Skytap CTO Brad Schick presented a session at AWS re:Invent 2013 titled, “Application Darwinism: Why Most Enterprise Apps Will Move to the Cloud,” and each time I go back and watch it, I more strongly agree with his prediction.
Schick of course isn’t the only one making this prediction, Doug Henschen at InformationWeek not only references a survey with proof positive evidence that the shift to hybrid enterprise applications has begun, he makes a prediction of his own when he states that “we’ll never get to see a 100% cloud world; there’s still plenty of demand for on-premises applications, particularly in highly regulated industries.”
So, why do these experts believe this shift is occurring? For the same reasons that any real change happens in business—to cut costs, speed up production, and most of all, to better serve the needs of customers.
In the video below, and in only the first twenty minutes, Schick points out how by shifting only a few key components, not entire forklift upgrades, businesses can dramatically affect the scalability (up or down,) agility, global distribution, and the ability to continuously integrate massively empowering enterprise apps.
I like where Schick points out that of course there will be challenges when moving any aspect of an enterprise app to the could. These challenges revolve around new strategies that will need to be considered, and any trusted cloud services provider is going to work with your organization on these challenges.
Larry Dignan at ZDNet predicts that in as soon as 2014, “Data centers will need industrial designs that cut waste at every point.” Why will this be a necessity so quickly? Because the cloud cuts that same waste almost immediately, and the only alternative is to join the unfortunate list of those apps who’ve fallen victim to natural selection.
