About Cloud Market

Note1: This is my vision of how future will unfold — doesn’t mean it is happening everywhere right at this moment. As the saying goes “The future is already here, its just unevenly distributed”.

Note2: I understand “Private Cloud” is semantics, I have written lot about it and how that term is problematic etc, the point here is I don’t believe comparing private cloud to a Cloud is an useful exercise. Whatever people call Private Cloud is just an extension of Data center technologies and I don’t believe they are doing themselves any favors calling it Cloud.

Few Observations on Cloud.

1. There is no private cloud — there is Data Center Automation and there are excellent vendors who provide exceptional solutions to squeeze more out of your existing hardware. Go talk to them if that’s what you want to do.

2. Customers do not want to buy new hardware. Visionaries and even early majority view buying new hardware and software as a fools errand.

3. Customers do not want to manage hardware, they hire a Cloud provider to buy services, not do plumbing themselves, even if your plumbing software is stellar.

4. Cloud is not about infrastructure, it is about consuming services ( infra services, app services etc )

5. Successful Cloud providers will accelerate customer’s journey to not owning a Data Center, not prolong it.

6. Application Development is key to customer success and customers want to consume services that enable this and not build it themselves. This means not building PAAS from Docker or some other misguided resume building exercise. Use AWS Lambda instead.

7. Data Centers are fast becoming Department of Typewriting. They are a relic of the past. ( see #5 )

8. A model where you try to rebuild cloud environment on customer premises will fail for customers. While vendors make implementation revenues, this model screws customers, so should be avoided.

9. Cloud bursting between on-prem and Cloud, between different Clouds is like amateurs digging for Gold. People who make money here are the people selling non working tools to these amateurs. This is “screw your customers” business model and is not long term viable.

10. No one has clarity as to how Cloud market will shape up, but “screw customer” business models will not last much longer.

Well, no post can be complete without talking about Docker. I view Docker as a stellar Data Center technology that you can use to squeeze more lemonade out of your data center lemons. ( see #1 ). When CSPs support Docker, that’s a sausage making detail that customers shouldn’t care about in long term.

Thats it folks. As you always expect, these are strong opinions — feel free to disagree, argue here or on twitter.