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By John Roese, Global Chief Technology Officer, Dell Technologies
We live in an economy where anything is possible from anywhere, made possible by an exponentially expanding data ecosystem. It is estimated that 65% of global GDP will be digital next year (2022). This influx of data presents both opportunities and challenges. After all, the success of our digital present and future hinges on our ability to secure and maintain increasingly complex computer systems. Here, I’ll examine both short-term and long-term predictions that address how the IT industry will provide the platforms and capabilities to harness this data to transform our experiences at work, home, and in the classroom. .
What to look for in 2022:
The Edge discussion will split into two areas of focus: Edge platforms that provide a stable pool of secure capacity for diverse Edge ecosystems, and software-defined workloads/software stacks that extend application systems and data in real environments. This approach to Edge, where we separate edge platforms from edge workloads, is critical because if each edge workload creates its own dedicated platform, we will have edge infrastructure proliferation and an unmanageable proliferation of infrastructure.
Imagine an edge environment where you deploy an edge platform that presents compute, storage, I/O, and other fundamental computing capabilities in a stable, secure, and operationally simple way. As you extend various public and private cloud data and application pipelines to the edge, as well as local IoT and data management edges, they can be delivered as user-defined packages. software exploiting this common platform of computing capability. This means that your edge workloads can scale and change at the speed of software because the underlying platform is a common pool of stable capacity.
We are already seeing this change today. Dell Technologies currently offers edge platforms for all major cloud stacks, using common hardware and delivery mechanisms. As 2022 approaches, we expect these platforms to become more capable and ubiquitous. We are already seeing most edge workloads – and even most public cloud edge architectures – move to software-defined architectures using containerization and assuming the standard availability of capabilities like Kubernetes as dial tone. . This combination of modern edge platforms and software-defined edge systems will become the dominant way to build and deploy edge systems in the multi-cloud world.
The opening up of the private mobility ecosystem will accelerate with more cloud and IT industries involved on the path to 5G. The use of 5G in business is still early. In fact, 5G today is not significantly different or better than WiFi in most enterprise use cases. This will change in 2022 as more modern and capable versions of 5G become available to businesses. We will see better and more scalable 5G along with new 5G features such as Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (UR-LLC) and Massive Machine Type Communicators (mMTC), with dialogue becoming much more dominant than traditional telecommunications (think: open-source ecosystem, infrastructure companies, non-traditional telecoms).
More importantly, we expect the ecosystem, delivering new and better private mobility, to expand to include IT vendors such as Dell Technologies, but also public cloud providers and even new open source ecosystems. focused on accelerating the Open 5G ecosystem.
Edge will become the new battleground for data management as data management becomes a new class of workload. The data management ecosystem needs an edge. The modern data management industry began its journey on public clouds processing and analyzing centralized data in non-real time. As the world’s digital transformation accelerates, it has become clear that most of the world’s data will be created and operated outside of centralized data centers. We expect the entire data management ecosystem to become very active in developing and using edge computing capacity as input and output to their data pipelines, but will also use the edges to process and digest data remotely.
As the data management ecosystem expands to the edge, this will dramatically increase the number of edge workloads and overall edge demand. This matches our first prediction on edge platforms, as we expect these data management edges to be modern software-defined offerings. Data management and the edge will increasingly converge and become stronger. IT infrastructure companies, such as Dell Technologies, have the unique opportunity to provide the orchestration layer for the edge and multi-cloud by providing an edge data management strategy.
The security industry is shifting from a discussion of emerging security issues to a penchant for action. Businesses and governments face threats of greater sophistication and impact on revenues and services. At the same time, the attack surface that hackers can exploit is increasing due to the accelerating trend of remote working and digital transformation. As a result, the security industry is responding with greater automation and integration. The industry is also shifting from automated detection to prevention and response with a focus on applying AI and machine learning to accelerate remediation. Evidenced by industry initiatives such as SOAR (Security Orchestration Automation & Response), CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management) and XDR (Extended, Detection and Response). More importantly, we see new efforts such as the Linux Foundation’s Open Secure Software Foundation intensifying the coordination and active involvement of the computer, telecommunications, and semiconductor industries.
In these four areas – edge, private mobility, data management, and security – there is a clear need for a broad ecosystem where public cloud and traditional infrastructure are integrated. We are now clearly in a multi-cloud and distributed world where grand challenges can no longer be solved by a single data center, cloud, system or technology.
What to look for beyond 2022:
Quantum Computing – Hybrid quantum/classical computing will take center stage, providing greater access to quantum. In 2022, we foresee the emergence of two major industry consensuses. First, we expect the industry to see that the inevitable topology of a quantum system will be a hybrid quantum computer where quantum hardware or quantum processing units (QPUs) are specialized computing systems that look like accelerators and focus on specific quantum-focused math and functions. The QPUs will be surrounded by conventional computing systems to pre-process the data, run the overall process, and even interpret the output of the QPUs.
The first real-world quantum systems all follow this hybrid quantum model and we see a clear path where the collaboration of classical and quantum computing is inevitable. The second major consensus is that quantum simulation using conventional computing will be the most cost-effective and accessible way to put quantum systems in the hands of our universities, data science teams, and researchers. In fact, Dell and IBM have already announced major work to make quantum simulation accessible to the world.
Automotive – The automotive ecosystem will rapidly shift from a mechanical ecosystem to a data and computing industry. The automotive industry is changing on several levels. We are seeing a shift from internal combustion engines to electrified vehicles, resulting in a radical simplification of the physical supply chain. We are also seeing a significant expansion of software and computer content in our automobiles through ADAS and self-driving vehicle efforts. Finally, we see the automotive industry becoming data-driven industries for everything from entertainment to safety to major disruptions like car-as-a-service and automated delivery.
All of this indicates that the automotive and transportation industries are beginning a rapid transition to being software, compute and data driven. We have seen it in other sectors such as telecommunications and retail and, in all cases, the result is an increased consumption of computer technologies. Dell is actively engaged with most of the major global automotive companies in their early efforts, and we expect 2022 to continue their evolution towards digital transformation and deep interaction with IT ecosystems.
Digital Twins – Digital twins will become easier to create and consume as the technology becomes more clearly defined with dedicated tools. While gaining notoriety, digital twins are still a nascent technology with few real examples in production. Over the next few years, we will see digital twins become easier to build and use as we define standardized frameworks, solutions, and platforms. Making digital twin ideas more accessible will allow companies to provide improved analytics and predictive models to accelerate digital transformation efforts. Digital twin adoption will become more mainstream with accelerated standardization and availability of solutions and framework, reducing deployment and capital costs. Digital twins will be the primary driver of digital transformation 3.0 combining measured and modeled/simulated worlds for direct business value across industry verticals.
As a tech optimist, I increasingly see a world where humans and technology work together to deliver impactful results at unprecedented speed. These short-term and long-term perspectives are based on the progress we are making today. If we see even incremental improvement, there is a huge opportunity to positively transform the way we work, live and learn and 2022 will be another year of accelerating innovation and technology adoption.
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