A so-called revolutionary technology can either be at least an order of magnitude more cost-effective than its predecessor, or it can meet the "just need" that the previous technology could not achieve.。But these two things alone are not enough for the new power to defeat the old power, but also to adopt a completely different business model from the old power, such as you sell software and I sell content, you sell products and I sell services。But the truly epoch-making technology must not only have a strong aura in its own circle, have many die-hard fans, but also have the ability to export the "ideas of technological revolution".。
TCP/IP and Ethernet 20 years ago，Beat technologies like ATMs and token rings，Not just because it's cheaper and more widely available，At a deeper level is through the open web，Mobilize the masses，Let users participate in creating app value，The World Wide Web, e-commerce, search engines and many other new applications were born，Today's Internet Plus emerged，Abstract out the "Internet thinking" theory。
After a few years of development, cloud computing (originally referred to as IaaS) has been proven successful by the market。Now, it's not just cloud computing 2.0, but also to do "cloud computing +" things, integration with other areas of development。The order of "cloud computing +" will also be the same as the strategy of "Internet +", which is distant and close。The closest thing to it is the server at the bottom and the application software at the top。
For high-throughput or high-performance computing scenarios, servers such as minicomputers or HPCS can only be used before cloud computing, because they are more reliable and have more processing power in a single machine, while X86 servers are synonymous with low cost and unreliable。As the theory of disruptive innovation says, X86 servers can only occupy the emerging edge markets such as WEB and Email。With the continuous improvement of X86 servers' own capabilities, especially the arrival of software-defined reliability brought by cloud computing, X86 servers are swallowing the entire server market, and customization and OEM manufacturers are rising, represented by Scorpion full-cabinet servers in China。
Cloud computing makes computing and storage software-defined, but networking technology is hardware-defined。It's like when you plan your free travel (computing) and accommodation (storage), but find it easy to get stuck in traffic (Internet).。 The network also needs to be defined from hardware to software, so SDN is popular and can be used in cloud computing environments。
With the major changes in servers and network equipment, the data centers where these ICT equipment are stored have also quietly changed。Data center technology used to be one of the core competitiveness of enterprises, but now it is moving towards open architecture, modularization, productization, standardization, energy saving, high density and service。These were originally the history of computer development, and now it has become the development trend of cloud data centers。
Before cloud computing took off, SaaS was half-dead。Although the early SaaS changed the deployment and use model of application software, it was unable to make more changes to restructure the system software, hardware and operating environment according to the requirements of SaaS, until cloud computing came to the rescue as the platform of SaaS。After IaaS matured in cloud computing, SaaS became popular because the basic conditions were in place。
Mobile apps were one of the first SaaS apps to catch on。The Internet is the computer, consisting of computing, storage and networking, and the PC is the I/O system。Similarly, the mobile Internet is made up of mobile computing, mobile storage and mobile communication, and the smartphone is the I/O system。iOS, Android and ARM solve the problem of mobile computing, WIFI and 3G solve the problem of mobile communication, mobile storage relies on cloud computing floating in the sky。Unlike the PC Internet application is immigrated to the cloud computing, since the birth of the mobile Internet, it has been together with cloud computing。
When the IaaS platform is unified, when SaaS is hot, it brings a new problem, how to efficiently develop, deliver and run a SaaS application in any location。After the underlying resources are packaged through IaaS and can be used flexibly on demand, the upper-layer SaaS applications also need a technology to be packaged and decouped from the environment as much as possible。SaaS applications need to be independent of the operating environment, just as goods need to be independent of the shipping environment, and now the way to come up with it, like containers, the application itself is wrapped in a standardized way。This is container technology, represented by Docker and others。
The prosperity of application software will not only bring the separation of application software and general operating system, the development of middleware technology, but also bring general data management software。The separation of software and hardware in the 1960s gave birth to operating systems, and the separation of operating systems/applications from data management systems in the 1970s gave birth to database management systems。In the 2010s, cloud computing was separated from big data, giving rise to big data management technologies such as Hadoop and Spark。
Cloud computing has evolved into a public computing service, a critical information infrastructure。Cloud computing is changing the entire ICT industry, which will be and is being changed by cloud computing, including innovation and entrepreneurship, procurement, machine learning, autonomous driving and VR。Of course, the most important is to change our thinking patterns and habits。(He Baohong, Deputy Director, Institute of Standards, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology)