Michael Long
Aug 22, 2017 · 2 min read

Not seeing it. In fact — and to use your back-in-time metaphor — we appear to be returning to the days of time-sharing.

Mainframes once ran jobs (applications), each in it’s own dedicated partition (virtual server).

Today, however, we seem to be headed towards more of a time-sharing/usage model, where individual functions (single endpoints) are stored on virtual machines and executed as needed.

This model is often refered to as Serverless Computing. Here, a cloud provider dynamically manages the allocation of machine resources. Pricing is based on the actual amount of resources consumed by the components of an application, rather than on pre-purchased units of capacity.

Major players are already working hard on this model. (aka AWS Lamda or Microsoft Azure Functions.)

I’d also discount this by the steady rise in AI-based cloud services, which rely on heavy horsepower backed by truly gigantic datasets and extremely sophisticated analytics.

Then there’s industry giants like Google, who’re pushing the vision of “everything” in the cloud, accessible and readily available from your phone, tablet, or notebook.

If anything, I’d expect the number of providers and services to merge and coalesce.

Others have mentioned economics of scale, as well as all of the issues one has with purchasing, owning, and maintaining their own individual “servers”.

Updates, backups, and security are all highly problematic here.

Untold scores of unpatched versions of Windows have shown that people quite literally can NOT manage their own security.

Heck, all too many people can’t even change the default password on their router.

Market forces, economics of scale, convenience, and widespread ubiquity of data access are all working against you here.

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Michael Long

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Michael Long is a Senior Lead iOS engineer at CRi Solutions, a leader in cutting edge iOS, Android, and mobile corporate and financial applications.