Everything is moving to the cloud. We hear this all the time. Especially since more people than ever are currently working from home and ordering things online thanks to the various responses to COVID. All of that online activity has been generating piles and piles of data, so much so that data storage companies have had to scramble to deal with it. Thus, new data centers, located in massive but otherwise innocuous buildings full of server stacks are springing up.
There are a lot of interesting and counterintuitive aspects to this trend. One is that our increasingly digital lives are causing a small boom in brick and mortar construction. Because of the obvious need for extensive electrical and HVAC capabilities these data centers can’t be easily installed in a refurbished warehouse or old office building. They often need a brand new building to be able to handle all the unique demands of a modern data center. This creates construction jobs and a few others in security and IT to keep the servers working.
Another unusual aspect to consider is the fact that the cloud isn’t really a cloud. Sure, when you upload a document to the cloud, it is easy to share with others and access from anywhere with an internet connection. However, that document is still stored in a specific physical location. In a way, the cloud as it currently exists is actually more centralized than ever. Stay with me on this. Before everything was getting put on the cloud, your information was typically kept just in your hard drive and the drive of anyone you shared it with. That is pretty siloed and keeps it out of the hands of people who might benefit from access to it. Yet, data as a whole was more spread out, over several different drives in multiple buildings, each possibly with its own servers.
This made it more difficult to share but also to hack the data. A single accident like a power surge was unlikely to wipe out vast swaths of data. Now, with the cloud and increasing amounts of data stored in these massive server farms it is in faact easier to hack, or be lost due to happenstance. How should we deal with this situation? What alternatives are there since it is unlikely we’ll be going back to the old model. After all, the cloud model has provided numerous advantages in cost savings and data sharing efficiency. For now at least, it seems we need those massive centers full of server stacks. Yet, this is merely a temporary fix, a band aid.
The question then remains, what is a better solution for this situation? The answer lies in the continued drive to decentralization. If cloud computing arose from a need to decentralize work, the solution to how to best handle all that data should lie in the same direction. While the details still need to be worked out, solutions that make use of blockchain technology are the most likely. These would make use of this cryptocurrency technology to harness the storage and computing power of devices large and small across the planet. Imagine if millions worldwide signed up to a system that would dedicate a portion of the storage and computing capacity of their smartphones and laptops to cloud computing. Each one functions as a node in a massive network.
These kinds of systems already exist. The oldest of note is SETI which began allowing people to hook up their computers to the SETI data network over a decade ago. These computers process data from SETI during what would otherwise be downtime, allowing that data to be processed much more quickly and efficiently than if it was just waiting for time at centralized supercomputers. The same method has been used in other capacities such as decoding genomes. So, why not apply the same principle to cloud computing generally?
This is exactly in line with TARTLE’s vision. We’re trying to help build a world in which data is not controlled by the few but by the many, by the people who create it in the first place. It’s just one part in the decentralization movement, a movement that aims to put people back in control of their own data and lives.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
Everything is moving to the cloud. We hear this all the time. Especially since more people than ever are currently working from home and ordering things online thanks to the various responses to COVID. All of that online activity has been generating piles and piles of data, so much so that data storage companies have had to scramble to deal with it.
Alexander McCaig (00:06):
[crosstalk 00:00:06] What were you saying about the dog food?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
[crosstalk 00:00:07] Welcome to TARTLE Cast with your hosts, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future and source data defines the path.
Jason Rigby (00:22):
The path, the path, the path. Alexander McCaig.
Alexander McCaig (00:25):
Jason Rigby. Keep telling me about the path. I was talking to you about side notes, we always do side notes, you were going, (singing) and I was like, "Batman."
Jason Rigby (00:36):
(Singing)
Alexander McCaig (00:37):
It's so funny. The dog food I get for my dogs is the one, who the owner of the company is the original Robin.
Jason Rigby (00:45):
Really?
Alexander McCaig (00:46):
Yeah. And it's called Gentle Giant. It is so funny. The bag kills me. Just-
Jason Rigby (00:51):
You got to taste, send me a picture of this, getting-
Alexander McCaig (00:52):
The marketing on it is fantastic.
Alexander McCaig (00:54):
[crosstalk 00:00:54] It's great.
Alexander McCaig (00:54):
And it's good. It's good food.
Jason Rigby (00:56):
Right.
Alexander McCaig (00:57):
The dogs thoroughly enjoy it. They're very healthy on it. And he has this advertising all over the bag that the dogs that eat Gentle Giant, they live for 20 plus years, all of them. And he's got an animal rescuer where he saved 15,000 giant breed dogs, really.
Alexander McCaig (01:10):
But the most hilarious part on the bag is that he says, "we kiss our dogs on the lips." He kills me. It is so funny. It has nothing to do-
Jason Rigby (01:18):
[crosstalk 00:01:18] So he's the original Robin. That's awesome.
Alexander McCaig (01:19):
He's the original Robin. Now, he does a dog rescue and sells dog food.
Jason Rigby (01:23):
Because I love the old school Batmans.
Jason Rigby (01:25):
Yeah, and it's cool. [crosstalk 00:01:27] And it's got Robin on with his cape and everything, but I can't get into it anymore. I'm totally done- [crosstalk 00:01:34].
Alexander McCaig (01:34):
[crosstalk 00:01:34] No, but speaking of Batman in the Batcave...
Jason Rigby (01:35):
Oh, the Batcave, yeah-
Alexander McCaig (01:36):
Let's get into data centers.
Alexander McCaig (01:37):
That's a nice transition because data centers are... They're like that new Batcave: super high tech, you wouldn't typically notice it, but it's in some square off building in some industrial park across the United States. And it's doing all these storage and processing for cloud computing. And you would never even know, you just drive right by it.
Alexander McCaig (01:57):
Just some inconspicuous building it's taken millions and millions of dollars to build and develop. And no one's managing it. There's maybe a security guard out front.
Jason Rigby (02:04):
I know Facebook here in Los Lunas, built a multi, I mean, a huge, you can see it on the satellite, built a huge data center. And there's some employees in there, but not a lot. [crosstalk 00:02:19] It's kind of creepy.
Alexander McCaig (02:20):
[crosstalk 00:02:20] No. It's a data center. It's just a bunch of server stacks because as the demand for online cloud processing increases in the amount of IoT devices that we have, in interactions that we have that are digital, there's just so much data going back and forth.
Jason Rigby (02:37):
When you talked about going on how all the computer businesses are going on the cloud and then we have everybody working from home. How much data that's creating?
Alexander McCaig (02:44):
Right. And so all that work-at-home analysis, applications processing, it's no longer done centralized at the office on the actual computer, like the machine itself. The computers are doing the processing. You can offload even large-scale video productions, which are so processing heavy, you can offload all that video editing and production to cloud processing systems.
Alexander McCaig (03:11):
So you can utilize tens of thousands of computers on server racks rather than just one to process some high-def film. That's amazingly efficient.
Jason Rigby (03:17):
Yeah, that's huge.
Alexander McCaig (03:19):
But what we're seeing here is that because of that increase in data flow, the amount of devices and technology that are interacting, creating that data, and people working from home using these new analytical cloud tools. Investors are like, "oh, we need to put money into these data centers. We got to build more of them."
Jason Rigby (03:39):
Right.
Alexander McCaig (03:39):
Which I frankly think is quite ridiculous. It's like the Band-Aid for a quick fix. Yes, we are building these data centers to deal with the amount of information that needs to be stored and processed, but the world is becoming inherently more decentralized. So why wouldn't you take on a decentralization effort for the storage and management of that data so that you can use smartphones, IoT devices, computers, to be the nodes and the processing power, rather than say, I'm going to centralize it and spend all this money to take the place of the processing power of billions of phones across the globe.
Jason Rigby (04:18):
That's so true.
Alexander McCaig (04:18):
Why wouldn't you use the processing power of all the computers that all the people who are generating that information already on to deal with that storage, we share across a network of supporting that? but now we rely on cloud storage, which is from a business's sense, they're like, "great. I don't have to have centralized servers at my place." They pass it off to a third party who has huge centers of centralized servers. So it is cloud computing. It's decentralized for your business, but the storage and manipulation of that data is still in a centralized format. It needs to transition over to somebody decentralized. So that's why I was saying, this is just a Band-Aid to deal with the increase in the volume of data and its analysis.
Jason Rigby (04:57):
Yeah, I did. I did enjoy. And this is a stock tip for whatever it's worth. The REIT, you know, real estate- [crosstalk 00:05:05]
Alexander McCaig (05:05):
[crosstalk 00:05:05] Investment trusts?
Jason Rigby (05:05):
Investment trusts. They were up 20% this year for data centers. They have a REIT that's specific just for data centers. And that's going to probably go for at least five years, probably [crosstalk 00:05:15].
Alexander McCaig (05:15):
[crosstalk 00:05:15] It's going to go for at least five years, until someone comes around and says, "oh, we have a decentralized way of storing, [crosstalk 00:05:21] managing, do all this stuff, and it uses a blockchain technology and all that other good things that come with it." But this data storage thing. It's a temporary growth.
Jason Rigby (05:30):
Right.
Alexander McCaig (05:30):
But we'll see that it'll make more sense in the future for everything as a network web to come in and support that storage.
Jason Rigby (05:37):
Yeah, and one of the things that Nelson Fonseca, chief executive of, I don't know how to pronounce this, but C-Y-X-T-E-R-A, Cyxtera, or whatever.
Alexander McCaig (05:47):
It doesn't matter. Stupid name, [crosstalk 00:05:49] no offense. No offense to him, but it's like, what does that even mean?
Jason Rigby (05:53):
He said it's actually accelerated all the drivers that were going in the industry in the first place, and they lease space in its centers for three-year contracts. And that they're looking, even now, for new markets, and their pipeline is going into 2021 is expositional-like. But it was interesting how they have to try to find specific, like the power grid has to be legit. The building, they have cooling issues. [crosstalk 00:06:18] They have a subfloor-
Alexander McCaig (06:19):
[crosstalk 00:06:19] Yeah, you got to have all the proper security and backup because it also is housing a lot of sensitive information, credit cards, very identifiable on the-
Jason Rigby (06:27):
All that online shopping data has to go somewhere. [crosstalk 00:06:30].
Alexander McCaig (06:30):
[crosstalk 00:06:30] It has to, yeah...
Jason Rigby (06:30):
We are booming in online shopping.
Alexander McCaig (06:32):
And it has to be stored somewhere. And now these data centers are responsible for that storage.
Jason Rigby (06:37):
And Amazon has gotten a lot of my money.
Alexander McCaig (06:42):
They've got a lot of your money and they have their own data centers.
Jason Rigby (06:44):
Yeah. That's cool. And they're even, I think they're AW, what is it?
Alexander McCaig (06:48):
A-W-S.
Jason Rigby (06:49):
Yeah, and I know that they are even getting into this race and I know they're cheaper than I mean, you can [crosstalk 00:06:56] see they're-
Alexander McCaig (06:57):
[crosstalk 00:06:57] Well that's because they've built so much more.
Jason Rigby (06:58):
Yeah. I mean, you know, TARTLE or anybody can go and purchase.
Alexander McCaig (07:02):
Yeah. We can purchase any sort of [crosstalk 00:07:04] server storage from them.
Jason Rigby (07:05):
[crosstalk 00:07:05] Space.
Alexander McCaig (07:06):
But, you know, it's just interesting to see right now that with the growth in data, which is fantastic, that people are just trying to find a way to keep up with it. And it's a nice, I guess, economic bump for people that are in the real estate...
Alexander McCaig (07:17):
Commercial real estate.
Alexander McCaig (07:18):
Commercial real estate, for that sort of development towards a future driven by data.
Jason Rigby (07:22):
Yes. [crosstalk 00:07:23]
Alexander McCaig (07:23):
[crosstalk 00:07:23] I mean, it's beneficial to TARTLE and the people that use TARTLE, so continue to do it. [crosstalk 00:07:27].
Jason Rigby (07:27):
[crosstalk 00:07:27] Yeah, continue to do it.
Alexander McCaig (07:28):
But I feel that there are better options out there and that this is just a quick fix.
Jason Rigby (07:31):
Yeah. I agree a hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Thank you for listening to TARTLE Cast with your hosts, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future and the source data defines the path. What's your data worth?
