Dr. Hossein Eslambolchi
Date: January 2012
Cloud computing is quickly evolving to change the way IT consumes compute, storage, and networking components. As Internet traffic continues to grow and as people own more types of mobile devices that stream video data, the user experience when accessing cloud services could become more challenging due to network congestion and latency issues. Reliance on cloud apps on an unpredictable and unreliable Internet would be fraught with challenges. Especially for applications involving geographically distributed users with highly variable demand for cloud services.
Today SaaS (software as a service) is the fastest growing phenomenon in the cloud market, moving from hosted web-based applications to cloud-based web applications. The trend essentially pushes the reliance on compute power and storage into cloud data centers that are located near cheap power, land tax breaks, and massive network backbones. The mobile handset has become a dumb device with a web browser backhauled to a virtualized cloud server.
However, these trends will be reversed in 2012 as the Internet becomes more congested, as quad core processors make their way into mobile devices, and as network devices become super-charged with higher virtualized processing capabilities. In 2012 we will see the hybrid (public/private) cloud expand in definition to include the telco cloud. The intelligence of the cloud will need to evolve to expand and contract out from the data center, to leverage resources found in network devices in the telecom network, and to leverage the compute/storage found on more powerful mobile devices.
This re-distribution of compute grids, storage fabrics, and network will be enabled through next generation, highly distributed cloud operating systems which will revolutionize how applications operate in the cloud. The next AT&T or Verizon will offer not only a 4G network, but a telecom infrastructure behind the cell towers, driven from a cloud control plane to shape and move the cloud, thereby enabling better control of the security, reliability, and performance of distributed cloud applications. Cloud Operating Systems will link the developer environment with a new telecom Application Delivery Network (like a CDN) leveraging the operator geographic footprint and core network assets for cloud computing.
Think of the telecom network as a path of containers between the mobile device, the cell tower, across the metro/core, and back to the data center. Previously, in a centralized model, the containers of compute, storage, and network resources existed in central cloud data centers. In the telco cloud, the containers float in a river, flowing and branching out to users who consume the services. Each of the inter-connected containers are virtual machines with available compute, storage and networking resources available to enhance and protect the user experience for security, reliability, and improved performance. The cloud operating system, such as one being developed by LonoCloud, is a horizontal platform that provides the intelligent connective tissue and business continuity to create the end-to-end telco cloud for applications to operate securely.
The telco cloud will also enable a new way for mobile operators to monetize their 4G/LTE (long term evolution) networks and differentiate their cloud offerings from commodity cloud players like Amazon. Cloud operating systems will begin the next evolution of Cloud Computing in 2012 that will transform the Internet 2 to the Internet 3, enhancing security, reliability and performance for mission-critical applications.
