Cloud computing has become so normal, it's invisible In IT, terms and categories come and go. Distinctions disappear as computing evolves and as something that was shiny and new simply becomes the way that we do things. Because of the huge expense of computers in the 1960s and 1970s, mainframes and minicomputers were time-shared machines, and capacity was often rented out under …
This is not the value of the infrastructure as it is rented by end users, but the value of the infrastructure as it is being acquired by companies, be they using it for their own purposes or setting it up for rental by others.
Once the AI boom turns to bust then I guess we'll see an equally rapid decline.
"it is helpful to do what Google has done longer than anyone: virtualize and containerize compute, networking, and storage capacity across datacenters and let people schedule massive applications across that, without having to even think about the underlying infrastructure."
I'm pretty certain that IBM was doing all that before the founders of go ogle were out of three-cornered pants.
And those of us who were there back then see the expense and futility of returning to the days of the service bureau ...
We went from mainframe and terminals, to PCs, to PCs connected to (a) local server(s), and we are now at PCs connected to remote servers run by someone else.
So, given that we're already hearing about "local cloud", how long is it going to be before we're back to terminals connected to a local server ?
At some point, "cloud computing" will just be "computing." Or maybe, reaching back further in time, we will call it "data processing" as the nerds from the 1960s did.
When that happens we'll be due for a return of the personal computer. (No, phones and tablets don't count. They're half-arsed thin client that can't even manage a decent keyboard.
- I'm curious if "All cloud" includes private clouds, from VMs/VM hosts upwards.
- The scalability of distributed computing (if your app is designed for it) is one advantage of clouds; Another is avoiding the long timescales and capital needed to build and fill your own data centres. Is that short-term thinking or truly a better way? Monolithic efficiency vs distributed flexibility? I'm trying to be open minded, but still don't get the rush to cloud. Are there any unbiased analyses out there?
Edit: https://www.gigabyte.com/Article/what-is-private-cloud-and-is-it-right-for-you?lan=en seems balanced, even for a hosting provider.
- Like Mark Twain, I suspect the report of traditional mainframes death are greatly exaggerated; There are still use cases for mainframes instead of supercomputing clusters. And although mainframe skills are rarer, mainframes are more efficient in some ways.
"... avoiding the long timescales and capital needed to build and fill your own data centres. Is that short-term thinking or truly a better way?"
Yes.
It's the better way, until it isn't. Just as closer and closer trade integration with the United States was a fine, sensible and lucrative idea, until it wasn't.
Both of those are true for roughly the same reason: in each case, you're willfully outsourcing control over your future.
"I'm curious if "All cloud" includes private clouds, from VMs/VM hosts upwards."
It really depends what argument you want to have. Cloud is not a very well-defined term. Some use it to mean "outsourced infrastructure which you rent from someone else". Some use it as "computing that you provision as needed rather than having dedicated machines for specific purposes". I've had debates between people who thought each of those was good and each was bad. The people who thought that running virtual machines across hardware was a bad idea, preferring having specific hardware for each set of tasks, are losing that argument, at least in popularity. Those who only argue about whether you rent or buy can point to large groups of people doing either as they like. I'm sure that someone can come up with a third definition for cloud and can still argue about that one too.
"Are there any unbiased analyses out there?"
Tons, but they're unbiased in that they aren't trying to sell you one or the other. There are no analyses that don't end up reflecting one person's or one company's experience with their limited use cases. Of course, you can find biased versions that aren't trying to sell you something, because this is an area with strongly held opinions even for those without a profit motive. For example, there was an analysis from a company that had used AWS as a massive outsourced hard drive and was therefore paying every month to store petabytes of data and would have to pay again whenever they wanted to read from it. They found that cloud costs way more than anything else and you can save money by not using it. That's not bias; they were correct and probably have honestly held opinions, but unless your use case for cloud is as a massive managed hard drive, it's also not the most relevant to whatever you might be doing. If I gave you my experience, it would end up being the same thing. A useful data point, especially if you're trying to do a thing that works similarly to what I'm already doing, but that's all it can be.
Watching this as it began, to as it now is declining. They called it SAS, WAS, and many other marketing terms until the cloud was born! Now, as IT Managers realize that security and other operational risks don't go away just because your data is in the cloud and you can blame someone else if it goes down or is compromised. So despite their tendenancy to want to become teflon when outsouced storage and applications go south, they now realize (the competent ones who actually know what various roles of an IT staff do) it is better to save money and move back to on-prem for many of those services. Funny how hype goes up and goes down, relying on non-technical management to buy these services as they think that they should be doing it, and have no real clue what they should/can do. Well, everyone knows that you should be doing this...just like it's a Paris fashion. I think as more techies move to the C-suites, they will straighten this out, and make good technical and fiscal decisions, not based on what is a deemed to be a "safe" path....
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