What is chancing already?
Several years now applications are moving to Apps. From On premise datacenters to cloud datacenters. In a virtual world, applications are also moving from package based to virtual, standalone applications. VMware has move forwards with VMware’s ThinApp, AppVolumes and Workspace One. Next step is containerized apps. Nowadays almost everyone used his bank App to make transactions. How often did you visit your bank office the last two years?
In private live most Web access is made by Smartphone or Tablet, only stationary people use their desktop. Most are connected by Wi-Fi or 3G and 4G to the web. This means to connect to a datacenter elsewhere in the world.
What do users want and aspect?
Most users today want simple to use applications that just work. Privacy and security in the cloud and fast response times. Use any device as a remote control: connect to the cloud application and do your job. Redundancy and always on connection. Buy something in a web shop: easy pay by bank App, next day delivery, a direct conformation mail and when is delivering (next day or tonight). Personal settings backed up as in iCloud, change a device made easy.
What about Legacy?
What if all applications are installed by a click is you have the authorization to use it? VMware predicted that 50% of all desktops are moved to the cloud (back to earth: a datacenter). I think we need virtual desktops to run legacy applications. It’s just an in-between period. Transforming all application from native to cloud native cost too much and the people who can do that are retired. So we must build a new generation applications and in the meantime lift legacy easy to the virtual world.
In the 90’s when terminal servers are the future of applications, I have seen a lot performance issues. The best way of thinking was to bond application and sources like databases and files shares in the same location. Then remote there is not a latency problem. Microsoft with RDP and the enhancements with Citrix did their work. Now applications do work for one or many users. You see the same now with virtual desktops: bond to the resources and packed with app layers in the same virtualization cluster/ datacenter. Desktop one is similar to desktop thousand.
How to deal with latency?
As we know, latency is always the bottleneck in applications. What if we run all apps, desktops, servers and databases on the fastest storage with the fastest connections in-between? Some new Flash vendors say we have App aware storage (Tintri) and others called it Predictive Flash (Nimble). Evergreen storage (PureStorage) with build in support for the next generation Flash: NVMe.
Imagine we could eliminate latency in the hardware and deliver lightning fast apps? Where want we store these IT environment? In fast datacenters, direct connected to the internet backbone I think. McDonald introduces next year orders by App. Like Nespresso, you can reorder the last delivery. They don’t deliver at home, because the burger must be eaten fresh baked. No latency allowed. It’s similar with data access over a slow line. So, the lower the latency, the more need to bring the data and App together.
Where lives the data now and in 5 years?
I think in the future the data is encrypted for privacy reasons and distributed over different datacenters, like a RAID 6 array. The data in one datacenter cannot be read by a hacker. You need data from all (minus one) to have the data set. Then it’s encrypted, so how to get in?
The data is in my opinion a data volume loaded with virtual machines, containers and files. Enterprise companies, with own datacenters can have their redundant IT services around the world. Latency between datacenters is not an issue because they don’t need synchronic replication.
Hypervisors will be built in in the storage arrays. Just a blade with compute to run the virtual environments. Security is built in the hypervisor. I thought it was VMworld 2006, Cisco predict the network is the datacenter. Today In 2016 they see shrinking the volumes of networking parts by 12%. Maybe there are other vendors? 5G (or higher) data transmission replaces fixed connections to the datacenter.
Disruption everywhere. The next ten years
The next ten years we see a total new IT landscape. When we reduce the amount of parts in a system, it will be cheaper, reliable and needs less maintenance. Look at an electric car: less moving parts then a today’s fuel motorized car. Less maintenance. VW will focus to build electric cars, they reduce 30.000 jobs the next years. Cars build in robotized plants.
Grow off datacenters needs every year more energy. Nowadays they use 2-3% of all energy worldwide. With grow of data, all worldwide energy is needed to fuel the datacenters in the next decades. We need efficient hardware with less power consumption. How do we connect every man in the world by the Internet Satellites plan launched by Elon Musk to a datacenter?
Over ten years, 75% of the people worldwide are connected to everyone by internet. With intelligent assistants we can talk to our device to order stuff in web shops and transfer money by bank apps. We have in the Netherlands an office less bank Bunq. Fully software driven and with the slice App it’s easy to split a bill with friends. Like the telco’s in Africa (the biggest bank) the bank we know is changing. They reduced people by thousands. The same is going on in the IT industry. Automation of IT and software defined everything is (already) standard.
Most of the administrative jobs are automated. Transactions are done in containers and lot of labor change in automatic processes. Like Henry Ford said ‘If I ask what people want, they say give me a faster horse’. Hidden answer: give me a faster transport, not a horse.
“Beam me up, Scotty”