Have we reached Peak Cloud yet? - Episode 3 of Inflection Points Podcast

It’s not hard to immediately pick up that there’s an obsession with what’s next in tech. What’s next is where the action is. As soon as 5G launched – or even before – some “expert” wants to talk about 6G. Wi-Fi 6E is barely out there and people are bringing up Wi-Fi 7. It is the way of the industry for a million reasonable reasons. When you work in an industry that often changes how the entire world functions, what’s coming next becomes a pretty big deal.

Other sectors of society live more in the present. As soon as Tom Brady retired from the NFL, the hype machine moved on. When he came back from retirement after six weeks, so did the hype. Sports aficionados are obsessed with what is. History and the future are nice to have, but what matters is whether your team is winning right now!

In tech, we often don't stop and look at ‘what is’ long enough to understand technology's effect on the world and what elements matter. In several of the Season 2 episodes of Inflection Points, Extreme's podcast, we reflect on the moment as well as the future. In an upcoming episode, we talk to Philip Reece, CEO InDro Robotics, who once owned an airline but got in the drone business when he realized it was what’s next. Today though, they are `what is.’ Drones may not be the hip tech they once were, but instead of potentially changing the world, they are already changing the world. That’s worth a moment.

So, where are we with cloud technology? In the moment or banking on the future? That’s our Episode 3, which is out right now. Hosts Carla Guzzetti and Tim Harrison talk to Extreme’s own Bill Lundgren, who has a big title in Distinguished Engineer, Portfolio Architect - Cloud Operations. But internally, he’s known as the Ultimate Cloud Expert, which is arguably a cooler title. He knows what cloud can and can’t do for enterprise networking. As we look into the future, Bill knows what cloud can and will do.

The cloud rapidly became one of those “what’s next” things around 20 years ago. Extreme was a speedy adopter, and we are known as the second biggest cloud company for enterprise networking in the world. So sure, we have a bias here. If anything, we take the cloud for granted: It is the foundational building block for what’s next. That’s a core belief within Extreme.

That’s what this episode with Bill is about: Explaining why we think that way. If you’re going to build what’s next, it must be constructed on top of a solid technology foundation, and that foundation is the cloud. Although not as hip as an iPhone, the cloud has also changed the world in many ways. First, the cloud has provided applications and technologies a new home for existence, and second, an opportunity to flourish. As we move increasingly into the Infinite Enterprise era, the cloud becomes essential in a distributed society.

That didn’t take long: From the mid-2000s to now. In any other industry, that pace of change is considered nuts. Unsustainable even. Not in tech. That’s why it’s always awesome to look at what’s coming next: We move so fast in this industry. But we should also take a breath and take a deeper look at what’s right in front of us.

We are now at peak cloud. Bill Lundgren is here to tell us why. Join us on Inflection Points, wherever you get your podcasts!