On 12/7/21 5:46 pm, Stephen Loosley wrote: > Cloud computing's destiny: operating as a single global computer
Um, virtual virtuality? Oh, just another spruiker. That's alright then. _______________________ > The next phase for cloud is coalescing public and private data centers across > the globe into a 'single infinitely powerful computer' that is easy to access > and use. > > IBM has a roadmap. > > By Joe McKendrick July 10, 2021 > https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-cloud-as-a-single-global-computer > > "We are well down the road of executing our vision of making the world's > cloud resources as easy to use as a single computer. When we do, we will > finally realize the full revolutionary potential of the cloud. The ability to > get what we need when we need it down to the millisecond with the click of a > button." > > That's the word from Priya Nagpurkar, director of hybrid cloud platform for > IBM Research. > > In a recent interview with SVP and Director of IBM Research Dario Nagpurkar > explained how IBM Research is pioneering a serverless computing architecture > that will transform the cloud into the world's largest computer. > > Serverless computing will make this all possible opening access without the > complications of backend provisioning and security management. > > There are data centers for the world's top public clouds in hundreds of > locations that span nearly every continent. > > "However, this only paints a portion of the picture," says Gil. There are > also a "massive number of private computing environments that exist in silos > across the globe. The cloud has dramatically evolved over many years to what > it is today, a massively distributed network of public and private data > centers comprising zettabytes of computing power and data storage." > > For all the progress of what's happening on cloud, we have to "get to the > point where we get the cloud to work as if it was a single infinitely > powerful computer," says Nagpurkar. Right now, there are too many obstacles > in the way, she adds. > > "Think about the simplicity of just working on your laptop. You have a common > operating system tools you you're familiar with. And, most importantly, > you're spending most of your time working on code. Developing on the cloud is > far from that. You have to understand the nuances of all the cloud providers > -- there's AWS, Azure, GCP, IBM, and private clouds. You have to provision > cloud resources that might take a while to get online. And you have to worry > about things like security, compliance, resiliency, scalability, and cost > efficiency. It's just a lot of complexity." > > Proprietary software stacks from different vendors "not only add to all this > complexity but they stifle innovation," she says. "Key software abstractions > start with the operating system. Linux as the operating system for the data > center era unleashed this proliferation of software, including virtualization > technologies like containers. That ushered in the cloud era." > > Serverless technologies are paving the way to being able to access and > leverage this emerging global computer, she continues. "Serverless > technologies are the key to realizing this.” > > "There are three key attributes to serverless: ease of use, on-demand > elasticity, and pay for what you use," says Nagpurkar. "For example, take a > simple data prep task on the cloud, which is fairly common. But the data in > this case could be coming from anywhere -- edge environments for example. To > make this as simple as a command, you could issue on your laptop a lot of > things have to happen under the covers, and today, it's the developers and > the data scientists doing these things manually. I have to worry about: do I > have access? Am I allowed to move the data? Where are the API keys? How many > containers should I spin up? This is what I spend most of my time on. But > with serverless you can literally boil this down to one single command, as > simple as moving files around on your laptop -- the serverless platform does > the rest underneath. That's the beauty of serverless." > > IBM Research is "pushing this vision forward today in the Knative open source > community, she continues. With IBM supporting this capability with Red Hat > OpenShift Serverless. "We continue to push this evolution of serverless and > it's getting us closer and closer to that vision of the cloud as a computer," > says Nagpurkar. > > Realizing the vision of a single global computer? "It's one of the greatest > challenges that we should solve right now in computer science, to harness > this tremendously heterogeneous and distributed system," says Nagpurkar. It's > time for a distributed operating system that provides "that common layer of > abstraction across these heterogeneous and distributed cloud resources," she > says. Kubernetes is the open technology that's emerging as the winner in this > evolutionary battle. So you have Linux containers, Kubernetes, both open > technologies." > > > By Joe McKendrick for Service Oriented | July 10, 2021 -- 21:02 GMT (07:02 > AEST) | Topic: Cloud Priorities > _______________________________________________ > Link mailing list > [email protected] > https://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link > -- Roger Clarke mailto:[email protected] T: +61 2 6288 6916 http://www.xamax.com.au http://www.rogerclarke.com Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law University of N.S.W. Visiting Professor in Computer Science Australian National University _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
