The sky's the limit with cloud computing

BottomUp - Skills for Innovators

015 - Cloud

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the BottomUp podcast. My name is Mike Parsons. I'm your host and it is a pleasure to bring you part four of our top five emerging technologies. And here today we're going to give you skills to grow, design, build, create your new product, service, or business. That's what we're all about at the BottomUp podcasts.

[00:00:31] And today, our subject [00:00:34] is the collective cloud. That's right. You're probably very familiar with AWS, Azure, Google cloud, or Red Hat. You've heard about all these guys. Things are really cooking in the cloud. All these different clouds, both private, public, on-premise, you name it. It's all starting to come together.

[00:00:53] And that's why we've called it collective cloud so that it's part four of our top five emerging technologies. Now, if you're very interested in all of these emerging technologies, and you'd love to get the master class, the video [00:01:08] keynote or anything around essential skills for innovation, go to BottomUp.io and you'll find all the goodies you need.

[00:01:16] All right, let's get into the world of cloud computing. So, what is this thing? Well. Cloud computing is all about moving away from having all your applications sitting on a local server in your office, right physically next to you, and moving to our remote or virtual model where the server is actually online, as they say, in the cloud.

[00:01:40] So Google docs [00:01:42] is a great example of something we all used to do in Microsoft Word 20 years ago, 15 years ago, and now so much of our word processing is done online, in the cloud, on a server rather than being installed locally. It's a great example, and you're probably using a ton of services like Dropbox and so forth.

[00:02:02] Even of course, what we take for granted now are services like Netflix. They're all driven by the cloud. So, that's what the cloud is all about getting all that hassle kind of out of the office. I mean, [00:02:16] I even remember the excitement, Oh gosh. When was this? 1997 when we got our first web server. I think it was a son's box server, and literally we had a physical server.

[00:02:28] Nobody does that anymore. It's so amazing how web applications, in particular, have transformed how everything has moved to the cloud. So, let's cut through all the hype in the conversation and cut to three things that really matter about cloud computing or what we call collective cloud.

[00:02:47] Well, the first thing that's probably come across [00:02:50] your inbox is the scandal around the JEDI project with the Pentagon. Now the Pentagon actually awarded this 10 gazillion Chilean billion-dollar project all exclusively to Microsoft. And well, Amazon, they were very upset, and this has been all over the place for a number of reasons. There was all sorts of Trump stuff involved, but it was also a pure-play.

[00:03:15] They chose one vendor and we see the whole movement to a collective cloud, which is hybrid cloud. Many different providers, many [00:03:24] different installations on-premise, off-premise, public and private. This JEDI contract has been huge in the cloud community because it was one of the biggest deals ever signed.

[00:03:35] So check out that JEDI contract with the Pentagon. Now, I mentioned Amazon, and when we talk cloud, you have to be talking about AWS, their web services division, which really pioneered this technology as a commercial offering. They're the market leader, but Hey, Microsoft is catching up as is Google. So, this is a very exciting place [00:03:58] because you've got a number of tech titans duking it out.

[00:04:02] AWS and Amazon leading the way, but don't count out the guys in Redmond and the guys at Mountain View, they might catch up. So, it's a very exciting couple of years in cloud computing and all of that competition, that's good news for you and I, because it actually means competition will drive new products and services.

[00:04:24] It will drive a more affordable service. And frankly, you know, cloud's pretty affordable, but it could even get more [00:04:32] affordable as that competition matures and the market grows. Third reason why we're all talking about this is actually the dark horse in this race is an old company. Yes, IBM. Now you might thought IBM in cloud, not so sure about that, but their recent acquisition of Red Hat has really brought a different idea to the table.

[00:04:57] Red Hat, a much more open source, IBM is becoming more and more so that way. So, we've got our very exciting, more agnostic [00:05:06] proposition coming into the market with huge power and distribution of IBM. I think this is very exciting for the collective cloud game for the cloud computing industry.

[00:05:16] That's three reasons, the JEDI contract, AWS, all the big tech titans, including IBM, are getting in on this game. Let's see what happens there. But if you want to know one number, I love just picking one number. One number that tells the story already in 2019, cloud computing makes up 30% of enterprise [00:05:40] IT budgets. That's already 30% I can guarantee before we know it, it's the majority of what IT spends its money on because it is such a better proposition than having server racks sitting in the back of your office and trying to maintain, update, and create new products and services on top of that legacy infrastructure. Forget it. It's all in the cloud, baby. Now, let's quickly wrap this up with some pros and cons.

[00:06:08] Okay. Look, I don't work for any of these cloud providers, but I will tell you this is the ultimate [00:06:14] proposition. Cloud is faster, cheaper, better than its previous version of local native installed applications. I mean, almost in all cases it's a better proposition. So that's the pro. Now you're thinking, okay, my good luck finding a challenge with this.

[00:06:31] Well, it actually, I think it is such a paradigm shift in computing, actually, the biggest challenge for business is the lack of skills and expertise in running large scale cloud environments. I mean, we're talking about DevOps load [00:06:48] balancing. We're talking about a lot of, you know, weaving together a web of microservices, running across a lot of different platforms.

[00:06:56] This is no easy task and actually there's not a lot of people that have actually got much experience or expertise doing this and then cut it down. Like once you say, we're real serious about doing a large-scale application, serving hundreds or maybe even thousands of simultaneous concurrent users, you're getting into just a handful of people in any city can really do that well.

[00:07:18] So that's the challenge on the cloud computing side, but it will [00:07:22] all come good as the market matures because, without a doubt, cloud computing is faster, cheaper, better. It's super exciting. Now, with all that excitement you're thinking, where can I find out more information, Mike? Well, the good news is you go to BottomUp.io, sign up for one of our masterclasses or keynotes. Get all the information not only on the top five emerging technologies, but you know what? You can go and discover a whole bunch more, design thinking, future of media. It's all their BottomUp.io. My name's Mike Parsons. I'm your host of the BottomUp podcast.

[00:07:55] It's [00:07:56] been so great to share cloud computing with you. We'll see you for the last installation of the top five emerging technologies.