The concept of a New Frontier is a long-standing theme in the fabric of American culture. In the early 19th Century, President Thomas Jefferson sent famed explorers Lewis and Clark on a mission to explore the American Frontier. In the next century, President John F. Kennedy declared a New Frontier as he accepted his party’s nomination for President, creating a movement which culminated with the Apollo 11 lunar landing. And, more recently, both politicians and technologists alike developed a concept known as an Electronic Frontier.
Within the computing world, admittedly a less grandiose theater, there have been several architectural shifts from and to multiple frontiers in the past decade. During the past few years, we’ve all experienced the gradual trend away from “on prem” (systems and servers hosted on a company’s premises or data center) towards cloud computing. Interestingly, cloud computing, a technology once seen as a potential security breach and quixotic out-of-the-box thinking, is now viewed as a best practice.
