In the Cloud 1.0 era, companies that conducted most of their business over the Internet were the first to adopt and benefit from cloud computing.
But although these businesses could share and utilise resources flexibly to create disruptive business models, Cloud 1.0 was focused mostly on the basics, such as self-service compute, network and storage resources, in formats that are cost-effective and convenient.
So says Farouk Osman Latib, senior manager, solutions architecture at Huawei, adding that Cloud 1.0 was a case of testing the waters.
Cloud 2.0 is different, as the barriers to harnessing the flood of data have now been effectively removed. It is all about the data and understanding the data.
"Now that your business is in the cloud, you need to take advantage of trends such as big data, the Internet of things (IOT) and artificial intelligence (AI), to help it operate at a whole new level," says Osman Latib.
"In the Cloud 2.0 era, infrastructure must meet the growing requirements of industries, so that organisations can gain more dividends from data."
According to him, public cloud computing services have changed the way IT infrastructure is used. "The public cloud is seen as a way for enterprises to scale IT resources on-demand, without having to maintain as many infrastructure components, applications or development resources in-house."
Osman Latib will be presenting on "Enabling cloud and AI to build a fully connected and intelligent Africa" at ITWeb Cloud Summit 2019, on 12 February at The Forum in Bryanston.
He says Cloud 2.0 focuses on new services and applications, such as IOT, AI and big data, to yield new-generation cloud application and architectures with high degrees of automation baked right-in.
"If Cloud 1.0 is an era driven by infrastructure resources, then Cloud 2.0 is the era of cloud-native applications, driven by data and AI platforms," he explains.
AI is vital because it solves problems in personal lives and business, adds Osman Latib. "Its value is mainly in two aspects. Firstly, to improve the efficiency and quality of internal operations; and secondly, to produce products and solutions according to demand, enhance competitiveness and future capabilities, and create new value for customers.'
With cloud and AI, we aim to provide enterprises, small and large, with one-stop AI platform services, enriching fine-grained APIs, adapting rich algorithms in diverse industry sectors, and heterogeneous computing infrastructure so that everyone can use various artificial intelligence algorithms to solve practical problems, he says.
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