The Clear Cloudy Future of Databases

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The Clear Cloudy Future of Databases

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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July 9, 2019 at 12:00 am

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Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Clear Cloudy Future of Databases

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Alex Gay SSCrazy Points: 2217 More actions · Answer 1

There are three important things to think about when considering moving to the cloud.

In the UK, and I assume in other countries, you can write the depreciating cost of hardware off against tax. Therefore you have to justify the savings not just in terms of upfront cost but also taking the savings in tax into account.
Information Governance has to agree, if you can't convince them, you can't do it and by nature they are risk-averse.
Even Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have regional or global outages occasionally. Whilst they may compensate you some of the cost for loss of revenue/productivity there is still the cost associated with reputational damage. Is your company willing to take this risk, or will an on-premises or hybrid solution be a better fit?

peter.row SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4319 More actions · Answer 2

Some what off topic, I just noticed the "Take a peek into our servers" stuff in the footer.

Isn't this a penetration test failure as you are exposing server names thus giving information to would be hackers?

Rod at work SSC-Dedicated Points: 34007 More actions · Answer 3

I completely agree with you, the cloud is where things are heading. Probably not everything. Or if it is everything, it won't be all at once. But its definitely coming. Training for it, I find, to be harder than I care for. Not because I can't mentally do it, but more because of other circumstances forcing it away from me. I train on Azure when I can, which is all I can do, for now.

Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736172 More actions · Answer 4

Alex Gay wrote:

There are three important things to think about when considering moving to the cloud.
In the UK, and I assume in other countries, you can write the depreciating cost of hardware off against tax. Therefore you have to justify the savings not just in terms of upfront cost but also taking the savings in tax into account.
Information Governance has to agree, if you can't convince them, you can't do it and by nature they are risk-averse.
Even Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have regional or global outages occasionally. Whilst they may compensate you some of the cost for loss of revenue/productivity there is still the cost associated with reputational damage. Is your company willing to take this risk, or will an on-premises or hybrid solution be a better fit?

A few responses.

Same in the US, but OpEx (monthly costs) also go against tax, so it's still better because you don't have the capital outlay. Either you spend the money up front or you borrow it. In the latter case, you then tie up credit as well as pay interest. The financial savings and flexibility are better in most countries from a tax perspective. The flip side is it costs more for the rental over time, but most finance people seem to find the cloud beneficial.
In any org, that can be true, but with large banks, insurance companies, governments, law enforcement, and legal companies moving, it's a poor argument. It's your governance group that is misunderstanding the situation. Doesn't mean they'll change today, but there is less and less reason to use this reason.
Most companies have internal outages all the time. That's one reason they pay us to fix things or get them back up. This is especially true for new/changed systems. The cloud is overall better than the outages most of our customers experience.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736172 More actions · Answer 5

Rod at work wrote:

I completely agree with you, the cloud is where things are heading. Probably not everything. Or if it is everything, it won't be all at once. But its definitely coming. Training for it, I find, to be harder than I care for. Not because I can't mentally do it, but more because of other circumstances forcing it away from me. I train on Azure when I can, which is all I can do, for now.

Good luck, and hopefully it pays off somewhere. Know there are lots of emulators for you to use at work/home if you want. Working within the free levels for Azure/AWS is kind of nice as well. Inherently limits your time spent on things each month.

Rod at work SSC-Dedicated Points: 34007 More actions · Answer 6

Steve Jones - SSC Editor wrote:

Rod at work wrote:
I completely agree with you, the cloud is where things are heading. Probably not everything. Or if it is everything, it won't be all at once. But its definitely coming. Training for it, I find, to be harder than I care for. Not because I can't mentally do it, but more because of other circumstances forcing it away from me. I train on Azure when I can, which is all I can do, for now.
Good luck, and hopefully it pays off somewhere. Know there are lots of emulators for you to use at work/home if you want. Working within the free levels for Azure/AWS is kind of nice as well. Inherently limits your time spent on things each month.

Emulators? Really?! I haven't heard about those. What are some examples, please?

Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736172 More actions · Answer 7

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/buckwoody/2011/02/01/windows-azure-emulators-on-your-desktop/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/local-emulator

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-use-emulator

Probably more out there.