Munir Maani from IBM made a presentation called “Cloud Computing & Quantum Computing”.
Munir talked about cloud-based services that go well beyond storage including sharing applications with customers, providing middleware or other services. To access cloud-based services, the user needs an operating system, middleware, servers, storage, network connection and back up storage for disaster recovery. The cloud can provide most of these services. It can provide infrastructure as a service.
You can utilize services and infrastructure of the cloud provider by renting runtime, middleware, OIS, virtualization, servers, storage and networking. Renting these services provides scalability to upsize or downsize as the company size and number of customers changes. Expansion costs such as new equipment, middleware, servers, hardware and networking, etc. is done by renting rather than purchasing. You can also expand into new territories by renting cloud services.
Security is enhanced with multiple layers of security reducing the vulnerability to ransomware, theft, outages and their associated costs. In terms of power outages, you can still operate during outages from another powered area where you can deal with disaster recovery. There are budgeting advantages allowing pay as you use, elasticity, reconciliation and forecasting. Tools allow you to track the services being used.
The future is Quantum Computing where super computers which are 5,000 times faster than existing computers. You can interact with a quantum computer without having one. At the moment, these types of computers can easily to hacked. Programmers are working on better security for these super computers.