When first there shook the decentralization tsunami of client-server computing, the mainframers responded successfully – well, IBM anyway. Some hemming and hawing, of course. But the IBM PC was a pivotal instrument of client-server’s move away from the domination of centralized mainframe-based computing.
But a tsunami finally hits a wall. After that, the tsunami energy reflects-back to the open ocean. When that happened (when client-server rolled over to cloud), IBM was busy promoting Watson AI. Big Blue had a heap of trouble when the elastic wave of centralization surged backwards – taking the name “cloud computing”.
The company cannot claim to an adequate response to cloud – it bought SoftLayer; it bought Cloudant; it bought RedHat. It still doesn’t have a cloud.
Its lunging stumbles are regularly chronicled by Charles Fitzgerald, who I had the good pleasure to speak with for a recent story I did for Venture Beat. Fitzgerald, a Seattle-area angel investor and former platform strategist at Microsoft and VMware — as well as the proprietor of the Platformonomics blog — holds to a notion that reported CAPEX spending is a most capable discerner of a cloud company’s true chops. I second the notion – that, and number of cloud regions.
I had reason to call on Fitzgerald for the VB article “Edge Computing Will See New Workloads”. The question was: How are the big cloud providers – often called ‘hyperscalers’ – responding to the emerging paradigm known as Edge computing?
Why ask? This could be an “IBM moment” for big cloud companies. Edge methods might gnaw away at cloud’s recently gained hegemony.
These companies know the importance of the Edge, and are responding, Fitzgerald assured me. They take different tacks of course, but underlying their different products is a common drive to push their own cloud architecture out to the edge, he said. There’s more on Venture Beat.
In my opinion, the hyperscalers will need to keep their eyes on the Edge, and respond with paranoid energy, if they are not to fall into the kind of ranks of low-growth heavyweights from which IBM is still trying to extricate itself. One wonders if a genuinely new approach to Edge would offer IBM an egress from low-growth limbo.
The Edge is percolating. IDC estimates worldwide spending on edge computing will grow to $176 billion in 2022. That’s up by 14.8% over 2021. The analyst firm said 69% of organizations plan to increase Edge investments in the next two years. As I researched the VB article, and attended IDC Directions 2022 in Boston, IDC’s Jennifer Cooke, research director for the group’s Edge strategies, told me the Edge paradigm will play out differently than client-server did in the past, if only because the workloads involved are so much more expansive. Other presenters at the event convincingly conveyed that networking will undergo great tumult at the hands of the Edge – that the future of Edge will be wireless-first; that advanced observability will be needed on the Edge; that Edge is vital because that is where the data is created and consumed. And more.
The client back in client-server days was likely a PC on a desktop – albeit, sometimes hanging off a server at a post office in the Australian Outback. As Lou Reed said in possibly his most accessible song: “Those were different times.”
Do me a favor and check out “Edge Computing Will See New Workloads” – then, let me know what you think!