Infrastructure Software is Dead
It took me too long to realize it, but now I am certain. Infrastructure software is dead. And with it, numbered are the days of any company whose core business is pinned to selling licenses or subscriptions to infrastructure software bits. It feels as though the entire industry is stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle of trying to justify its own existence. And if we keep it up, we’ll be dead too.
Let me take a step back and set the context. We came late to the OpenStack game. At that time software startups like Piston and Cloudscaling, as well as established companies like Red Hat and HP were well underway in their race for the “king of OpenStack software” title. Fast forward five years and we are behind the largest OpenStack deployments on the planet, able to win deals from a super competent rival with 20 years of open source history. Now I’d love to tell you that it’s all because Mirantis OpenStack software is so much better than everybody else’s OpenStack software, but I’d be lying. Everybody’s OpenStack software is equally bad. It’s also as bad as all the other infrastructure software out there - software-defined networking, software-defined storage, cloud management platforms, platforms-as-service, container orchestrators, you name it. It’s all full of bugs, hard to upgrade and a nightmare to operate. It’s all bad.
But none of this matters, because today customers don’t care about software. Customers care about outcomes. And the reason Mirantis has been successful is because, despite ourselves, outcomes are what we’ve been able to deliver to our customers by complementing crappy OpenStack software with hordes of talented infrastructure hackers that made up for the gaps. We didn’t win because of the software. We won because we’ve been shouldering the pain associated with turning OpenStack software into customer outcomes.
Seventeen years ago, Salesforce.com transformed the business application space by pioneering the SaaS model. Ten years ago AWS did the same for infrastructure. Neither of these transformations were about the software; they were about the software delivery model.
When Salesforce.com launched, Siebel was a 2 billion dollar software company. At the time, Siebel could not have beaten SFDC by writing a better version of its CRM software, because SFDC did not innovate on the software; it innovated on the delivery model that abstracted customers away from the pain of operating (forever crappy) enterprise CRM software.
In hindsight it is obvious, right? Why is it then that after AWS disrupted the infrastructure delivery model a decade ago, today we still see infrastructure startups and veterans trying to capture market share by shipping a better version of infrastructure software? Would it not be the same as Siebel trying to beat SFDC by building “better” CRM, while continuing to ship it on CDs?
Analysts constantly ask me: “Is OpenStack mature for the enterprise?” Just a couple more years and it will be mature, right? Wrong. OpenStack is quintessential enterprise software. No enterprise software delivered as packaged software bits will ever be mature for today’s enterprises that are hooked on the cloud delivery model. Especially not the cloud software itself.
At Mirantis we entered the market with a services-first approach, focused on helping customers build and operate OpenStack before ever releasing an OpenStack software distribution. To this day, many still don’t understand the business model. “Do you want to be a product company or a services company?” - we get asked. “Is AWS a product company or a services company?” - I reply. Cloud is about redefining the notion of “product.” Software is the product of yesterday. The product of today is a combination of software and, more importantly, a service to operate that software, getting the customer to their desired outcome. So when Mirantis is discounted as "primarily a services company", I reply: “You bet we are!”
Very interesting! As you say, it’s important the service to operate the system, provider has to be partner of the operator and help them to cover the gaps that the software always has.
nowadays product is service and solution provide, not only a software adaption/enhancement or some hardware to sell.
there always is a pain-point for customers, which is good product/software usually could not bring good return as customers expect, why is that? it is because our software providers haven't partnered with the customers after provided the software to customer and operated with provided software together with customers based on their business requirements. so I would completely agree with the point that product is ' A combination of software and more importantly, a service to operate that software based on the exact customer requirements.' , if software provider could do so, the product which they provided will be the true product
Very interesting post, AWS is a self service platform changing the delivery model, but the IT area in the enterprise should define what is the SLR/SLA required to the business according to the ITIL best practices so nothing change at all I think the change comes from the how the services strategy and business will be go with traceability For that reason hybrid scenarios for XasX must be the better choice; critical services versus no critical services approach
Boris is bluntly honest and to the point. OpenStack code quality is questionable and there is no light in the end of the tunnel. Still OpenStack is a winner! Why? Enterprise decisions are all about risks: 1) Lost capital investments; 2) Pain of being first; 3) Long term SLA risks due to lack of th maintenance; 4) Vendor lock-up. Open-Source solves when it reaches a critical mass: 1) Low cost entry point; 2) Reference implementations exist and public plus there are implementors; 3) Community size ensures continuity; 4) Generics brand. I would still qualify the post-mortem. There is still a need for quality enterprise software, i.e.: mission critical applications and security assurance. But even they to be successful need to adopt and to work in a new brave world of open-source through open API/container support. Cheers