How I see it, when the cloud reaches its limit, it'll fall down on our heads as rain. ©AliAlp

Will cloud technologies be enough in the next decade ?

For years, we have been using the cloud as an unlimited pool of storage and computing resources which is globally and always available. However, after decades of storing and storing, soon we will face with some serious issues :

• Cloud will run out of data storage space
• The world will not be able to provide enough energy to keep the cloud running.

Year 2020

Currently, we have Amazon, Microsoft and Google (The big guys) to handle our big data storage and processing. Conceptually:

More Money => More Resources

Unlimited Resource Pool, the main objective of the cloud is to be seen as an unlimited pool of resources(CPU, RAM, DISK, Network). As a matter of fact, the cloud consists of a tremendous number of nodes (each node can be a cheap and simple computer machine). The cloud providers are constantly adding more nodes to their data centers to create the illusion of the Unlimited Resource Pool.

Fault Tolerance, hardware always fail, sadly, the only way we know to deal with the hardware failure is Hardware Duplication. We store the customer's data in three or four or five or even more different physical storage devices(Depends on how much the customer payed or can pay).

The trend of adding more hardware to the cloud will continue to rise, either for supporting more customers or a better fault tolerance.

Year 2033

• The energy consumption and environmental pollutions have passed its critical levels.
• The data size has reached alibyte(I've coined the name for every 1000^50 Bytes. In 2020 the highest data size is yottabyte which is 1000^8 Bytes).
• The conflicts between the countries are 13(2033-2020) times tenser.
• Data centers are the new banks.
• Storage is the new currency. you may get paid in Bytes.
• Data is the new Gold.
• Your internet profile is more real than your real character.
• A Hacker is more valuable than a F-35 fighter jet.
• GSM sim-cards are extinct; your phone is only connected to the national-cloud.
• And I am 50 years old. (Possibly?! :)

Consequently:

• Countries have their own data centers and cloud, which is called National Cloud.
• Independence means the National Cloud is covering the demands of the nation.
• Wealthy countries are independent.
• The poor countries are using the wealthy countries' National Cloud.
• National Clouds of different countries can communicate but only with the governmental agreements and authorizations.
• Grid Computing is alive again and it is the new backbone of the inter National Cloud communications.
• The cloud that we know in 2020 is dead.
• To call your friend abroad over the internet, you have to pay extra fees (Internet Roaming).

How I see it, when the cloud reaches its limit, it'll fall down on our heads as rain. ©AliAlp