Interesting point of view on how cloud service providers are haemorrhaging cash to sustain these models in the hope they'll win big in the long run.
As data storage and compute costs fall they may well be able to sustain existing pricing though I suspect ultimately they'll need to ratchet things up. Cost comparisons are also hard to get right due to the complexity of pricing from suppliers and I also believe the difference in architectural patterns used in the cloud versus on premise further complicates things (something for another day).
What I do know is that their are those in the industry who cannot afford to be left behind in the race to the cloud; IBM, Microsoft and Google notably. They will likely be pumping all they can into the cloud to establish their position in the market - and maintain their position generally...
I also must wonder how many systems transition from "cloud" to dedicated/managed hosting providers once companies do the maths on what it'll cost them to run their apps in the cloud over a period of 3 years or more ............
ReplyDeleteNext thought do cloud providers need lots of people to come in and out of their hosting environment to make money, or do they bank on long term retention to pay the bills... hmm ....
In theory the cost savings can be substantial. In practice the cost models are complicated and may be overlooked by architects and developers in the rush to migrate to the cloud. When the bill lands the CFO may have something unpleasant to say... We need to do our own cost models and projections but perhaps we should also have an exit strategy in mind to move off a cloud provider if needs must. Unfortunately industry standards aren't exactly prominent in the nebulous world of cloud so finding an alternative once you've bought into the various capabilities of one provider isn't going to be easy.
ReplyDeletePersonally I think cloud is pretty cool but I suspect you're right and they'll be a backlash at some point with some major outages and/or orgs moving back to their own tin as the charges mount. By then the world will have moved on though and hopefully the standards and options will have coalesced somewhat... hmm indeed...