Nowadays it’s the age of blockchain and cloud services. But Santander Global Tech is an innovative company that has a clear strategy of being a step ahead. We have designed a solution beyond cloud computing: sky computing.
The idea is quite simple: many companies move their compute power to cloud servers, hosted by a few datacenter providers all around the globe (I’ve been tempted of teasing flat earthers but we do respect all beliefs) but they also rely on global communication networks: thousands of kilometers of optic fiber or communication satellites. So why no combine both of them? If we do deploy a proper satellite network and each of them holds enough compute power we will save on communication costs and offer reduced latencies and better bandwidth.
So we gathered a group of experts and began the design of this Star Wars alike Tier 7 datacenter (Reagan’s Star Wars, not the film). The first stone in the path was how to deal with a proper weight/compute power ration. Spoken to Elon Musk their BFR was available for a fee and some banners in our site, so HAL quantum computers could be launched to a constellation of GPS-alike geostationary orbit.
We have designed a solution beyond cloud computing: sky computing.
That resembles a bit like agile project development as we could start with some early adopters satellites. It was successful for GPS, starting with 8 satellites so the initial cost wouldn’t be as big. Some solutions were discarded at initial design phases were much most costly (other projects have been ditched just for the sake of its cost, ignoring the benefits)
Having the datacenter sites selected and the underlying hardware technologies the number of questions we still have to solve are a few, but decided to “do it” instead of “not” but not trying. Selecting an OS for the whole thing was complex, but recent developments on sandboxing and large number of libraries and algorithms available directed us to a proper C++ Linux environment. Java was simply not reliable enough as we have stated already in some other articles. Like: Will the end of Java be after version 11? or Java 11 makes its comeback.
That is the point where we cannot disclosure more information today, but soon you’ll have news on this dream made true, may it life long and prosper.
Ps. Come on, its 1st of April!! 😛
Juan Tavira
Universia
Specialist, architect and interdisciplinary geek passionate about all kinds of innovations. This is easy to say for oneself, but when my computing colleagues, my geek friends and even my wife say so, then it must be true somehow ;-). I also like to build violins as a hobby. I see code
