2011 Prediction: Model Metrics
What’s Ahead for 2011? The 1.5 Ton Question
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949.
The exercise of placing predictions against the progress of technology may seem futile as in the case of this Popular Mechanics quote. However, in order to take steps forward, we need to set goals and then use our experience and hard work to achieve those goals.
As we enter into 2011, we are in a transformational era of computing, and cloud computing in particular. Over the past few years, we have witnessed the birth of cloud computing and its evolution into distinct disciplines of SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc. The next phase in the maturation process is to combine these worlds into synergistic solutions that leverage technology virtualization and enable mobility for businesses. I realize that is quite a mouthful, but allow me to explain.
Since the early 2000’s, we have been hearing that the next major frontier of computing is mobile technologies. Our personal lives have been taken over by mobile devices that we use for email, texting, applications, cameras and, of course, phone calls. Businesses, however, have seen more challenges in truly adopting a significant mobile strategy outside some of the same basic functions of email and telephony.
A number of factors have contributed to the slow progress. First, business applications are inherently more complex than personalized apps in terms of data structures, volume and functionality. The technologies available through a mobile application or browser simply did not stand up to business needs. A second factor is connectivity. Access to bandwidth in remote areas has always been a challenge, and even when connected, performance of mobile applications has been less than stellar even for basic web access. Another issue has been the devices themselves that have presented their own limitations in terms of real estate, ease of use, etc. Finally, security has been a major concern because the previous factors have required that data be replicated to the local device to compensate for performance issues.
In 2011, we are finally positioned to overcome the mobile barriers with cloud technologies that enable both software and infrastructure virtualization. Devices like the iPad and Android tablets, introduced in 2010, have created a whole new category of mobile hardware. These products, combined with emerging development standards of HTML5 and compatibility with Adobe Flex, provide the flexibility and horsepower needed to build a mobile enterprise business application.
The ability to run these applications in the cloud and simply consume them on the mobile device means that we no longer need to be concerned about the security and bandwidth issues of replicated large data volumes.
Technology shifts do not happen overnight, so this milestone is not one that will be achieved universally over the coming year. However, all of the pieces are in place to allow early adopters to leverage multi-cloud solutions to finally fulfill the ten-year-old vision of mobility (and thankfully, on devices that weigh less than 1.5 tons).
