Cloud computing's destiny: operating as a single global computer, enabled by serverless - ZDNet
( July 10, 2021; ZDNet )
IBM anticipates a future where using "the cloud" is just as easy as using a single computer with (effectively) infinite capacity.
"We are well down the road of executing our vision of making the world's cloud resources as easy to use as a single computer. When we do, we will finally realize the full revolutionary potential of the cloud. The ability to get what we need when we need it down to the millisecond with the click of a button."
That's the word from Priya Nagpurkar, director of hybrid cloud platform for IBM Research. In a recent interview with SVP and Director of IBM Research Dario Gil. Nagpurkar explained how IBM Research is pioneering a serverless computing architecture that will transform the cloud into the world's largest computer. Serverless computing will make this all possible opening access without the complications of backend provisioning and security management.
I haven't finished watching it yet, but here is the interview:
In my personal opinion, making the cloud seem like a single computer only solves half of the problem. The other half is decentralizing the infrastructure away from massive corporate data centers and into homes and small businesses, where anyone can get revenue by "farming" compute cycles. We already see hints of this with products like Bittorrent and BTFS, Presearch, threefold, and Golem.
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The idea of a global single computer almost sounds almost perfect until we consider the potential drawbacks with regards to security. A breakdown or significant hijack in such a global cloud could put businesses and vital information of individuals at risk. Even on decentralized cryptocurrency blockchains, hackers are still finding means to steal, so how secure is the global cloud going to be?
Good point. That's certainly a concern. On one hand, with encryption, standardization, and compartmentalization, it might actually be an improvement over the way everything is haphazardly distributed now.... but on the other hand, with everything interconnected like that, a single flaw could be catastrophic.
After listening to the video, the description in the article sort-of overstates their actual plans. Basically, they're just talking about standardizing protocols in their cloud and reducing or eliminating the need for their customers to manage the underlying infrastructure.
If they are able to make the global computer far secure, then I think it will be an ultimately useful invention. But would it be a decentralized or centralized platform? What do you think?
For some time now this has been applied to video games, there are consoles that do not have readers, everything is in the cloud. but when the cloud falls all the rankings fall.
A serverless cloud these sounds interesting, but how will these be possible? there must be a mandatory server or many servers that store our data as Kwadjobonsu and alevin say having all the information in one place is not safe because there is a risk of computer hacking or damage to the system where everything would go down the toilet drain .
I imagine they are planning to use a single super quantum computer to achieve this goal.
Yeah, the servers still exist - so "serverless" is a bad name. It's just that the developers don't need to know about them. The idea is that the servers will act like bitcoin mining nodes. The servers come and go, but as long as there are enough of them, all of the programs in the cloud will keep on running.
I think that one of the main goals is to let the developers focus on writing productive code to address their actual needs instead of burning cycles on implementation details for some particular hardware configuration.
Is IBM talking about Kubernetes?, the open-source container-orchestration system for automating computer application deployment, scaling, and management. Google developed Kubernetes and uses internally. Azure, GCS, and AWS all sell it as a service along with other IaaS providers.
It seems, as per the article, that's exactly what IBM is talking about their version of Kubernetes, so in the end your software would end up working for 'any' of these platforms if the world was perfect.
Yeah, seems like they're basically talking about an architecture that's built with some combination of Red Hat OpenShift Serverless, Kubernetes, and Knative.
A single cloud is not a good idea, it is as if my computer had a single 50G ram memory, when it gets damaged, I will not have more memory, I prefer 2 memories of 25G each.
The cloud is made up of thousands or millions of computers, though, so the idea is that if you're running your program on one computer, inside the cloud - and that computer goes down - your program can just move to another in a way that doesn't need any human intervention.
Technology and its simplifying advancements are of great benefit.
I watched the video this morning. The whole thing is good, but the relevant portion for this post begins at about 41 minutes.