Dispersing the cloud
CLOUD COMPUTING HAS CHANGED THE WAY WE LIVE, WORK AND PLAY ONLINE OVER THE LAST HALF A DECADE, BUT DESPITE ITS YOUTH, IT’S ALREADY EXPERIENCING A SHAKE-UP. TECHLIFE INVESTIGATES THE RISE OF WHAT COULD BE THE NEXT CLOUD: EDGE COMPUTING.
YOU’VE NO DOUBT heard it said a thousand times how we now store our memories, our photos and our data ‘in the cloud’, that mysterious, almost mystical entity that lives somewhere on the internet. But cloud computing is much more than just storage — it’s changing the way we interact with the world and, for many, it’s enabled them to ditch their home computers and live life exclusively on their smartphones. But as demand for computing resources grows, the way cloud computing itself works is in for a shake-up over the next decade and it could have huge ramifications for future technology.
THE IOT BOOM
According to market analysts Gartner, the world simply cannot get enough smartphones. Figures for the March quarter of 2017 revealed that just under 380 million smartphones were sold, up 9.1% over the same period last year ( tinyurl.com/y76awull). By contrast, PC makers are having a tough time of it — only 62.2 million PCs were sold during the quarter, 2.4% down on 2016 firstquarter results and the first time since 2007 that PCs sales have dipped so low. Over the 2016 year, Gartner says we collectively bought just under 1.5 billion phones ( tinyurl.com/
zh9vc7h), all connecting to the internet, either via phone network or through Wi-Fi and internet service provider.
Yet that number pales against the predicted number of ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) devices expected to tap into the internet in the next three years. The numbers vary depending on who you talk to, but conservatively, market analysts now believe we’ll see somewhere between 20 and 30 billion IoT connected devices, not including smartphones, tablets and PCs, by 2020.
Many IoT devices use comparatively-cheap computer chips called ‘microcontrollers’ that have moderate computer processing, RAM and storage all built into the one chip. You can even buy 32-bit microcontroller boards on eBay — some with built-in Wi-Fi — for under $5 that are well capable of capturing data from a whole range of sensors. (We often look at building your own IoT devices in the Arduino Masterclass of our sister publication
APC). But as we’ll see, the consumer side of IoT will likely be swamped by how it’s used in the industry.
THE GOT BOOM
Yet, the IoT boom may or may not mean as much to you as the seasonal GoT boom. HBO’s Game of Thrones launched its Series 7 opener in Australia on July 17, only for the demand to overwhelm the Foxtel Now streaming service. The company was forced to put out a statement on its Facebook page that night, noting that "due to unprecedented demand, we are experiencing problems with our online services this evening". The following day, Foxtel told media that ‘demand’ was 820,000 users, a record for subscription TV in Australia ( tinyurl.com/y9mwas6k). But it wasn’t just Australia that had a dose of the ‘technical glitches’ either — Foxtel US, India and Latin America were also said to be struggling with demand. Foxtel made an additional statement on its website ( tinyurl.
laying the blame on its Identity Management System, which keeps track of who’s who and makes sure you’re a paid-up member of Foxtel Now before letting you in. This system normally handles 5,000 ID checks per day, but Foxtel said that, with Game of Thrones, came 70,000 checks within a few hours, overloading the system. While you’d have to think this was less an internet problem and more a Foxtel issue, it does show that capacity, in all its forms, is not something you can ever afford to underestimate.
THE INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS
Many of those 20-odd billion connected IoT devices will appear in almost everything we know and love, from cars to coffee machines, but they’ll likely have an even greater transformational effect on business, particularly in manufacturing. The general wisdom is that the ‘Industrial Internet of Things’ (IIoT) will usher in ‘Industry 4.0’ — the next industrial revolution where smart connected machines not only tell you when they need maintenance, but even go so far as to order their own replacement parts. Seen Amazon’s Dash Button, the tiny productordering device that can place an order to your door at the press of a button? The same principles involved there will likely be used in machines self-ordering parts replacement.
Earlier this year, Standards Australia released a recommendations report into Industry 4.0 for the Australian government in which it advocates for a number of actions, including the need for standardisation and getting the world to agree on how it’s implemented ( tinyurl.com/y9m4jzg7, PDF). Without this, the likely alternative will be ending up with a bunch of incompatible systems that drive up costs for everyone. And the numbers are staggering — estimates already put the expected global investment in Industry 4.0 at more than US$900 billion per year ( tinyurl.com/y9954xv5).