The New Legacy in Software Architecture

Once, it was the mainframe; now, it's the cloud.

Software architecture could benefit from a refresh.

Could you look at all the cool boxes? I bet they have a network, a file system, some way to interact with each other, and inputs or outputs on either end.

Please take a look at the evolution of IBM’s core product. Software and hardware. Can you believe these are still around?

What does the SaaS version of this look like?

Yeah, a lot bigger than those IBM machines.

Look, they still have people that sit in front of them.

Look familiar?

The current software products are starting to sound legacy to me. What will displace large, distributed data centers if the cloud displaced mainframe systems?

Granted, evolution in computing has been transformational in that we have been able to shrink chips while increasing their speed or processing power; what is next?

Let’s say we started with the mainframe. Then we ‘migrated’ to the cloud. Now we must embrace intelligence.

Intelligence is going to need something new to test its upper boundaries. Humans can only do so much to offset machines as they are today. Information Technology & Systems at the sector level require vast investments in software, hardware production, research, and development, with high and inflexible maintenance costs, consultants, and humans to work together.

There must be new software architecture for intelligence to realize itself beyond expensive models, toolkits, web browsers, keyboards, a few operating systems, and many servers. Architecture that is beyond imagination.

That’s all I have thought about lately.

What does the new architecture look like? One of the ideals I hold for intelligence in computation is that it can run advanced loops of automated processes in the background and make decisions on what to bundle and automate to fill in the gaps created by human operators.