“The cloud” does not exist, it’s just someone else’s computer.
I mean…
I gotta say, I really hate it when people say this statement.
That’s a pithy saying, but the cloud is a totally different model than a “computer”.
The concept of “cloud” (generally) has its own way of interacting with tooling, it’s got a huge economy of scale that brings resiliency, a ton of interconnected services, etc. There’s more to it than just computers.
That’s like saying “the Highway doesn’t exist, it’s just someone else’s driveway.”—yeah, but there’s more to it than just streets.
I work in a company that runs an own cloud for most of it’s business operations and for customers. I know where the data center is and when I go there I SEE the computers running the cloud.
It’s physical hardware running virtual machines and storage servers, and network switches with absurdly and unnecessary complex configuration, all owned by, well, someone else (the company).
So yes, the features of “the cloud” are distinct from your everyday stuff done on the computer sitting under your desk, but it really is just someone else’s computer running “the cloud”.
That’s true in the same way as you are nothing else but molecules and some biochemical reactions.
It’s reductionist, and otherwise not a useful description of a human, tells nothing about interaction possibilities, lifestyle or lifespan for example.
It’s also not an accurate description, because “molecules and biochemical reactions” describes very very many life forms, just as “a computer” could be your smartphone. But aside from both being a computer, a smartphone is quite distinct from a cloud.
Isn’t part of “the cloud” being able to scale? That only works if there is a large® shared infrastructure layer. Of course I can have my own datacenter where I host my clustered services. But if I decide I need 20% more resources, I need to order and setup 20% more machines. On the other hand, if I just keep 20% machines idling around for the chance that I might need to scale up, I waste a lot of money.
An ant hill isn’t an ant. Your consciousness isn’t a neuron. The cloud is an abstraction on top of all that hardware. Each individual machine is simple and volatile, but a network of machines around the world offering reliability and resiliency create a new thing entirely that we call “the cloud”.
That’s a very simplified version of it that just ignores the premise though. The cloud does a lot of things that locally-hosted software and content does not, and not all of it is simply by nature of being on another PC
Hence why the article seems to suggest advancing P2P for more uses, which is another way to visit another computer, but has many differences from visiting “The Cloud”
More accurately, it’s someone else’s network of pluggable computers. “The cloud” is just a convenient metaphor for “it’s up there,where someome else keeps it working”.
The point is to free up resources in individual companies that would otherwise be used maintaining the infrastructure.
In a lot of companies that translates to having fewer employees to pay. Enlightened companies keep those people and allocate them to other, profitable, activities.
A wonderful and Powerful effect of vitualization is the idea of declarative infrastructure. Individual companies can allocate those Cloud resources in specialized ways. It’s primary value is in economies of scale.
Tangentially: Microsoft Teams and SharePoint web infuriate me daily. All the functions that should be separate programs are rolled up into one inseparable window forcing you into a single task workflow.
Want to have two folders open at once that you can drag between? Want to copy a file to your desktop? Read a message from a colleague while looking at a planner item? Pretty much any basic task that Windows 95 can handle with ease? You’re screwed.
These are all things that should be separate programs handled by the OS and a samba share. The MS Office ecosystem has regressed massively over just a few short years thanks to teams.
Holy shit I suffer from this daily, and I notice no one else complains in my company.
I’ve been using Norton Commander and then Total Commander for like 20+ years and I’m used to being able to do everything with a couple of keypressings, and now I’m being obligated to deal with multiple slow clicks and awkwadly placed menus to do the most simple task.
I tried using the SharePoint Plugin for TC, but it requires the freaking pope to allow my loggin.
I tried using the SharePoint Plugin for TC, but it requires the freaking pope to allow my loggin.
“The power of Microsoft compels you!”
“The power of Microsoft compels you!”
“The power of Microsoft compels you!”
“Please just let me in FFS!”
Error 53003: Your sign-in request was blocked due to a conditional access policy configured on the Tenant where you tried to authenticate.
We have already seen the effects of over-reliance on a few CDNs and cloud providers: One bad push, one ill intentioned employee and potentially entire portions of the web might become unaccessible. That by itself should have been the end of this business model long ago
So you’re recognizing that a bad command execution can exist in CDN or cloud provider, but where is your recognition of the tens of millions off bad command executions that happen in small IT shops every month?
I looks like you’re ignoring the practical realities that companies rarely ever:
- hire enough support staff
- hire enough skilled staff
- invest in enough redundant infrastructure to survive hardware or connectivity failures
- design applications with resiliency
- have high enough rigor for audit, safe change control, rollback
- shield the operations stupid decisions leads impose because business goals are more important that IT safety
All of these things lead to system impacts and downtime that can only come from running your own datacenters.
The cloud isn’t perfect, but for lots and lots of companies its a much better and cheaper option than “rolling your own”.
but where is your recognition of the tens of millions off bad command executions that happen in small IT shops every month?
A bad command execution in a small IT shop will only bring down a couple of websites at most. A bad command execution in large cloud providers can literally make significant portions of the web unavailable, just by the sheer number of services dependent on it.
The same applies for most of the “practical realities” you noted out: Redundant infrastructure can only work as well as the software running on it. The convenience is not worth the risk.
A bad command execution in large cloud providers can literally make significant portions of the web unavailable, just by the sheer number of services dependent on it.
You can’t have it both ways. You’re trying to call out all of the benefits of running your own infra, but then calling out the downsides of public cloud. Talk apples to apples or oranges to oranges. The point I’m making in the post you’re responding to is that “rolling-your-own” as an organization, specifically a small or medium sized one, comes with risks that far outweigh the costs and risks of public cloud.
The convenience is not worth the risk.
That is not the opinion of non-IT business leaders make decisions to the detriment of the advice of IT departments. You’re ignoring that good IT decisions don’t get to be make by good IT professionals. You’re always limited to the budget and power granted by your organization. That is the practical reality.
If no legal issues stand in your way and your uptime requirement warrant the invest, you can design and host your system across multiple providers. So instead of “just” going multi-datacenter within for example Azure, you go multi-datacenter across Azure, AWS, GCP, etc.
The problem with that, is that you now have to maintain virtual infrastructure in many different syntaxes. And features of one do not exist in another.
Plus things like cash and session do not cross those boundaries.
I generally think the Cloud is popular for a reason—it has different benefits and downsides to local storage and should be considered separate, as they have different purposes. Now if you’re talking about a company forcing you to use their cloud when you don’t need to, that’s different. But there’s no denying it’s useful for the specific use cases.
