{"id":5863,"date":"2020-11-01T16:30:13","date_gmt":"2020-11-01T14:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/?p=5863"},"modified":"2020-11-01T16:30:15","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T14:30:15","slug":"the-end-is-near-for-cloud-computing-or-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/the-end-is-near-for-cloud-computing-or-is-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The end is near for cloud computing. Or is it?"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time-approximately:<\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

Cloud computing is a long way from being fully mature, but its obsolescence may already be upon us. Is the cloud\u2019s future really up in the air?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Joel Shore<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Peter Levine, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, puts it, \u201cEverything that\u2019s popular in technology always gets replaced by something else,\u201d be it Microsoft Windows, minicomputers exemplified by Digital Equipment Corp., specialized workstations typified by Sun Microsystems, or, yes, even cloud computing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Levine explains it, cloud computing, which he views as the centralization of\u00a0IT workloads\u00a0into a small number of super-mega-huge datacenters, is an unsustainable, unworkable, slow-to-respond method. The need for instantaneous information makes the\u00a0network latency\u00a0associated with a device-to-datacenter model and the corresponding datacenter-to-device return trip simply too long and therefore unacceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Computing, Levine suggests, will move to a\u00a0peer mesh\u00a0of\u00a0edge devices, migrating away from the centralized cloud model. Consider\u00a0smart cars. They need to continually exchange information with each other about immediate, hyperlocal traffic conditions. Smart cars need to know that an accident occurred 10 seconds ago a half-mile up the road, that a pedestrian is entering a crosswalk, or that a traffic light is about to turn red. For this to work requires realtime data collection, processing, and sharing with other vehicles in the immediate area. The round-trip processing in the cloud model isn\u2019t even remotely (pun intended) fast enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Text messaging is similar in that messages exchanged between people sitting just feet apart are still routed through a distant datacenter. It\u2019s inefficient, slow (in compute terms), and unsustainable. The centralization is needed only for logging and journaling.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The answer, Levine postulates, is pushing processing and intelligence out to the edge, using many-to-many relationships among vehicles for information exchange, along with edge-based processing based on super-powerful machine-learning algorithms. No wonder he describes the self-driving car as \u201ca datacenter on wheels.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, a drone is a datacenter with wings and a robot is a datacenter with arms and legs. They all need to process data in real time. The latency of the network plus the amount of information needing to travel renders the round-trip on the cloud unsuitable, though that\u2019s still plenty fast enough for a Google search, he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cloud still plays a role; data eventually needs to be stored, after all. That makes this model not fully edge and not fully cloud. It\u2019s perhaps closer to what Cisco dubs \u201cfog computing.\u201d It also speaks to the inevitability of how IoT-driven smart cities must operate, a\u00a0concept explained to me\u00a0by Esmeralda Swartz, vice president of strategy and marketing at Ericsson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a profound irony to this. We started the age of IT (MIS as it was then known) with the IBM mainframe as the centralized place where all programs ran, all processing was done, and all data was stored. That was blown apart by decentralization, driven by the client\/server model, Ethernet (or Token Ring or ARCnet), network operating systems (NetWare, VINES, LAN Manager, 3+ Open, Windows for Workgroups, Windows NT, OS\/2 Warp, etc.) and early network-aware databases, such as Btrieve. Cloud computing swings the pendulum back to the centralized data model of the past, albeit with a dose of edge processing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s throwing out everything you know and seeing from a paradoxically different perspective \u2014 just like the young girl presented on Christmas morning with her great-grandmother\u2019s heirloom wristwatch, only to declare, \u201cA watch that doesn\u2019t need batteries? Gee, what will they think of next!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

You can watch\u00a0Levine\u2019s presentation\u00a0\u201cReturn to the Edge and the End of Cloud Computing\u201d on YouTube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No doubt you\u2019ve already thought about this. Where do you think\u00a0cloud computing is headed? Is this a technology that is ultimately doomed to be superseded by something different, better, faster, and cheaper? What does this mean for you as an application developer? Share your thoughts and fears; we\u2019d like to hear from you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time-approximately:<\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>Cloud computing is a long way from being fully mature, but its obsolescence may already be upon us. Is the cloud\u2019s future really up in the air? Joel Shore As Peter Levine, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, puts it, \u201cEverything that\u2019s popular in technology always gets replaced by something else,\u201d be it Microsoft Windows, minicomputers exemplified by<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,145,4,30,3,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cloud-architecture-design","category-datacenter-hardware-trends","category-datacenter-news","category-expert-advise-and-opinion","category-industry-news-and-expert-advise","category-trends-datacenter-hardware-and-solutions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5863"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5864,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5863\/revisions\/5864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}