The use of cloud computing is growing and this growth will increase in the coming years. The possibilities and the limitless capacity of cloud applications has been so enormous that immense ecosystems have developed around it. The key thrust of cloud computing is common or share infrastructure as popularly known, something that has the big bang effect of changing the information technology as we know it.
For years, great innovators have often figured out how to make our lives less laborious. Let’s leap back in time for a moment and look at a comparable revolutionary event that changed the world as we see it today.
Back when there was no artificially harnessed electricity (at least available on a mass production), one innovator named Thomas Edison came up with a way to generate current and how to transmit it in a technique called Direct Current, abbreviated DC. This worked but it was tremendously wasteful and required millions of stations to power cities of the world. Other inventors in the field, including Tesla, worked on a substitute, AC or Alternating Current and this was proved to be more efficient than Direct Current in terms of mass production.
What emerged at this point was a significant discovery in history that proves history repeats itself, the need to create utility stations that acted as super nodes in a countrywide grid and that relayed electricity throughout the grid and made it possible for electricity to be always available when people needed it. This groundbreaking concept overturned the plans that were in place at that time and gave way to today’s smart power grids that provide us with access to power at any time at the flip of a switch.
Looking at today’s computing, we are operating more or less in the Direct Current era, where everything has to be supplied to individual needs separately prompting for wastage – think of the many software installed in your laptop, for example MS Office. This in turn forces you to spend more money on Windows compatible software, and so on, yet this products are not custom made for you but rather off the shelf products that are similar in nature for as long as you are comparing a similar version. It is therefore very unproductive to struggle installing the software when you can easily use it online when you need it.
What cloud computing does is that it makes all these products available on the Internet or a shared network and the new economy that emerges is one where there are no longer any legacy. I can easily use any Operating System I would like with any software I need without any compatibility challenges because all of these are made available over the Internet (think of Windows 7, 8, 10, Linux etc).
Ultimately, we may reach a day when we won’t need Operating Systems anymore and all we will need is simple base software installed in our laptops, computers etc that connects us to the Internet and to all our applications as we may need them (on demand) without clattering our limited storage space. Such efficiency can only be made possible by ensuring that today our internet connectivity is always on, always available and always reliable.
This shift has seen massive investments going into data centers as more and more ICT infrastructure moves to the cloud (Internet). The future we shall see is one where data centers shall form smart grids and relay information much the same way that electricity is relayed today. Data centres use a cloud foundation to virtually connect companies to the data that supports their business, removing physical or geographical barriers. The foundation for the cloud concept is the lessons we learnt in our own history of electric grid system that has always improved over the years including connecting to the various power sources seamlessly.
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