Addressing the Challenges & the Future of the Cloud

"Cloud has delivered on some of the promises but I think it also brought newer challenges that need to be figured out,” –Kunal Khushwaha, developer relations manager at Civo.

We’re pleased to share that the "Livin’ on the Edge" podcast is back for Season 4 after our summer hiatus! With it, we have one new host, Jacob Caddy, and myself (Kay James) will also return as a fellow host. This season, we’re still going to be highlighting all the best Kubernetes practices, but we’re also going to be diving deeper into the world of API development, ephemeral environments, developer tricks, and more.

To kick off episode one, I chatted with developer relations manager at Civo, Kunal Khushwaha, for an in-depth interview on all things cloud computing and the main challenges that organizations are facing as it relates to cloud-native development.

Understanding "The Cloud" and the Present Challenges

For those who are new here and might need a cloud refresher–Kunal simplified the concept of "the cloud" as essentially someone else's computer that is accessed over the internet. He likened services like YouTube to videos stored on an external hard disk that users can access remotely. The ultimate goal of using cloud services is to alleviate the need for companies like Netflix, to manage their own hardware. Instead, they utilize the hardware of companies like Amazon through AWS. However, challenges like cost, billing, and data privacy issues have emerged with this model.

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Cloud promised to make it easier and cheaper to access and manage these technologies over the internet, but as time went on cost began to rise, billing became more complicated. As more organizations become cloud-first, we’re also seeing a rise in data privacy issues and control over information (i.e. who owns what)."

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The key challenges that cloud-native organizations face today include:

• Cost: While cloud computing traditionally can be seen as cost-effective, it also poses financial challenges depending on the scale and management of the resources.
• Scalability: One of the significant advantages of the cloud is its scalability, allowing businesses to easily increase or decrease resources based on their needs.
• Data Privacy: With everyone moving to the cloud, robust security measures need to be in place to protect that data. Breaches and hackers are on the rise, and storing information in the cloud can make it all the more vulnerable.
• Transparency and Environmental Impact: Many organizations are not practicing transparency with their cloud practices, particularly as it relates to the environmental impact of huge data centers. If cloud computing companies do not take a commitment to sustainability, it could pose a great threat to the planet.

Benefits of the MultiCloud Approach

As we look at the evolution of the cloud and how to address some of these common challenges, Multicloud emerges as a strong solution contender. Multicloud is when a company uses services from multiple cloud providers, reducing the risk of downtime and avoiding vendor lock-in. This approach allows companies to choose the best services each provider offers and achieve a level of flexibility and control.

Multicloud approaches allow organizations to leverage the strengths of various cloud platforms, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and others, to optimize performance, cost, reliability, and flexibility. Kunal suggested this could be a way to address the challenges of high costs and dependency on a single provider.

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"The idea behind multicloud is simple: you're not putting all your eggs in one basket. It truly gives companies the ability to choose the best services from each provider.”

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Looking Ahead: The Potential of K8s, Open-Source & AI

The cloud is already complex enough, but when we add Kubernetes technology, open-source tools, and (of course) AI, it gets even more complicated. Or…does it simplify things?

Kubernetes technology, for example, acts as a unifying layer that abstracts away the underlying complexities of individual cloud providers, allowing businesses to deploy, scale, and manage their applications consistently across various clouds. Whether it’s automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications or providing portability across different cloud environments, K8s technology helps to meet some of these cloud challenges. Speaking of the right tech, the right open-source tools can also make navigating the cloud a little easier.

"Two-thirds of organizations use open-source tools for deploying machine learning applications, and this has significantly improved time savings when dealing with the cloud," said Kunal. “Only a small part of these systems is actual usable machine learning code, leading to many cloud projects being abandoned due to the high cost and time consumption. However, open-source models have made machine learning more accessible and greatly reduced these issues as we look forward towards the future of the cloud.”

And finally–AI is everywhere for better or worse, and it will greatly impact the future of the cloud. AI enhances automation, helps optimize resource management, and improves security through advanced threat detection and response (and we already know that security is a top challenge for the cloud world already). AI might be the solution that combats those data privacy concerns, enabling more efficient data analytics and the development of AI models, making cloud services smarter and more scalable.

One example of the many recent news stories is Amazon’s use of Amazon’s Generative AI tool, Bedrock, to its own cloud services. Or, Microsoft Azure’s collaboration with OpenAI, integrating models like GPT-4 and DALL·E into Azure AI.

Keep Your Head in the Cloud(s)

In the end, the cloud’s promise to be our end all be all still came with some challenges that many digitizing industries and tech organizations are currently facing. But the benefits of a multi cloud approach, plus the assistance of new technologies still leaves a bright future for cloud computing.

Kunal’s parting thought on the matter was, "Right now, the most important thing cloud providers can do is provide transparent pricing and prioritize data privacy. Take a proactive approach to security, don’t just rely on cloud providers but also have your own robust security measures in place. And lastly–try to include sustainability wherever possible.”

We appreciate Kunal coming on the show, you can check out what Civo is up to by going here. For more podcast insights, check out our other episodes from the past seasons.