September 20, 2017 at 9:11 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Avalanche of Cloud Computing
September 21, 2017 at 2:19 am
Cloud computing is a good fit as long as your applications are not deeply embedded and entwined. Essentially if you are able to quickly and easily duplicate and move server and network setup. We hadn't developed appropriately in the past for it, but we are now. I wouldn't exactly say we are properly DevOps oriented, but we're a lot closer to that with what we put together these days, and hence I can't see us moving away from Cloud based systems now.
September 21, 2017 at 2:54 am
'email may never come back on-premises' ?
Outside the US, and with regard to the very long arms of the Patriot Act, there are many regulated market sectors whose data-security risk assessment keeps them well away from any US-domiciled service providers... and then there is the EU, with its new General Data Protection Regulation, which also constrains many sectors to keep the majority of their data [and data flows] well away from the major cloud service providers.
Many applications not handling personal data -are- suited to migration to cloud services; many are already hosted somewhere by service providers hurriedly re-branding their hosted service as a Cloud Offering... but until there is clear legal separation between in-country operators and their US parent brands that offers true protection from data access by DHS, acceptable to regulators, many markets will ignore the benefits of cloud.
September 21, 2017 at 6:01 am
Our email won't come back on premises as it was moved to O365. Also or file server. I've also replicated most of our servers to Azure. It is certainly not a perfect cloud but neither was our on-premises environment. There are advantages and disadvantages to everything. I don't expect us to ever move these services back on-premises, but can't say cloud is forever. Who knows what the next big thing in IT will be? What will be the replacement for cloud infrastructure in the future.
Will some type of AI environment replace what we have now? Or some other technology we can't envision be the next big thing? I can't say, but for now we have embraced (for some things) the cloud.
September 21, 2017 at 6:14 am
I think that many of the pundits and observers of this trend spend too much effort promoting the upside of centralized computing. The cloud computing/tech giants have too much power/information/influence at this time. Putting the industry/world in a handful of corporations that can turn the spigot off at any time due to internal or external influences isn't necessary a good thing. Not everything needs to be on the cloud in the hands of a few computer (or credit reporting) organizations. Maybe because most tech people believe in the goodness of people and gloss over history and true human nature.
September 21, 2017 at 6:19 am
Cloud will definitely take over in the long run but its going to take another decade to get to the 80%+ mark and blue prints to successfully transition major systems like ERP's with many systems integrated with it in companyies away from monolithic application development. As the ERP systems change the speed of cloud adoption will continue to increase. (even if its just for specific services within the application)
A big accelerator, in my opinion, are companies building poor performing on-prem clouds. This exact scenario: "... the wandering performance levels of their systems. For executives used to knowing what the predictable level of performance was, even if poor, having systems (appear to) run randomly slower or faster can be maddening." is common place in companies as internal infrastructure team build their own virtual environments without the correct experience or infrastructure to support it. What results is IT spending more money on hardware than necessary and hiring more people which begins to make the cloud more appealing.
In the end what is absolutely maddening is when a system has unpredictable levels of performance and erodes trust in IT and the application vendor.
From the executive level they don't think about it as a database or on-premise issue... they see it as the applications fault and want to replace it. (More $)
The Application vendor see's it as a client issue, IT infrastructure or because client is on a 4 year old version of the application and refuses to upgrade.
As a results the Vendors are 100% motivated to go to the cloud because they can control the environment, who is putting data into the system and how (another major reason for system issues), support goes down, and as the final motivated, reoccurring revenue goes up. The only downside to vendors is they need to retool their development teams and architect their platforms which will take time for legacy applications and come at a significant expense.
September 21, 2017 at 6:31 am
nick.barrett - Thursday, September 21, 2017 2:54 AM'email may never come back on-premises' ?
Outside the US, and with regard to the very long arms of the Patriot Act, there are many regulated market sectors whose data-security risk assessment keeps them well away from any US-domiciled service providers... and then there is the EU, with its new General Data Protection Regulation, which also constrains many sectors to keep the majority of their data [and data flows] well away from the major cloud service providers.
Many applications not handling personal data -are- suited to migration to cloud services; many are already hosted somewhere by service providers hurriedly re-branding their hosted service as a Cloud Offering... but until there is clear legal separation between in-country operators and their US parent brands that offers true protection from data access by DHS, acceptable to regulators, many markets will ignore the benefits of cloud.
This leads to an interesting thought. The trend (currently) is to migrate things like e-mail off-premise because (in theory) you no longer need to pay someone to manage your Exchange / sendmail / postfix / etc system and it's required hardware. BUT with in some locales the increasing requirements of maintaining data privacy will potentially result in a return to on-premise, we control it all, e-mail.
I have to wonder, also, how many businesses are rushing to the "cloud" without really thinking about what they really expect from it. Where I work, we're supposed to be migrating to "the cloud" and have some rather stringent requirements when it comes to both what can connect to our network (so no just spinning up some Azure SQL instances for me,) and what we are required to have monitoring those systems. So far, our "cloud" looks like it's going to be nothing more than our current setup of virtual machines picked up and dropped into some other data center outside our facility. Some day. Eventually. Of course, at the current "blistering" pace of our migration, I'll probably have moved on from this position before anything gets done (they've been talking about it since I started about 3-4yrs ago, and there's been no movement that I can see in the last couple years.)
September 21, 2017 at 7:49 am
Of all the words used in computing, the one I hate the most is "Cloud"! When did a warehouse of computers suddenly become a "cloud"? Clearly, I missed that marketing meeting!
September 21, 2017 at 7:53 am
I would say the biggest change that could create a shift back to on-premise will be bandwith costs.
The Telco's are sitting back and waiting for the tipping point where they know all your data is sitting in the cloud and the only way for companies to access is it is through them.
At the moment companies gets entrenched in the cloud (Both client and vendor) the Telco's will be in position to cash in.
They will be the modern day railroads and as of right now there is no way to move data without them.
They will attempt to move to a new model where companies are charged on a per MB to use their data and for priority access. Vendors will also get charged on the other side for priority access.
We already this happening today when the telco start throttling home connections or connections to services like Netflix.
If that starts to occur cloud adoption will slow, especially for centralized companies, and could also be the trigger to consider re-centralizing staff back into the corporate office.
September 21, 2017 at 9:01 am
nick.barrett - Thursday, September 21, 2017 2:54 AM'email may never come back on-premises' ?
Outside the US, and with regard to the very long arms of the Patriot Act, there are many regulated market sectors whose data-security risk assessment keeps them well away from any US-domiciled service providers... and then there is the EU, with its new General Data Protection Regulation, which also constrains many sectors to keep the majority of their data [and data flows] well away from the major cloud service providers.
Many applications not handling personal data -are- suited to migration to cloud services; many are already hosted somewhere by service providers hurriedly re-branding their hosted service as a Cloud Offering... but until there is clear legal separation between in-country operators and their US parent brands that offers true protection from data access by DHS, acceptable to regulators, many markets will ignore the benefits of cloud.
or local companies provide the offering. I'd think this will happen in conjunction with some companies working to provide separation from US government agencies
September 21, 2017 at 9:06 am
chrisn-585491 - Thursday, September 21, 2017 6:14 AMI think that many of the pundits and observers of this trend spend too much effort promoting the upside of centralized computing. The cloud computing/tech giants have too much power/information/influence at this time. Putting the industry/world in a handful of corporations that can turn the spigot off at any time due to internal or external influences isn't necessary a good thing. Not everything needs to be on the cloud in the hands of a few computer (or credit reporting) organizations. Maybe because most tech people believe in the goodness of people and gloss over history and true human nature.
Some of this is true, some is not. There are lift and shift operations, moving a VM to a "cloud" vendor. Those can easily be moved to another location, so there isn't any power for the cloud vendor, other than price and any contract you have. Those operations have been in place for over a decade, with companies shifting from one vendor to another. We've done that here at SQLServerCentral, moving physical equipment at first, and lately just VMs across 5 vendors in our history.
The PaaS, platform stuff, that's another story. That can be true lock in.
September 21, 2017 at 9:08 am
chrisn-585491 - Thursday, September 21, 2017 6:14 AMNot everything needs to be on the cloud in the hands of a few computer (or credit reporting) organizations.
One quick comment on this. There isn't an everything or every one or just a few. There are trends, but no one I have seen, outside of vendors selling products, think that everything needs to be any way. Beware of pinging the needle and assuming promotion of an item or leaning towards a platform means that someone implies everything should be that way.
September 21, 2017 at 9:13 am
bdcoder - Thursday, September 21, 2017 7:49 AMOf all the words used in computing, the one I hate the most is "Cloud"! When did a warehouse of computers suddenly become a "cloud"? Clearly, I missed that marketing meeting!
If you think that a cloud is a warehouse of computers, you haven't really thought about what a cloud is. A cloud of computers can be a bank of systems where one takes over for another. That's way beyond what a series of computers in your data center or a warehouse is. There is substantial infrastructure in Azure, AWS, even Rackspace that allow another system to take over for a failed item, without you doing anything. It's beyond what ESX does, though more of an evolution at scale.
The platform services are also more than a warehouse of computers. They are tied together in ways that handle load, scale, deal with failure, and even handle hardware disparities. That's not to mention the multi-tenant separation, threat detection and complex networking, and more.
Calling this a warehouse is more marketing than hyping the cloud.
September 21, 2017 at 9:20 am
Mike Dominick - Thursday, September 21, 2017 7:53 AMI would say the biggest change that could create a shift back to on-premise will be bandwith costs.The Telco's are sitting back and waiting for the tipping point where they know all your data is sitting in the cloud and the only way for companies to access is it is through them.
At the moment companies gets entrenched in the cloud (Both client and vendor) the Telco's will be in position to cash in.
They will be the modern day railroads and as of right now there is no way to move data without them.They will attempt to move to a new model where companies are charged on a per MB to use their data and for priority access. Vendors will also get charged on the other side for priority access.
We already this happening today when the telco start throttling home connections or connections to services like Netflix.If that starts to occur cloud adoption will slow, especially for centralized companies, and could also be the trigger to consider re-centralizing staff back into the corporate office.
This isn't quite true, as there is a lot of data that is moved through private lines still. Less than in the past in relative terms, though potentially more in absolute terms. Companies still contract for private access, even to cloud vendors.
Telcos are regulated, so I don't think they will exert a dominating influence. Add to the fact that bandwidth continues to grow and there is still competition for connections, with wireless becoming more prevalent than I would have guessed a few years ago.
Don't forget that satellite operators have had strong monopolies for data, but they can't just charge as much as they want. There is a balance to keep a healthy market. Telcos throttle services like video because they get used well over what any other service is and impact their ability to serve other markets. There are some people that run vast amounts of video, which weren't anticipated. I expect that throttling always comes and goes, as telcos upgrade their bandwidth in fits and starts.
The real question is can I get priority data if I pay for it? That's part of net neutrality. Can I treat some traffic as higher, or lower, priority and charge. I think that's bad for the general public services. I think this is great when it's a private line.
September 21, 2017 at 10:33 am
I think the rational thing to do is determine what apps, data, and infrastructure is strategic and what isn't. Risk management (not just security considerations) should guide the decision making and particularly figuring out how much control you actually need vs. how much you want. Those companies where their IT operations are more like a utility will probably benefit the most from the cloud; those where IT is a strategic, mission critical operation less so. If reliable scaling is what you need most then the "Cloud" (I still hate this term) is an attractive option. Even so you need to design your apps to scale, structure your data, and figure out how it will complement your systems architecture. I believe that there is a significant and long term future for it, but that it has a customer profile like all other products.
Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 21 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply