On 2017-07-13 John Lange wrote:
But sure, some Admins will insist that they can still do more with a horse and buggy than a newfangled truck, and truth be told, horses and buggies stuck around a long time after trucks were first invented so existing Admins will be around for many years to come.
Ah, the old fallacious ridicule/peer-pressure argument. Who would want to be the horse-riding luddite? Heaven, not me! No different from the "right side of history" (non)argument that is overused in similar circumstances.
Cloud, or whatever it's renamed during the next hype-phase, cannot ever replace all on-site servers (let alone desktops). The reason is it is mathematically impossible for the cloud providers to sell their service cheaper than the raw costs dictate. This especially applies in the instance where one needs a constant amount of resources over a long period of time. If I need 12 cores & 64GB steady for a project, and I am (or have on payroll) a computer expert, there is no way AWS or Azure can per-minute me that box for less than I can buy & run it myself.
In fact, I'd be extremely curious to see what multiple of (hard!) cost the cloud providers are using to determine pricing. For instance, if said box is $3k and has a usable life of 3 years, it's easy to add in A/C, etc., to get a TCO. Then figure out what cloud charges for the equivalent of said box. I would not be surprised if it is 2X, 3X or more. Of course it'll constantly be falling (as long as no mono/duo-polies arise) multiple, but it can never be less than 1X.
Granted, my scenario assumes a high level of local talent, and assumes a smaller (micro) level of scale. I'll gladly admit that cloud has its (small, albeit growing) niche, and excels in there. However, to say that niche will become as trucks are to horses smacks of over-optimism. Cloud's niche will grow to a certain level then stabilize. It will never be 99% of the computer market. It'll never be 99% of the server market. It'll never even be 99% of the web server market! I'll bet real money on that on any timeframe you wish during which we'll still be alive.
Also, any conversation about pie in the sky (get it??) technologies must be candid about the effect of geography and scale. A lot of us have learned that what works in Silicon Valley, New York and Toronto, don't necessarily apply to Winnipeg (or any smaller, lower cost of living, lower A/C costs, locale). And what applies to medium/large business does not apply to small/micro business. Adam mentioned the same thing: works great for Netflix, not for my local micro-retail customer. If you don't need quick-scaleability or high time-variability, or capex->opex, then I see very little value to cloud at all.
Additionally, and purely personal, cloud takes away the "fun" factor. I'm sure there's very few MUUGers who don't still get a kick of spec'ing and building a DIY workstation or server and firing it up. There's a sense of satisfaction. It'll be a sad day if/when we lose all sight of the actual hardware.
On 2017-07-13 Adam Thompson wrote:
I’m at least a decade past the “hey, it’s new, therefore it’s cool, therefore let’s use it!” stage, and well into the “yeah, sure, prove it” stage of life. Until someone can convince me that the New Ways Of Thinking actually represent an *improvement*, not just a *change*, over the old ways, I’m going to continue to regard them with extreme
Decade? Perhaps, for us, closer to two :-)
skepticism. Because I *was* one of those young turks who agitated for change, convinced that newer always meant better. Enough experience finally taught me otherwise. Especially when I note that we’ve basically gone right back to 1970-style Mainframe Partitions with semi-intelligent terminals; the problems we’re dealing with today on the web are EXACTLY the same problems we were dealing with in the early ‘80s with IBM/Amdahl mainframes and IBM 3270-style terminals… just with rounded corners and alpha transparencies. I honestly don’t see a lot of actual improvement in many (not all!) areas. “Everything Old Is New Again.” I’m tired of that hamster-wheel.
That's an astoundingly good commentary. Cloud is the same model as time-sharing: sure, vastly more powerful, but still the same model of grabbing a tiny slice of a monolithic hidden beast. Love the "rounded" and "alpha" (neither is on my box!). I can't think of one single actual UI improvement on the desktop in over a decade, save tabs in browsers. :-)