Converging 101
The last twenty years can be thought of technologically as virtualization, cloud, trust, big data, and digitalization. If those were the harmonics, the rhythm was set by oscillations from on-site core to hyperscale cloud and then from either to the edge. Now, the triumvirate of core-cloud-edge is like a triangle flying through a viscous liquid called the economy.
All things maybe good to know, maybe not. But what they teach in the experiencing is that some form of agile, some type of dev/ops, and some type of business metric matter all at the same time. Once upon a time, these things mattered in disparate sequence, rather than close order time stamps. If it took two years to build an application, you have two years to decide how to deploy it and instruct users in its operation. If it takes an agile sprint to build an application and an hour to deploy it, what can you accomplish in two weeks and an hour of instruction?
Some of this change is addressed by starting off with a minimum viable product, and adding features that benefit a user community as you grow the application maturity. Some of this is addressed by emerging technologies which make the experience of an application a combination of learning while using. If a picture used to be worth a thousand words, what would a video clip be worth to a user community? Probably beyond words.
What led to this set of concepts is the fact that there are many challenges yet ahead of us. In thinking about how to leverage technology to enable a richer and more widely adoptable technological environment, the one word we could really use a lot of now is convergence.
So, virtualization, cloud, trust, big data, and digitalization are now cast as components of a cloud native solution set. Containers are the virtualization piece. Kubernetes provides the cloud, trust, big data, and digitalization solutions. Both run on core, cloud, and edge and hybrid on core, cloud, and edge. Could be we are on the verge of an omni-channel experience distribution era. If that were to come about, what would it change in the relationships between humans, machines, and algorithms?
What we would have called business dev/ops twenty years ago, we might call business xOps now. Or maybe business as code. The push toward business-as-code is well underway and there are organizations ready to consume offerings couched in those terms. In 2016, fewer than half of companies in the middle market had a web presence, and now that number is over seventy-five percent. The change represents the differentiation which comes from seeking market valuation based on digital transformation.
Information from: How Middle-Market Digital Transformation Creates New Investment Opportunities for Private Equity | Middle Market Growth; accessed 21 march 2023
Just as middle market organizations want to change their digital footprint, startup organizations and large organizations looking to re-foot themselves into new markets want to change, too. The rate at which any of these change sets can occur has to do with the available scale, efficiency, and flexibility each organization can bring to the transformation table. And, understanding that the tables have been turned on us more than a few times in the recent years, tumult upon tumult one feels, the rate of change is subject to change.
Rather than keep trying to get to an ever-higher water mark of predetermined success, what if we looked for a change rating system that was judged by the degree to which we were moving toward a metaverse that mattered to us and whether we were positioning ourselves to be adverse to recession? In seeking the one, we need to constantly avoid the other. But what would the process of supporting business xOps between that particular brand of a hard place to understand and a rock that will crush your bottom line?
It is in the convergence of balancing numbers of equations of motion for sure. We are now well possessed of tools to observe the precession of such motions. We have the harmonics; we have the rhythms and the insight that the harmonics support oscillation between the rhythm sections. Right now, we are heading to the edge, using as-built solutions as the source of inspiration. Once we get to the edge, we have options about whether to extend at the edge, or extend at the core to provide new sources of edges, from customers and markets to the distribution of digital services.
We understand all those things, without ever having been taught their intricacies or the nature of their dynamic interactions. What we can do is wade into that particular tumult with some idea that something, someone, or somewhere, is an analogy for water marking a rising tide. Which is exactly what we need to support s composable edge.