Why the rush to public cloud?
I spend a fair amount of time talking to clients who call out public cloud as their future platform — new stuff lands on it and old stuff needs to move to it. There is a lot of hidden detail in these choices but a strong sentiment is there, no doubt about it. To many it can seem as though these clients are punch drunk on public cloud vendor koolaid. Maybe, but often I find that dismissing this sentiment misses the point entirely. Often I’ll hear:
“But they have a cloud already!?” (talking about an on-premise virtualised platform — which is a big misunderstanding of features/capability)
“Public cloud isn’t the right fit for them.”
“It doesn’t make sense to run in public cloud, it’s got to be more expensive than on-premise.”
I’ve always said that public cloud is not simply some pure cost play on cheap server hosting. It’s a feature and capability play for the future. Public cloud platforms are attractive because they represent a monumental leap forward in managed services and put previously hard to obtain features into the hands of everyone. Public cloud has democratised capabilities all the way from multi-DC disaster recovery to Machine Learning.
Marc Andreessen responded with the following when asked why microservices and cloud-native technologies are important for every business to adopt:
In my view, because the companies that do can then innovate much more quickly than the companies that don’t.
If a business can successfully adopt and learn how to work with these cloud platforms, the beneficial impact can be wide-ranging: from stronger implementation capability with modern tech to leaner and more efficient organisational models.
This is why adoption of cloud is seen as a must, whatever the cost. The capabilities of cloud coupled with the knowledge obtained through adoption simply screams “this is the platform you want NOW” and that’s why, to some, rigour and reason can appear to fly out of the window. It’s an arms race and we’re moving from horse-mounted to mechanised cavalry.
Two interesting comments from different customers this week - "No way are we ever going back to using VMs, if it is not PaaS we won't touch it" (paraphrasing) People are starting to realize that cloud is not about running some VMs or infrastructure cheaply, it's about the value add services they can have on tap, those really make the difference.
Lester, very good article. I do feel the Innovators Dilema applies here, in so much that the on trend rush to innovate via disruptive technologies companies neglect sustainable innovation that is more aligned to their current market and customer needs. Public cloud enables many benefits but it's not a panacea for becoming 'more innovative'
Nail meet head! :-) A the end of the day compute is a commodity and like all commodities the market is growing up. Years ago we used to analogise that cloud was a utility, like electricity, you simply plug in and consume the compute you need ............ more importantly you only pay for what you need because you can turn it off. Like the power grid it works because you have enough customers to balance the various supply and demand over so you can drive the economies of scale. Obviously public cloud offers more services than just compute but its still the same principle IMHO. All we are now seeing is customers realise they are better consuming from a grid than trying to run their own power stations. Given they don't have to focus on making the power then can now focus on what they can do with effectively unlimited power and actually drive value to their customers.