Venyu Blog

The real inventor of the modern Internet, Vinton Cerf, (sorry Al Gore), has his sights set skyward; ok, maybe even a bit higher. In fact, he’s planning on building what’s being described as a space-based version of the worldwide web, with short and long-term implications for, what else, the cloud.

Following his keynote address to attendees at the recent Interop Las Vegas expo, Cerf disclosed he’s working closely with NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory in California to develop the technologies that could be used to support an Internet for use in space. Speaking in Information Week, Cerf said such a system would most likely use radio signals at first, and then ultimately optical lasers that could deliver “hundreds of megabits per second” to conquer the vast distances involved.

In fact it was Cerf’s work at the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the early 1980’s where he spearheaded the development of TCP/IP, the communications protocol that services the modern Internet and worldwide web.

In addition to touching on a wide range of subjects including mobility and instrumentation with applications for automobiles and healthcare, Cerf sees a huge upside for the cloud, provided clouds support interoperability between different vendors. If that happens, Cert believes “the cloud” can become THE dominant enterprise computing architecture.

The implications for backup and recovery via the cloud receiving signals from orbiting space stations or manned colonies on Mars (ok, it could happen in our lifetimes; President Obama has said publicly he would like to see a manned launch to the red planet by 2035), are enormous. In that context and in that time data will not only being serviced and stored globally, but also bounced off satellites and transmitted to Earth. I dare say the cost per megabyte would be significant at first, maybe even beyond the means of many privately-held concerns, but perhaps my associate Jonathan McSweet, wasn’t too far off in his April 1 blog — Venyu Moves Beyond The Cloud — to suggest that the future of data backup, data recovery and SaaS services really does have cosmic implications.

You do have to wonder though, how big the server farm supporting an entire galactic matrix would have to be. The power needs alone would have to be massive, never mind trying to meet five nines uptime and individual customer service level agreements. Indeed, would that kind of horsepower only be possible if select data backup managed service providers banded together to enable geo-specific, cost-effective delivery of resources (e.g. storage)? Imagine the onerous process around e-discovery: is the data under subpoena located in a server room on some remote moon or is it easily accessible half a continent away via the cloud? The implications alone are astonishing but I dare say their origins are taking shape all around us even now.

Thankfully, it looks like we have at least a few more years to plan for this outcome, maybe sooner if Vint Cerf realizes his vision. Given his track record of achieving virtual worldwide communication I wouldn’t bet against his ability to mirror that same level of success among the stars.