Cloudy Skies: The digital enterprise is getting smarter!

By Denis Nwanshi, IDCA 

Mr. Nwanshi is the Technology Delivery & Partner Manager at TD

Back in 2016, I published a short article on LinkedIn that highlighted some of the merits of adopting cloud and virtualization strategies. The pace of cloud technology innovation since then has been simply astounding, with the emergence of data lakes, mobile apps, AI, machine learning and other data-driven capabilities pushing the boundaries of cloud technology across every major sector. Add to this the ever-increasing release of disruptive digital-first applications and open source software under-pinned by infrastructure-level capabilities such as software defined networks, storage, backup, application monitoring, disaster recovery etc. and it is clear that cloud technologies have come a long way.

Cloudy Skies Ahead

But we are all too aware that the rapid pace of innovation is creating seismic gaps in our deployment and scaling of large application stacks as business demands grow in complexity. In parallel, innovations in APIs, Service Mesh and Serverless Frameworks, Blockchain, VR, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Cognitive Computing etc. are recalibrating how we think about the possibilities of digital interactions, as well as our ability to connect business supply chains around the globe. Sounds exciting but this presents major challenges for businesses, policy makers and regulators in areas such as data privacy, cyber security and planning for the social and economic impact of increased automation.

These problems associated with the rise in cloud based technologies are largely due to the absence of globally-recognized standards and measurable metrics for security, control, availability, interoperability, reliability etc. poses a major risk over the long term. As organizations migrate more business assets to the cloud, we can expect these gaps will lead to more system outages, data security compromises and loss of revenue.

The Infinity Paradigm: Event-Driven Application Scenario

These challenges have not gone unnoticed at the IDCA where top professionals from a wide range of industries work with some of the largest multinationals to develop the standards, controls and data center frameworks of the future under the revolutionary Infinity Paradigm: https://www.idc-a.org/infinity-paradigm

But some may ask what is the correlation between developing standards for the data center and the application layer?

Let's use the developments in event-driven microservices applications to evaluate this question: As the major car manufacturers increasingly place their future in autonomous vehicles, the safe functioning of these transformational modes of transport will be highly dependent on the ability of geographically-dispersed cloud-based applications and embedded devices to monitor every event in real-time and respond in milliseconds. This ability to monitor events and retrieve massive amounts of data rapidly also means these autonomous vehicles can trigger other events and deliver rich, personalized services to the driver and the autonomous vehicle, not to mention create the highest levels of safety throughout the self-driving experience. To put some context around this, Gartner advises enterprises to adopt “event thinking” as part of their digital business strategy, stating that "by 2020, event-sourced, real-time situational awareness will be a required characteristic for 80% of digital business solutions, and 80% of new business ecosystems will require support for event processing."

The capabilities of IoT, robotics, process automation and other technologies working together as part of an autonomous vehicle ecosystem are realized by an event-driven architecture that allows the exchange of massive data sets at scale. Essentially SaaS, IaaS, PaaS and other cloud models working in harmony.

All this is only possible if data centers are built and operated in a systematically consistent manner that allows disparate systems to communicate in real-time with industrial-strength resilience and reliability. To address this global challenge, the IDCA Infinity Paradigm® breaks the Application Ecosystem® into abstraction layers, defines the relationships between these components through the unique Pyramid model and provides an efficacy score rating that simplifies a myriad of complex metrics that need to be measured.

In today's interconnected digital world, the IDCA is committed to the quest for global standards and controls from the data center to the application layer in the pursuit of security and operational efficiency for consumers and businesses worldwide.

Denis Nwanshi is a results-oriented digital transformation strategist, technology delivery leader and enterprise architect with a proven track record of delivering complex platforms and products at scale using Agile, Lean Startup, PRINCE 2, TOGAF, COBiT, Design Thinking, ITIL, ISO and other industry-leading frameworks and methodologies. A trusted adviser and methodical problem solver, he consistently places a strong emphasis on user experience, data governance, quality assurance, industry best practice and sound financial management. Demonstrable experience creating cloud migration plans, AI/ML & big data strategies, business capability models, TOMs, technology road maps, risk management frameworks, SLAs and KPI scorecards. Denis holds an Executive MBA from Ivey Business School and professional certificates in Architecture of Complex Systems and Cybersecurity (Technology, Application and Policy) from MIT.