Cloud automation: It's happening at the edge
The promise of the IoT is becoming a reality, finds Computing research
Everyone is automating everywhere, and that's nothing new. Businesses have always mechanised the manual where it can be done quicker, cheaper, safer or better by machines.
What has changed in the digital world is the scale and ambition of automation and how that's being enabled by cloud computing.
We asked we asked 300 IT leaders, 150 in the UK 150 in the US, across all sizes and sectors, how their businesses are automating their workloads how they are using cloud to do so, and what cloud-based technologies they are adopting to get there.
Why cloud is important for automation
Cloud platforms provide an umbrella of connectivity between the various parts of the business and other data sources, integrating them into a consistent environment.
Cloud also provides a platform for managed services for workflow orchestration, provisioning, monitoring, analytics and event-driven automation from one place.
Typically, cloud based services are quick to deploy and provide high levels of availability.
And perhaps most importantly, new features are constantly being added. Automation is a process rather than an end point, and the continuing pace of innovation is a critical factor.
We asked our IT leaders whether they have adopted - or radically increased - the use of specialised cloud infrastructure in order to handle new workloads over the last 12 months. The majority said they have.
Most popular (mentioned by 31% of respondents) was infrastructure to support new security models. Security continues to be the paramount concern, and with talent as hard as ever to come by, organisations are turning to automated anomaly detection and threat mitigation.
Just below that was edge infrastructure and IoT (29%). Sensor networks are finding a whole host of use cases, whereas the newer term edge computing refers to bringing computing and analytics physically closer to where data is generated, to minimise latency, enable real-time control, improve security and reduce operating costs.
Equal second (29%) was specialised infrastructure for data-intensive use cases, which could include machine learning modelling and various forms of advanced analytics and scientific research.
Third, mentioned by 29% of respondents, was cloud native and Kubernetes, infrastructure to support the containerised applications which have taken the software world by storm, and which themselves are an automated way to deploy and orchestrate distributed apps.
Use cases: IoT and edge
As we've seen, many of the use cases supported by the new cloud infrastructure fell into the IoT/edge category. They included:
- Supporting working from home.
- Integration of large commercial buildings and campuses into cloud platforms for advanced monitoring and control of HVAC, lighting, access control, etc.
- A construction company was experimenting with Novel wearable devices and sensors for tracking personnel and conditions in hazardous areas.
- And sensor networks were used to monitor water and power systems over large geographic areas.
There were also solutions to improve in-patient healthcare through continuous remote monitoring, and for failover and bandwidth optimisation for resilience and cost savings.
In fact, there were cloud IoT and edge use cases across every sector and size. The promise of the Internet of Things is becoming a reality as organisations adopt cloud platforms to connect and derive value from a growing array of intelligent devices and sensors.
You could say the IoT is at the heart of much of what we call enterprise automation.
We'll look at other use cases for cloud and automation based on this research in future articles.
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