Thanks to Martin Dugage of France’s Boostzone Institute, who provided the following commentary on the video clip.

My emphasis below … I am reminded of Euan Semple’s classic post about implementing social computing (The 100% guaranteed easiest way to do Enterprise 2.0?), and I don’t doubt that one of, if not the, the hardest part is senior managers and executives getting used to the idea of less or different control.

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Cisco is undoubtedly a lab for E2.0, and Chambers is definitely in the pilot’s seat. His point about collaboration revolves around productivity and speed.

My attention was drawn by a couple of things he said, such as the new ability of the company to pursue 26 top priority projects at the same time instead of just one or two last year; or the fact that Chambers meets more customers now but less often face-to-face and more often virtually, less often one-on-one and more often as a group; or the fact that he had to get rid of 20% of his staff composed of control freaks who didn’t get it.

Chambers believes that communities are the very core of E2.0, and he admits that he had a hard time getting used to it.

-[ Snip ... ]

Based on Cisco’s own experience in the past several years, organizations will completely restructure around these new capabilities. Indeed, he offers up his company as a paradigm of this vision. Once a hierarchical, command and control-based organization, Cisco is now much flatter, a company running “off of social networking groups.” Councils with cross-functional responsibilities suggest and take on many more projects (from emerging markets, to video, and smart grid boards); from one to two major ventures per year, to this year’s 26 launches.

The next generation company is “built around the visual.” Cisco employees do non-stop teleconferencing with collaborators around the world. The company hosts 2500 such virtual meetings per week. It also employs Webex, Wikis and blogging to move work along.

With this kind of communication and carefully managed process to match, “operations can be turned on a head,” says Chambers. It’s the recipe for market-dominating speed and scale. Chambers is “loading the pipeline” with projects that assume other companies will want what Cisco has and makes.

“If we’re right, we’re developing a huge wave of revenue opportunity.” Perhaps this is one reason why he’s “an optimist on global productivity, global economy and our ability to handle the challenges.”

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I have just had the opportunity to spend a week in Paris, meeting and talking with the team at blueKiwi, under the leadership of Carlos Diaz and Christophe Rouitheau, two dynamic and intelligent young French entrepreneurs.  They and their team, thanks to live-wire Bertrand Duperrin, invited me and Stowe Boyd to speak at the launch of the 2009 version of blueKiwi collaborative platform.

I’ve also had the chance to connect with Headshift’s Dr. Olivier Amprimo, a young organizational sociologist, strategist and early-stage entrepreneur who is (I believe) helping to raise the bar regarding the mass customisation of work with his involvement with Personall, the brainchild of he and Jeremy Grinbaum (ex of IBM and Google Enterprise) and Jean-Patrice Glafkides, also an ex-IBMer.

Additionally, I’ve had the pleasure to meet and discuss with Dr. Miguel Membrado (co-founder of several leading search and collaboration related software applications), David Guillocheau and Patrice Malaurie of Talentys, and Philippe Colin of Itexium, an IT strategy and implementation consulting boutique.  There’s even an Enterprise 2.0 Institute at the Grenoble Ecole de Management, headed by Richard Collin

France has a long history and reputation of hierarchical organizations headed by (generally) imperial and autocratic top management (at least, I believe that’s a reasonable way of phrasing their reputations seen from a North American point of view.  I am certainly no expert in macro-economics but am aware of the general belief that France needs some economic revitalization (who doesn’t, these days ?) and that some of that has to do with its organizations and their structures and methods. However, France’s companies and economy still produce(s) some very interesting products and services, the country has healthy financial and medical care and educational systems

But .. and I believe this an important "but" … France also has a very well educated work force (compared to the North American workforce), a culture that enjoys examining and discussing issues (they cannot help themselves ), and workplace cultural habits that encourage and reinforce teamwork. In addition, in no small part due to the maturing of the EU, there are young people from all over western and eastern Europe living and working, and contributing their brainpower and energy, to the workplace in France.

Additionally, the social culture in France is essentially based on discourse, examination of ideas, arguing in friendly (mostly) ways about almost  any issue under the sun In my books, that makes for fertile ground for the enracination (taking root of) effective social computing.

We bloggers with a strong interest in Enterprise 2.0 and who carry out research and practice consulting, strategizing, theorizing, or coaching tend to believe that social computing in the workplace is inevitably tomorrow’s foundation for knowledge work.  According to almost any theory, its use along with the inputs of factual information and decent brainpower should lead to increases in intellectual capital, organizational capability and thus enhanced productivity over time.  If this is the case, then it’s my belief that France’s workplaces of the future should be interesting places should the stereotypical dependence on elite autocracy and its orientation towards hierarchy be reduced.

If the traditional reliance on top-down dynamics can be viewed with a critical eye, and if France’s leaders of tomorrow can bring themselves to adapt to th e new leadership style(s) born of listening, sensing and helping interdependent systems respond to the ongoing rapid changes we face today, then France has a lot of potential with which to work with regard to the promise(s) of Enterprise 2.0.

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To put it all in context he compares two perspectives — Old School vs. Productivity 2.0 — across the following dimensions:

Crank It Out vs Deep Focus
Lots of Planning vs Just Start
Tons of Paperwork vs Automate
Multi-Tasking is Productive vs Multi-Project and Single-Task
Produce More vs Produce Less
Be Organized vs Tag, Archive and Search
Hierarchy vs Independence, Freedom and Collaboration
Work Longer Hours vs Work Fewer Hours

This all reinforces fundamental 2.0 thinking.
Way to go, Leo.

In my opinion this reinforces a major trend that I believe will redefine how knowledge work is designed (I wrote about this massive trend and its importance in the Ark Group publication "Making Knowledge Work - The Arrival of Web 2.0"). 

What I mean by trend is that over the past two years all the major workplace software vendors - Microsoft, IBM Lotus, Open Text, Google, Oracle, EMC Documentum, SAP, Adobe and so on - have all launched (or acquired companies that provide the elements of) "renovated" platforms that have collaboration and social computing at their cores.  As just one example of the ongoing evolution in this arena, see Bill Ives’ recent post about Microsoft’s investment plans for Sharepoint, in which he notes "The next release of Sharepoint, Microsoft will be investing for the paradigm shift to more web 2.0 capabilities".

When a critical mass of large organizations have upgraded or migrated to platforms with collaboration and social computing at their cores, I expect that the changes to the ways people work with information and each other to create and use pertinent knowledge will accelerate.

In the case of Socialtext 3.0, I think it’s very smart to make explicit the "transfer" of massively-adopted consumer technologies to make it easy for people to connect, collaborate and co-create as they are already doing outside the firewall.  Leadership and management will change (or have to) to see this as an opportunity to focus people on what is important and what needs to be done - including increased tolerance for new ideas and potential innovation - and not as a crisis of control.

Rather than recreate all the links, I’ve let Robert Scoble do the work for me from this excerpt from his blog post of September 30th.

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SocialText Brings Enterprise Facebook and Twitter to Wikis

Socialtext is making big news all over the Web this morning. Here’s a rundown, later in the post I’ll talk about why. I also have an exclusive video of Ross Mayfield, founder of Socialtext demonstrating the new features to me.

Ross Mayfield, for my cell phone camera last night, explains the changes in this 18-minute video.

Ross Mayfield, co-founder of Socialtext, writes on his blog “Hello Socialtext 3.0!”

BusinessWeek: Socialtext 3.0: Will Wikis Finally Find Their Place in Business?

Webware: Socialtext co-founder: Enterprise Twitter isn’t enough.

eWeek: Socialtext Signals Marks Wiki Provider’s Move into Enterprise Microblogging.

Dawn Foster notes the move of Enterprises to social.

Zoli Erdos says “Socialtext Becomes Really Social.”

ZDNet: “Socialtext enters Twitter for Enterprise sweepstakes.”

TechCrunch writes “SocialText 3.0 blends Facebook, Twitter, and the Enterprise.”

So, why are these changes important? Because they bring the social features that many people have gotten to know on Twitter and Facebook into the Enterprise along with advanced wiki functionality.

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I would add "They represent an early look at the ways most people will work (and the kinds of tools they will use) within another five to ten years"

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People everywhere are beginning to understand, and practice with, the utility of "watching" snippets and fragments of peoples’ thoughts (see Dave Snowden’s KMWorld article titled "Everything Is Fragmented") and being able to instantiate and jump into a possible conversation when something interesting to them flows by.

 It works … for example, late last night I twittered a response to one of Jeremiah Owyang’s tweets pointing to his recent blog post about "What’s After The Social Web?", and shortly thereafter I had a Twitter direct message from Jeremiah in my email inbox saying "sounds interesting, I think you’re on to something .. tell me more".  A professional, potentially knowledge-building, conversation is brewing.

Here’s a summary of Stuart Henshall’s reflections on working with and in knowledge flows with the nascent micro-blogging

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A Master Strategist’s Take on a (Possible) Future of Knowledge “Management”

From the keyboard of Stuart Henshall, one of the most advanced thinkers about the “flows” of information combined with usability and innovation.

Stuart helped out with the blogging at the just-ended KMWorld and also gave a presentation on the last day about how people are beginning to use Twitter to connect, stimulate, catalyze and coordinate flows of information.

I thought he did a great job of outlining interesting possibilities .. but it seems he made some people nervous and some people stretch their minds. That may be because he has been immersed in the world of constant micro-flows of information and mobility for the last half-year while many of those at KMWorld are just now beginning to come to terms with blogging, using wikis and social computing. There may be one of those classic mismatches, the kind that lead to phrases like “You can always recognize the pioneers, they’re the ones walking around with arrows sticking out of their backs“.

Here’s Stuart’s post:.

Social Media or KM / KM or Social Media

I sat in earlier on a session on the Future of KM. There are three very different people on the panel. I’ve been listening with half an ear. This means what I write may have nothing to do with the context of the session. However, part of the reason we come to events like this is to spark other thoughts and tangents.

So far today I’ve not heard the word “flows”, I don’t hear “lifestreaming” I still feel what I am hearing is that knowledge is to be managed, moved, manipulated. Plus I just heard Dave Pollard say that SARS, 9/11, Katrina etc were all failures of classic knowledge management. I can’t quite put my finger on why KM isn’t learning and moving forward more quickly. It suggests to me that there remains a bigger problem.

Individuals are increasingly using personal tools, blogs, wikis, social networks, mobile phone, etc. As they move into this realm publicly they create more information about themselves. I’m increasingly seeing these tools being put to use by marketing / PR. KM seems to be missing these social media implications. Thus adoption of these tools is not being driven by the need to manage knowledge. Rather it’s driven by responding faster, being more adaptive, building on what others do, opening up systems so they can find that they need just in time. It’s a learning centric approach. I see it when I go to blogging sessions and talk to people there. The difference is they are believers.

[ Snip ... ]

I’m thinking more and more that the social media experts are likely to usurp or overturn many KM practices in time. The fact that SAP, Oracle and IBM are today all working with Twitter like updates is at least encouraging.

Maybe they can still sell a knowledge platform?

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It’s interesting that Stuart pointed out the directions large collaboration platforms are taking; Hylton Jolliffe, who manages this blog, just sent me an email a few days ago pointing out that Oracle’s developments with BeeHive may be signalling a new phase, while this ZDNet article (Did Oracle Burst The Enterprise 2.0 Startup Bubble?) suggest something similar.

At this very same conference one year ago (KMWorld 2007) Stuart wrote a post with which I agree 100% (link in the paragraph below) … while people in companies and business everywhere are looking for business case or ROI justification for using social media tools (while understanding semi-consciously that of course useful knowledge gets built in social interaction) they have to work (and experiment) at overcoming a lifetime of working in environments that divide and separate problems, responsibilities and challenges into discrete and divided bundles of tasks that are supposed to fit together like an orderly paint-by-numbers-like template (by which I mean an organizational chart).

To understand how using social media to increase effectiveness, responsiveness and innovation in an environment characterized by constant flows of information, you have to Use the Tools First; Then Talk To Me.

Read the whole post on a possible future for KM here ..

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That was the case with me as well. Call me a wannabe “Technomadic.” From Chicago (where I was a panelist for a session at The Open Group Enterprise Architecture conference — details here), on northward to the wilderness of Upper Peninsula Michigan, Mackinac Island (pictured here), Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, and, later in the summer, to the Green Mountain Inn in Vermont, I posted blogs, collaborated with colleagues, published research, and worked on applications, quite seamlessly, without anyone knowing where I was on any given day.

The Green Mountain Inn’s claim to fame is that Lowell Thomas, the famed broadcaster, would conduct his shows from the inn during ski season. In other words, Lowell wanted to get away on ski vacations without leaving work, so he brought his work with him. Now with wireless access and broadband, every average Joe can broadcast from the inn.

Some might say it’s a little obsessive to want to always stay connected; but I am my own boss, and therefore do not receive vacation pay. So I prefer to stay in touch with the world. But by spending a couple of hours a day online at a minimum, work flowed and clients were kept happy (I hope) and I still had a refreshing amount of downtime.

Technomadic is a term coined by Steve Roberts, who many years ago, set off on a cross-country trek on a bicycle outfitted with a satellite uplink, the latest communications technology and microprocessors of the time. Now, anyone can compute and collaborate, anywhere, anytime. The Web has made sense of place irrelevant to modern-day work.

As you read the story of the Flop and how the establishment reacted, think about organizations today and how they push back at a 2.0 culture. My hope is that, as with the Flop, as the kids come up who only know the “Flop” or 2.0, then the establishment will have to cave.

You would have thought that all would have followed him. But they didn’t. All the elite athletes and the elite coaches were too invested in the straddle. They could not undo the years of repetition and muscle memory if they were an athlete. If they were an elite coach, what did they know of the new?

So of course all the establishment had to attack the Flop:

Here is how Dick Fosbury saw the challenge.

If your organization is all about control and top down - it is unlikely that having a Wordpress site will take you to the new world of networks. To make a 2.0 world work for those you serve means that you have to have such a world working inside your organization.

So what do you do to get this? It is clear to me that we have made this shift at KETC in St Louis.

The context of this story is a project that KETC is working on to find ways of activating the community in St Louis to help reduce the pain of the mortgage crisis.

In so doing we are testing the big idea that Public Media can do more than bring Jane Austen to your TV screen. The CPB is testing this idea in St Louis and if we have enough progress - will expand the test to many other cities and stations.

So an important task that we have to fulfill will be to help the system replicate what we have done.

The easy part of this task will be the “Whats”. The Content we created, what we did on air, on the web, in meetings with the community etc. But I don’t think that only talking of the “what” will be very helpful. I think that it will be the “how” that is the real secret. The “how” will be about the new culture - the new set of work and social norms that are behind becoming a convener.

We surely have to become a Convener inside the station before we can have much a of a chance of being the Trusted Convener outside. That is the really hard work. I know that KETC has pulled this off. But how can I tell you about the how. How do you tell another about a new way of being?

This weekend while watching the Olympics I had an aha about the “How” that I would like to try here with you.

Here is a picture of the Canadian men’s 8 at the Olympics yesterday.

When all the 8 in the boat and the cox are aligned - something magic happens. All the effort is applied to the work. When this happens, you feel it. It is almost a spiritual feeling. It’s a form of magic. The boat just flies. You dissolve into a field that is the boat, the 8 and the cox. You are ONE. All friction and resistance is gone.

With a big race and your reputation on the line - the pressure to get aligned is huge - you can feel if one person is not there with you.

This is what it feels like in our KETC project meetings now. It feels like the boat is flying - it feels so good to be with the other members of the boat.

The pressure is there. As the guinea pig for Public Media we feel the eyes of thousands upon us. Upping the pressure to perform seems to help with transformation. Like heat applied to water creates steam or heat applied to iron with other things creates steel.

So creating pressure about results, time and scale is a first step. You don’t go gradually into this - you have to go full tilt.

We had no time. the project is only 3 months long. So there was no time to be incompetent. In the early days we had to re-arrange the boat a bit to get the team that could do the work and do it with the others. We could not tolerate anyone in the boat who could not pull their weight. We acted immediately when it was clear that the mission was being threatened. This is not the pub media way but it is the real community way. Real communities see everything and expect a lot. Real communities are not soft.

But after this initial shift - we know we have the right team. With the right team we build energy and confidence over time. There is a trust and a confidence in each other that has been developed by publicly and transparently experiencing the abilities of the others.

To get this transparency - we have a process that is built around all involved making public commitments.

It has developed by a simple part of the Project Management process - the day starts with asking each other for help. Every day we meet for 30 minutes to talk about what is going on and all the cards are face up on the table. We have learned to be explicit. Not rude but very clear. A very different norm from the past or most organizations. Accountability is fully visible.

This does not seem like the typical meeting that many of us have. It is very operational - what has to get done today and this week. But it is also very social. As trust has built there is also a lot of laughter and banter. The walls of the silos are coming down. We are finding that people who we did not know or trust much can be very helpful and that they can work miracles. Especially when the chips are down.

We have set major milestones and we have surpassed them all. Everyone has been tested in public. By being open - by being demanding in public - we are closer. Nothing is not unsaid anymore. You don’t have to whinge in the washroom. This is more than transparency - this is “clarity”.

So how does this happen? Well we are set up as I now see like an 8. The engine room is of course the department heads - they do the rowing. But it is the project management structure and discipline that makes the 8 go so well. So let’s look at this because all can replicate this.

First of all we have “Cox”. Not the project sponsor, not the President but the Cox (The Project Manager). In an 8, it is the cox - usually a very small person (Our PM is new and is very young but is an old soul) - who not only steers but who encourages and who works with the crew to respond to threats and opportunities as they happen on the water in the race. He is always pulling us back to the task. He is always asking the awkward question - he is always asking for more clarity. He uses humor and self-deprecation to get his way. But behind him is the power of the coach and the President. He can always use disappointment as power - “Do we really have to go to Jack about this?” usually settles most issues without escalation.

So the PM/Cox not only sets the process tone but also shows us how to use power as a convener. He uses personal power and almost never has to escalate because all the conversations are in the open - bad behavior - is obvious to all - social pressure ensures good behavior.

There is no doubt in my mind that Project Management is a key skill in the operation of a high performing organization. What it does is it keeps focus - it forces accountability - it manages the white space between the silos - for this is where the cooperation is demanded. For a while it all feels forced for this is new. But after 9 weeks it is our new normal.

Of course what is really happening is that the PM is “Convening”. He is holding the kind of open and trusted space that enables groups to work well with each other. The central process at KETC has become Convening.

We are also seeing that the project never ends. There is always complex work that is measured by outcomes to do. That raises another issue. Outcomes and measurement: in the old norm, we were soft on both. Now everything that we do has to have an objective and hence has to have a measure. This again was awkward at first but now is a new normal.

Which brings us to the “Coach”. The Coach in an 8 is not the cox. The coach’s work is all about ensuring that the goals are set and the capability is ready. We have such a role being played at KETC - the project Sponsor.

There is a lot of discipline in the role. The coach is not one of the guys. The coach pushes all the time. the coach has expectations.The coach sees the needs of the whole race/project. She sees how this race/project connects to others. She sees the development needs and she has an eagle eye on personnel. If someone is not working out, she has to deal with this.

Part of her power comes from her appointment. She has been selected by the “Club President”. She can escalate and does over personnel and budget issues. But she settles organizational issues from her position. But not all her power is delegated from the President. She has her own power based on her own achievements. For the coach is also rooted in their own talent. She has deep skills in a key area - Community Engagement. She has a track record of her own in getting tough jobs done well.

Finally we have the club president. He is responsible for the financial envelope - which provides the boat etc. This is a separate role to that of the Coach or the Cox. But in most organizations this person does all of this.

This is what I mean by Top Down organizations being political. They tend to be like medieval courts, where factions compete for influence and power. All the work happens in the corridors or in secret. Little is really visible. All in the end is decided by the King.

What is happening at KETC is that all the key work is now taking place in a process that is fully transparent. The President can look at the boat in the water and see all the workings. Accountability is clear.

• Each rower has his or her part and they have to be visibly working with the rest of the 8.
• The cox’s ability to get the boat running optimally in each race is clear to all - especially in the boat itself.
• The results of the boat belong to the coach - her role is clear.
• The resources for the club are the President’s role - and he is delivering and he also sets the tone.

The President in our case, asked the team for it all. He wants Gold in an Olympic setting and he asks for nothing less. In asking for all, he is getting it.

So that’s my metaphor. If you run your organization like a rowing team, if you set up the key roles as you find in a rowing team, you can make the shift inside from 1.0 to 2.0.

The irony is that the 2.0 world is more disciplined than the 1.0 world. But as you can see much of the discipline happens because of visibility and clarity. It’s like being in a small town. What you say and what you do can never be a secret. So your word and your actions define you. In a small town you also have to help each other.

In the 1.0 world of the huge city - there is little social pressure. All is anonimity. So there have to be rules and policemen and gaming the system.

Installing the kind of Project Management Process that we are using at KETC gives you a good shot at making this shift.

I have been known to suggest that the ubiquitous use of such tools and processes, and the need to understand how to facilitate and manage the new dynamics they engender, is inevitable … and need not be scary, overly difficult (except for the attitudinal and behavioural changes required

I came across a recent NY Times article (link below) about the growing use of wikis and blogs within the US State Department, an organization that clearly has interest in controlling its messages AND in understanding better how to use information, knowledge and brainpower to be effective.

Rather than try to analyze and explain, I have just selected quotes from the article that I believe make the point well.  I’d be interested to learn what you think.

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An Internal Wiki That’s Not Classified

NOAM COHEN
August 4, 2008

IN the past, said Stacie R. Hankins, a special assistant at the United States Embassy in Rome, when the ambassador prepared to meet an Italian political figure, the staff would e-mail a memo about the meeting and attach biographies of those who would be attending to be printed out.

Today, she said, they still produce the memo, but “now they attach a link to the Diplopedia article” — Diplopedia being a wiki, open to the contributions of all who work in the State Department. The ambassador, Ronald P. Spogli, frequently reads the biographies on his BlackBerry on the way to the meeting.

The advantages are obvious, in efficiency and in saving paper, but it has required a leap of faith, too. For, theoretically at least, anyone at the State Department could have edited the biographies Mr. Spogli was reading — unlike traditional resources.

[ Snip ... ]

“It’s grass-roots technology in a top-down organization,” said Eric M. Johnson of the State Department’s Office of eDiplomacy in Washington, who recently gave a talk about Diplopedia at Wikipedia’s annual conference in Alexandria, Egypt.

Since it was introduced in 2006, Mr. Johnson said, Diplopedia has had impressive growth. There are 1,000 registered users, he said, 650,000 total page views and lately 20,000 new page views a week, he said of the site, which contains no classified information but is not available to the general public. “It is one of the most popular sites in the State Department, other than getting your pay information,” Mr. Johnson said.

[ Snip ... ]

Even so, success to Mr. Johnson is defined not only by what can be found on Diplopedia but also what cannot. There have been no “flame wars,” he said, that is, mindless arguments over the phrasing in an article, and no pages that have needed to be deleted or locked down.

What if someone creates disinformation or vandalism? Mr. Johnson was asked in Egypt — a not-infrequent question when the topic of wikis comes up. He pointed out that unlike Wikipedia, Diplopedia does not allow anonymous contributors, so bad actors could be tracked down. He then observed, “There are plenty of ways to commit career suicide; wikis are just the newest one.”

There was a larger point to bringing his message to Wikimania 2008, as the annual conference is called: if wikis can work at the State Department, with its fabled bureaucracy and attention to protocol and word choice, they can work anywhere.

[ Snip ... ]

The decision to embrace wikis is part of a changing ethic at the department, from a “need to know culture” to a “need to share culture,” said Daniel Sheerin, deputy director of eDiplomacy, which was created in 2003. “This is a technological manifestation of a policy difference,” he said, a change he dated to when Colin L. Powell was secretary of state.

The eDiplomacy office also supports internal blogs at the department. It sent trainers to the embassy in Rome, for example, to teach the staff how to use Diplopedia. Since the training, Ms. Hankins said, the embassy has taken to it quickly, though the ambassadorial staff in Berlin is trying to surpass its biography total.

“There is definitely a learning curve of — I can’t believe I’m saying this — of my generation,” said Ms. Hankins, 37. “I like computers, but I wasn’t a big Wikipedia person.”

The advantage of Diplopedia, she said, isn’t necessarily the ease of creating new material, but the ease in finding information. “The political section used to keep biographies on political people, and the economics people kept biographies on economics people,” she said. “It was not always up to date. You didn’t always know what the other had.”

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It’s about finding and using pertinent information more quickly and more easily, and letting people do what they do best when addressing an issue using curiosity, common sense and a desire to do their work well. 

That’s it, that’s all … no ?

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Tags: hoerarchy, wirearchy, organizational effectiveness

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HP, Intel, and Yahoo! have just announced the creation of a “global, multi-data center, open source test bed for the advancement of cloud computing research and education.”

What is the purpose of having a test bed?  I mean, isn’t the Internet and its user base the test bed for such things? (This is said partially tongue in cheek…) According to the joint press release, the “official” Cloud Computing Test Bed will provide a testing environment to study cloud computing issues “on at a larger scale than ever before.”

The institutions supporting the test bed include the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the National Science Foundation, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. HP, Intel, and Yahoo! will also host centers.

Each location will host a cloud computing infrastructure, largely based on HP hardware and Intel processors, and will have 1,000 to 4,000 processor cores capable of supporting the data-intensive research associated with cloud computing. The test bed locations are expected to be fully operational later this year. Parties interested in using the test beds for their own budding cloud applications will need to go through a selection process, however.

This initiative is another sign — a very high-level one at that — of the tectonic shift taking place beneath the feet of the entire computer and software industry. End users are increasingly looking to the network to take advantage of applications, services, and utilities, versus installing and maintaining these artifacts at their own sites.