A lesson for those who think the cloud is great

[CheeseSlice]

It's not just Cloud, though.

E-Health Insider :: 2e2 customers to stump up £1m

holy tulip!

can't help but though

[speling bee]

holy tulip!

can't help but though

Some kind of insurance against supplier failure may have been helpful.

[tomtomagain]

The "Cloud" is completely inevitable. "Software as a Service", "Platform aaS" and "Infrastructure aaS" ... they are all coming our way.

Sure there will be the odd hiccup, disaster and scandal. But these things can be sorted out over time.

Cloud is going to gut in-house IT teams. It's going to completely hammer the outsourced providers. It might take a decade or so, but I would be surprised if there were many "IT" people left working in companies by 2024.

The people who will thrive? They will be the ones who understand the "domain" they operate in, can add genuine value to their customer and have technical skills to deliver a competitive advantage.

[vwdan]

Not gonna lie - I'm kind of happy about this. I'm not "anti-cloud" and, indeed, my specialism is kind of cloud driven, but I am sick to death of people thinking that Amazon is some kind of one stop shop and a "Next Next Next" fully functional, resilient infrastructure that can never go wrong.

[CloudWalker]

I currently work in a cloud provider who specialize in migrating whole businesses from on site to the Cloud.... hope they don't read this

[tomtomagain]

Not gonna lie - I'm kind of happy about this. I'm not "anti-cloud" and, indeed, my specialism is kind of cloud driven, but I am sick to death of people thinking that Amazon is some kind of one stop shop and a "Next Next Next" fully functional, resilient infrastructure that can never go wrong.

Look at the industry dynamics.

ALL the major players want it. Amazon, Google, Apple, SAP, Oracle, IBM etc ..... and they create hardware and software we all use. Like it or not, they define the industry we operate in.

ALL the major companies want it ( well at least their CIO's do ). They don't have to run expensive ( and risky ) projects to deploy stuff, they don't have to employ expensive, skilled staff, they don't have to employ temporary skilled staff.

On your point regarding resilience. Firstly they are already pretty damn good. Much better than the majority of in-house IT departments. They are only going to get better.

If you haven't done so already. Sign-up for a Windows Azure account. What it gives you is pretty mind-blowing if you think back to how IT was in 2000. I am using it for my business. Essentially I have access to the same quality infrastructure ( or better ) than a FTSE 100 company ..... on a pay-as-you-go basis.

And if you haven't done so already. Sign-up for a Office 365 trial. For a few pounds a month it gives you, email, document sharing, instant messaging, file sharing and the office suite of applications. Again this is what 90% of people working in companies use.

Companies that produce widgets do not want to employ people watering and patching servers. They do not want to employ people who can code. They want to employ people who understand widgets.

This is why they will eventually simply sign a contract to host the majority of their IT on a cloud. So they can get on with what they really value.

This is also why if you stay close to the business and keep a technical edge then you have a good chance of prospering. Migrating companies to the cloud is surely going to become a big area of IT in the next few years.

Then of course there is "Fixing the problems caused by migrating to the cloud" a few years later.

If you specialise in patching Windows servers or deploying storage you should start looking for a new niche.

As I said though the likes of Wipro, Infosys will struggle far more than nimble contractors.

[CheeseSlice]

If you specialise in patching Windows servers or deploying storage you should start looking for a new niche.

What do you think those cloud platforms run on? white fluffy nothingness?

[VectraMan]

The "Cloud" is completely inevitable. "Software as a Service", "Platform aaS" and "Infrastructure aaS" ... they are all coming our way.

Sure there will be the odd hiccup, disaster and scandal. But these things can be sorted out over time.

Cloud is going to gut in-house IT teams. It's going to completely hammer the outsourced providers. It might take a decade or so, but I would be surprised if there were many "IT" people left working in companies by 2024.

The people who will thrive? They will be the ones who understand the "domain" they operate in, can add genuine value to their customer and have technical skills to deliver a competitive advantage.

But is it just the computing industry going round the same old circle: move everything to the server, move everything to the desktop, move everything to the server...

And if the likes of AWS don't make it a bit more idiot proof (e.g. by taking care of backup for you), then you'll still need IT people who can correctly setup and administrate AWS.

I'm glad I don't work in IT. I work in software.

[CheeseSlice]

Essentially I have access to the same quality infrastructure ( or better ) than a FTSE 100 company ..... on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Thats what its sold as, but the reality is shove as much onto as few boxes, with as few support staff as possible. When things start going wrong you'll be put through a crackly line onto an indian call center trying to describe why your multimillion pound business is losing 10's of thousands of pounds per second because the web service is returning HTTP 404.
As with all of these initiatives, whilst commodotising the product sounds sensible, the provider is trying to commoditise the customer by providing naff, bare minimum service at minimum cost. That is the real dynamic of the industry - in search of ever more profit.

I think you're confusing the self-service and convenience aspects of cloud computing with the quality of platform and service. The latter tend to be a lot lower than what you could do yourself with a solid IT department that is local and understands the business also.

[NickFitz]

AWS blows goats. Azure ftw.

But the company whose misfortune is the subject of the thread used AWS, so Azure is