Nowadays, practically everything is in the cloud, and thanks to IBM Cloud Satellite, hybrid cloud services can now be generally available everywhere. Yup, whether on any cloud, on premises, or at the edge. After all, as IBM Asia Pacific General Manager Brenda Harvey put it last year in her keynote at IBM Cloud Forum 2020, a cloud-first world is the new normal.
“The key to digital transformation nowadays is really to do it in an accelerated fashion. If you want to transform, we are no longer talking about years here. We’re already talking about months. Applications are being deployed in a matter of weeks, even. So with IBM Cloud Satellite, the development, testing, and deployment would be very swift. I think this would really help the government in the Philippines to digitally transform in a fast manner,” said Mike Dionisio, president of systems integrator Questronix Corporation, in response to my question at the IBM Philippines virtual press briefing.
Cloud everywhere
Questronix Corporation is an IBM Platinum Business Partner, and Dionisio was one of the resource speakers at the virtual session. Joining him were Tristan Ylagan, country leader for IBM Partner Ecosystem in the Philippines; Christine Llanto-Ravelo, country leader for Cloud, Data & AI, and Security, IBM Philippines; and Jed Cruz, technical community leader and country presales leader, IBM Philippines.
As previously reported, business executives in the Philippines are increasingly planning to invest in hybrid multi-cloud platform strategies and capabilities. So as I told the resource speakers at the press briefing, I really hope that the government would also embrace cloud in order to accelerate its own digital transformation and address the increasing demand of citizens for digital services.
After all, the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting measures such as social distancing and lockdowns have forced everyone to embrace digital transformation — and these changes will have an impact on society for the years and possibly decades to come. Filipinos can’t afford to be left behind just because of the actions — or inaction — of digital dinosaurs.
Edge computing
One of the buzzwords we keep hearing these days, particularly with the advent of 5G, is edge computing. Simply put, edge computing is a decentralized system that brings computing to the source of the data, or very near it.
So you can see why the IBM Cloud Satellite is exciting because of this ability to make hybrid cloud services available even at the edge, resulting in faster decision making and implementation.
For one, Lumen Technologies and IBM have integrated IBM Cloud Satellite with the Lumen edge platform to enable clients to harness hybrid cloud services in near real-time and build innovative solutions at the edge.
Not only that, but also IBM is extending Watson Anywhere with the availability of IBM Cloud Pak for Data as a Service with IBM Cloud Satellite. This gives clients a flexible, secure way to run their AI and analytics workloads as services across any environment — without having to manage them on their own.
As a proud member of Generation X who also happened to become a tech journalist, I’ve been digital for over two decades now. In fact, I’ve been working from home and championing it before it was even called work from home.
So I’m really happy to live in these interesting times. A time when science fiction keeps turning into science fact. When more and more people are embracing digital, and joining us gamers and K-pop fans in the virtual world.
Decentralization is the future. And the future is in the cloud.
