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The immigration of Han Chinese to Tibet brought aid, technology, and know-how to Tibet.  Most notable along the way from Lhasa airport to Lhasa city are the green houses for vegetables and water melons.  My tour guide, Xiao Xu, told me that before this wave of immigration, Tibet produce very little vegetable, so that when the Han chinese got a chance to visit home, the most precious thing they could bring back would be vegetables.  They would insert vegetables as the inner layers of their coats to maximize their payload. However, as of today, many food and consumables are still imported from other parts of China.

The road into Tibet was indeed a costly and deadly one.  Xiao Xu told me that the 2,000 kilometer high way from Sichuan to Lhasa cost more than 3,000 soldiers’ lives to build.  There was a memorial at the junction of Sichuan-Tibetan road and Sichuan-Qinghai road to commemorate the people who lost their lives connecting Tibet with the rest of China.

My driver Xiao Wang told me that he is breeding a kind of Tibetan dogs that is very masculine and loyal.  The dog can grow to 1.4 meter long and can handle 5 wolves simultaneously and win.  The strong build resembles that of a lion.  I cannot wait to visit his house and take a look at it.   Not sure how much it would cost me to bring a pair to New York for my sons.

Tibetans are very gifted.  There is a saying, one who can talk can sing, one who can walk can dance, and one who can sip can drink (liquor).  The Tibetan platoon is on average closely to 3500 meters above sea level.  The air is thin.  Oxygen level is equivalent to 60% of that of other places.  The lung capacity of Tibetans are developed larger than normal, which contributed to their ability to sing long lasting high pitch.  Tibetans usually do not drink water.  When they are thirsty, they drink beers and Qinke liquor, made of a kind of wheat grown at high altitude.  It is requisite a man must dance,  the more powerful and straight the kicks are, the better dancer he is. A woman dance with long leaves, the more smooth and elegant arms move, the better dancer she is.

She is among the first going to medical school after the Cultural Revolution.  At age 16, she passed the exams and went to one of the best medical schools in China,  where she met her future husband.  While many of her classmates eventually went abroad and pursued new lives in the Western world, earning good income as medical doctors, she accompanied her husband to Tibet because he got a job as a doctor in the Chinese military.  They settled in Tibet since their graduation.

Dr. Xie mans a clinic mostly by herself in Lhasa Hotel, a five star hotels in Lhasa.  She is available 24×7.   She does everything,  testing, diagnosis, treatment and therapy, etc.  The government have not yet allowed her to provide services to community residences, a potentially good source of income for a highly qualified doctor.  From her cheerful and optimistic nature, you can see she really enjoys taking care of people - the tourists residing in Lhasa hotel.  She rents two hotel rooms, one for her own rest, another for patients.  She indicated that her income does not allow hiring a nurse to help her.  Only when things get quite busy, she has colleagues helping out on an adhoc basis.

My encounter with Dr. Xie came after I had a case of bad diarrhea.  One day before I came to Lhasa, I went to taste the real Sichuan food in Chengdu.  Among the exotic dishes were duck liver and hailuo.  There must be something wrong with the food and me. I started having diarrhea during the night.  The anti-diarrhea medicine I brought from New York seems useless.  I barely made it to Lhasa hotel.   To my delight, I learnt there is a clinic inside the hotel, treating tourist-patients for illness due to high altitude and infections.  I called and Dr. Xie asked me to come down to see her.

In a typical Chinese manner of efficiency, Dr. Xie quickly come down to the diagnosis and treatment.  She laid me down in her patient room and started I/V with two kinds of liquids,  supplementing electrolites that I had lost and providing antibiotics killing the germs in my stomach.   Amazingly my diarrhea stopped.   Dr. Xie also prescribed antibiotics and Dianqie – a mainstream anti-diarrhea medicine used in china.   My worries disappeared.  I cannot thank her enough. My stay in Lhasa is limited to a few days and I have a long list of things to do. The last thing in my mind is resting in hotel nursing my stomach.

During our conversation, I learnt that Chinese doctors are not paid by their time spent with the patient.  They are compensated by admission fees and selling drugs they prescribe.  They are quick to testing and diagnosis.   Imagining in the US, my doctor would do a number of tests before getting to the point then the treatment would be minor or none for a simple case of food poisoning like mine.   It is hard to imagine I would be given I/V and quick recovery that would enable me to climb Potala the next morning.

Dr. Xie asked me how well Chinese medicine fares in US. I explained to her although Chinese medicine has genuine supporters in US consumers, US has yet to developed a way to train and certify doctors practicing Chinese medicine.  Chinese medicine is herb based, it is naturally wholistic, organic and non-chemical in nature.  Practice like acupuncture has gained reputation because it worked for many people while western medicine could not.  I explained to Xie how US Primary Care Physician works in conjunction with public and private health insurance. I also pointed out the potential collusion between the prescribing doctors and drug companies.  She laughs and said it is similar in China since Doctors are not paid by their time, they are compensated by selling medicines.  It is called “Tuo”.   I told her that the latest US health reform would mandate doctors disclose their financial relationship with the pharmaceutical companies, Dr. Xie nodded her head in agreement.

I asked if the substance abuse is on the rise in Tibet, she confirmed.   Folks here can be addicted to a kind of liquid cough medicine so they would need to drink about 10 bottles a day.  Some cough pill containing opium is also addictive so the government started to regulate the prescription of these drugs.  Xie also told me obesity and diabetes are on the rise too among Tibetans.  Tibetan diet is heavy on meat with very little vegetables.  They drink ShuYouCha, a kind of tea mixed with animal fat and cheese, which attributes to obesity.

Dr. Xie has a son in his 20s, still in school in Sichuan.  Chinese government would pay all expenses for government personnel’s offspring to visit their parents in Tibet once a year.  However her son lacks real interests in visiting Tibet.  I regret the fact that a young man has all the opportunities to explore Tibet and climb Everest but chose not to take advantage of it.  As I bid goodbye to Dr. Xie around 10:30 pm, knowing she would stay there all night on call to take care of patients like me, like the other gentleman needing I/V for his infection of respiratory system, and like five different people visiting her asking for different medicines during my 2-hour stay at her clinic, I felt a sense of admiration towards this thin middle aged woman who came to Tibet for love and stayed here all her life taking care of strangers in transit.

Tibetan are good at using minerals.  They use minerals for medicine, construction, and painting.  The art form of using mineral is the Thangka painting.  The gold color comes from the fine gold dust, the blue color from the fine blue gem dust, and the green color from the fine green gem dust, so on and so forth.

Thangka was originated in Nepal.  Tibetan advanced it with great deal of influence of Chinese painting style.  Thangka is a way of teaching Buddhism.  The monks and living buddas paint Thangka under certain context, dependent on their thought and mood of the day.  They use either Yak stock or a very strong kind of paper for longevity of the painting.  Colors of minerals can last a long time.

Tibetan do not say “buy a Thangka”, they say “invite a  Thangka”.  Once you invite a Thangka, you would bring it to the living buddas in the Buddhism Temples to “enlighten” the Thangka.  The living buddas will recite scriptures after unscrolling the Thangka.  After the recitation, they would roll the Thangka up and put five kinds of grains in the scrolls.  One would not open the Thangka until he or she reaches home.

Xiao Xu brought me to the “Eight Corner Street” to see Thangka.  At a reputable “Thangka Art Villiage”, the sales people brought me to a collection of antique Thangkas.  Many of them were made 100 years ago.  They collected these art from the ancient temples in southern Tibet then sell them to tourists.  It was understood that the major portion of the proceeds went back to the temples for their renovation and operation.

The salesman brought to my attention to a set of Thangkas of 90 to 100 years old.  I particularly liked one that is very colorful.  In the center is the “Infinite Longevity Budda”.  The bottom corners features one “White Shepard Goddess”, a goddess bringing safety, and “Green Shepard Goddess”, a goddess bringing health.  The top corners features Shakyamuni and Amituofu, two most powerful figures in Buddhism.  Collectively, this Thangka brings health, longevity, and safety to its owner.  I decided to invite it home.

Xiao Xu advised that we should bring the Thangka to DaZhao Temple to be enlightened by a living budda.  So we went.  DaZhao is the center of Lhasa.  Potala is the palace of the ruler of Tibet, not the religious center.  DaZhao is.  The historical Lhasa was built around DaZhao.  The most important statue there is the life sized statue for the 12 year old Shakyamuni, the founder of the Buddhism.  Shakyamuni’s students wanted to preserve their teacher’s real look.  So they consulted Shakyamuni’s nannies and built four life-sized 8 year old Shakyamuni and four life-sized 12 year old Shakyamuni.  All these 8 statues were made of solid gold.  These statues were the most sacred to Buddhsim believers because when they see the statue they see their great budda from 2500 years ago.

Tibet owns one 8 year old Shakyamuni statue and one 12 year old Shakyamuni statue.  The 12 year old Shakyamuni was a gift from Tang Dynasty of China as the wedding gift from the Chinese emporer for his daughter who married the king of Tibet at that time.  Prior to that, Tang China provided financial aid and military support to the king of India to restore their kingdom and preserved Buddaism in India.  Out of gratitude, India King gave Tang emporer one of the statue.  The 12 year old Shakyamuni statue thus resided in DaZhao, the center of the Tibet, since 7th century.

As Xiao Xu and I passed by the golden statue and paid our respect, I asked if the living budda and monks standing in front of the statue can enlighten my Thangka.  Xiao Xu said they usually enlighten it upstairs outside of the center of Temple.  I insisted that she ask the living budda.  To our surprise, the living budda agreed and asked us to wait.  After a while, he sent a monk outside and took my thangka and brought inside of the steel curtain that separates the tourists and the statue.  They opened my Thangka and presented it to Shakyamuni in close distance.  The living budda and the three monks started reciting scriptures for the Thangka. Then they rolled the Thangka up, put five kinds of grains in the case along with it, and handed back to me.

Xiao Xu told me this was very rare as buddhism believers think one glance of the Shakyamuni would relieve them from all burdens and suffering.  Enlightening my Thangka in front of Shakyamuni in this manner is something people would not have dreamed of.  Although I do not consider myself a religious person, I am awed in great gratitude.  My only thought was to bring the enlightened Thangka to my family and bring Shakyamuni’s blessing and protection to everyone.

Year 2010 is the year of Tiger accordig to the Chinese zodiac. It is special for many reasons. One for me is that the Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day meets on the same day – February 14th, 2010. Last time it happened, it was 1953, when Korean war was not over yet. It won’t happen again for many years. It is almost as rare as Halley’s comet, which comes very close to our solar system once every 76 years.

When I was little, living in a mid size city in Northern China, I enjoyed the Chinese New Year gift of 1,500 round of fire crackers. With a string of incense, somewhat fragrant, I would be happily occupied most of Chinese New Year’s eve and Chinese New Year day. Those were a lot of fire crackers. If you set off one by one it would last a long time. The maker of the firecrackers braid them together so that if you really do not have time to play it one by one, you may set it off all together in a matter of a couple of minutes. The children will come and cheer, jump up and down if one of us could quickly empty our rounds like that. Noisy but fun.

In the run up to the Chinese New Year, the principle parties in world’s most important bi-lateral relationship (someone dubbed G2) set off a few fire crackers on their own. In January 2010, China appeared to be non-cooperative to the U.S. when it came to the inspection of the reduction of carbon intensity/emission. A few days later, the U.S. declared they would sell $6.4 billion dollars worthy of arms to Taiwan, which is regarded by China their renegade province. To make the matter spicier, President Obama informed China that he would meet Dalai Lama, whom China labeled as “separationist”. Even Google joined the foray, accusing China’s censorship and hacking, which prompted Hillary Clinton lecturing China about Internet freedom. China immediately rejected Clinton’s claim and labeled the U.S. “information imperialism”. It then slapped tariff on American chicken parts and threatened to sanction those corporations involved in the Taiwan arms sale. A few days later, Chinese foreign minister lectured the American and Western counterparts that Iran had the right to “peaceful use of nuclear energy” and the “diplomacy is the only way”. All of a sudden, it feels like fire crackers setting off in a noisy venue to the Chinese New Year. Where was the fun?

As noisy as it is, it does not blur the fact that the two most important countries in the world can no longer live without each other. They are essentially joined together at the hip. It has gone a long way since the late 1970s when they finally normalized their relationship. China is now the largest creditor to the U.S. while U.S. is China’s largest export market. Their economies are regarded as complimentary. Each year, the U.S. government and consumers gain hundreds of billions of dollars through the trade with China. The export to the U.S. created and sustained tens of millions jobs in China. When one of the two has a hiccup, the other will feel it. The extent of the deepening relationship will someday make people realize the most of these firecracker events are too trivial to stay in the way. The U.S. will come to its senses to end so called “Taiwan Relationship Act”, which is more than 30 years old and no longer makes sense. Regardless how attractive $6.4 billions are, the arms sale is just a chomp change that should not be on anyone’s agenda. After all, China is lending close to $1.8 trillions to the U.S. government and U.S. economy. The protection fee that the U.S. collects from Taiwan is no longer worth all the arm twisting between the G2. Rather than wasting scarce air time between the G2 on such issue as the non-existent “Internet freedom”, it can be better spent on the cooperation for nuclear non-proliferation and climate change.

Compared with the enemies engaging in daily ideology debate 30+ years ago, the G2 nowadays are more like partners in the same boat. The quarrels are temporary. Besides all those noises, the Chinese New Year will come, and the politicians will get tired. Life goes on. The year of tiger will be filled with events such as the Winter Olympics at Vancouver and the World Expo at Shanghai. The U.S. has to export in the future to sustain its jobs domestically. They needs China as its export market. China needs the U.S. technology and know-how and the access to the U.S. market even though it has to expand its domestic consumption. In the end, the folks will remember the vastly more important and improved collaboration than the a few firecrackers in the past two months.

On January 28th, 2010, New York State successfully organized its first Request For Information (RFI) on Cloud Computing. It was delivered via a fairly successful multimedia syndication to over 200 leaders from the state agencies and vendor community and countless people online. The response was warm and insightful. At the end of the session the question is not if we should go with Cloud Computing, it is when and how.

To help an Enterprise as vast as the New York State government to reap the benefits of Cloud Computing, a comprehensive and prudent plan is needed. The risks should be carefully managed. Every CIO should look at the Cloud implementation through the following five prisms: finance, services, governance, risks, and processes. We should carefully address the following five questions:

1. Does the business model of cloud computing address the immediate financial bottom line?

Moving to cloud computing should also subscribe to the desired performance based budgeting. The return on investment (ROI) and economic impact of Cloud Computing needs to be carefully looked at. Cloud computing will reduce capital expenditure (CapEx) but it may keep pace or even increase operating expenditure (OpEx) for IT. It will alter the pictures of the cash flow and the balance sheet for an enterprise. Whether this is advantageous to do depends on the current situation of the enterprise. If an enterprise is having a current cash flow problem, the desire of asset consolidation and relocation simply cannot triumph if the marching towards cloud computing incurs large migration cost.

Moving to cloud computing brings both tangible and intangible benefits and costs. Computing on demand is usually perceived more cost effective than maintaining private data centers whose capacities are engineered for peak activities rather than actual usage. In the government settings, the overcapacity and waste also stem from the fact that we usually build permanent infrastructure for temporary programs.

We also need to be cognizant of the intangible impact and figure out how to account for it. The agility and flexibility that cloud computing bring to us will advance the innovation in our enterprise. Many new ideas were simply too expensive and too tedious to try. A traditional proof of concept will have to go through the normal procurement process and require outright capital expenditure, leaving the innovators steaming and frustrated. After moving to Cloud Computing, the enterprise IT workforce can be shifted from infrastructure centric to business process centric. The impact may be profound as our operation is increasingly (business) knowledge driven. On the other hand, shifting the computing to the cloud will incur some new cost that is associated with dealing with the shifting legal responsibility, more complex knowledge management, and required governance.

2. Have we clearly articulated in business terms the impact of cloud computing on our business processes?

All IT systems impact business processes to a certain degree. The moving to the Cloud is not a march by IT alone. Business users are coming with us. To assess and articulate the impact on our business activities is one of the hinges for success. Moreover, migration towards Cloud computing will compete for resources. Certain business processes may be slowed down. As CIOs, we need to make sure there are gains in business processes due to cloud computing that can more than offset other delays. Many enterprise processes are complex requiring sophisticated integration and process management. Cloud computing may simplify such processes if we know how to coordinate and consolidate. Many users already have the desires to use readily available computing resources outside of the enterprise to advance their goals. A fragmented approach may cool the enthusiasm if the business processes are not improved.

3. Are we prepared to operate and govern a multi-host multi-tenancy computing ecosystem?

Multi-tenancy has the potential to lower the infrastructure cost for individual participants. However the shared environment will cause a shift of responsibilities. How does the accountability precipitate and how do we govern in the shared Cloud? Among the top concerns for moving to the Cloud are security and privacy. It is not only the complexity associated with securing the shared infrastructure but also the shift of regulatory compliance responsibilities, whether it is Sarbanes Oxley or HIPAA. Legal counsels need to be involved before the enterprise can plant solid footing in potential quick sand.

Information governance has paramount importance for security and privacy in cloud computing. A good information classification program is one of the precursors for moving to cloud computing. It will shed light on how an enterprise chooses its pilot cloud services. Salesforce.com has been a successful business case of cloud computing for small and medium businesses because the data and information stored in the cloud are less burdensome in terms of regulatory compliance. A strong information governance in the Cloud is the critical path for the enterprise to prevent itself from being locked in a single vendor solution.

4. Are we clear what the risks and performance metrics are?

Security, privacy, performance, vendor lock-in, service level are the top concerns of Cloud Computing. The ability to gauge and mitigate risks in relation to our current business practice is a required IT competence for cloud computing. For example, in order to ensure the cloud services to be portable among vendors, adoption and enforcement of standards may not be straightforward given the myriad of interoperability standards out there. The performance for business computing over the Network can be a real bottleneck for the adoption of cloud computing. The success of cloud computing have to come with high-bandwidth and highly available Network. The ability to decouple the tightly built private systems to be Cloud-ready is another challenge. A well documented risk management plan and a set of key performance indicators for cloud computing should be in place sooner rather than later.

5 What IT services do we select as the first wave of Cloud Services?

Picking up a rock of the right size is part of the success. We want to avoid taking too big a bite than what we can chew. Starting to review the enterprise IT service catalog was timely recommended by one of the attendees in the New York State Cloud Computing RFI session. Like any technological advancement, Cloud Computing is still climbing the ladder of IT services. As the technology community starts cataloging cloud services such as Communication as a Service (CaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud computing comes with various levels of maturity and is associated with different degree of risks. For example, CaaS is more mature than SaaS in many cases while application development environment is less risky than production environment. Choosing the right Cloud Computing pilots that has manageable business complexity and controlled risk will help the movement along more smoothly.

When we talk about climate change, a new concept has been coined a few months back, which is Carbon Intensity.  It is defined as carbon emission per unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  Why is it created?  Why not go straight to reduction of carbon emission?

The concept ties to the economic development disparity and perceived equality.  Developing nations have not been the major contributors to the carbon emission in the past centuries.  When clean energy is too expensive or simply unavailable, the only way to develop their economy is to use traditional energy which unavoidably will leads to increased carbon emission.  Having Carbon Intensity will tie the carbon emission and climate change to right of development.

For example, China’s current carbon emission is slightly larger than that of U.S..  However their economic development status is much poorer.  Per capita energy consumption is only about one sixth of that of U.S..  If China subscribes the notion of absolute reduction of carbon emission, the energy consumption per capita will be even smaller than that of U.S..  Economic development will be halted and the standard of living will be frozen to less than one tenth of that of U.S., measured by GDP.

Cloud computing is not using your laptop in an airplane at 50,000 feet. Cloud is the metaphor of Internet. Cloud computing delivers computing services to users via a Network. It relieves users from managing or even knowing the infrastructure. Sometimes, Cloud Computing can be linked to utility computing, computing on demand, etc.

When it comes to Cloud Computing, three S’s come to one’s mind – Security, Speed, and Standard. Security make our mind at ease. After all someone else is managing our systems and data. Are they doing a good job? Is our privacy at risk? Speed makes everything enjoyable. Delivering computation over the Network, which could be Internet or private network, adds additional latency. Poor performance will turn users off. Standard insures user’s ability to avoid vendor lock in.

What does Cloud Computing mean to business and government? What is the economy impact to us?

It relieves business and government from operating private data centers on their own. As a result, the capital expenditure is reduced. Ongoing energy consumption is contained. As private data centers are often engineered for peak activities, the shared multitenacy Cloud Computing reduced unused capacity and resources.