Beyond cost saving , enterprises pursue cloud to become more agile and decrease time-to-market .
Beyond cost saving , enterprises pursue cloud to become more agile and decrease time-to-market .
nologies for the cloud , as well as how to properly manage those environments when in production .
Moreover , there have been some differences in the ROI promised by cloud providers and the actual ROI realized by enterprises . This has been due to a lack of experience and / or understanding about the cloud ’ s impact on labor costs , the cost of changing the organization , and the need to operate both cloud and non-cloud systems at the same time the switchover is occurring .
Still , the outlook for public and private clouds shows a very steep upward curve . The emerging industry seems to be working out the kinks , and the successes outweigh the failures .
There is a long learning curve ahead for most enterprises . Similar to the shift to the Web that occurred in the 1990s , cloud computing is even more systemic and far reaching . It will take at least 10 years before cloud adoption can demonstrate its full value .
Other Drivers
Other drivers for the second wave of cloud computing are the use cases and applications the technology enables . The Internet of Things ( IoT ), for instance , is about data coming from sensors , and the processing of that data in near real time . The platform requirements make IoT a natural application for the cloud . Food producers are looking at cloud-based IoT applications to provide better insights into irrigation and production . That ’ s just one example of where the cloud ’ s cost savings make the development and production of IoT applications a cost effective proposition .
These innovations are not lost on the cloud providers , with Google , Microsoft , and AWS all offering IoT services within their public clouds . Indeed , the ability to support IoT applications could easily encompass 25 percent of cloud applications by the end of 2017 . More and more , people expect everything to be connected , and the cloud makes the cost of doing that realistic . Companies that make devices , from mobile phones to thermostats , understood early on that it doesn ’ t make sense to keep all the smarts and storage in the device itself and most smart IoT devices pair with their own cloud .
Nest , for example , stores data from their thermostats in their own cloud , and they even sell cloud storage services for their DropCam IoT device . Most mobile applications have a back-end cloud service , typically running in another public cloud . Without cloud services , the devices would likely cease to have value , or cost much more than the sub- $ 100 US price tags we see today .
Developers are also creating applications that are purpose-built for cloud platforms . They ’ re called “ cloud native ,” which means they leverage the native features of the platform , such as auto-scaling , auto-provisioning , and other features that are accessible by leveraging the native APIs . Cloud native applications written for the cloud platforms they run on perform better than applications which are not . Moreover , they burn less money during operations , and provide better monitoring and management capabilities .
The second wave of cloud computing is really more of an evolution than another inflection point . Cloud services are becoming systemic to everything , including enterprise infrastructure and applications – IoT , mobile computing , etc . The success is based on how cloud computing provides the path of least resistance to what is typically the most cost effective solution . Unless major issues are uncovered — and that doesn ’ t seem to be happening – cloud computing will continue its rapid growth .
6 | THE DOPPLER | SPRING 2016