Gamboling through the Clouds

Some months ago, I wrote about how Software as a Service (SaaS) was going to be used in building controls. The UNC Enterprise Building Management System (EBMS) and Hosted Controls already use that model for monitoring and operations of building systems. Others like Sensus offer building analytics and knowledge-based maintenance from their own data center. Now Harrah’s Entertainment, the largest of the casino operators is moving into the clouds, and the outcome may change building systems again.

It has been best practice for a while now to interface building systems to hotel customer operations. The check-in process can activate the room systems, which then save energy when not rented. Front door access control sensors can read the room key and turn on the room conditioning as the guest comes in the front door. The Hotel Technology Next Generation group has even included remembering customer preferences for the operation of room based systems in their customer retention strategies. Traditionally, these approaches relied on direct interaction with the reservations system.

Harrah’s has outsourced its systems for managing reservations, for air travel, and for player relations to the SaaS vendor SalesForce.com. This is a strong statement, as no industry relies more on customer loyalty programs than the gaming industry, and Harrah’s is known for the most data intensive approach to this problem.

One of the concerns with outsourcing core business functions like this is vendor lock-in; you have committed yourself to integrating your other business functions with an external computing resource of which you have no control. It is easy to view these operations as a simple user interface for the customer making a reservation, and for the clerk checking the customer in. The hotel reservation has a host of interactions, however. Housekeeping needs to know not only when the customer arrives and departs, but also any requirements for special bedding, or extra towels. The restaurant may support one free drink on the night of check-in; tabs for breakfast on the departure date may need expedited processing. In today’s hotel, third parties may run housekeeping and the restaurant, increasing the complexity of the interaction

These interactions, and their importance to the enterprise, are why service interfaces and service definitions are so important.

If we take these interactions to building maintenance and operations, and to new energy markets, the service interaction problems continue. The reservation process should drive the operation of each room. The hotelier may want to balance spreading guests out for maximum privacy vs. bunching guests on a few floors because of anticipated high energy costs or energy reliability signals. Organizations such as Harrah’s demand close integration of tenant service and physical security.

Harrah’s provides high amenity facilities wherein an extra feel of luxury creates an increased willingness to gamble. Harrah’s has global distribution with considerable site-based diversity. Knowledge based maintenance and central management of facility quality are particularly valuable to Harrah’s.

Standard service definitions can put all operations into cloud computing, whether the low hanging fog of facility operations or the core customer relationship management that Harrah’s has outsourced. Building controls are grounded concrete systems—but their heads should be in the clouds.

The Song of Atlanta

I wake up unusually early, and unusually alert. All senses are wary, and I am waiting for something, for anything to happen. The city is all around me, humming its early morning song.

I am staying uptown in Atlanta, at my friend Paul’s flat in Buckhead, in the city to speak speaking of standards, and surfaces, and transacted energy. It is not really any noisier than home. There is no river roaring in the background. There is no early morning siren of an ambulance coming north from Scotland County to the teaching hospital in town. It is really much quieter than Bynum in summer when the cicadas and katydids are fiddling their mating tunes into the hot humid night.

What noise there is here is less personal. I can’t pick out the sound of Donnie’s truck on the street. I don’t have one ear cocked for Thalia’s car in the drive. Each noise is less personal, and therefore less important.

The pattern of sound is different, though. Pattern is everything. In the dog culture of Bynum, every ear is cocked to hear the sirens from the south as they hit the courthouse circle, miles away. Each canine wants to be first to raise the mournful howl that accompanies the ambulances passing. They all do it in unison; they all learn to do it within months of first living in town. There is something unworldly, yet fully grounded in that sound, something so fully based in place that it is reassuring, and restful; it sends one back to sleep rather than to wakefulness.

Here the sounds are different, and I do not know the pattern, and they defy categorization. It’s not just the cars. My parents’ house is above the interstate, with traffic noise that does not quit. If you look to the west, from that high hill, you can see where the freeway ends, its off-ramps curling into the beach-side neighborhoods like a rive fading into a delta. Weekend visitors usually exclaim on the sounds of the surf, and how well they slept because of it. It must be some trick of the valley that brings the shore sounds so far inland. But there is no trick of the valley, and there are no sounds of the shore; only the freeway below hums, its individual cars blended into one swirling sound that ebbs and flows, yet never dies down.

But these sounds are not mine. They feel like something ready to happen, and I feel alert, as if I just heard a stick snap in a silent northern forest late at night. I get up and shower, because I am not going back to sleep. Paul, the perfect host, rises, makes some coffee, and bids a cheery adieu before shambling back to sleep. He needs no alarm, because these sounds are his sounds, and he can hear what time it is.

But to me, they are the sounds of a strange city, and of a day speaking, and of people to meet and names to remember. To me, they say be alert, and be ready. It does not matter that nothing that I plan to do today starts for hours. It does not matter that none of these sounds being information to me. For I am surrounded by the sounds of the city, humming its early morning song.

Flying home from yet another meeting

No one was sitting in my row on the small three-seat per row plane I left Boston in and I slid over to the windows while keeping my aisle seat. I began typing my thoughts leaving the member meeting of FIATECH, gloomy musings about the day.

We headed out to sea from Logan airport before turning south, as the high-rises along the harbor glittered into light against an orange sunset. The low-lying clouds in the distance made a lilac backdrop to the twinkling lights in the multi-level parking deck as headlights circle inside. Soon the cape was laid out below me, all silver beaches reaching out from the gray forests at twilight.

I put my head down, and began to write about the day. Heather, working the American Eagle flight from Boston to Raleigh is generous with her broad smile, professionally pleasant as she plies the aisle. She offers to refill my water as she returns, the simple generous act of noticing pulling me from my keyboard, and I look up from my typing to see burning gold in the distance, amid broad bands of orange and red above a spit of land running to sea parallel to our flight.

It is the Chesapeake bay, looking empty, as if longing to be explored, and I think of the crabs I have eaten and seafood I have enjoyed from those waters, I think of sailing in that bay, and I wonder if my son, Josh, has learned to sail now that he lives and works in Patuxent, in the Chesapeake just below Washington, and now coming into view.

This sunset just won't quit, although it is deepening now into a darker red, the high clouds making a dramatic dark border with the blue sky which fades from the palest robin's egg to the dark blue of twilight. Down below, the bunched grey tissue paper of the low hanging gradually clouds hides the top of the Outer Banks from view.

Now there is only the low lying clouds the red band above, golden toward the south and the sun, and all the shades of blue above. Now that I have seen it, I am drawn again and again to the window. I am not sure what to make of the conference. Several Board members, including the chair attended my session today.

They were more than supportive. They wished me well. They indicated they would embrace the work when done. It seemed they felt the passion, they acknowledged the import of the work. They gave me the greatest gift of all, that of complete attention for more than three hours, until long into the lunch hour. They understood the value, and embraced it. But in the end, it seemed not a good fit. Maybe they can make some introductions they said. So I leave Boston, weary from the effort, energized by the strong minds and clear visions, but pensive.

Yet there is the Albemarle Sound below. What are those lights? Is that a ferry cutting across the purple-gray waters? I don't know. Soon all is covered again by the lilac clouds, mow making a seamless rolling carpet to the still orange horizon.

Tomorrow, I will think of how to explain it again. Tomorrow, I will think again of standards, and XML, and composability, and far, far too many acronyms, each filled with vital import. Tomorrow I will think of market rules enabled by software surfaces, and of market creation. Tomorrow I will think of building services as generators of business value and new revenue. Tomorrow I will think of standards meetings in Atlanta, and white papers on situation awareness, and emergency response, and business interaction and identity management. Tomorrow I will think of carbon, and transacted energy, and yes, even the distinction between "Green" and "Blue"

But Heather has brought me another glass of water, and another professional smile. The Alligator River, with its large mouth and archipelageous banks has appeared through the clouds, pointing at the horizon, still orange. We turn inland, and Virginia Beach shines in the night.

Life is good, and we live in a good country filled with good people who happily share the gift of service every day. Simple consideration and honest smiles for strangers and the beauty of the world that surrounds us every day are under-appreciated. Sometimes it takes one to make us notice the others. Tonight, I am going to appreciate them. And still the sunset goes on. There. There is a new shade of deep red.

I'm going to watch it until I land.