10.1 Hardware Platforms Trends and Emerging ...
 |
Hardware technologies, in line with technological advances, are developing rapidly over the years. |
|
Figure 10.1 highlights the main hardware platforms trends. |
|
Hardware technologies, in line with technological advances, are developing rapidly over the years. |
|
Figure 10.1 highlights the main hardware platforms trends. |
|
The penetration of mobile platforms and devices is a strong trend in the computing world. |
|
The use of cellular networks, Wifi and WiMax networks is becoming the norm. |
|
Such systems with software operating systems and applications installed on them allow user connectivity anytime, anywhere to a network with no need for a wired connection. |
 |
Devices such as smart mobile phones, tablets and laptops support such a trend. |
|
According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), there were 5.9 billion users of mobile phones in 2011. |
|
On the other hand, only there are only 1.2 billion users of fixed phone lines. |
|
The huge penetration of mobile devices and networks usage is due to the mobility feature, the less dependency on infrastructure to support the mobile services. |
|
The cloud computing paradigm is based on providing the means for accessing resources over the network. |
|
The location of such resources is unknown. |
|
Users can develop, deploy and maintain their systems on the cloud. |
|
Google Apps is an example of cloud computing where applications can be accessed remotely using a web browser. | |
|
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a model that is closely related to cloud computing. | |
|
Using this model, a company would choose to use a business software supported by a service on the cloud rather than installing it on its local IT infrastructure. | |
|
Storing a business massive data on the cloud is a practice that is becoming more common in organizations. |
|
The business benefits of using cloud computing include: |
|
Saving on cost: as the cost for setting the applications locally on the top of the company’s IT infrastructure is eliminated. |
 |
Thus, no additional hardware or software has to be installed. | ||
|
A company has to pay only for the use of the cloud services that exactly fulfill its business requirements. |
|
Saving on time: the process required to setup a new IT system can be lengthy and time consuming. |
|
Getting a service functional on the cloud can be very time efficient. |
|
Better mobility: a business’s employees can access the data and resources on the cloud while on the move and not necessarily within the organization’s premises. |
|
An organization allocates resources to meet the average computing demand. |
|
When the demand exceeds the expected average, the organization passes the extra load onto remote data processing centers that are capable of coping with large scale of data processing. |
|
The company pays for the extra computing service supplied by these remote centers. Examples of companies that supply on demand computing are: |
|
HP, IBM, and ORACLE. |
|
Advantages of using on demand computing include: |
|
Organizations do not have to invest extensively in hardware platforms saving finance and resources. |
|
This lowers the likelihood of over investment in technology. |
|
The IT infrastructure can be adapted easily with the organization’s new and changing business needs. |
|
The concept of edge computing is based on the distribution of services across a network moving it far from centralized points. |
|
E.g., an organization can deploy its web services on farms of clustered web servers which are connected to the Internet in different remote locations as shown in figure 10.2. |
|
This brings the computation required to serve requests close to customers. The benefits of using edge computing include: |
|
Better service times to serve customer requests. |
|
This is due to the reduction of transmission times as computing is performed closer to the point of request. |
|
Edge computing could also remove the effect of bottlenecks on performance as computation required to serve customer requests are distributed among multiple servers in different locations. |
|
Pervasive computing is concerned with embedding computers in everything composing the user's surrounding environment. |
|
Such computers (of different sizes, shapes and functionalities) can be connected through wireless networks. |
|
The main purpose is to have computing existing everywhere. |
|
In a pervasive system, devices are integrated seamlessly with the environment surrounding the user including devices (with applications and services offered by them) connected by wireless networks. |
|
Decisions can be made on behalf of the user, thus a pervasive system must be able to learn user preferences to automatically behave based on user current requirements. |