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Current Filter: Cloud>>>>>Analysis> Cloud at the crossroads Editorial Type: Analysis Date: 09-2014 Views: 2627 | |||
| No one group has all the expertise needed to create a perfect cloud environment - it needs expertise in application behaviour, data centre design, network and machine virtualisation, wide area networking and so much more. Getting this all working together calls for collaboration, and the CloudEthernet Forum can help to do it, says CEF President, James Walker. Sometimes society needs to pause, waiting for one single word or symbol that encapsulates its fundamental need, before moving on. Like a seed crystal dropped into a super-saturated solution, the word "cloud" has become the rallying cry for a range of "as a service" business models now spreading like wildfire. And yet the basic idea - that it makes economic sense to invest heavily in central resources and save money on cheaper access to those resources - has been around since the days of the mainframe computer. The personal computer almost destroyed that model, as people discovered that they really liked holding their own resources, but it re-emerged with client-server and the savings made possible by allowing a "thinner client". While the rise of the web revived the idea of centralisation, with a truly thin client accessing services from the Internet, early moves in this direction gathered little momentum. This was partly because Internet access in the 1990s was still too slow, but also because people still cherished the autonomy of having all their assets in their own PC.
PHONE AHEAD The signs are everywhere, as massive new datacentres are springing up in the coldest places: Dell'Oro Group predicts that within five years more than 75% of Ethernet ports will be sold into data centres, with similar predictions for compute and storage gear from Gartner and Forrester. So the total worldwide market for cloud infrastructure and services is expected to grow to $206B in 2016, and the cloud will be the hub for most business investments well into the next decade.
YOU CAN'T PLEASE ALL THE PEOPLE… This means that the industry will soon be facing a much steeper sales incline - and this is just when it can least afford to slip. If the cloud fails now, it could send the whole market tumbling back down the slope. The bad news is that the cracks in the cloud structure have already started to show. The good news is that this has been recognised in time. The industry has launched the CloudEthernet Forum and is already rallying to tackle fundamental issues and ensure a reliable, scalable and secure cloud for the coming generation.
CHALLENGES IN CONTEXT The first is scale. It is understood that the market is rapidly expanding, even more rapidly than expected - but this is a familiar challenge in the IT world with lots of new users coming on line. What is different is the explosion in virtual machines that is unbounded by the physical limitations usually imposed by the requirement to install hardware.
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