Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2018. Read them in this 10th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Joe Kinsella, CTO & Founder, CloudHealth Technologies
Governing Cloud Infrastructure in 2018
As 2017 draws to a close, 2018
promises to be another year of change - particularly in the world of cloud computing.
With that, here are some predictions for the coming 12 months:
Complexity Drives Disruption: With each passing year, the complexity of managing
cloud applications and infrastructure keeps increasing - it's a trend line that
just goes up and up. To maintain the agility that makes cloud so appealing in
the first place, new roles, processes and technologies designed to support management
at cloud scale will emerge. Based on the ability of current software to handle
this complexity, there has to be disruption in the industry if we're going to
be able to effectively manage cloud infrastructure for the next decade plus.
Governance as Code: Cloud infrastructure management exists in feedback loops. These loops
require constant optimization around cost, availability, performance, security
and usage. What's different these days - compared with the pre-cloud era - is
that feedback loops don't go unnoticed for quarters or years. Now the intervals
are trending towards real-time, and testing the limits of our ability to keep
pace. Manual governance is no longer sufficient; instead, the job has to be
done by software that can maintain governance without sacrificing agility, based
on internal policies, best practices and reference architectures. This
"governance as code" approach offers a better, more efficient way to monitor,
report and (whenever possible) automate.
Cloud 2.0:
What is Cloud 2.0? It's about platform
services and serverless applications leveraging heterogeneous cloud services
that only run when required...and it's a break from decades of variations of the
client-server model. In 2018, cloud 2.0 will go mainstream. Don't get me wrong,
this shift won't take place overnight. In fact, the actual transformation will
take over a decade. 2018 will be the year when 2.0 will finally be accepted as
the future of application architecture. Let's greet it with a round of
applause, and bid goodbye to virtual servers.
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About the Author
Joe has 20+
years of experience delivering commercial software for both startups and large
enterprises. He was previously VP of Engineering at the Amazon-backed cloud
archiving company Sonian, where he developed and managed large scale cloud
infrastructure spanning multiple public clouds. He was also a managing director
at Dell, where he led global engineering teams delivering multiple SaaS
products. Joe was also Vice President of Engineering at SilverBack
Technologies, which was acquired by Dell in 2007, where he helped pioneer
remote management software.
He is an
advisor to the University of Massachusetts Boston Entrepreneur Center, mentors
for a high school FIRST robotics team (FRC 4761), and blogs at High Tech in the Hub. He
is also a member of the Forbes Technology Council and a 2017 Boston CIO of the
Year award winner.