[Insights] Psymon Li, CEO of BonusCloud: IT Service Future Will be A World of Decentralization & Multi-Reciprocity
In today’s Internet age, just about every facet of society, from individuals to enterprises to government institutions, share IT services in different and multiple ways. Along with the rapid development of science and technology, the question we should ask is: What will IT services and its organizational forms be like in the future? BonusCloud CEO Psymon Lee shares with us his ideas and reflections with regards to this.
01. The past and the present of the IT service development: From big to small, from uniformity to individuality, from centralization to decentralization
Throughout the history of biological evolution, plenty of large organisms on land have already disappeared from earth. Furthermore, many large marine organisms that remain are also probably in the gradual stages of extinction. These large animals are being replaced by smaller ones that are capable of long-term survival.
If we glance at the history of IT services, there is a strong similarity between the development of IT services and the evolutionary process of all living things: all evolution is a process from big to small, from uniformity to individuality, and from centralization to decentralization. We have experienced the progress of IT services, from the mainframe to the minicomputer, from the server to nowadays cloud computing. In the future, more large-scale of nodes will be the mainstream.
Meanwhile, IT evolution closely relates to and results in its service forms. Mainframes and minicomputers mainly serve the scientific computing and financial systems. Moreover, the emergence of enterprise IT bred service companies such as Oracle, Microsoft and SAP, along with its development, has made PC servers and small IDCs commonplace in the market.
Cloud computing platforms have developed and grown during the age of the Internet, naturally matching IT applications. So we can say that the complementary development of the Internet and cloud computing is shaping today’s era. Internet applications have become mainstream for IT applications, while cloud platforms have become mainstream for IT service platforms. Sparks of a two-way fusion effect between cloud computing platforms and enterprise IT ones are coming out. There are not as many debates upon the differences among public cloud, private cloud or enterprise IT as before, nor debates for which one will be the dominant form of the future. What we are more concerned about now is the development and deployment of cloud computing platforms towards hybridization while traditional IT platforms and software are merging into cloud computing platforms. One of the most important indicators of this trend is that AWS, which once adhered to public cloud, announced its support for the deployment of private cloud and hybrid cloud at the end of 2018.
The evolution of the new era is not one-way and one-sided, but a comprehensive process. Therefore, the IT evolution has always been forming different service forms during different IT eras, and the organizational form and talent structure are also undergoing tremendous changes.
In the era of enterprise IT, the main organizational form for companies is hierarchical, and the talent structure of IT is mainly about operation and maintenance. And in today’s era, the main organizational form of Internet companies is function-oriented, and the priority of the talent structure of IT is R&D, supplemented by operation.
02. The Future IT Services Landscape Outlook:
Multiparty Reciprocity by Coordinated Cooperation in IoT
Can we imagine what the next era will be like if we employ a broad view of the future?
Nowadays, the IoT (Internet of Things), big data and AI (artificial intelligence) have already become recognized, important directions for the development and expansion of the IT industry. When the IoT era does arrive, the question will be if the existing IT service form (cloud computing), organizational form (function) and talent structure (R&D) in the Internet era will be capable of meeting the needs and demands at that time.
In the IoT era, more and more smart terminals will be used to serve society at large. With the promotion and development of AI, terminals become more and more intelligent and capable with more and more computing demands, real-time requirements, and privacy protection awareness of data, and repetitive and monotonous tasks are gradually handing over to the machines. So what kind of IT service form, ways of data sharing, organization forms and talent structure will be adopted in the future?
As mentioned previously, IT development follows the universal law of evolution from big to small, from uniformity to individuality, from centralization to decentralization. The development of IoT, without any doubt, pushes to generate large scales of smaller terminals, which means that completely decentralized IT service platforms will be more structurally suitable for the future.
Imagine if the IT service form of the future is completely decentralized, where all connected terminals can not only acquire resources from network, but also contribute the resources they own to the network. Additionally, IT resources are consumers and also service providers, this huge service resource platform, as a result, constructed by all the connected terminals, is capable of providing services to all sorts of terminals, allowing them taking their own advantages, and obtaining what they need indeed. By this means, the efficiency of whole IT society resources will be highly enhanced.
The future IT service form will be more likely based on a totally decentralized resource network in the service of resource demands completely decentralized and personalized. The organization form will be networking-like and community-like. The arrival of the AI era makes the AI professionals on the top of the talent pyramid, while the R&D engineers in the middle and others at the bottom. It is to say that, if we change into another angle of supply side, normal and common people will provide tremendous amount of resources, gain the corresponding rewards by offering their resources, and obtain resources from the products developed by AI professionals and R&D engineers, in this way, forming eventually a new and steady social structure.
Corporations are the dominant organizational form that has emerged along with the industrial revolution. This form has its strength and advantages, which has enabled it to exist for such a long time. However, there are also drawbacks to it, including its “inborn attribute” of squeezing the upstream and downstream among the supply chain for maximizing the company benefits. Typically, the more powerful the corporation is, the more it squeezes. Regardless of how well the ecological systems built by them as the corporations publicize and how much they have contributed to the ecological services, they, actually, shift the way of squeezing from two-side in the traditional supply chain into multi-side in the ecological chain in the market.
Community system, no matter from the level of family, of tribe, or of country, is the longer-term organizational form in the human society and has already existed since human beings. The objective of this system form, different from the corporation form, emphasizes more on maximizing the overall interests among the community members. In other words, what is taken from the people is used in the interests of the people. And this objective never changes.
The change of the organization form resulted from the new IT service form in the future will probably be a blend between the corporation and the community. The objective of the organizations is to maximize the interest of members in the organization, instead of the interests of the organization itself. The organizations will be highly open and no longer closed.
At that time, anyone who has a common understanding of a certain organization’s goals can join in, contribute resources and acquire resources. IT service will be a highly metrical service system where the quantification of the resource contribution and acquisition is no longer hard to navigate.
Perhaps, IT service is the very first field which will make the idea of socialism come true.
BonusCloud is exactly striving to make such future achievable goal come true. Founded by Psymon Li and supported by a team of core members with proven track record and complementary mix, mainly from world leading internet and IT companies, (such as Alibaba, Cisco, Baidu, Meituan, Sangfor et.), BonusCloud endeavours to develop a global computing power trading platform, so as to connect such global computing resources as existing cloud computing, IDC, enterprise computing centers, and personal CPU/GPU/bandwidth etc.
About Psymon Li
Psymon Li, founder and CEO of Bonus Cloud, is a senior cloud computing expert with over a decade of industry experience. Prior to BonusCloud, he was General Manager of MOS, Director of Alibaba Network Department, Chairman of System Technology Committee in Baidu.
About BonusCloud
BonusCloud endeavours to develop a global computing power trading platform, so as to connect such global computing resources as existing cloud computing, IDC, enterprise computing centers, and personal CPU/GPU/bandwidth etc. By attracting tens of thousands of resources contributor, platform users and application developers, it could provide a trustworthy cloud computing platform service featured by low price, wide scope and strong computing power, shaping the business model and resources distribution structures of traditional centralized cloud computing.
BonusCloud
The next generation infrastructure driven by blockchain.
Website：https://bonuscloud.io/
Forum: https://bonuscloud.club/
Facebook：https://www.facebook.com/BonusCloud.io/
Twitter：https://twitter.com/bonus_cloud
Telegram: https://t.me/Bonuscloud
Wechat：Search for “BonusCloud” or scan the following code in wechat
