Although Cloud, or Cloud Computing, as a way to process data and run apps cost-effectively, has only been around since about 2010, here in 2022, its looks like cloud technology is already going out of style. Now days, cloudless technology is the new high technology fashion look. Cloud providers are not calling cloudless technology what it is, cloudless, but are advertising it as Edge technology.
So what is Edge technology? Edge technology is basically a cloud in a closet. Instead of many people indirectly accessing through the Intenet a very large, energy hungry and very far away cloud data center, they access a very powerful cloud, locally, that is an Edge Cloud, that might be in their apartment building, more so in an apartment center closet. Similarly, instead of a corporation accessing a far away cloud data center, they instead may be accessing a very powerful Edge cloud at a small business office just down the street. Its not that much different than on-site clouds, a thing of the 1990s. But there is a major difference. Local Edge clouds have a lot more compute power per user, are more energy efficient, require less communications (data transit time) But Cloudless is more than Edge technology. Cloudless providers, just like off the grid solar plants that sell excess energy back to the energy utility provider, sell excess computer power and data storage capacity back to the cloud provider. Effectively this is the same business model that has let small scale solar plants and small vertical farming companies break into the consumer and energy markets. Many utilities throughout the world have power export programs in place that allow homeowners and business sell the excess energy they generate with solar arrays and wind mills.
That said, expectations are that it will be easier to set up a system that allows one to sell excess computing power back to the cloud gird than to hook up a renewable energy source to the power grid. The idea that one could sell back excess smart phone or computer compute power and free data storage is the basis for the income producing cloudless compute market.
The cloudless business model relies on a cloudless social media network. Often thousands of home computers and personal smart phones make up the cloudless network. The cloudless data and computer provider manages and sells the excess compute power on the cloudless network to cloud providers. all transparently. And pays the members of the cloudless network a royalty based on overall usage of their own personal computer and smart phone.
Will the cloudless model succeed? With most computers and smart phones running only at a small fraction of their computational power most of the time and billions of these devices scattered in every home and office throughout the world, it is possible, but will it be practical. That question, for now, will be left for the venture capitalist and the cloudless technologists to answer.
