About Cloud Computing . That has been one of the hottest topics in the Technology World in the last few years. What kind of chaise just what kind of changes can Cloud Computing brings your life . We are delighted to have as our special guest dr. Tzicker chiueh, the director of the Cloud Computer center to talk about the state of technology and the prospects for his him for his future development. Welcome to the program. But inc. You for having me. Im very glad to be here. Im going to start off with a very generic issue. A lot of people are asking what exactly is Cloud Computing . This is a commonly asked question. The word cloud in Cloud Computing to me means a data center accessible over the internet. It is associated with the word loud, so it gives people many romantic imaginations but its just a data center over the internet so people can access a service and store them in those data centers. And those information stored in based on Cloud Computing technologies, what kind of changes are we likely to see in peoples lives . Cloud computing basically has three characteristics. One is the kind of application used to run on enduser devices like gmail or email or a map search and so on, these are now moved to some data centers on the internet. Thats number one. The second one is the kind of i. T. Infrastructure you see an individual corporations or universities are now going to be centralized and consolidated. Thats the other major change. The third change is the Cloud Computing encourages ondemand resource provisioning and usage. Therefore the usage base and charge, to put it simply, to encourage renting versus buying services and resources great rex so i will say to my students at the university, Cloud Computing can do one thing, and that is very direct in our daily lives, which is what you mentioned in point number three. A lot of things you dont need to buy anymore. There is a difference between ownership and possession. You dont need to spend 400 or 500 to buy a cd or dvd. You can rent it, get the materials or download it from Cloud Computing technologies, correct . Yes especially for a small business. This notion of buying hardware is going to be outdated. People are going to rent these i. T. Services and this is ready common in the United States nowadays great nowadays. Allowing an individual to spend money on hardware. What is the state of the development of Cloud Computing technologies . Has it been progressing at the pace people at the beginning projected to be . Yes. Right now, i believe this year, 2013, is apparent area if you look at the biggest player in this space, it is amazon web services. The valuation of wall street on amazon is a large part not its Retail Business but its virtual i. T. Renting business. This is still most successful in the United States but if you look at it territory, it moves to tokyo, singapore and australia. This trend is now moving not only from the United States to europe but readily to the asia pacific area as well. What are some of the similarities and differences between the concept of Cloud Computing and virtualization . Virtualization to me is one of the enabling technologies for Cloud Computing. Two of the major benefits of Cloud Computing the notion of always on and inelasticity. Virtualization happens to be able to support that. Simply put, virtualization is a technology that can abstract a piece of hardware resource into Virtual Services. Becoming Virtual Services or resources exit much easier to manage it. No longer you think of a computer as hardware. You think of it as a file. Like whatever you can manipulate in your folder. It makes it very easy to manage. On top of that, to maximize utilization of your Hardware Resources and encourage a marketable entity to share the resources simultaneously without interfering with one another. With the advancement of Cloud Computing technologies, one thing that is clear in peoples daily lives is we are going to be buying less physical things and renting more. Because the fact that now peoples homes or houses are not as big as they used to be with more and more people and a scarce supply of land space. People will be having problems with storage if you keep buying cds and dvds. Is that why in the last few years we see Cloud Computing technology becoming more important and popular in the daily lives of people . Thats right. One of the key benefits from our experiences, you can think of the benefits of Cloud Computing in terms of the point of the individual consumer and corporation. From the individual consumers point of view, whatever benefit you just mentioned. The most important one is it can go anywhere and access my file. That turns out is one of the major benefits from an individual consumers point of view. From the i. T. Point of view, there is a circle of advantages most people would not appreciate. The notion of converting capital expense into operational expense. That is very important from a tech point of view. It turns out that cloud enables this kind of business model. Given the fact we have seen and talked so much about Cloud Computing technology, what do you think are the likely consequences that it changes that Cloud Computing is making in our lives on future generations . For example, a lot of people reverting to electronic books into the buying physical books. They referred to renting services or music and movies instead of buying the actual physical things. Do you think in the future one day all the physical books, cds, dvds will disappear completely . Almost all the digital things will probably eventually reside on the cloud. Starting from what you use to compute, your endpoint devices like your laptop or Desktop Computers and whatever you store on your local disk, eventually this will go to the cloud. Not to mention things like your maps and dictionaries. They are already in the cloud already. Almost all Things Digital will eventually move to the cloud and theres not much reason to hold a personal copy other than to speed up access. Cloud is still doing a better job. A lot of people watching the program today may be thinking that is ivery expensive to store all the data and files i want to store up in the cloud . Actually at this point cost has not been an issue. Most people worry about two things one is security. The other is longevity. How do i know this startup stores my file 10 years from now . Its a statistic people show that when there is a fire in your house, the first thing you want to bring is your photo album. Thats the most precious memory of your entire life. The same thing will go to whatever you store on the cloud. You worry about the longevity of a not just for your lifetime, maybe you want to pass this to your grandchildren. That is something to be concerned about. Another issue people may have doubts over is how big is the cloud . Is it unlimited supply of Space Available according to Cloud Computing technologies . For all practical purposes, i believe it is unlimited. If google gives me 10 gigabytes, its three or four years, i only use less than 15 . And i like to think of myself as a pretty heavy user. 10 gigabyte may seem like not too much but as far as what we are concerned, you can extend very easily from google plus point of view. The technology is there, its just a matter of managing it. You are the general director of the Cloud Computing center for mobile applications grade what kinds of applications can we see in terms of applying these Cloud Computing technologies on a mobile device . Right now, our center does not do too much work on the mobile application but we do some cloud applications. One of the big applications we are working on is this socalled Surveillance Video analysis. Probably like 16,000 cameras out there and they have this problem or they spend so much money installing this i. T. Capable camera and when push comes to shove, they ask the hard question what is the benefit . People cannot clearly articulate the benefit. The main reason is no one has the time to look at the video. We need some kind of capability to use programs to go through this video to do interesting things. That is what this cloud application, Surveillance Video analysis is doing. This application can do simple things like if you give me a simple thing like a report, parked at this particular street at 4 p. M. Yesterday. You want to know the trajectory and this morning he went to that place and the car is gone trade you want to know the trajectory from 4 p. M. Yesterday until now. Somebody must have drove it away. We need to scan through the related cameras and do analysis automatically and plot the trajectory. As long as they show up on some camera, we should be able to spot them. That is what this application is capable of doing. We should discuss more about the applications later. We do take the first break on our program. When we come back, we will continue our cover station with dr. Tzicker chiueh. See you in just a few minutes. Welcome back to the second segment of todays program here on the taiwan outlook. Oh were continuing our conversation with dr. Tzicker chiueh, the director of the mobile Cloud Computing center. What is the state of Cloud Computing industry in taiwan . We should look at it from a global point of view. There are two types of businesses in the Cloud Computing space. What is the Cloud Service writer like google and facebook and amazon. The other category is Cloud Solution provider. These are the people who provide solutions for Cloud Services, provide the data center and services. It could be hardware or the usual suspects like ibm, hp, dell and the software would be like microsoft. In this global cloud space, we want to think about where taiwan should position itself in this space. We eventually decided we want to focus on the Cloud Solution provider space. We know that taiwan has an enormous hardware basis and we want to leverage the spaces to enter this Cloud Solution providing business. Right now, we think we are doing reasonably ok. This big Cloud Service provider like facebook and google, they tend to bypass the cloud hardware solution provider. They will say instead of order from you, i might order from your odm grade this business of facebook and google will try to contact our odm directly and order hardware directly. This business has been going on for a while. What you have seen in the newspaper, some of the companies are doing very well in the cloud space. It is mostly in this kind of business. Compared with other neighboring economies like japan , korea and china, who are some of the major competitors for the industry in this regard . The dominant player is United States. The next guy is probably china. Neither japan nor korea are very active in this particular space. Our biggest competitor at this point is probably england china, especially its outcome equipment providers. Given the fact there is intensifying competition from china, do you think there may be opportunities for the two sides to cooperate on the development of Cloud Computing, especially in terms of Service Solution . Probably at this Service Providing business, there is some room for collaboration. But that is probably not i shouldnt say it is very sustainable in the following sense area right now, because chinese tend to have their own brand. They have a very big domestic market so they can just do it grade from the Traditional Hardware in taiwan, instead of doing business with hp or dell, they do business with the ct. Thats not what we want. We want to escalate the taiwanese business to a somewhat more valueadded. That means we cant just do hardware. We cant just do hardware component. We need to escalate ourselves to the hardware system and add some sort of software so it becomes some type of total solution. In this regard, we are in competition with china. There are major challenges that would lead taiwan to take a lot of efforts to overcome in terms of developing this Cloud ComputingSolution Service fighter type of platform. The simple word is software. In particular, i want to emphasize this notion of System Software. The kind of software you directly run on top of hardware that controls how Hardware Resources are used and managed. This is the key missing piece three or four years ago when i tried to find something to do in the Cloud Computing space. It is the key missing piece. At that point, in terms of the technology base, its relatively not ready to develop a System Software technology. Its the kind of organization that has to be building bridging such a gap grade thats why we decide to focus on this area of technology development. Taiwan is well known for computerrelated technologies. How come we dont have industries or Companies Jumping to this System Software area and try to be competitive down the line . Not just System Software but software in general is not really the top career choice for many of the young generation in taiwan because our Electronics Industry is so strong. Many people doing Computer Science are probably more likely to end up being an i. T. Manager of some Engineering Company as opposed to choosing Software Development as a career grade in particular, Systems Software is a difficult area. Within the software area, theres easy software and difficult software. System software is more difficult grade even in academia, there are not many willing to do this kind of research because its very difficult to publish area so people think its not a very conducive to their career development. They tend to stay away from it. As a result, they dont have that many students and we dont have that many talents area you graduated from one of the top engineering and Computer Science schools in the United States, uc berkeley. You also taught for many years in the state of new york at stony brook. Then you came back to tie one roughly four years ago to head the center all these years. What do you think the likely development of the industry after you have been back here for four years. In addition to the lack of talent, what are some of the things the government and private sectors can do together to try to make taiwans Cloud Computing industry more competitive . I have a very strong impression about these kinds of things. About the Software Development efforts in the industry. Before i came back, i used to be a consultant for various companies over the years. People recognize the importance of software. Its not like they dont recognize it, they do. In the last three or four years, i saw governmentfunded agencies and local industries, electronics companies, they evolved from a service into a true convert. They believe in the importance of software to their companies and eventually put the money where their mouth is. Now they want to take the money from their pocket and really invested. So we can really see that change and im glad i came back at the right time. People have been talking about software and some people even became cynical, there is no hope for taiwan to develop software. But i disagree. I think theres a good chance to do something and not only us, we have another organization doing similar things. Some of the companies we work with, they stop using a Software Team to develop technology thats going to be very important to taiwans Cloud Computing industry. Given the fact you have been back in taiwan almost four years and you mentioned earlier that the role for entry is very important in terms of bridging the gap between what is the prospects in the future and what is the reality today. What are some of the major achievements you can identify for us your center has been able to do in the last few years . We focus on System Software. So the product in my center is basically an end to end solution for Telecom Carriers or data center operators. They are able to provide what we call infrastructure as a service. Similar to amazons service. This kind of software is unique because it doesnt exist on the market yet. Yet there are a lot of Telecom Carriers like malaysian telecom. A lot of Telecom Operators are looking for this kind of solution, simply because amazon is very successful. Amazons software is not for sale, so they need a solution to compete with amazon. Right from the beginning, we position ourselves to provide such a solution not just to the Software Part but team up with taiwanese hardware people to give a total solution for carriers to be able to provide this kind of amazonlike service. So far, the response from the private sector and industry has been positive . X yes. This has been transferred to a couple of local industries. They are willing to invest and license this kind of gigantic piece of software and then try to modify and improve it and do their own things. This year, our major focus is to try to prove the cloud can pass the test of local Telecom Carriers and support some of the government Cloud Services. Once we can achieve that, they will give us reference cases and become a useful way to promote our technology in the international markets. We need to take another break. We will be right back. Welcome back to this part of the programmable. We will continue our conversation with dr. Tzicker chiueh, the general director of the Cloud Computing center for mobile application. We talked earlier about the need to store data files and information in Cloud Computing technology. There is the concept of so called container computer. Can you explain for us . How important is container computer in the development of clod Computing Technologies . We can look at container computer from two points of view. One is the user point of view area imagine you are microsoft or google and they try to build up a Large Data Center. This kind of data center can have 10,000 servers. Instead of building such a large scale data center, using an individual server one by one. Container computer is one such thing. Each of them has about 500 servers. The model is when you have a container, you ask the manufacturer to test them and preinstall everything inside the computer and ship it inside the manufacturing side over a ship and truck and come to the user side. When it reaches a user side. You treated you treat it just like a laptop. If it doesnt work, you send it back and it useful to the end user. I dont need to disassemble it and it takes a long time to do it. I could have just used a warehouse, for example. As a basic building block. What are some of the critical components involved in assembling a container computer . What is the average cost . Four 120 foot container computer, four one 20 foot container computer, its about a million u. S. Dollars. The server storage switches, you need cooling and a Power Generator and Fire Suppression and earthquake proof. The entire container computer is selfcontained. There is nothing else you need to get. That is all you need to run some sort of dater Center Service data Center Service. Who are likely to be the beneficiaries with the advancement of Cloud Computing . Mostly Large Data Center operators. Even with a medium scale, especially from japan, the japanese are trying to build up their data center very quickly because some 70 of their data centers are in the tokyo area which is very close to the earthquake. So they try to digest this data center into other areas. The quickest way to do it is to do it through a container computer. Are we likely to see more of the traditional businesses become the beneficiaries of the technology . X yes. Yes. Most likely they will become renters. They use the Container Center to build up a Large Data Center and rented out as a Virtual Data Center to small and medium businesses. You mentioned earlier which is a key when people talk about Cloud Computing, that is Data Security. You mentioned earlier if i store a file or a collection of photographs today and 10 years later, i want to retrieve them, they may not be there or somebody else distorted the data or stole it all together. What are some of the safeguards Cloud Computing technologies are able to offer in terms of Data Security and protection . There are two kinds of security. One is the kind of security problem that would have happened even with our Cloud Computer. You need an antivirus or intrusion protection. You still needed in the Cloud Computing era. There is no replacement for that grade because of Cloud Computing, new Security Problems get introduced. There are two types. Cloud computing is a renting model. You worry about your landlord. What if landlord is not trustworthy . What do you do . There are Encryption Technologies that allow you to protect your data even from the landlord. You can park your data in your landlords place and you dont need to worry. The other is you worry about the tenant lives at the same place as you do. You worry if they are too noisy or maybe their i. T. Is not so great so they get hacked. When they get hacked, do they compromise my Virtual Data Center . Because mine is on the same physical infrastructure as that tenant . That technology also exists to provide this kind of isolation, to make sure one Virtual Data Center is completely isolated from other Virtual Data Centers that go reside on the same physical infrastructure. Another aspect concerns not the Technology Available for protection, but in terms of the discretionary power of the landlord, of misuse of the information or data you have stored. There is a huge controversy regarding certain foreign governments interfering with peoples private phone records and eta files. Data files. Thats becoming a huge controversy worldwide. With Something Like this being part of the consideration for people involved in the Cloud Computing industry, certainly something for them to keep in mind as the Technology Becomes more stable in the years ahead. The Main Technology is really encryption. If you are really paranoid, the right thing to do is before you ship anything to the cloud, you should encrypt it and hold the key yourself so nobody can decrypt it. The other piece of technology that is very important, its a lot like a business measure, to make sure the Cloud Service operators to not do anything bad. To make sure the data is interoperable. When you use certain Cloud Services, you feel its difficult to get your data out easily. For example, i want to get a copy of all of my mail. That is usually not that easy. You have to do certain things. That is in the interest of the Cloud Service provider to make it sticky so you wont leave. To make sure a Cloud Service provider will make it easy to move their data or information or elsewhere great that ensures there is a competitive market so nobody can do anything sneaky. Once they do it, i move our business elsewhere. And other related question regards the legal regulation. If i miss use someone elses file or data or isolate altogether, what are some of the legal implications that particular person has to face . Im no lawyer, so im not an expert on this. From a Technology Point of view, we want to make sure data is movable easily. The second thing is auditability. Whatever happened, we want to have an audittrail. Some of the regulations in the state have some spirit along this line. If you keep somebody elses data and its compromised, you need a mechanism to notify those whose data has been compromised even if it is not your fault. If someone hacks in and takes a peek at your customers data, you need to have to know which date is not picked . This kind of technology is very important. You mentioned earlier what is important for taiwans Cloud Computing industries to develop software capabilities. Has this been discussed . Can data securely become part of it as we designed this software for the industry to become competitive in the future, also adding another layer, saying this material stored under the software will be better protected . Yes. Each has technology that is exactly as it is. One of the measures to make sure your data is safe from the landlord is to encrypt it. But if i encrypt my data, i cannot ask my landlord to search through it. So if i store a thousand files at the dropbox and encrypted. The dropbox operator is no way of understanding the contents. I cannot ask dropbox to say search my files to find those files that contain the word ibm. We develop a technology, so called encryption domain search. On the one hand, i want to encrypted so the dropbox guy cannot understand it, on the other side i want to make sure i can search through it without understanding the contents of the file. That is one of the technologies we are working on right now. And that is close to being formally announced . X yes. It is the close to product great. We need to take another break on our program. We will be right back. Welcome back to the final segment of todays program. We will continue our conversation with dr. Tzicker chiueh, the general director of the Cloud Computing center for noble application. You often talk about or express the notion of googlelike model. What is it . Can you elaborate for us . In one sentence, it is a softwaredriven data center solution. The goalstyle data selection is characterized by the fact that they use only lowcost commodity hardware. Everything else is controlled by System Software. That is the signature of google style great it is a good fit with taiwanese industry because we are good at building commodities and hardware. Switches, servers, storage and so on. This is a good model and focus on the most variable part. They can write down the economies of stale economies of scale to keep the cost down. What are some of the cooperation programs your center has with the International Partners . Also chinese partners from the mainland . We have two cases. One is we are working with data to develop some sort of Research Center in taiwan. It used to be the case that most of these servers, intelbased, now we want to move to the most popular cpu in the world. They are used in a lot of mobile devices. So that is one area we are working on. The other area is we work with facebook on developing something called p project taiwan. The idea is facebook actually open up its hardware spec to make sure it becomes standard. We are working with facebook to become a Certification Lab for this open compute project vendor. How about cooperation with chinese firms . Anything at this point . Not really that many cooperation with chinese players at this point. How is the concept of intellectual Property Rights protection being accepted in the Cloud Computing industry . Theres a big difference in the Telecom Industry and the i. T. Industry. In the Telecom Industry, you try to get your idea into two standards and try to get your licensing from this vendor. My idea will go into some kind of standard but that only buys me 12 months head start compared to others. That model encourages a faster evolution of the technology and eventually everybody wins. That is the kind of model we would like to follow as well great fax in the remaining part of the program, we are going to get personal with you and ask about your distinguished career. You have served as a specialist in Computer Science, you have taught as a professor in new york, and you have been a consultant for the industry. Now you have been running for the last four years of the general as the general for the Cloud Computing center here in taiwan. Of all these different roles, they must be very different experiences for you personally and professionally. Which role did you like the best . What was the reason . Im actually like my current role very much. When i was a student actually when i was about to graduate, i got an offer from stony brook and i went to see the department year who is a pretty famous guy. He told me the following thing, and i think its interesting to share. He said in a typical university, you probably write a book in order to get tenure. In ivy league schools, you need someone to write a book about you in order to get tenure. So the key word is impact. You need to make an impact. I have a very strong feeling about this. I publish whatever papers i need to publish and update a certain point you ask yourself so what . I can do whatever a people expect me to do. But then you start to ask yourself what are the interesting things you would still like to do . In my current position, i can make some impact that whatever skill that i have accumulated over the last 20 years, i can really put them to use and build stuff. This is one thing especially in my community we really care about. Exactly which technology are using which of your technology are using which product . It is a sensitive question but everybody understands thats the final question people ask of you customer if you can influence certain products, great. That is what big guys are capable and encouraged to do. That is my motto, that we want to do things along this line. You mentioned earlier that Cloud Computing industry is still relatively speaking very young. We still have a shortage of talented people. For the younger students who may be watching the program today, if they are interested in this field and the pursuit of Cloud Computing technology and its related advancement, what would be some of the skills and recommendations and aptitude they should have in order to be able to serve a constructive role and the development of this new technology . From our experience in the last couple of years, and i saw a lot of graduate students, those who are successful today have the following attributes one is absolute interest in computing. They just have to love computing. Every part of it, hardware, systems, everywhere. Play with it, experience it and know how to build it. The other one is excellent programming skill. For whatever reason in taiwan, we do not stress this. I want to convey that notion of writing good programs or have a great programming skill is like good composition when you write english or chinese, it takes years to master the skill. Its not just about learning the language and you know you can compose. You learn chinese for one year and you say you can write an article. Theres no such thing. With this, Everything Else can be learned, not a problem. You have been involved in the Research Area and the development of technology and industry for many years. What does Cloud Computing mean to you today . Clout is really just some eta centers over the internet. We want to build Solutions Data centers over the internet. We want people to build solutions for this kind of data centers. Before the technology became popular, not many people thought about we need to build up all these Cloud Computing data centers and they probably did not foresee the Impact Technology would have on peoples lives. Based on your experience and knowledge about the industry, what would be the next thing people likely to develop in the years ahead based on the experience we have accumulated in the development of Cloud Computing technologies . Probably we are going to see thinner and thinner devices because more and more applications are moved to the cloud. Everyday lives, we dont keep things around. We put things on the cloud. This issue of security and longevity is true but eventually it will all be worked out. People are worried about putting their credit cards for e commerce. Nowadays people do it all the time. The issue is whether all these services can be sustainable or not . Is there a Good Business model where these services are interoperable . Even if a certain business goes down, theres a way to transfer the assets or data from one corporation to another. That will keep the Cloud Computing revolution going. May be in about 20 or 30 years when you retire from active work, and people ask you can you write a book about the story of the development of Cloud Computing industry in taiwan. What will be some of the things you include in the book . I am hoping we can say that my center has laid a significant role in building out the Cloud Computing industry in taiwan. Particularly the Systems Software. We more or less on this space. We started rolling out the first group of talent and hopefully they will spread out in the industry. Then we roll out certain key technologies that become the basis and some of the spinoffs trade one of the spinoffs is on the way and we hope we can do this. But the signature is Systems Software. We hope in the history of the Systems Software industry in taiwan, if you ever evolved in the way we hope it evolved, we can honestly say we played a significant role there. Think you very much for being a special guest on our program today. We want to wish you and the center and the very best in the future. Thank you very much. Thank you for watching our program today. We will see you next time.