Why Blockchain-Based Cloud Computing Could Be The Future of IoT
The cloud computing market is pegged to balloon to $411 billion by 2020, according to a Gartner Market Report. In particular, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is expected to grow the fastest, expanding 36.6 percent from 2017 to 2020.
IaaS cloud services are dominated by the likes of Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud for enterprises looking to tap into vast computational resources, data storage, and networking. However, these resources are housed in centrally controlled facilities (i.e., massive server farms) that make them inefficient in furnishing the connectivity and edge computation required for the advent of the Internet-of-Things (IoT).
“IoT applications require edge computing close to the source, something vastly different from today’s cloud computing paradigm which has a bigger focus on scaling the service or offering consistency,” details DeepCloud AI CEO, Max Rye.
As a result, high bandwidth-consuming traffic like video streaming has to travel through extensive routing protocols to reach central servers — increasing costs and reducing connectivity performance. Edge devices (e.g., IoT) require computation and detection close to the edge of the network, making centralized cloud infrastructure antithetical to the goals of IoT proliferation.
Add in the data privacy and security concerns of centralized repositories, and it is clear that distributing the infrastructure holds significant promise. And blockchains are increasingly revealing themselves as the optimal medium to achieve the lofty goals of IoT.
The overarching decision to transition networks to more decentralized frameworks is the prevailing trend among firms pushing the narrative of “decentralized cloud computing.” One of those, DeepCloud AI, views the blend of AI and distributed ledgers (i.e., blockchains) as the natural next step to supplement the growth of the IoT industry.
“We enable resource providers close to the edge, such as retail shopping malls, to share the excess capacity of their computer resources on the decentralized cloud, close to the city traffic lights, which makes it possible to do these local computations close to the source,” details Rye.
