The era of cloud computing has simplified how organizations develop, deploy and run applications that power their businesses by transforming complex IT infrastructure into simple building blocks offered as a service. When combined with economy of scale efficiencies, this simplification has redefined the legacy IT sector and practices and accelerated innovation in business applications. Enterprises now focus on applications and the data they generate, turning them into insights, which in turn enables smarter applications and even more useful data to be generated.
The IoT phenomenon is taking the world by storm but the importance of IoT is only now coming to light. With computing powering getting less and less expensive, IoT is effectively digitizing every aspect of the physical world. Every interaction in the physical world is generating data and providing a means for applications to take action. This is naturally prompting cloud developers to create their
applications to take advantage of the data and optimize business performance. But the true power of this new cyber-physical world comes through with applications using the data and taking action in real-time. Businesses can not only change behavior in real-time but they can become true “real-time businesses” by allowing systems to react without human intervention in real-time.
Whether retail, manufacturing, medical, or energy organizations, “real-time businesses” are developing operations that incorporate real-time data and run real-time applications. These applications require specialized computing not only for harsh environmental condition but to run securely, reliably, and even autonomously if necessary at the location of service (the edge) in order to avoid latency, bandwidth constraints, as well as dependence on potentially unreliable Internet connections, and all at a cost that scales with need.
What does a real-time business look like?
The road ahead (also, by the way, the name of Bill Gates’ first book!) is going to be very interesting indeed.