Cloud Management and Automation Tools Help Maintain Greater Visibility and Oversight

Philip Andrews, the Vice President and General Manager for CEMEA at Red Hat, says the key challenge will be harnessing the clouds and maintaining the deployment flexibility as not all clouds are in all place

What trends do you foresee for Cloud Computing in 2022?
Cloud strategy is increasingly leaning towards “hybrid cloud”. The greatest benefit of a hybrid cloud strategy is the ability to choose the optimal solution for each task or workload. The use of three or more clouds is expected to jump significantly. In addition, there is a possibility that COVID-19 significantly hampered organizations’ plans to expand their cloud usage last year and they are hoping to pick up those plans in 2022.

What sort of benefits does cloud computing bring to eCommerce stores and e-tailers?
Cloud computing is the act of running workloads within clouds—which are IT environments that abstract, pool, and share scalable resources across a network. Cloud management and automation tools help maintain greater visibility and oversight across these disparate resources. Chain retailers increasingly use data to offer new services, improve in-store experiences, and keep operations running smoothly. But most stores aren’t equipped with large amounts of computing power.

For these kinds of enterprises, it makes sense to centralize the data storage while extending a uniform app environment out to remote locations. Edge for retail could mean anything from a store manager who uses AI tools for staff scheduling, a pharmacist with a tablet who can visit patients in their homes, or restaurant workers prepping mobile.

Is edge computing helping shape up the cloud computing industry as a whole?
At Red Hat, we see edge computing as an opportunity to extend the open hybrid cloud all the way to the data sources and end-users. Edge is a strategy to deliver insights and experiences at the moment they’re needed. We’ve seen edge computing transform many fields—manufacturing, automotive, energy, utilities, finance, healthcare, retail, telecommunications, and government.

Edge computing can mean faster, more stable services at a lower cost. For users, edge computing means a faster, more consistent experience. For enterprises and service providers, edge means low-latency, highly available apps with real-time monitoring.

Edge computing can reduce network costs, avoid bandwidth constraints, reduce transmission delays, limit service failures, and provide better control over the movement of sensitive data. Load times are cut and online services deployed closer to users enable both dynamic and static caching capabilities.

Do you believe serverless functions have a big part to play in creating new user experiences?
Serverless is a powerful and popular paradigm where you don’t have to worry about managing and maintaining your application infrastructure. In the serverless context, a function is a single-purpose piece of code created by the developer but run and monitored by the managed infrastructure. A serverless function’s value is its simplicity and swiftness, which can entice even those who don’t consider themselves developers.

Will combining AI with cloud services enable organizations to get the most out of both applications in a cost-effective way?
Red Hat accelerates AI/ML workflows and delivery of AI-powered intelligent applications with self-managed Red Hat OpenShift, or our AI/ML cloud service. Data science and machine learning are helping drive innovation and business value in nearly every industry. For many companies, the biggest barrier to adoption is the complexity of wiring together the necessary data sources with diverse model training and model deployment technologies.

With Red Hat OpenShift Data Science, Red Hat’s contributions to Open Data Hub, and our extensive partner ecosystem, we’re helping organizations overcome such complexity to begin harnessing the full potential of machine learning from the leader in trusted open source technology.

With Metaverse becoming the “keyword” for 2022, do you believe the cloud has a major role to play here? What opportunities exist for both vendors and channel partners?
The cloud is becoming a major source of functionality “on-demand” around the world and around the clock- and has become a way of gaining access to functionality from basic compute and storage, to access to online SaaS-based complex enterprise applications. This convenience with both ease of access and use on-demand will continue to drive adoption for cloud as a key component of all businesses’ IT strategies.

The key challenge will be harnessing the clouds and maintaining the deployment flexibility as not all clouds are in all places. This will also drive the value of a hybrid cloud approach, with the availability of development, integration, and management tools that will work across all clouds. This is an area Red Hat can ease the challenges with cloud and accelerate new software/digital asset development increasing the “digital-first” capability of the enterprise.