As cloud computing becomes mainstream, history repeats again

Just a few years ago, the main form of electronic communication between people was the telephone. Therefore, the core of the world's infrastructure is also the telephone network. But with the explosive growth of the Internet in the 1990s, IP networks have become the new core network of electronic communications. In the meantime, many of the patent standards and technologies disappear - such as telegrams and token rings.

As cloud computing becomes more mainstream, history may be repeated again. For the cloud, data is critical, so storage needs to evolve a new core architecture based on IP networks. Businesses like Google and Facebook are already aware of this new core and are therefore included in their architecture. But we still have a long way to go to make storage a standard core architecture like today's IP networks, and it's only now in hype.

In the past two technological evolutions, there are always a number of technology vendors and service providers involved, often using a variety of competing means. Its evolutionary process will generally continue for many years, or even decades, and divided into multiple stages. Pioneers will appear in the first phase, followed by a large number of new followers into the second phase, and finally the third phase of integration. So far, we are still in the first phase of cloud evolution, and the second phase has just begun. However, due to the absence of newer technologies in the storage space, the second phase is expected to be more serious chaos. We can predict that there will be more Nirvanix off this scene. Does this mean that Amazon is a definite winner? Not necessarily, because now we are still in a natural transition from the first phase to the second phase.

You can do further discussion. In the two previous technological evolutions, technology vendors converged on some interoperability standards. However, storage technology vendors still have a long way to go in this area. In the absence of standard convergence, large enterprises often push their own storage core. For example, let's review a lot of operators borrowing leased telephone lines that combine PPP, Frame Relay and ATM to build their own network cores. However, because of the lack of standards, even large enterprises are unlikely to create their own storage.

Therefore, new storage technologies will be key to the evolution of the cloud. Existing vendors may already be aware of this fact, but their traditional technologies and installation base are not enough to support them moving forward. Moreover, some new technologies, such as SSDs and FCoE, are consuming their vast resources. As a result, innovative companies with new technologies in their possession, such as CloudByte and other start-ups, will be the key to future cloud evolution. We believe these efforts will soon make storage as easy and universal as making a phone call. (Wave compiled)

(The author, Felix Xavier, has worked for IBM, Novell, Juniper, and NetApp and helped NetApp gain a leadership position in data protection for storage arrays and is now the founder and CTO of startup CloudByte.)