6 Technologies and Trends that are Reshaping the IT Channel
Technologies like blockchain, serverless computing and unikernels are redefining the way organizations deploy applications and consume technology.
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Most people associate blockchain with Bitcoin, the anonymous digital currency.
But providing a new way to transfer payments is only one of many ways in which blockchain will be used in the future. Blockchain can also be applied to handle tasks ranging from property eed management to powering IoT applications.
Machine learning is not a new concept. Computer scientists have been crafting artificial intelligence since the Turing generation in the 1950s.
What's changing today, however, is that workloads have become so large — and the need to scale so massive — that machine learning is now the only way to handle many application deployments.
For example, when you have an environment composed of thousands of containers instead of a few virtual servers, or a network composed of thousands of IoT sensors, using machine learning to configure the environment automatically is essential, because attempting to manage so much complexity manually just doesn't work.
Unikernels take the Docker container concept to the next level: They make it possible to run an application inside a portable, self-contained environment without any host operating system at all.
Unikernels do this by packing the operating system code into the container along with the application code. But because unikernels only include the precise bits and pieces of operating system code and libraries that are necessary for running a particular application, they're lean and mean — not to mention secure, because they have small attack surfaces.
Unikernels remain mostly an experimental technology today. Expect that to change as organizations look to find even more efficient infrastructure solutions than Docker containers.
The paradigm that has traditionally prevailed across the IT world is one in which an organizations sets up and maintains servers on a constant basis — even if it only uses those servers part of the time.
Technologies like the cloud and serverless computing are changing this. They're making it possible to consume IT resources on demand. That means organizations access compute, storage, networking and so on when they need it, instantly, without having to invest in infrastructure that requires constant maintenance.
I also happen to think there is important intersection between on-demand computing and other types of on-demand services, like those made available via the gig economy.
When cloud computing became popular about a decade ago, cloud-based servers functioned as a complement to on-premise infrastructure or applications. They weren't the default.
That is changing. Today, consuming IT resources as a service is becoming the norm rather than the exception. This trend will continue and reach a new level in the coming years.
This trend is called Everything-as-a-Service (or sometimes XaaS). It will be a key part of the future of the channel.
Serverless computing — a type of on-premise or cloud-based consumption model wherein organizations run application code on demand without having to set up or maintain servers — has evolved rapidly in a few short years. When AWS Lambda launched in 2014, it was the only major serverless computing platform available in the putlic cloud.
Today, Lambda has lots of competitors, such as Azure Functions, OpenWhisk and Fission.io. This list will grow as serverless computing becomes a central part of the technology stacks that organizations use to deploy applications.
Serverless computing — a type of on-premise or cloud-based consumption model wherein organizations run application code on demand without having to set up or maintain servers — has evolved rapidly in a few short years. When AWS Lambda launched in 2014, it was the only major serverless computing platform available in the putlic cloud.
Today, Lambda has lots of competitors, such as Azure Functions, OpenWhisk and Fission.io. This list will grow as serverless computing becomes a central part of the technology stacks that organizations use to deploy applications.
To understand the future of the IT channel, you have to know which technologies and concepts will power it. Technologies like blockchain, serverless computing and unikernels are redefining the way organizations deploy applications and consume technology.
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