It is that time of year again when we naturally start looking ahead to the future, and as this has turned out to be one of my larger posts I thought I’d give you a summary – saves you reading the other 1200 odd words if you think I am talking rubbish 🙂
Hybrid cloud is finally starting to come of age – driven by Microsoft, VMWare, HPE and Dell among others
Public cloud will continue to make serious in-roads to Enterprises moving from Shadow to primary IT
Big Data and the Internet of Things (IoT) will become core to Businesses looking to out innovate their competition in terms of offer and cost reduction
Cloud will be the repository of our lives, mobiles will be the gateway and increasingly wearables will be the window
So as I mentioned at the top of the post I have been pondering what the future will bring for my industry as I reflect on what books and things to look at for 2016. I remain convinced that true Platform as a Service (PaaS) type offerings is where we need to end up and to this end the rise of micro-services, and their natural home – containers, are a step in the right direction. For me containers, cloud and the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) feel like the foundations being laid for true PaaS.
True PaaS will enable “Business as Code” where systems are context aware and that context spans the whole Business not just that system’s inputs. Business as Code won’t just enable the developers, it will enable all areas of the Business including the compliance teams – if you can automate building a website you can definitely automate finding one that is not compliant! Compliance teams need to embrace these technologies and get in on the ground floor – rather than fighting against automation and losing the opportunity to embed compliance in the Continuous Delivery pipelines.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) combined with cloud like capabilities will underpin true PaaS and it will be interesting to see how the cloud side develops. Currently the costs of public cloud keep moving down as ever greater economies of scale, miniaturisation and automation help the big players reduce their costs; there will however come a time when they will bottom out and eventually start to rise. Much like there was a “space race” in retail, it currently feels like there is a feature race in public cloud – AWS & Azure keep piling out new capabilities but these capabilities will need to be able to demonstrate their value when costs go up.
The Dell’s & HPE’s of this world will still want to sell tin for a while yet – and if you have a data center (DC) or two already, or operate at a certain scale you will probably still buy said tin. As the hardware manufacturers strive to keep their offerings competitive they too will keep dropping their prices and take advantage of the lessons being learned at AWS & Azure (while trying not to be whitebox fodder).
OpenStack seems unstoppable with wide industry support and finally some stable, simple distributions that come with that warm comfort blanket Enterprises like so much. Yet VMware is not going to sit still, they have OpenStack interfaces to their software stack but I suspect we will see more in this area as they defend their lead. Another option comes from Microsoft who with their Azure in your DC have a really strong offering. HPE – a key OpenStack contributor – have announced they will support Azure in your DC and it will be interesting to see how this plays out against Helion (HPE’s distribution of OpenStack). VMware and Microsoft seem to have the best Hybrid stories right now and it will be interesting to see if that resonates – or if Business’ desire to avoid lock-in will see them go OpenStack (and also avoid all those features the public cloud players are pumping out!).
For kit in your own DC Composable infrastructure is the new kid on the block, and for me, it has real potential to change the game again. Going forward in a Software Defined Data Center applications will be able to define exactly the compute they need for that point in time, reserve it, consume it and release it (Mainframe anyone?). This can further drive the economies in your DC and I will be interested to see what the cloud providers do with it – exciting stuff.
One thing is for sure – containers will be in the news with all the major providers now offering or promising support. 2016 will see the management aspects for containers evolve as they move into Enterprise mainstream. Containers though for me are a stepping stone to true PaaS – with containers Developers are still worrying about application packages, patching and all the plumbing. Yes it is now neatly packaged but it is still there – PaaS removes that and frees the Developers to just write code.
Digital natives are much more comfortable with their personal data being collected and it will be interesting to see if that trust and acceptance will reach a limit over the next few years. The loss of payment cards doesn’t seem to be an issue, just an accepted risk of life and its OK as the banks sort it out right? I wonder what will happen when truly personal information leaks, or if the drive for personalisation will cross that line from useful to creepy and drive a backlash. The media has whipped up a frenzy that we need to encrypt our messages to protect us from our Government but it’s the storing and mining of information for commercial use that worries me more. You can already get car insurance based on how you drive, how long until you can get insurance based on what your wearable says about you? Businesses need to be wary of the mantra “just because you can does not mean you should…”
Data is the engine for Businesses and I think micro-services will eventually evolve from their containers to ephemeral processors existing only when needed, designed to support parallel running. The purpose of these ephemeral processors hosted in PaaS will ultimately be to feed the data monster; the Internet of Things (IoT) will drive ever more data collection which will have processors to receive and where required transform the information flow. Other processors will react to changes in the data lake firing off proactive processors or where something new occurs reactive ones. Still more processors will go fishing in the lake trying to land patterns to identify trends drive the Business forward in terms of new offerings, personalization and cost reduction.
Then, of course, there is mobile. The power in those devices we all carry around is incredible and they too are now getting their own ecosystem becoming a hub for wearables. If the cloud will be the repository of our lives, mobiles will be the gateway and increasingly wearables will be the window. These changes in how we consume data and services will in turn drive further changes in how we store and process data. Messaging and things like AWS Lambda are for me when the game is going.
Where am I going to focus this year? In all honesty I don’t know, but the first two books I have pencilled in for this year that don’t involve space ships or magic are: NoSQL Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Emerging World of Polyglot Persistence (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0090J3SYW) and Big Data: Using Smart Big Data, Analytics and Metrics to Make Better Decisions and Improve Performance (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1118965833).
That’s it – well done if you have read this far! Whatever the World brings in 2016 I wish you all a very Happy & Prosperous New Year.
Ian
Please note this post was orginally posted to LinkedIn
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