Part 2. The cloud of the future – making the right choices for long-term competitiveness
Author: Jari Timonen, Codento Oy
# NEXTGENCLOUD – the cloud of the future – is the frame of reference on which we at Codento believe in building the long-term success of our customers.
As the cloud capabilities of mainstream suppliers evolve at an accelerating pace, it is extremely important to consider the potential of these new features when making the right choices and clarifying plans.
We at Codento feel that developing a vision in this area is our key role. In cooperation with technology suppliers and customers, we support customers’ business and enable application innovation and modernization.
In our two-part blog series and the upcoming # NEXTGENCLOUD event, we’re opening up our key insights.
- Part 1: The cloud of the future: shortcut to business benefits
- Part 2: The cloud of the future: long term competitiveness through technology
In this blog, we discuss how the cloud architecture of the future will enable long-term competitiveness.
The target architecture is the support structure of everything new
The houses have load-bearing walls and separately lighter structures for justified reasons. What kind of structures are needed in cloud architectures?
The selection of functional structures is guided by the following factors.
Identification of functional layers
- Selection of services suitable for the intended use
- Loose integration between layers
- Comprehensive security
Depending on the capabilities of each public cloud provider, a unique target architecture can be defined. In multi-cloud solutions, respectively, a multi-cloud architecture with multi-cloud capabilities.
Future architecture with Google Cloud technologies should consider the following four components:
- Data import and processing (Ingestion and processing)
- Data Storage
- Applications
- Analytics, Reporting and Discovery
There are a number of different alternative and complementary cloud services available in each section that address a variety of business and technical challenges. It is noteworthy in architecture that no service plays a central or subordinate role to other services.
The cloud solutions and services of the future are part of the overall architecture. Services that may be phased out or replaced will not impose a large-scale change burden on the overall architecture.
New generation cloud enables cloud computing
When designing a target architecture, the capabilities offered by the cloud to decentralize computing and data storage closer to the consumer or user of the data must be considered.
In the early days of the Internet, application code was run solely on servers. This created scalability challenges as user numbers increased. Later, when reforming application architectures, parts of the application were distributed to different computers, especially in terms of user interfaces. This facilitated server scalability and reduced the risk of unplanned downtime. Most of the application code visible to the user is executed on phones, tablets, or computers, while business logic is executed in the cloud.
A similar revolution is now taking place in cloud computing capacity.
In the future, all workloads will not only be driven in the large service centers of cloud services, but will also be driven closer to the customer. Examples of such solutions are e.g. applications requiring analytics, machine learning, and other computing power, such as the Internet of Things.
Some applications require such low latency that it requires computing power close to the customer. The close geographical location of the data center may not be enough, but local computing capacity is needed for edge computing.
The smart features of the cloud enable new applications
The cloud has evolved from a virtual machine-centric mindset that optimizes initial cost and capacity to smarter services. Using these smart services allows you to focus on the essential, i.e. generating business value. The development of new generation cloud capabilities and services will accelerate in the future.
Increasingly, we will see and leverage cloud-based smart applications that effectively leverage the capabilities of the next generation of clouds from the edge of the web to centralized services.
With modern telecommunication solutions, this enables customers to take on a whole new kind of service, with an architecture far into the future. Examples include extensive support for the real-time requirements of Industry 4.0, self-driving cars, new healthcare services, or a true-to-life virtual experience.
Sustainable and renewable cloud architecture, the utilization of edge computing and the use of smart services are all part of our # NEXTGENCLOUD framework.
The author of the blog, Jari Timonen, is an experienced software professional with more than 20 years of experience in the IT field. Jari’s passion is to build bridges between the business and the technical teams, where he has worked in his previous position at Cargotec, for example. At Codento, he is at his element in piloting customers towards future-compatible cloud and hybrid cloud environments.
