At least the big enterprises still tackle the cloud movement cause of massive changes in their actual way of acting. That is not only about getting peoples mind changed to more agile, high speed and fail fast culture but adjust processes and well proven interfaces toward partners and the industry. From a technology point of view that “cloud” movement is just another strike of the centralize and decentralize pendulum. And i really wonder how long it takes these time for the pendulum to strike back. Don’t get me wrong, the cloud is here to stay the same way as all the other tools in our box like Client/Server and the Host. But following the route of the pendulum makes me think of the decentralization coming up. With centralizing everything to just a hand full of companies running services for us we created a kind of 3 monster hosts (AWS, Alibaba, Azure and some not to relevant others) where we consume resource slices as our grant daddy’s did during the good old computer punched cards instead of lambda and and docker containers times. I think the actual trend is even more aggressive, what makes me think the movement against will be as well much more aggressive. I can think of at least two possibly relevant motivations for that movement:

Data protection

As a individual bias for technology, innovation and future in general, that is a very sensitive topic. Most of the science fiction ideas we actually have in mind a based on technology understanding us and our needs as man. It seems that a cooperation between both involved parties is necessary to support the innovation processes as efficient as possible. Actually we started to realize which enormous possibilities we have playing around with data. Those data we already have started technologist to desire more data in specific fields. At least i will judge the initial idea of gathering specific data not as a bad thing or a being driven by criminal intent, it is a given that those data will get into peoples hands with more creative power and less decency. So we can make that topic ether a topic for nerds that go and “kill google” cause it is evil or see a general movement to more mature approach of managing our data. What ever it is, it can lead us to a situation where people actively start to let the big 3 cloud providers behind them.

Efficiency

Any kind of wearable, smart devices and IoT devices out there can potentially combined to a nearly endless resource source where data can be processed next to there owners or clients. Imagine Samsung or Huawei find a way to unburden their devices from power costs. Can be done with a smart business model and contracts including revenue share for the resource it self for power providers - or anything else. That can allow them to create a run-time environment running on all that devices where the code it self is aware of its environment. Number of nodes next to it, demands for data processing for a specific use case at that specific point in time. Even with not to complex processing units and available store per node, that will open a whole new universe of efficient use cases. On the other hand i see a chance for the centralized idea for mobile devices as well. Why to we pack so much resources directly into the devices it self? A actual Phone can easily replace each tom dicks PC and only utilizing parts of the provisioned calculation power. There is a chance that we going to reduce the complexity on the devices but find a way to swap out power intensive tasks to central processing units instead. That will lead to smaller form factors as well as, compared to the actual situation, unbelievable long battery life.

Both is driven by technology ideas, but we are humans and we are more complex. I can think of another option, that of cause is somehow against my own core believes, but hey… I’m here to proof my own ideas wrong ;-). What about a Bio/Slow-food movement for information technology? I can see cloud native people wondering about the performance and reliability of proper configured classic IT infrastructure such as database clusters. Of cause actual trend don’t want us to see the beauty and usability of such configurations, but honestly i still see it and probably others as well. If something like that happens, that could for the first time in history of information technology ether slow down the pendulum or stop it and allow people to not simply follow the latest trend but use the available tools where ever they fit best to the demand. Kind of romantic option, but at least worth to think of it.