavec featured on Shark’s Tank? They are Canadians! Where’s the Donald?

And let us dispatch with this shopping bag bylaw already. What a complete joke, especially the idea of charging a nickel for the things. This bit of government-implemented nonsense is not, in fact, greening the Earth, as we’ve been led to believe. Remember the ’80s? Retailers charged us for bags back then, too.

And, p.s.: It costs less than $.001 to make an enviro-unfriendly plastic bag. You do the math. Someone should invent a truly “green” plastic bag that will disintegrate when mixed with water. That would be some environmentally friendly thinking.

And finally, a bit of math to close out our forward view. Homeopathic plus modern medicine equals naturopathic. Excellent. Question: Why haven’t more medical doctors calculated this equation? Answer: Big-Pharma.

On to 2010.

A new year dawns differently for everyone, depending on where it finds them. And for some, there is no dawn at all.

A new page on the calendar, alas and alack, doesn’t do a thing to staunch the flow of horrifying news streaming up from those dark recesses of our world where men commit acts of violence against women so odious they’ll steal your breath.

When I first read about the acid attacks perpetrated on women in certain cultures and countries, when I first understood the brutality that defines them, the viciousness that underlies them, the devastation that results from them, I was floored.

Today, as a board trustee for ASTI Canada, this country’s arm of the UK-based Acid Survivors Trust International (ASTI), I haven’t taken my eyes away.

While the efforts of this UK-based not-for-profit—established to provide survivors with financial, medical and administrative support through a network of Acid Survivors Foundations—have resulted in considerable progress, the news out of ASTI continues to shock. Acid Survivors Foundations in Uganda, Pakistan, Cambodia and Bangladesh each treated more than 100 survivors in the last year alone.

Women have been victims of acid attacks in these dark parts of the world for decades. Activists cite jealousy, revenge, domestic squabbles and business disputes as common motives.

Victims are scarred for life. The physical effects of nitric or sulfuric acid are catastrophic. With alarming speed, this toxic cocktail eats through skin and even bone. Often, victims suffer permanent blindness and lose the use of their hands for having reflexively brought them to their faces. Their ability to find a mate, hold down a job or enjoy any kind of normal life is snatched away with this single, rage-filled act.

The psychological scars are much harder to quantify. Isolation and ostracism—from ashamed family and community members—are typical. Suicide is the sad last resort for many of these women.

And it gets worse. Perpetrators of this dreadful crime too often justify it as a means of preserving their honour—and (a patriarchal, feudal, conservative) society tacitly acknowledges its validity with wrist slaps and nominal fines.

In Pakistan, a country without a domestic violence law, the Acid Survivors Foundation recorded 48 cases of acid attacks in 2009 (to say nothing of the countless more that likely went unreported). A band of female parliamentarians there has submitted a bill—the Acid Control and Acid Crime Prevention Act 2009—to the National Assembly Secretariat in pursuit of stern action against the architects of these attacks.

They also call for measures to regulate the sale of acid, often readily available and cheap in countries where it’s used to process cotton or as a key ingredient in car batteries. Indians use concentrated acid to sterilize their kitchens and bathrooms, just as we use bleach. Repeated calls for its sale to be regulated have been ignored by the government.

All of this takes place against a backdrop that is pitifully witness to a continued stream of assaults. The December 17, 2009, issue of The Phnom Penh Post, Cambodia’s “newspaper of record,” reported an attack on a 16-year-old girl who had half a litre of acid poured over her, and 30 people were injured in an acid attack on a busy street in Hong Kong last weekend.

Happy New Year? Let’s hope so.