The cloud computing landscape is shaping into a classic oligopoly.

With big tech powerhouses such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft commanding a 65%+ share of the computing market.

The result? Data centers that can barely meet the demand. Huge price tags that stifle the user. And a concentrated point where breaches can take place.

So where are we heading? Was this what Tim Berners Lee envisioned when he sat down to bring the Internet about for the first time?

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The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished.

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Tim Berners-Lee (1998)

It is clear that young Berness-Lee envisioned a free, global and shared information space where users could interact boundlessly — not locked by a single entity that held control over what you see, say, and do.

An open source environment built and managed by the user, and not a few corporations. 

The arrival of blockchain technology gave us again a taste of this ideal. It opened the doors for decentralized solutions to come about and disrupt sectors that were previously controlled by a single force, such as finance and banking.

But if the vision of an open Web is to come to fruition, one crucial piece of the pie is still missing: decentralized computing.

In today’s article, we’ll expand on our last piece about Open Clouds, touching on the biggest benefits and opportunities it can offer to the world — as well as the potential challenges that might crop up with its adoption.

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The Key Features & Benefits of an Open Cloud

As covered in our last articel, there are 4 key components that underpin an Open Cloud system.

Standards and APIs need to be open — so that integration and communication between systems & apps is easier to carry out, and transparency can hold supreme.

Interoperability is the norm — and not just an afterthought.

A community-driven environment fosters innovation — powered by the own rewards and incentives users receive for becoming active participants in the platform’s growth.

And the infrastructure is vendor-neutral — where you can pick the hardware provider that better fits your agenda (and even switch vendors seamlessly if need be.)

All of these components grouped together allow the decentralized model to offer some clear advantages over centralized computing services.

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And those are:

• Lower costs — Decentralized cloud solutions reduce costs by lowering the capex needs by leveraging hardware provided from the community. This approach significantly improves operational efficiency, therefore lowering the price point for the customer.

• Enhanced performance — Since in an Open Cloud, data is not bottlenecked by the capacity of a single server or cluster, data is instead located at the edge and ready to go whenever you need it.

• Seamless integration — Services running on an open cloud can integrate seamlessly with other software — unified by the platform layer. Any service provider can build on the platform and access hardware as needed.

• Pricing transparency — The pricing model in an open cloud is enforced by the protocol and fully transparent to all parties within the value chain, preventing exploitation or misuse of resources.

• Potential for unlimited growth — Businesses can scale endlessly and rest assured that they won’t run out of space, or be slapped with a hefty price tag out of nowhere. Open clouds can handle as much data as needed (with no hidden fees.)

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These are just some of the sound distinctions open cloud platforms can offer from centralized systems. Many open source clouds are already helping businesses all around the world experience these benefits.

Take OpenStack, for instance.

OpenStack is an open-source cloud computing platform that has been going strong since 2010, it is primarily used to deploy and manage Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) environments. 

It allows users to create and manage large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources through a web-based dashboard.

Like any other Open Cloud project, it offers a robust framework for managing cloud infrastructure that can be utilized by any service provider for a variety of use cases — such as creating private, public or hybrid cloud solutions for their customers.

But now, this is just one example of an Open Cloud on display.

Admittedly, as with any promising piece of technology, there are some inherent obstacles that come along with it as well.

Primarily, security and practical concerns.

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Potential Challenges & Solutions For Open Cloud Adoption

In order to implement an open cloud solution to the fullest, multiple providers & services around the world — each with their own personal agendas — would have to work together and collaborate seamlessly. Which sounds complex enough due to the variety of systems involved.

Not to mention, the open nature of the cloud implies that the user himself would have the ability to coordinate infrastructure and play around with the code — which only adds to the skepticism the general public may have about the true antifragility of decentralized initiatives.

In an Open Cloud, data moves across multiple services and locations, which can raise concerns about unauthorized access and compliance with different global regulations.

In truth, despite how pricey and inefficient current centralized solutions can be, the own centralization of data can make it a tad easier to implement security policies — and quickly respond to problems in the ecosystem in case the balloon goes up.

The tech giants that dominate most of the cloud computing market — titans like Google, Amazon, Microsoft — have been going strong since the mid 2000s. So they are, naturally, what the average user swears by in the modern age.

Nevertheless, a case is to be made that this is out of a lack of a better alternative. As of July 2024, existing DePIN projects have begun to develop strong security measures to address the challenges preventing adoption.

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Cue In: Impossible Cloud Network

The Impossible Cloud Network (ICN for short) is a Web3 initiative that introduces a decentralized approach to cloud infrastructure.

Underpinned by the latest blockchain technology, it is an open source cloud offering users a digital peer-to-peer marketplace for storage, computing, and general services.

The way ICN is addressing security concerns is simple:

1. ICN implements decentralized architecture that distributes data across multiple nodes. SLA Oracle Nodes verify transactions and protect your assets against potential misbehavior. This fragmented approach not only strengthens resilience as a whole, but also boosts transparency.

2. Every transaction is recorded on the blockchain and can be viewed by any participant in the network, providing clear visibility in the vast cloud environment. In other words, users can easily track how their data moves across the digital space, unlike centralized frameworks where the user is unaware of the whereabouts of his data.

3. The implementation of advanced cryptography measures also ensures data remains intact. Any unauthorized changes or tampering attempts can be quickly detected and corrected accordingly.

Furthermore, one of the unique offerings ICN will bring to the computing market is  all-in-one solution for multiple cloud services.

Most decentralized cloud solutions today are equipped to handle one service — be it storage, computing, networking — yet lack the architecture to offer those services all in one place.

ICN’s founders recognized this need and created an ecosystem that will draw together three key players — primarily Service Providers (SPs), and Hardware Providers (HPs) — to enhance the range of cloud services available.

We believe this is the only path to the sustainable decentralization of the internet.

A world in which our cloud services systems can handle the rigorous demands of new times, without jeopardizing our autonomy and security in the process.

Essentially, staying in line with initial founding principles of the Web.

For further information on how to leverage ICN as a decentralized solution for your cloud needs, we encourage you to stay on the loop for future publications.

Very shortly, we’ll be continuing our series on the core functionalities that set ICN apart from other cloud solutions in the market — you will not want to miss it!

Thanks for reading.

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