The power of the cloud
Did you know that a birthday card that plays “Happy Birthday” has more computer power than that used by all of the Allied Forces in 1945? And we just throw it out. Did you also know that your mobile phone has more computer power than NASA had in 1969 when it landed two astronauts on the moon?
What’s even more incredible is that the devices we have today are the least powerful devices we shall ever carry.
As power increases and price decreases, more powerful device applications will continue to be created. Each enhancement of device capabilities produces a high-powered expansion of applications and app complexity. Think about the fact that you basically have a desktop computer in your pocket. Imagine what will replace it in just a few years. Processors have moved from single core to dual core, and now to quad core, which is intended to be mainstream in 2013. The continuous play between compute power and battery life will continue to cause innovation to drive superior performance.
In parallel to the changes seen on the device side, there is an IT revolution on the server side. Commonly referred to as “cloud computing,” it is now possible to “rent” vast amounts of computer capacity and/or software services on demand, and only pay for what is used – at greatly reduced cost and lead time compared with traditional IT deployments. This has completely changed the economic landscape and removed barriers for anybody wishing to bring a service to market.
It has also created a whole new industry of cloud-infrastructure providers. Traditionally, any company would have needed to buy hardware, install software, find somewhere to run it, and then employ people to manage it. You would have needed to buy vast amounts of hardware and software to cope with peak-traffic levels, irrespective of how often these traffic levels were experienced. Now cloud-service providers remove that burden from the software developer’s realm.
The effect of cloud computing means drastically lower production costs of compute capabilities combined with faster time to market.
Cloud computing is in its very early stages. In the future, cloud-computing capability will never be as hard to use as it is now. Nor will it be as expensive or slow, despite its already disruptive attributes in these spaces.
Read the paper.
Written by Geoff Hollingworth
Ericsson Evangelist #5, software designer, marketeer, business developer and strategic lead. Geoff has worked in the mobile industry for over 20 year: Node, WebRTC, PaaS and new business models. Currently leading Ericsson's AT&T Foundry Initiative in Palo Alto, Silicon Valley. Follow Geoff on twitter at @geoffworth
