IT often borrows words from science: be it biology, medicine or meteorology. Just think of viruses, roots, bugs and more recently, cloud and fog computing.
Fog computing is a term created by colleagues here at Cisco in 2014 to describe the decentralization of computing infrastructures, in other words: bringing the cloud to the ground. As to cloud, the idea of network-based computing dates back to the 1960s, but “cloud computing” in its modern context is a concept of the 21st century.
What makes it so topical today is that cloud has basically become the new datacenter. Companies are running business critical applications on environments they don’t own. This process was accelerated by the global pandemic. The urgency to connect remote workers with collaboration tools and serve customers in the digital space for the business to continue, forced organisations to rely even more extensively on cloud.
At Cisco, we believe that a hybrid, multi-cloud, and app centric infrastructure has become the de facto way of operating IT. Hybrid, because customer environments have a mix of cloud-native, cloud only applications combined with Edge and on-premises applications and services. Multi-cloud, because applications can consume services from any cloud. And last, but not least: app centric, because the application has become the business.
Today, services are delivered and consumed through applications. It’s how companies build relationships with their customers. IDC predicts that more than 500 million new applications will be developed over the next three years.
Most CIOs I talk to are thinking about how they can reimagine the way they design, develop, and deploy applications. That was true before but has been heightened by the pandemic. As digital experiences get simpler for consumers, they get more complex for companies. They need insight into the health of every application and every transaction. Enabling a rich and smooth digital customer experience is key to business success.
At Cisco, our aim is to help customers at all points on their cloud journey. This includes business continuity, enabling hybrid work; and security, with a Zero trust model across workplace, workforce and workloads. We connect any user to any application and any cloud; and deliver cloud operations across on prem and cloud environments.
But perhaps most importantly, we offer unique insights and observability: from the infrastructure to the application. Our visibility capabilities allow us to understand better than any other vendor how a user connects to an application. This gives companies and institutions an end-to-end view into the digital delivery of applications and services over the internet.
As cloud adoption is accelerating, we are as likely to hear the word cloud in boardroom conversations as in weather reports. But cloud is not the destination: it’s a major part of the journey towards unique and flawless digital experiences.
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