Distribute And Win - Why Distributed Systems Are Winning

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Distribute And Win - Why Distributed

Systems Are Winning
Rajeev Srinivasan - October 12, 2016, 1:53 pm

SNAPSHOT

There are many instances, both in nature and business, of the virtues of

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distributed systems as compared to monolithic systems.

The evolution from centralised to decentralised systems in computing has hurt
some of the giants of yesteryear, such as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, and
enriched newcomers such as Google, Amazon and Facebook.

There are many instances, both in nature and business, of the virtues of distributed
systems as compared to monolithic systems. One of the most obvious is the rise of
open-source software, as argued persuasively by Eric Raymond in The Cathedral and
the Bazaar (available online).
He argues that cathedrals (hierarchical, well-organised companies which are the
western norm, e.g., IBM, Microsoft) will in the long run be defeated by bazaars
(loosely federated groups of workers).
In the context of operating systems (the software that controls devices), and
speci cally of the UNIX and Linux systems (which is what Eric was focusing on),
this prophecy has largely come true. Microsoft, so dominant in the last century, has
now lost its monopoly.
If you consider smartphones and tablets as well, the newcomer operating system
Android (from Google) now accounts for as much as 60 percent of the worlds
devices, with Apples iOS running another 10 per cent. And both are derived from
UNIX and Linux; Microsoft Windows share, once 90 percent, is around 30 percent.
A major difference is that UNIX/ Linux are, fundamentally, distributed systems. The
original design of UNIX was radically different from that of operating systems that
existed before it, such as the monolithic IBM System/360. UNIX (and its rewrite
Linux) depends on many small pieces of code, each of which does one thing well,
and which are loosely connected (technically through pipes).
This structure means that arbitrarily complex systems can be built independently

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by distributed teams: each team has a contract with the others about sharing
their functionality through well-de ned interfaces. Furthermore, by putting the
(reusable) pieces together in different ways, you are able to create different
con gurations: say, one optimised for number crunching, another for video editing,
yet another for natural language processing.
The rise of these systems was an invention, then, of the greatest relevance, but the
story of how they were thwarted in their rise is an object lesson in the transition
from invention to innovation. It is not obvious that if you build a better mousetrap,
they will come and buy it from you. Potentially radical inventions do not necessarily
become disruptive innovations unless you work on it.
You have to actively market your invention, and moreover, you need to have
friends, an ecosystem that builds co-specialised assets along with you before you
are able to appropriate the value in your invention and turn it into an innovation,
that is to say, something that has succeeded in the marketplace.
But that is a story for another time; let us look at some other instances of
distribution. The Economist magazine recently noted a curious fact, that both
Linux and Amazon Web Services were born on the same day,25 August, the former
25 years ago, and the latter ten years ago. They are closely linked, in that it would
not have been possible to create and support AWS, had open-source software such
as Linux not existed. However, Linux, as The Economist noted drily, will continue to
plod along, while AWS is a $10 billion business, and very pro table.

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What have AWS, and other cloud services such as Microsofts Azure, and Googles
own offering, done? Cloud computing means you relinquish control over your
computing requirements (that is, you treat it as a utility that arrives as per your
demand, instead of owning a large computer centre). The cloud is not a single
large monolithic data centre with arrays and arrays of computers, but instead, it is a
constellation of such data centres all over the world.
You, as a user, view computing as an on-demand service, like electricity. You only
pay for what you consume: computing power (CPU), storage or other resources. If
you are a small company, you start off by consuming a small amount, and as you
grow, you keep adding more: thus, capital costs for computing need no longer be a
barrier to entry. Of course, in the rental model, you will probably pay more in the
long run, but then it is an operating expense, not capital cost, and you get
preferential tax treatment. Therefore, from the point of view of the user, distributed
computing is ef cient and cost-effective. And you dont have to employ armies of
system administrators, nor worry too much about the latest upgrades to hardware
and software: someone else takes care of it.
The associated software-as-a-service (SaaS) model is also helpful: instead of buying
expensive software, you simply rent it. The provider will take care of the chores of
keeping it up to date and xing bugs centrally.
Of course, there are losers in this transition, too: of particular note are IT
incumbents, including service providers, who have found demand for their services

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diminishing; hardware providers, who nd their standard offerings undercut by

cheap commodity products from no-name makers; and enterprise software
providers, whose products are in competition with free/ open-source products.
Thus, the evolution from centralised to decentralised systems in computing has
hurt some of the giants of yesteryear, such as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, and
enriched newcomers such as Google, Amazon and Facebook. Doubtless, these
worthies will also be, in turn, shouldered aside by others with good ideas.
Now comes yet another eld where the monolith is being replaced by the
distributed: space exploration. In its Technology Quarterly of August 27, The
Economist considers some new developments that are giving the space business a
second wind: after the race to the moon, and the giant International Space Station,
there has been a lull for a while. Perhaps the most exciting thing that has happened
recently is Indias frugal Mangalyaan mission.
But there are two new things that are making the headlines: one is the success of
private companies entering the launch business and promising space tourism as
well; the other is the discovery that the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, has a
planetary companion thats roughly Earth-sized and might even be capable of
hosting life. There is a spring in the step of space cadets, all of a sudden.
Space exploration is in a sense the epitome of centralised projects in its complexity
(although upon visiting Angkor Wat in Cambodia, it occurred to me that the
management task of building that astonishing monument, without modern tools,
would have approached the same level of complexity). A giant spaceship ascending
to the skies in solitary splendour is evocative as is that most iconic of monoliths,
the black slab from the science ction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.
But, despite the romance and glory associated with manned space ights, it has
been distributed systems of unmanned satellites that have brought the greatest
bene ts to us. In some cases, they have become indispensable: for instance, the
global positioning satellite systems that let us triangulate our locations so
precisely. In other cases, they have been spectacular failures, though: like

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Motorolas ambitious Iridium project that envisaged 77 satellites offering

instantaneous global communications.
The utility of satellites is known: in fact, there is a virtual traf c jam up there (let
us remember there are many military spy satellites circling us too). But what is new
is the emergence of very small satellites known as cubesats. A conventional
communication satellite may cost $100 million and may be a standard structure: a
cylinder several metres long, a metre in diameter (as in the systems built by SSL of
Palo Alto, California).
But cubesats are much smaller: the standard de nition of a 1U cubesat is a box 10
cm x 10 cm x 11.5 cm with standard interfaces that allow them to be stacked like
Lego bricks. Most of their innards are not custom electronics, but standard
components scavenged from, say, smartphones. Given the rapid rate of advance of
these components, cubesats are becoming quite capable, and they cost around
$100,000. Most of these will end up in low-earth orbit (LEO), around 10,000 km, as
compared to geostationary satellites at 32,000 km.
What is interesting about these cubesats is two-fold: they are versatile, and they
can lead to a resilient network. They can map the earth below; they can listen for
ships and planes beacons (remember MH370?), they can collect scienti c data,
depending on speci c sensors on board. The loss of one or two of them does not
lead to dramatic erosion in total system capability, always a plus for distributed
systems, and very much unlike the loss of a big satellite.
Besides, theres also the possibility of even smaller space probes. Space dust, they
call it: tiny boards 3.5 cm on a side and weighing four grammes, each holding
sensors, a processor, solar cells, a radio and a pair of coiled 10 cm whiskers, says
The Economist. These tiny little devices can study various phenomena and transmit
the data back to earth.
Intrepid dreamers go further: by putting mirrors on them, such tiny craft could be
pushed gently, using powerful lasers on the ground, and accelerated to speeds
that are a notable fraction of the speed of light, and who knows, some of them may

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one day reach Proxima Centauri B, the candidate exoplanet four light years away.
Thus, from projects up in the heavens, all the way to mundane computing tasks,
the principle that distributed systems are often better than a single monolithic
design seems to hold true. Extrapolating, it could well be the case that
mono-anything is less ef cient: monoculture crops, monopolies, monoglot
Anglophones, monotheistic certainties, even monosodium glutamate, that which
fools your brain into thinking something is tasty.

google

innovation

Microsoft

Bill Gates

October 2016 issue

Rajeev Srinivasan focuses on strategy and innovation, which he worked on at Bell Labs and in
Silicon Valley. He has taught innovation at several IIMs. An IIT Madras and Stanford Business
School grad, he has also been a conservative columnist for twenty years.

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