The Cloud Is Dead - IoT Is The New Catch Phrase

Wait, what? The Cloud is dead? How can that be? I just got my first AWS account. How did this happen? Ok, so maybe Cloud isn't really dead. It's that the latest new thing is trying to push Cloud out of the way and it's called IoT. Internet of Things. Yep, you heard right. Here is the Wiki on it --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things

Based on the Wiki, the term was founded in 1999. Who knew? Now, before I go on about IoT, I've got few more choice words about Cloud Computing. Keep in mind, this is my personal opinion and should not be construed as anything more. My thoughts about the Cloud. I think it's a farce. There, I said it. Let's be honest, cloud computing is nothing more than moving your data and processes into a data center, owned by someone else and you remotely access it. It's as simple as that. How was that ever new? I remember going into the bank in the 1970's, and the tellers had terminals with either white or green mono screens. Oh, and the cool banks had the orange screens! Were there PC's under the counter? Nope. Was there a server room in the back? Nope. There was an IBM Mainframe in some data center located some distance away and these early thin client end points, via terminal emulation, were accessing data from a data center. Hm, sounds like today's cloud to me. Is today's environment more complex? Yes. Are there awesome new tools and offerings that make workflow and other automation easy? Absolutely. But is Cloud something new? I don't think so. I think it's just the natural evolution of what we already had. Ok, that's my two cents worth.

On to IoT.

Internet of Things? What does that even mean? The Wiki article says this, "The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects or "things" embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data." What? So basically, someone coined a term to describe what we all already know. Internet connected devices are a sprawling Utopia and will continue to grown and continue to be more interconnected. We really needed a new catchphrase for this? Even Citrix has jumped on board purchasing Octoblu. What does Octoblu do, you ask? Well, it takes IoT to the next level. I wasn't even aware there was a first level. Anyway, their new catchphrase is "The Integration of Everything." Seeing a pattern here? Yeah, me neither.

Time will tell if IoT will replace Cloud as the next big thing. Even if it does, I believe that IoT will basically become the next step in Big Data. Companies like Octoblu are looking at aggregating data and then, via automated workflows, make intelligent decisions on how to process that data. Right on their main webpage you can see a graphic of a workflow for collecting Twitter data, massaging that data, doing calculations on that data and then deciding which piece is the most important, or as on their graphic, the winner.

I think that we are all winners. Even if some IoT process in the future decides we're not.