Still, even if the infrastructure works as advertised, could there not be some other problems? The answer is yes, but, if so, they are not obviously intuitive. dinCloud feels that its solution scales as needed, but the question of latency arises. When a user is working with data and applications that may be physically housed thousands of miles away, are there any latency delays that might range from simple annoyance (noticeable delays in response time to response time sensitive requests) to total frustration in not being able to perform a given task? dinCloud emphatically states that latency is not an issue. Coast-to-coast latency over the Internet is only 120 ms, so connecting the purpose-built dinCloud to the public network known as the Internet is not a problem. (For example, recently I downloaded an iPad2 app from another company that demonstrated the use of medical images over the Internet from a distance of thousands of miles, and there was no apparent latency issue.)
A key remaining issue is price. Given the breadth and depth of the infrastructure required and the players involved, how much does the service cost? dinCloud offers the HVD service for $65 per month per user for use of the full infrastructure. By doing so, a customer's IT investment changes from a capex (capital expense) model to an open (operating expense) model, which makes life easier for IT in the budgeting process.
Is that a good price? The answer is that this is a much lower price than is typically quoted. So how can dinCloud do it? Economies of scale (where quantity discounts are obtained for larger volumes) and the famous Boston Consulting Group's learning curve model (where costs per unit supplied go down because of learning how to do things better) applies, but there is more than that. The price of computing and storage is still plummeting. Wouldn't $65 for a single month be enough to pay for protected storage for a single user for a long time? So there are ways to cut costs, and dinCloud has apparently found them.
Many (if not most) of us may feel about the cloud similar to how Mark Twain felt about the weather: "Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it." While we shouldn't go to that extreme (as there is a lot of action happening in cloud), we might wonder if there can be any way to inspire more action and less talk. Well, dinCloud has shown some action in an unexpected area.
On the surface, one might not consider the subject of HVDs as being a primary candidate for the cloud, and while I don't want to indulge in hyperbole, it could very well become a killer cloud application. That is because the raison d'etre of the cloud is IT as a service, and that is not possible if the user cannot access the same applications and data whenever and wherever necessary across multiple computing devices. And that is possible only if a public cloud (a central data center available via multiple networks) is part of the deal.
dinCloud's solution is of value to three key constituencies: to IT, which can't cost-effectively manage the end user computing revolution on the way to providing IT-as-a-service in the cloud without a purpose-built solution like this one; to end users, who need this type of solution so that they can have it their own way, using their own computing devices anywhere at any time; and to CFOs (that is, the bean counters), who have a solution that saves the company money while users have smiles instead of complaints about what they had to give up.
Now, dinCloud may not have the only solution (as it is unlikely that any company offers anything totally unique) for personalized employee computing, but with HDV it has thrown down a gauntlet competitors will have to take seriously.
At the time of publication, dinCloud was not a client of David Hill and the Mesabi Group.
