Why cloud proves Watson right

Only Five!

Was the title of an article I penned for the CIO East Africa magazine sometime in 2015 and every day it becomes more accurate.

A few months prior to penning the article, I had the privilege of visiting the IBM Research Lab in Kenya which happened to be the only one of its kind in Africa.

When there I had the opportunity to get into the data centre where I came face to face with not one but two modern mainframes.

The room was no larger than my sitting room, which made me contemplate a statement that was made by Thomas Watson in 1943 when Chairman and CEO of IBM.

“I think there is a world market for maybe five (5) computers”

As indicated, he made this statement after “thinking” and pondering the question “how large was the potential market for computers?, which I suspect, had been asked of him by bankers, post-IPO shareholders and academics.

If I am not mistaken Steve Wozniak said something similar in response to Steve Jobs assertion to put a computer into every home, Watson and Wozniak have been prematurely castigated for their stand and likely been the butt of the jokes as the computer got onto my belt.

Many of you who have read this far must still be in stitches from the laughter caused by Watson’s statement especially looking at the rapid proliferation of computers.

Let me go back to the issue of my visit to the IBM Research Lab as I give you a chance to recover your composure and regain your breath.?As mentioned, I was shown 2 mainframes each in a 42U rack and more impressively which I was even allowed to touch.

I was so excited that I quickly sent out the tweet “I touched a mainframe”, once the excitement had subsided I asked the team at the lab when Watson would be coming into the country and the response was, soon.

For the uninitiated, I love that phrase, not Dr Watson who is Sherlock Homes’ sidekick and not Watson who made the statement that got you all bent over but Watson, IBM’s new kid on the block a computer that responds to natural language queries.

No society can survive without a few conspiracy theorists like myself who would believe that Thomas Watson’s brain was preserved by IBM and is now installed at the core of the Watson computer more so after watching it win the Jeopardy Show in 2011.

By the 1900s idea of a mainframe, Watson is puny, it originally had a footprint of less than one thousand square feet, the newer iterations are 2U in size.?Based on the size this could result in the shrinking of facebooks data centres from hundreds of acres to a few thousand square feet.

The first mainframe I saw, as I was not allowed anywhere near it, was at the Kenya Commercial Bank data centre in Gigiri and it was huge and imposing, with fellows walking around in white lab coats.?

Unfortunately, my excitement of having seen my first mainframe was short-lived as a few months later I was part of the team that installed the first-ever Compaq System Pro PC server, at Trade Bank.?It ran the core banking system developed by TCS and provided online centralised processing for the entire branch network that linked over packet-switched lease lines, KenPac.

The cashiers had what we referred to as dumb terminals but with the current proliferation of web and cloud, I might need to reconsider that description.

It had two 486 processors with 4 x 210 MB, yes MB, hard disks connected to a proprietary controller running the UNIX operating system, it was awesome.

So, before you laugh at Thomas Watson’s assertion about there being a market for maybe 5 computers think of this fact, the entire animal you call facebook is virtually a single computer with distributed processing all addressable as www.facebook.com.

The same applies to www.google.com and also www.amazon.com which translates to 3 computers, in the event that facebook, google and amazon merge their infrastructure we shall reduce this from 3 to 1 computer system.

Watson also brings to mind a 1960’s movie called “Demon Seed” which featured a computer that responded to natural language commands, remember SIRI?.?

To avoid leaving an issue above hanging, the 2U Watson is more of a node of the entire distributed computer called Watson, think mother ship.

With all the pervasive connectivity going on and the acceptance of cloud as a way of doing business and living our life’s soon Thomas Watson’s statement will be no laughing matter but reality, the question, therefore, should be “how will Africa make sure it owns at least one of the five computers that the world will have?”

?

?