The new future of the IT world: six grand predictions for cloud computing

With the spread of cloud computing, today's IT world has undergone tremendous changes, is in the new era of excessive chaos stage. And the chief information officers at the center of the storm. They are in a position like Ulysses, the protagonist of the Virgin Demon Scylla and Charybdis Disney in Homer's Odyssey. Scylla symbolizes the already established it rules, and Charybdis Disney represents the future, and it is certain that the future, both intrinsic and unpredictable, hides infinite crises and troubles. Those who preach painless cloud migration are like sirens. So many CIOs have to make themselves like Ulysses to resist the Sirens and buy software, hardware or cloud services rationally.

We can imagine that CIOs will eventually overcome the difficulties and enter the calm waters like Ulysses. In the future, new programs and products will replace what is currently in use, but these are the things that make up our IT world today. And those new products are collectively called cloud computing.

As we are in the midst of a turbulent change, it is difficult to predict the new world. However, in my opinion, we still have the confidence to predict how the cloud computing revolution broke out. Cloud computing's rays are so dazzling that they are enough for us to outline the post-cloud era.

In the post-cloud era, cloud computing is no longer an alternative to today's it conventions, and becomes a standard way to handle things. Today, cloud computing is seen as a destabilizing factor in the existing rules of the IT community, but one day, cloud computing will become the mainstream of the IT world.

So what is the mainstream of the IT world in the future? Here are some of our predictions:

Mass computing is commonplace.

Each system is designed to handle large amounts of data. Each application is resilient and can be adjusted according to the "Data flood" traffic. When the system is designed, no one will ask questions about capacity, because everyone will think that the potential capacity is unlimited. Therefore, design work is assumed to be scalable to handle more things, no matter how much data the application is managing or how many virtual machines the application topology contains. In fact, we can assume that the system was created for "infinitely large capacity."

Internet of things has been popularized

Cisco's chief technology officer predicts that in the near future, 1 trillion of devices will be connected to the Internet. Many people predict that we are entering the post-PC era.

We realize that the Admiral will enter a "post-human Center" world of equipment. There will be many devices that can interact with humans, such as computers, PCs, smartphones and tablets. In fact, we will be surrounded by more and more special-purpose devices to perform a function that communicates with the central program running on the cloud, which takes turns interacting with what we think is valuable.

For example, we don't have to look at our watches to read our blood pressure values. The watch will measure our blood pressure, then send the data to the blood pressure monitoring system, and the system will alert health care personnel if our health is beyond normal medical scope and specific values. We'll be surrounded by these devices, but we don't have to focus on them unless we need to focus.

It is not a simple matter to understand how this trend has developed. Even those in the industry who are in charge of the dynamics often underestimate what is going to happen. Ten years ago, I discussed the prototype of a smart fridge with a CEO of an analog chip company and was recognised by a device manufacturer. The chief executive said the fridge will have an interface in the future, in which you can draw up your shopping list based on the number of things in the fridge. My understanding is that the milk carton should be able to determine how much milk is left, and then inform the fridge to add milk to the shopping list. His answer was in the negative. He thinks the cost of doing so is too high, so the milk carton does not have this function. The chief executive then began discussing the relationship between cost and functionality, rather than continuing to discuss how to drive the trend forward.

In this case, it is clear that the chief executive underestimated the situation. In fact, my understanding is correct. Today, the milk packaging carton can be linked to a cloud-based shopping list application that will contact your chosen store and arrange a shopping list including milk. When I wrote this article, I also saw a video from a Toyota Motor company that showed how car glass could be an interactive device. The number of unmanned computing devices in the future will be far more than the number of interacting devices, and this moment is not far away.

It component costs will drop dramatically

I'm not just talking about chips and hard drives. I mean, every part of it supply chain. Operating systems, middleware, applications-although they are now resistant to commercialization, they will become cheaper in the future. If not, they will be replaced by free open-source software components.

Why do I have to make predictions like this? Obviously, if we're going to achieve the predicted scale, then a single component must become cheaper. There is no other way. For now, I've heard many people say that software vendors are not allowed to migrate to cloud computing to prevent their profits from being eroded. If these manufacturers resist this trend, the more reasonable prices of new players in the market will replace them.

Nevertheless, total IT spending will increase considerably. Here we need to discuss the Jevons paradox, where people cut back on the cost of services rather than the entire spending, which actually increases spending. It functionality stimulates current business applications, and it facilitates spending growth. Every new business application includes it, so the move to boost new business supply growth is to increase it investment. The difference between this situation and the present is that it is not a rear support office and will face the customer directly. The long-term goal of the IT department should be to become a partner in the business unit, rather than wait until a problem occurs and then "fire".

IT department reorganization it

As part of the business, on the other hand, it means to run like a business. This section requires cost transparency. The presence of a public cloud service provider provides a reference benchmark for internal IT departments. Failure to provide reasonable transparency means death.

Cost transparency affects deployment decisions. Cost is one of the important considerations in decision making. In addition, you need to consider factors such as privacy, compliance, application bandwidth/latency requirements, and so on. These factors determine whether the application is deployed internally or externally. Wise CIOs recognize that their role is to manage the infrastructure, not the assets.

In the post-cloud computing era, the biggest challenge for IT organizations is legacy systems. These systems seriously affect the ability of IT organizations to meet the needs of business users. In the post-cloud computing era, legacy applications cannot be adequately managed with little additional spending. Even with some additional investment, these applications make maintenance cost structures higher than the current cost structure. For IT organizations, they have to cut the overhead of legacy systems. For example, some companies are currently moving mail systems to external service providers. It organizations must deal with these legacy applications aggressively. Otherwise, some of the indispensable projects will lack sufficient funding budget. Each CIO needs to assess existing systems, plan to reduce their costs, or replace them with functionally similar SaaS services, or outsource them to lower-cost service providers.

PAAs will become popular

Many people view cloud computing as a virtual machine to use on demand. However, the rapid development of cloud computing has surpassed people's imagination. If application developers have to design applications that are scalable and resilient, they are wasting their time. Infrastructure to address these issues, freeing application developers to focus on business functions. This approach is PAAs (platform as a service). It organizations in the post-cloud era will rely heavily on PAAs to manage basic functionality and infrastructure through internal or external institutions.

Shortage of application developers

The Jevons paradox means a big burst of it demand, especially for application developers. People who know how to develop business applications will integrate multiple applications into a new application and be proficient with external APIs, a service that is very demanding. The rise of PAAs has also driven demand for application developers. High productivity means lower unit costs, which also leads to increased demand.

However, this does not mean that all application developers are in short supply. This also has nothing to do with understanding the language or the framework. The development of such applications is like a total contract contractor, who integrates a range of internal and external components and services to provide the functionality required by the user. As it investments turn to apps, there will be shortages of people who can write post-cloud applications, just like cloud chief information officers. Now you should start thinking about how to recruit this type of talent.

This writer, Bernard Golden, is chief executive of Hyperstratus consulting firm. The company is dedicated to research on virtualization, cloud computing and related issues. Golden has a book, "The Virtual Fool Book", which is the best-selling book on virtualization in the market so far.