Cloud computing has many variations and nuances, and everyone is doing something different with it. However, there appear to be four distinct phases to the cloud evolution (or revolution?). We're still early in the process (working our way through the second phase), but ultimately, it will bring organizations to the point in which decision-making is pushed down through the ranks, and traditional business models are cast aside in favor of more entrepreneurial ventures -- even within large corporations.
That's the word from Don Rippert, IBM general manager of cloud strategy, who discussed where the world is at in the progression in a recently released video. Speaking at the company's InterConnect event, Rippert started off by reminding attendees that the purpose of cloud wasn't to make things simpler, but rather, "magnify and amplify" the talents of employees. "Clouds are not designed to make things so simple that a trained dog could do it," he pointed out. "They’re designed to make things so good that you can build the best possible apps in the shortest time."
To that end, organizations are moving through a four-stage evolution with cloud computing. Ultimately, the goal is not just to make things run simpler and smoother across businesses, but rather, cloud is enabling people to move their businesses and careers to a higher purpose, with greater achievements.
1) Era of infrastructure: In its first phase, which began five to six years ago, cloud did start out with the intention of making things easier. "People tended to see clouds as variable infrastructure that they could use to offset some need for infrastructure they had behind the firewall," Rippert pointed out.
2) Era of hybrid apps; This is where most organizations are at right now, Rippert states. "People are building applications that are more than just using infrastructure; they’re doing more than just taking advantage of somebody’s server or storage. They’re actually processing business transactions."
3) Era of composable applications through application programming interfaces (APIs): This is where both enterprise and publicly available APIs are employed to assemble new applications or capabilities. "This next generation requires people to use APIs that enterprises are publishing. In this third phase of cloud, you’re going to see a lot of developers using capabilities from many clouds to compose quickly an application primarily based on the APIs that they’re buying."
4) Era of hybrid data: In this final and upcoming stage of the cloud evolution, data is packaged and delivered across networks in the same manner as apps. "Right now if you’re an enterprise, you’re collecting data, but you don’t have all the data that you need," Rippert says. "You should be able to go out and buy data from data vendors. Just as you can create hybrid applications, you should be able to create hybrid data stores. For example, if you’re an insurance company and you need weather data, you should be able to go and buy weather data. In this world, people won’t just be buying applications through APIs, they will be buying data sets."
Ultimately, the goal isn't just to have cloud computing, but rather, to propel organizations toward digitization, and break down the hierarchy of decision-making that has defined organizations for decades. As cloud evolves into a hybrid data delivery environment, the shift to the digital enterprise will accelerate. Rippert pointed out three key elements of digitization. First, "you want to move decision making down to the front lines -- the days are gone where somebody sits in a castle and tells everybody on the front line what to do and how to do it," he says. "What we want instead is we want people in the front lines to have access to have the data and analytic capabilities, close to the customer."
The second shift in digital is toward insight-driven processes, he says. "We want to augment the day to day decision making with the information that’s coming out of our systems and out of our processes. We want to have better processes." Finally, the cloud evolution is bringing about digital innovation. "You have new businesses you just couldn’t do ten years ago," he says. " Sometimes they’re the province of startups, sometimes they’re the resurrection of companies whose prior business model isn’t working any more."
