FEATURE: CLOUD MANAGEMENT
society faces the challenge of balancing innovation with accountability. This balance is crucial for both engineers and policymakers and is vital for all who rely on digital services.
Infrastructure Evolution: The Edge gets sharper
While AI might dominate the headlines, profound changes are also taking place in the foundational layers of our digital world. Edge Computing, once a nascent concept, is now rapidly evolving into a more sophisticated model that fundamentally alters how we conceive of infrastructure.
To understand this, imagine the Internet as a sprawling city. In the past, most computing tasks were handled in large, centralised data centres. Now, Edge Computing is like setting up satellite offices across the city’ s suburbs, bringing processing power closer to the areas that need it. This localised model reduces latency, enabling real-time analytics, autonomous vehicles capable of split-second decision-making, and gaming without lag. Beyond speed, when AI is integrated into this distributed framework, it opens up entirely new classes of applications.
However, these advantages come with their own challenges. The demand for GPU capacity to support AI workloads has skyrocketed, often outstripping supply. As a result, infrastructure providers must rethink chip designs, explore new architectures and invest in sustainable energy solutions. The future data centre will likely be a global network of micro-facilities, carefully co-ordinated to balance performance, sustainability and security.
The growth of Edge Computing highlights the need for neutrality, flexibility and a distributed approach to computing and storage. By directing workloads to regions abundant in resources and clean energy, we can create an economically viable and environmentally responsible digital ecosystem. The Edge is not just becoming more powerful but smarter, more efficient and more adaptive to the demands of an increasingly connected world.
Cybersecurity: New challenges amid a changing landscape
As we look ahead to 2025, cybersecurity remains a paramount concern for businesses and IT leaders. According to Cloudflare’ s Shielding the Future: Middle East & Türkiye Cyber Threat Landscape Report 2024, 42 % of regional business and IT leaders expect cybersecurity to make up at least 20 % of their organisations’ IT spend over the year ahead. Of those expecting a budgetary increase, 91 % anticipate a rise of more than 10 %.
While this is good, cybersecurity now faces a range of transformative forces, including the democratisation of AI, the adoption of zero-trust security models and the rise of Quantum Computing.
AI is a double-edged sword in cybersecurity. On the one hand, AI enhances threat detection and automates defence systems. IBM’ s 2024 Cost of a
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