Reimagining Infrastructure for a Distributed Era [5/5]

In the previous parts of this article series, I had mentioned that we are the advent of a new era of glorious distributed computing of many kinds, and therefore infrastructure has to be reimagined to meet the evolving needs and challenges.

To close out the series, let us summarize the ways that infrastructure itself and applications are being decentralized, thereby driving needs to evolve infrastructure (compute, network, storage, security, and orchestration) to meet the resulting challenges.

• Distributed applications, containers, micro-services, API revolution
• Distributed edge compute infrastructure
• Distributed trust, enterprise blockchain, need for distributed tracking, etc

Each of the above trends, described in the earlier parts of this article series, engenders a set of new challenges for application delivery, performance, and security. On top of those trends, we also have accelerating application functionality trends and end-user trends that are driving remote and distributed applications and data delivery.

Here are some of the application functionality trends to note:

• Rich media communications with the use of real-time video for conferencing is increasing exponentially
• Healthcare delivery is combining wellness and vital monitoring with video conferencing to optimize outcomes
• Internet of things is being combined with machine learning and AI for increasing levels of optimization and even zero-touch automation
• Automobiles are becoming increasingly super-connected entertainment and commerce centers on wheels, and are also on the way to complete self-driving to increase utilization of those services

Here are some of the end-user trends to note:

• Increasingly, most application and content consumption is from mobile devices
• Also, such consumption is being done while the users themselves are moving (including connected cars)
• Ad-hoc/Over-the-top entertainment consumption (streaming, games) is increasingly prevalent

Such application and end-user trends also interact with each other and with the three distributed trends we mentioned earlier (distributed apps, edge compute, and distributed trust) to compound the challenges on cloud infrastructure. 

With all those challenges converging, we cannot stay on course for the incremental evolution of infrastructure. We need to radically re-imagine infrastructure to deliver innovative solutions to address the needs of responsive user experience, immersive application experiences, and data security and sovereignty delivered by a myriad of cloud and edge based microservices.

Given all of the above, I am very happy to report that we are, in fact, on the way to the delivery of such solutions. Companies co-created by The Fabric in the past have already delivered on some of the solutions that are needed (eg SD-WAN pioneered by Velocloud), and more such solutions are on the way, spearheaded by recent company co-creations that we have announced.

Please visit this page of The Fabric portfolio to read more about how companies co-created by The Fabric are revolutionizing infrastructure by reimagining for this dawning distributed era.

We will have more on this subject when we report on the outcome of the discussions amongst industry luminaries at The Fabric’s invite-only Annual Summit on October 17th in Palo Alto.

 Watch this space!