Indeed, a study by Capco and Wipro showed that cloud computing was slowly becoming more important for IT leaders, C-suite executives, and board members across all industries. It is especially necessary in banking and financial services as it is used to store data and applications as well as access advanced software applications via the internet.

By using cloud technologies, 48% of banks are expecting to see a decrease in costs in the coming two years, while others expect a boost in income. 66% of banks also believe that cloud benefits will quickly include improved revenue and thus, boost profitability. Organisations that have already implemented cloud computing are enjoying large gains regarding their revenues.

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Indeed, Gartner recommends to monitor and measure the progress of the management team against cloud skills initiatives by dividing by expertise and responsibilities. A program management office will need to be working with the cloud center of excellence (CCOE) to be more effective.

Moreover, it is essential to train existing staff with cloud skills and ensure that they are strategic thinkers and team players. Employing new workers with the necessary skills for cloud projects is key to accelerating cloud computing initiatives.

Finally, having external service provider (ESP) assistance, such as a cloud-managed service provider (MSP) can help businesses with their strategies.

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Indeed, a recent study by Gartner showed that enterprises are increasing their adoption of cloud strategy. By 2025, 51% of IT spending in application software, infrastructure software, business process services, and system infrastructure will have shifted from traditional solutions to the public cloud. On top of that, almost two-thirds of spending on application software will be directed towards cloud technologies in 2025.

It was also reported that organizations need to invest more into higher value skills and capabilities such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and DevOps. The adoption of distributed cloud will be able to accelerate cloud shift because it brings public cloud services into domains that have previously been non-cloud.

Hence, more than $1.3tn in enterprise IT spending will depend on the shift to cloud, growing to almost $1.8tn in 2025.

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Edge computing is then a distributed computing framework that enables data to be analyzed quicker and more efficiently, allowing more opportunity for insights, faster response times, and improved customer experiences.

Hence, we have talked to experts in the industry to learn more about edge computing and what the future holds for it.

What is Edge Computing?

Data in this era is the most valuable asset and with the digital revolution, data is being generated in high volumes at very high velocity, according to Ali Saeed Khan, Head of Engineering. Processing this raw data into useful information is the challenge of the present and future. Data is acquired through millions of devices ranging from handheld devices to microcontrollers.

Carrying this data to a centralized location creates network dependability. One way to handle this challenge is to grow the network infrastructure with the growth in data acquisition. The other way is to bring the processing unit closer to the data. Hence, he continues, the term edge computing is tossed where we bring the processing unit closer to the network edge i.e., end of the network.

The concept of edge computing is thus based on the divide and conquer approach, where we divide the processing units into smaller parts and once the data is processed into information, that information is sent to the centralized storage unit for later use. Edge computing is a set of computational components deployed closer to the data acquisition device(s).

Dalia Adib, Practice Lead at STL Partners, adds that edge computing brings the capabilities of the cloud close to the end-user or end-device. There are debates around edge computing vs fog computing. In reality, the two have similar objectives. A small difference is that fog computing can include running intelligence on the end-device and is more Internet of Things (IoT) focused.

Edge can exist on customer premises, on a Raspberry Pi, in a regional data center, or in a network operator’s facility.

Moreover, Paul Ridgway, Founder of The Curve notes that Edge Computing involves running usually small, low power, often low cost compute devices at a location where computing needs to happen, rather than centrally in some data center. It can be a device collecting data and sending it somewhere for consumption, for instance, a pollution sensor on a lamp post.

Edge Computing vs Cloud Computing

Cloud is a broader term at a larger scale than the edge, Ali states. Indeed, a cloud consists of different types of resources provided to end-users as a service. These resources range from software to hardware.

Ali underlines that both of these terms should not be compared because both works in tandem to improve the user experience and performance of information delivery. Edge computing can be used in the cloud to reduce the network load. It adds to the overall cost and reliability of the cloud but at the same time makes it more robust and scalable.

According to Paul, Cloud computing is very different from Edge Computing. Cloud Computing is generally the ability to scale up and down compute resources in a provider’s data center without long-term ownership commitments, capex, etc.

Dalia also emphasizes that edge computing is not independent of the cloud. It is often an extension of the cloud to a location outside of hyperscale data centers and part of a distributed compute continuum. As cloud computing is a catalyst for industrial transformation, edge computing should be a key part of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) planning to enable and accelerate digital transformation.

Similar to the cloud, she continues, edge cloud is flexible and scalable. Unlike static, on-premises servers, it has the capacity to handle sudden spikes in workloads from unplanned increases in end-user activity. It also helps scale when testing and deploying new applications, so it is a great solution for enterprises. Besides, efficiency and scalability can be cost benefits for businesses as well.

Is Edge Computing important?

For Ali, edge computing is the future. IoT and IIoT have become the new norm of the way we live and our industries manufacture. With these sensing devices working around the clock, it is impossible to handle the volume of data generated by them. Edge computing is the first answer we came up with, and we have still a lot to cover. Hence, edge technologies will become a component of regular cloud infrastructure.

Edge Computing unlocks new ways of capturing and processing data due to the often small size, low power, and solid-state nature of the devices that can be deployed, Paul says. For some businesses, Edge Computing is an enabler for new ways of working. For instance, one of his clients is using edge computing in their MachineLink product to collect data from CNC machines with a plug-and-play experience for the end-user.

Moreover, Dalia notes that edge computing has the potential to accelerate enterprises’ existing digital transformation by allowing them to access innovative applications while complying with existing processes and data privacy concerns. This can include manufacturing companies using edge computing to allow industrial tools and machinery to be controlled using standard software on standard infrastructure, rather than be tied to proprietary technology. An interesting use case to bring this to life would be automated guided vehicles (AGVs).

Today, she continues, they are designed to run on a set track, which means that when the production line has to change, it requires sufficient time and costs for the operations teams to re-engineer the line and the associated AGVs. Controlling AGVs using software and connecting them over standard networks will allow for flexibility and enable manufacturers to innovate more quickly.

Benefits & Drawbacks 

Edge computing incorporates the benefits of both local computing, such as on the premises, and cloud computing, Dalia points out. The advantages of edge computing include customers being able to run low latency applications better, as well as cache or process data close to the data source to reduce backhaul traffic volumes and costs.

On the other hand, like cloud, edge compute should offer flexibility and scalability. Edge computing can provide the capacity to handle sudden spikes in workloads from unplanned increases in end-user activity or address enterprises’ need to scale quickly when developing, testing, and deploying new applications. For mobile applications, telco edge compute not only needs to scale up and down, but also move across different telco edge locations.

For Paul, Edge Computing can unlock new sources of data, ways of working, and in turn products and services that were otherwise not possible.  There is also a great potential to distribute and decentralize workloads distributing any failure risk.

According to Ali, edge computing offers the following benefits to the cloud over a traditional cloud architecture:

• Improved Network Performance
• Distributed Nature, decentralization of data makes edge enabled clouds more secure
• Scalability
• Autonomous data collection, the edge devices don’t require a user to power up or log in. These devices are collecting and processing data continuously
• Reliability, as the devices are decentralized the failures are also less impactful

However, as with any digital transformation, there are always costs to implementing new technology, Dalia notes.

Indeed, the challenge with edge computing is that it’s rarely going to be plug-and-play. It will often need an ecosystem of solution providers to provide each part of the value chain: hardware, software enablers, end applications, and services to support the enterprise with setup and ongoing operations. Besides, the remote devices can be difficult to communicate with and manage remotely, Paul states. In some cases, you may deploy a solution that you can’t then get to so the software and hardware must be very robust.

The future of Edge Computing

Dalia, like Ali, believes that edge is still at a very early stage so it will take time for end-customers to learn about what it is, the benefits and begin implementing it. Early adopters are conducting POCs and starting to scale implementations across sites. But in time, others will follow, and we will see more applications for edge grow in the next few years.

Paul also expects Edge Computing to grow in its use and usefulness. Hardware is becoming cheaper, more powerful, more reliable, and more robust and the same is happening with connectivity like 4G/LTE/NB-IoT. Technologies such as computer vision can now run on edge-type devices and that sort of signal processing unlocks even more possibilities.

Special thanks to Dalia Adib, Paul Ridgway, and Ali Saeed Khan for their insights!

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Indeed, the adoption of cloud computing has grown significantly over the last decade, with investments in cloud infrastructure and the demand for cloud services from customers increasing rapidly. The report shows that spending on computing and storage cloud infrastructure will likely reach $112.9bn in 2025, which would account for 66% of the total.

Hence, this reveals that the demand for cloud is growing more important than for non-cloud infrastructure. Yet, many believe that the cloud won’t entirely replace on-premise infrastructure as companies are likely to keep mission-critical services operating on infrastructure so that they can control it better.

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According to the study, most of them were motivated by the idea of starting a new career and finding job security and stability. Indeed, 43% of these new coders and developers came from a non-technical background, while the rest either worked in the IT industry or were unemployed.

Moreover, coding wasn’t the only skill developed by people in the UK. Some decided to take up animation and graphic design, personal development, first aid training, and editing, so as to help improve their careers.

The spread of the pandemic and the shift to home working showed that the future is digital. Hence, having people turning towards computer programming or software development as a new skill seems to be more vital than ever.

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CSB is a business model that manages IT resources across all cloud models from several vendors in order to reduce complexity and infrastructure costs by controlling, orchestrating, and integrating multi-cloud locations on a centralized platform.

Hence, the report notes that there is an urgent need to adopt cloud services for back-office systems and B2B processes, coordination, and integration, as it will drive the growth of the global CSB market by 2025.

Moreover, it is predicted that the demand for hybrid cloud solutions in large enterprises will rise and more enterprise data will be needed to manage. Besides, the quick shift of SMEs towards cloud platforms for better data accessibility and fewer operational costs are expected to drive the market growth by 2025.

It was also reported that initiatives taken by governments across the globe to promote digital banking technologies and the growing number of digital payment vendors will boost the market growth.

Yet, there are still some concerns about data security and a lack of general awareness regarding the benefits of CSB.

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For some businesses, migrating to the cloud had started before the pandemic hit the country. However, for many, the transition to the cloud was merely a plan for the future. The state of the world sped up the process and a lot of organizations found themselves having to adapt all of the sudden.

This turbulent time brought a lot of challenges and, with cloud now a top priority, businesses need to make sure that they are ready for the change.

To shed light on this topic, I talked to experts in the industry and asked them what has made cloud migration so important during these challenging times.

A rise in cloud migration

With the start of lockdown, businesses were in a position where they couldn’t make their employees work in the traditional way – in offices – so they were forced to adapt and continue their cloud journey in an accelerated velocity, Dan Hills, Head of DevOps at Costain Group PLC, tells me. Indeed, he continues, the first step was to make sure that all users were able to work from a vast majority of locations. Then, it was about ensuring that cloud computing offered every employee the flexibility they needed to work and connect with each other.

‘COVID and lockdown have given us the best proof of concept that we could have asked for in successfully proving to the business and giving it the confidence that the vast majority of staff can work in a modern way.’ Dan states.

Cloud plays a vital part in it as it shows businesses how they can further enhance and provide benefits for each department or project by migrating traditional solutions to the cloud.

Similarly, Othman Baalache, Principal Cloud Architect at the Commercial Bank of Dubai, highlights that, with the increase of remote working, organizations have started to shift towards more flexible and reliable ways of working. Moreover, he states the fact that there is also a rise in demand for digital services in order to facilitate processes. Thus, businesses have to act fast to meet customers’ needs.

Moreover, as Arman Kamran, CTO of Prima Recon and enterprise scaled Agile Transition coach, emphasizes, cloud migration provides businesses with a quick, reliable, robust, and elastic IT power to stay afloat and expand their operations. At the beginning of lockdown, as we’ve seen, most companies did not have the capacity to accommodate such a sudden rise in their staff working remotely. This led to many server crashes and VPN connection drop, which put ‘connection curfews’ on remote workers based on their domain of responsibility.

On the other hand, companies that already had a Cloud Service Model were able to enjoy the immediate benefit of having the raised connectivity requirements covered by their service providers. ‘Others, which were following a Hybrid Model (a mix of Cloud Services and their own Data Centers) noticed that offloading more of their workload from the Data Centre’s and their on-premise networking infrastructure would not only provide them with the needed service elasticity but also would extend the financial benefits they had been experiencing in their Cloud transition so far.’

Thus, the sanitary crisis made the move to cloud a necessity for survival for companies that had to adapt to this new working model, which will probably last even after lockdown.

Yet, Dan says, lockdown has forced everyone and not only the IT department to adapt quickly to this new way of working. Hence, technologies and security have increased to a point where it is possible that offices might not be required at all in the future.

Lee Gardiner, DevOps Lead at Collinson, reinforces this idea by pointing out that the cloud is the future. ‘Server hardware and its management require skill sets that are a thing of the past’, he says, while ‘cloud is an enabler for great infrastructure with ease.’

More benefits…?

According to everyone, the major benefits of moving from on-premises infrastructure to a cloud-based model are cost-saving, security, sustainability, collaboration, and service elasticity.

Indeed, Arman and Dan underline the fact that the cloud allows businesses to save a lot on capital expenditure to focus on an Operating expenditure costing models which enable them to focus on what is important for them. It also allows them to follow a pay-as-you-go spending model on most of their services, hence adjusting the spending as close to the real demand level as possible and avoiding having under-utilization of resources.

Moving to cloud can be daunting at first in relation to the costs but then, there are a number of added cost benefits that will make it worth it.

Dan also points out that moving to a cloud-based infrastructure and platform allows the integration seamlessly into a DevSecOps model where all new infrastructure and applications have security baked in from the outset of any deployment or new application.

Moreover, migrating to the cloud can provide insights into specific areas quickly and easily using data factories to provide key information for projects. Using cloud also helps the business to be much more environmentally friendly and results in fewer carbon footprints.

Cloud, as Arman goes on, has a lot of available resources to cover businesses’ needs and is able to adjust them to the rising demands, avoiding crashes in the services or excess capacity left to pay for. A Cloud Service Model also brings more technical agility as they can now allow their teams to explore and experiment with new technological solutions or business workflows for much less cost and time. This has led to much-needed innovation.

Othman agrees with that, saying that Cloud brings elasticity, reliability, cost-effectivity, resilience, and innovation. According to him, cloud must be seen ‘as a platform which enables you to make money rather than spend’.

Furthermore, Dan points out that this accelerated migration has led to many changes include the ‘reprioritizing of upskilling and retraining staff and ensuring that the team can support, administrate and monitor the platform effectively from a remote location but also provide them the confidence that cloud computing offers the flexibility and adaptability that any modern business requires to be successful’. Collaboration is a key tool.

Othman adds that companies’ mantra should be ‘Cloud First’ and so when a solution up for support renewal or a major update is available, the first instinct should be to look to migration is a SaaS/IaaS first before anything else. This mandate has expedited the velocity of migration, a consequence of which is significant cost savings on aging hardware, electricity, and air-con among others.

Lee also highlights the fact that cloud migration often has ‘very little to do with massively scaling infrastructure but more about job satisfaction’. Indeed, he says that happier staff results in new technologies, new methodologies, and a renewed joy of learning. Hence, cloud migration has definitely made people happier, and thus ‘businesses benefit from increased stability, agility and a lower time to market when coupled with DevOps practices such as infrastructure as code and CICD’.

… But also risks!

Cloud service is not impartial to issues and although cloud providers have helped mitigate their clients’ worries over the years, some concerns might persist, especially with the rise in cloud migration.

One of the most important risks, as Lee points out, is the lack of infrastructure as code (IaC). Indeed, he emphasizes the fact that if a change is not IaC then there will be major consequences. IaC ensures that documentation is carried out on the fly and that it’s a collective responsibility.

Moreover, if the cost is mismanaged then it can spiral from months to months. Thus, it is vital to carry out frequent audits of storage/compute/network consumption to ensure items are correctly right-sized.

Dan also highlights latency as a risk of cloud migration. Businesses need to ensure that every aspect of the cloud platform is optimized and using modern tools to mitigate latency issues. There is the issue of control as well as it is impossible to control everything in cloud. Using external cloud services means that the responsibilities for some of the policies and governance reside in cloud providers’ hands. This is a risk as there is no way to ‘see end to end with the full clarity needed if and where a bottleneck is occurring’.

Another risk is if businesses do not have a clear strategy, the cloud cost can become out of control very quickly. There is then an absolute need to know and understand exactly what to pay for and estimate the monthly cost so no mistakes are made.

Arman reinforces this idea by pointing out that one of the main risks of cloud migration is the weaknesses of the migration plan and the flaws in the orchestration of the outcomes. Not having proper knowledge of the solutions will slow down the process. it is then vital that IT staffs are aware of the requirements for safe implementation of their solutions and controlling access to that data. According to him, they also need to know how to benefit from the best practices in Cloud Solutions’ architecture and proper setup of resources to optimize their cost by maximizing their elasticity.

Moreover, Arman points out that cloud can also negatively affect service providers catering to the now-considered ‘old ways’, putting their livelihood and future in jeopardy. The same thing is happening to businesses in the field of selling IT infrastructure components and their installation and support services. Indeed, so many people lost their jobs due to the pandemic and this was only exacerbated by the cascading effect of this major shift in the IT service structure of companies.

Similarly, Othman brings up the fact that more expertise is now required to deal with cloud implementations and adoption while there are more concerns over security and data regulations.

Why is Cloud so important?

With our new ways of working, data center access is becoming extremely difficult. There are only a few providers that fully enable their dedicated or collocated customers with the right tooling to work completely remotely and the ability to upgrade hardware is hindered completely, Lee emphasizes. Likewise, there are even fewer providers that can give the security and capacity planning that cloud providers provide.

Thus, Cloud is now vital for businesses to survive. Cloud allows to meet capacity demands accurately and with agility, resulting in less waste.

Moreover, Dan stresses the fact that ‘if lockdown has proved anything, it is that cloud is here to stay and is fundamental to the flexibility and scalability of every business.’ While the pandemic lasts, cloud will remain essential.

With cloud, he says, businesses ‘can build, configure and host without the need to the initial capex outlay, install without having to visit any office outside your home study and scale up or down as the bandwidth dictates’. Besides, ‘cloud offers the platform to get apps quicker time to market and time to recovery alongside the automation to deploy test and scripts to ensure its as bug-free and performant as possible’. Something that would be impossible in a traditional server model.

Due to the severe economic impacts of COVID-19, combined with the need for less capital spending and lower cost of running the business remotely, Arman underlines that cloud has now become critical for organizations to thrive in an ever-competitive market.

A switch to the cloud in 2021?

When major players in a market sector start cutting costs and raising efficiencies through technological innovation, soon, their entire sector follows the same path. Indeed, as Arman points out, cloud is now a necessity and in order to survive, all sectors will switch to the cloud in the upcoming years.

Hence, businesses will either opt for complete, partial (incremental), or even co-existing (hybrid) migration models, which will allow them to start moving their computing, storage, and networking much faster than all previous IT upgrade projects.

Dan also believes that, nowadays, a company can’t be successful by working in a traditional client/server on-premises way without even exploring a cloud-first strategy. Cloud computing provides now better flexibility, time to market, and a range of DR options that a traditional infrastructure and applications don’t have.

For Othman, if some organizations are not using cloud today for collaboration, communication, and others, they are not reaching the desired number of clients and not operating in the most optimal way. Then, every company should start using a form of cloud in one way or the other. According to him, the question should be when but how.

Lee believes in a switch to cloud as well considering the benefits and flexibility it brings. He says that ‘network bandwidth/latency is a thing of the past with most servers carrying 20G+ network connections minimum.’

‘The beauty of cloud is what the migrated infrastructure will become, will it remain as a typical virtual machine, will a database migrate to a managed database service, where and when does it end if at all?’

Will the future be cloud-driven?

Lee, Arman, Othman, and Dan all do believe that the future will be cloud-driven.

Lee points out that, as we are starting to see a shift away from what we refer to as legacy cloud (Virtual Machines) to serverless and fully cloud-optimized, there is less waste, more application stability, and businesses are providing the very best service to their customers.

As we progress towards the cloud, there will be less concern over the operation process and more focus on innovations and connectivity. Hence, typical and traditional data centers will simply be out scaled by the cloud.

According to Lee, ‘it’s a fantastic time to be in technology and I look forward to working with the developments of the future that do not have the worries that we do with infrastructure.’

Othman underlines that the cloud is everywhere. In the coming years, it will be ‘in every home in every device so the world is in need of cloud experts and more focus from the cloud providers to make the services available to every corner of the globe’.

Finally, Arman emphasizes that the future is already here as enterprises are moving to permanently remote working models to save money. Even small organizations are able to benefit from the cost of saving, availability, and elasticity of cloud-based services.

All over the world, the demand for Cloud Services is increasing at an accelerated pace and there is no sign of slowing down.

Thanks to Dan Hills, Arman Kamran, Othman Baalache, and Lee Gardiner, your inputs were essential to shed light on this topic!

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Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, revealed that Microsoft is offering core technology to support serverless computing and containers as part of its DevOps strategy, at the Microsoft Build 2017 conference.

He explained how Microsoft’s container approach, using continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), has played a massive role in the company’s developer strategy, which combines testing developments.

“DevOps is supplemented by serverless computing, because it frees up IT operations staff and developers from having to set up and tune systems,” Nadella proclaimed.

“It will be the core of the future of distributed computing.”

Technology demonstration to inspire developers

Microsoft broadcasted a preview of its Azure Functions Visual Studio tool extension at the conference, to assist developers in building serverless apps, to inspire developers to use the tool into development flows.

“Azure Application insights support for Azure Functions preview provides telemetry information about codes, enabling developers to measure performance and detect issues with serverless apps,” added Vice President of the cloud and enterprise group at Microsoft, Scott Guthrie.

“The serverless computing preview extends Azure Functions to the cloud, so developers can leverage the serverless programming model on premises.”

The technology company also publicised a range of other technologies to help with transitions, including updates to its artificial intelligence (AI) offerings and database technology.

Edited from source by Leah Alger

Source: TheServerSide

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