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Adopt the Cloud, Kill Your IT Career
snydeq writes "IT professionals jumping into the cloud with both feet beware: It's irresponsible to think that just because you push a problem outside your office, it ceases to be your problem. It's not just the possibility of empty promises and integration issues that dog the cloud decision; it's also the upgrade to the new devil, the one you don't know. You might be eager to relinquish responsibility of a cranky infrastructure component and push the headaches to a cloud vendor, but in reality you aren't doing that at all. Instead, you're adding another avenue for the blame to follow. The end result of a catastrophic failure or data loss event is exactly the same whether you own the service or contract it out.'"
no one even knows what the cloud is. It's everything, it's nothing, it's cheaper, it's not.
run your IT shop like everything else, with common sense. Can external hosting work sometimes? sure, if so, do it and stop worrying about it.
Since you "know computers" it will still be your problem.
If I had a dime for every time I got blamed or was asked to fix something that was clearly outside of my sphere of influence...
well, I probably wouldn't be reading slashdot right now.
I think that if we adopt the cloud model for our internal networks (i.e. a private cloud) that would help improve manageability of the network.
Rather then outsource to someone else's cloud, create your own.
I sort of agree with the blurb that started this thread.
Instead of being a skilled professional with power to change things and work on a problem, when you go to the cloud you demote yourself to a gopher who can only make complaints via a phone call when things don't work.
Aside from making yourself much more dispensable ( "Well, gee, *I* can call and complain too") you get the frustration of feeling powerless. At least with your own systems you can go in, take readings and try things.
I guess "cloud" at this point means, "Running your programs on a computer with a network connection."
Palm trees and 8
This has nothing specifically to do with "the cloud" at all. It's the same problem you have when you outsource anything -- the company you hired might not provide the quality you were expecting.
Can we please stop the re-hash of old ideas with buzzwords attached? This is a site for engineers, not MBA idiots.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Agreed. What's worse is that your skillset gradually atrophies away until you're barely able to do anything of value, other than manage "Sales Force" passwords, or write throwaway scripts to use against someone's proprietary API.
The hard stuff? Well, that's why we have consultants!
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
Campus decided to outsource our e-mail to Microsoft BOPS, rather than just do Exchange (or something else) on campus. Problem was that doesn't mean that suddenly campus IT just gets to say "e-mail isn't our problem, call MS!" No, rather IT still hast o do front line support but now when there's a problem you have to call someone else, get the runaround, finger pointing, slow response, and so on.
Net result? We now have an Exchange server on campus and do e-mail that way.
It isn't like outsourcing something magically makes all problems go away, particularly user problems. So you still end up needing support for that, but then you get to deal with another layer of support, one that doesn't really give a shit if your stuff works or not.
Basically people need to STFU about the "cloud" and realize that it is what it always has been: outsourcing and evaluate if it makes sense on those merits. Basically outsourcing is a reasonable idea if you are too small to do something yourself, or if someone does a much better job because they are specialized at it. If neither of those are true, probably best not to outsource.
"The end result of a catastrophic failure or data loss event is exactly the same whether you own the service or contract it out"
I disagree. Instead of your head rolling, its likely to be your cloud providers head. Much better- in my opinion. For somebody who does something useful besides maintaining an aging fleet of XP machines, I think the cloud really helps people and companies get past the IT technicalities and get back to doing work that is productive and makes money.
You save the hassles of maintaining a file server, daily backups, etc. Also gives more features as in the ability of sharing some docs with third parties for example.
Of course when the Feds seize the server because some users have been sharing their music and movies with third parties, you're screwed.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-01-07/
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
It doesn't matter if the processes that create the output are in your office, your server room or even your building. You're providing the services that produce the output the business needs and the business management wants. If I.T. has made the transition in your workplace to service provider you will always have a place as the person making sure the desired output is delivered. If management still sees I.T. as the people who take care of the computers then yes you'd have something to worry about.
I imagine that the MBAs realize it simply outsources the problems. From their perspective this is better. If the IT guys screw up then all they can do is fire them. If the Cloud has a problem, then they have a breach of contract with [Amazon/Microsoft/etc].
Whether or not they could recover any significant damages doesn't matter. Or the probability of failure. They have someone outside the organization to hold accountable. Someone who can be sued.
I have never ever met a co-worker with an IT title or job description who pushed for "Cloud" "Workflow" "CRM" "Near Sourcing" "Off Shoring" or whatever other new name for old tech that might fly across executive management's desk. That is for CEOs and people who don't know what the fuck they are talking about to chase, and for us to implement.
Are we talking about IT professionals or managers? Since outsourcing became a dirty word with a proven track record of job losses in exchange for questionable gains it was re-badged as the "cloud".
IT professionals by and large recognize in function that the cloud is just today's shiny version of a main frame and dumb terminals. IT Managers see the "Cloud" as a way to outsource services and reduce costs. We saw the same thing when everyone thought you could outsource all the IT jobs to India.
I'm at a place now where we have a brand new CIO. Our brand new CIO has heard about the BYOD trend. BYOD means that users buy their own computer and take purchase their own software. We will will even give the user an advance to pay for this. In and of itself this is not bad, but somehow the new CIO somehow thinks that this extends to our users also managing their own devices. In effect he thinks BYOD means that we can outsource computer management (back end stuff like patching, asset, inventory, licensing etc) to our user-base.
Outsourcing is outsourcing, whether it's to India, a contract house, the cloud or your own user base. Any time you hand over control to outsiders you are going to necessarily have problems, how does changing the label change the principals?
Moving to the cloud is easier, which is why we keep considering it. It is easier to off load the work onto some cloud operator who is supposed to do it better and possibly cheaper, or at least it LOOKS easier. No more dealing with backup tapes, No more dealing with software licenses and the like, just pay your vendor of choice copy all your data onto the cloud and start tossing hardware and the people that managed it out the door.
Problem here is that doing this job right, on a budget, and on time is FAR from easy. Plus, it is going to be very difficult to verify that your vendor is actually doing the job correctly, considering that the hardware isn't accessible, being located in some server room some distance away. Who knows if they actually do backups of anything, much less actually do off site storage of recovery media. My guess is that as competition in this area heats up, prices will fall with quality falling too. Costs will be trimmed by eliminating skilled labor and without skilled labor the whole house of cards will fall.
Seems to me that the cloud may be a short term gain for most, but in the long run, dumping your infrastructure and the people that go with it is going to bite you eventually, unless the business is very small.
Finally, the biggest messes I've had to clean up had very little to do with a hardware failure or some loss of data. The worst messes I've seen where caused by some administrative error.... Replacing the wrong disk in the RAID, causing the total data loss or not thinking though a command before hitting enter. I don't see how being on a cloud will fix this kind of thing.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I deal with large MFP copiers that can scan to email and I love "THE CLOUD". Since the two manufacturers I deal with cannot figure out TLS it's a huge issue. Then the IT guys yell at me cause he moved everything without ever asking if our equipment would have an issue.
Good thing Stunnel exists or we would be having major issues.
If you outsource most of your IT workload to the cloud, you'll be stuck with it, and it becomes very difficult to upgrade services/applications. I know some companies that outsource their email and regret it. They can't use addon features that some applications/databases require, service is painfully slow, archiving is a pain and expensive. It's just not worth it.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
When the Cloud is a bunch a servers that sit in the US which are subject to laws that enable the US to snoop through your private data at will the answer has been, and will continue to be "no".
Not to mention that more of those laws seem to be on the way. I would say that any business/government should find that it is unacceptable and unethical to potentially subject your clients to that (unless already subject to US law by residing there already in which case it doesn't really matter).
They didn't involve my office in the process at all. They knew they wanted to dump their big ERP for something else, but they chose a cloud based SaaS solution and we warned them that it was probably not a good idea considering their size. Now we get tech support calls almost every day complaining that the SaaS website is frozen, and all we can do is shrug and call the SaaS company's support line because we have no control over it. My boss didn't want to tell them "I told you so" but...
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
the "cloud" is the latest (in a long line) of over used buzz words
are you running a few virtual machines on a couple of midlevel servers? probably not "cloud computing"
are you considering virtualizing a large number of servers to achieve high performance/high availability/infrastructure as a service/or some other "as a service" buzzword? probably "cloud computing"
where your "cloud configuration" exists is another issue. there was an article (Forbes maybe) that pointed out how much less money is required to start/run an "Internet startups." With the "public cloud provider" being Amazon Web Services (i.e. just because you are using the "cloud" doesn't mean you outsourced everything)
remember that "I.T." is about helping a company do whatever it is they do - the need for "I.T. people" (especially in security, virtualization, and developers) is not going away, but if you are a "hardware only" tech, spending your day replacing power supplies and installing new hard drives, you don't have a future in corporate IT departments ...
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
It depends on what your role is. I work as a systems engineer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_engineering), but notably not in IT. My job involves a great deal of 'outsourcing' work to others, whether it is internal (specifying hardware or software requirements for other departments to build to) or external (coordinating suppliers and development partners). I'm responsible for making sure the integrated whole works; if I had to simultaneously know as much as the specialist engineers do on every single subject, from software algorithms to epoxy composition to thermal analysis (which would be impossible anyway) I wouldn't have time to do my job. Delegating that work to other specialists doesn't diminish my value; it empowers me to do other things. Sure, maybe some of my own original specialist skillset is diminished, but it is replaced with another skillset. So, I'm not sure the 'skills' argument is that important, unless as an individual IT worker you're concerned about staying in your field, which is your problem, not the companies.
Relinquishing control is a bigger issue. Sometimes that will work fine, sometimes it won't. One needs to analyze their situation, and do the risk assessments.
Lest your sanity leave you.
Fun when things break and you and the folks responsible for the "other" side of things get into a blame-pointing game in a conference call.
" You have a bad transmitter ! "
" No YOU have a bad receiver ! "
" I'm not seeing any data from you ! "
" We're seeing data leaving fine, must be a problem on your end ! "
Bad enough when this happens within the same company, a nightmare when two get involved. :|
The end result of a catastrophic failure or data loss event is exactly the same whether you own the service or contract it out.
This is MBA perspective, not in the trenches. In MBA-land a one day outage is a one day outage, doesn't much matter. In the trenches a one day cloud outage means you lay at the beach and occasionally dial into a conference call, whereas a one day non-cloud outage means you spend 24 hours in the office slinging hardware and backup tapes.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
All that stakeholders care about is results. If you have an infrastructure problem internally and push things to the cloud to solve it (as the summary discusses) and your cloud vendor is not 100%, your stakeholders are still going to come after you (meaning I.T.). After all, they really shouldn't have to worry about where data is stored or how it is accessed. That is your job (I.T.) not theirs. On the other hand, any problems with service affects their jobs and your department (I.T.) is at fault regardless if it is an internal problem or with a vendor you contracted with.
People complain about the bean counters all the time. They're a piece of cake, you just need to talk their language and show a decent ROI. Upset the sales or manufacturing side of things, though and you will be out on the street.
It's not that adopting the cloud kills your career. It's putting your career in the hands of outside vendors that has the potential to kill it.
All a recipe for disaster IMO.
Then again, I'm one of those infosec control-freak types who will corner a salesperson and brutally interrogate them over the crap their iPad has brought into my networks, or even better, the confidential documents they store in public, online data warehouses...
"You put WHAT on Google Docs??!!"
YMMV.
Keep it in house. That way, when something inevitably gets fucked, you can actually do something about it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/100000/60000/0000/400/160498/160498.strip.print.gif
Couldn't find the "mashup" on dilberts site, but still good.
Plus, your cloud vendor is in the IT business like everybody else. Like any IT business (or any business for that matter), they have a bottom line to watch and will choose to provide the minimal acceptable service to maximize profits, or they will charge a lot extra to exceed those standards. But, unlike your business, when they need to make business decisions that lead to cost reductions, you don't necessarily know about it until it is too late.
I have to agree. This summary is, well, crap. Anyone trying to "push problems" to somewhere/someone else rather than resolving the problem shouldn't be working in IT for a start.
This is another "fear the cloud, it eats babies" post, which are becoming more frequent recently. I know I'd never make a decision of how/where to host apps/services purely on one criteria, eg: getting rid of my local headache.
Yet another failure of an IDG article.
http://www.infoworld.com/print/195144
Discussion System prefs link: http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm
The trick is to get a job at a Cloud provider. No gopher status for me.
Most of the cloud (IaaS, SaaS, whatever) services out there boils down to this: you are outsourcing some or all of your infrastructure (losing control) and are still saddled with all of the responsibility to make it work.
It is yet another way to hack away at the internal IT cost center. Can "cloud" be a good idea? Sure, if you are delivering metered services (Netflix, SaaS), or are entirely office-less.
We outsourced our fax, CRM, and backup and it is "fine." Management thinks it's fantastic because it is so cheap... but I am sitting here right now waiting for a our fax system to come back online due to a cable outage in California (I'm in the midwest). That's the reality of this type of shift. I am completely responsible for this outage and I can do absolutely nothing to fix it or to prevent further outages (other than redundant services which management shot down due to cost).
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Fast, cheap, or easy. Pick one.
We're looking very seriously at the cloud for all new deployments and likely catching a few existing systems.
Not generic things like email or whatever, but for our own company applications. Cost is a major consideration sure, but honestly the biggest win I'm looking for is being able to specify a deployment in code (XML, whatever) and actually see it executed correctly and timely. The ability to deploy an entire infrastructure with the same ease we currently have of typing "make all" to compile.
Server allocations, network ACL settings, storage needs, all of it. All the stuff that currently takes 3-5 teams (DB operations, Sysadmins, Network Operations, etc, etc) a few weeks or months to do, screw up, screw up again, redo thrice, etc. None of this is particularly fancy or new, it's the same basic requests every time. Yet IT can never, ever deploy anything quickly, accurately, or efficiently.
And it's not just this company's IT. It's most every company's IT department. I know, I know, there's a bazillion reasons why this or that can't happen in whatever way, etc. I don't give a flying fuck about the excuses, by bosses sure as hell don't, at the end of the day NOT ONE is ever valid.
The cloud promises to replace all that repetitive deployment headache with the ability to simply specify what we need in a tidy little XML file and press Go. We're talking about taking a part of our SDLC that previously took weeks or months and doing it in seconds. Accurately. Reliably. Repetitively. Without complaints. Without obstacles. Without lost email. Without fat fingers.
That is why your IT department should be incredibly scared of the cloud. Because you've been doing a shit job for decades and now someone has finally figured out how to literally replace yall with 5 lines of script code.
This isn't a question of outsourcing ("internal" clouds are just fine), this is a question of obsolescence. Most of the human hands in a typical IT department are going to have all the modern relevance of a horse and buggy repairman.
My
I used to run regional ISP's for a living (~150k users in multiple states). As an ISP, we had "cloud" infrastructure before it was cool. Among other things we had high speed internet connections, PRI connections, and vendor outsourced dial-up pools. As the head of technology for these companies, I was unable to see anything past my router interface (except incoming traffic, of course). When the T-1 to a customer crashed, there was absolutely nothing I could do except make good and damn well sure it wasn't a hardware issue. If my dial-up lines were down, all I could do was, well, make good and damn well sure it wasn't my hardware at fault.
This problem is nothing new. What's new is scale, and in a way that is unprecedented. Back in the day we had T-3's and multiple PRI's, and, at the end, an OC-3, but that was about the extent of it. However, when managing "the cloud", you're talking about the network backbone, along with servers, storage, and who all knows what else. In other words, at the hardware level, you're damn near blind.
What could possibly go wrong? Oh, wait...
Even back then it was complex. My survival tactic was to learn how to make the guys at the other end of the telephone lines believe I worked for them when I called. That, and be really nice to the ones who could actually solve a problem and get their cell phone numbers (and Norm, if you're out there, thank you for your home phone number!).
As someone stated earlier, the "cloud" is that part of the Visio network diagram where you have no idea what the #@$& is going on or what the @#$* it is running on, and you have zero level of visibility to it. Hence, the term "cloud".
I spent many sleepless nights talking to Cisco's help desk in Australia and waiting in a queue at the RBOC's office to solve a problem I knew without a shadow of a doubt was not mine. (Except the one time it was, but that guy was pistol-whipped, sock-partied, and sacked. And then re-sacked to make sure.) I can't imagine how anyone over a decade later figures outsourcing *MORE* could be a fantastic career move, especially when the technology behind it isn't really all that old. At least OC-3's, PRI's, and T-3's had at least a decade of real-world use when I was doing it. Doing it on unknown code with vendors who can't possibly have more than a few years of experience? I don't think so.
Bill
When you make the conscious decision to use a word which means something different to every ear and carries a hopelessly ambiguous and nebulous definition then your a goddamn smurf.
If you like being blue, two apples tall, living in a mushroom house and having to wait in a (long long) line for smurfette...then by all means to the "cloud".
So, you want to keep your job. You read a nice, informative article on some businessy web site. OK, I'm never going to touch that cloud shit. I could get fired. Now, how do you manage your company's needs without using the cloud? I hope you know, hire people that know, etc. Because guess what happens if you lose all the data in that case?
Just tell your wife/mother, "Well, at least I didn't get fired for using the cloud!"
THANK YOU.
I am sick of people treating this concept as stupid when it's just fucking encapsulation
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
If you contact with a substantial company, and insure there are service agreements in the contract, with penalties for not meeting them, you will be no worse off than housing the data center on site.
Go with some fly by night or 1/2 free service, well, might as well have your boxes ready, just in case.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why don't we use hosted servers?
Think about it like this, a [industry] business is based on information, confidentiality and good reputation.
How would you like it if you were involved in a [transaction] with, say, a [business] who mishandled funds related to [your stuff]. Your [representative] puts all his files on a hosted EC3 or Azure server and there's a breach. Those documents could well include confidential communications, financial information, etc., etc., etc., Now your confidential information is out in the wild.
What would that say about the trustworthiness of your [representative] and his/her processes?
We employ multi-layered security to ensure that doesn't happen. We control who has physical access to our VM infrastructure as well as network access. Those who have administrative access are all employees of [business]. They're not employees of a third party who has no stake (other than retaining the revenue stream) in the success of the [business].
And I haven't even touched on the network bandwidth issues -- we have to manage and process huge amounts of data, much of which comes from our customers.. If I send you a couple dozen DVDs, will [your hosting provider] load them up onto the server? No? Then we have to transfer huge datasets of customer data across the internet So then we need to increase the size of our network pipes. What's the latency between [provider's] data centers and Europe? Asia?
We get anywhere from sub-millisecond to 10-15ms latency between our offices and our virtual infrastructure. Unless we move our offices into the [provider's] data centers, we won't get anything close to that.
I could go on and on and on.
Bottom line, hosted servers are great. 95% of our servers are VMs. We just host them on our own virtualization infrastructure. If you're a start up or a small company like [other person], it *may* make sense. For medium and large businesses, not so much.
It's all about fitting the infrastructure to the business model.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
The IT business loves its fads. Remember client/server? Remember when green screens were passe and everything had to be rewritten as a GUI? Remember when Novell Networking was all the rage? Remember when IBM's Systems Application Architecture (SAA) was hot stuff? Remember when COBOL then Java was going to be platform-independent and displace all other languages? Remember when everything was going to be outsourced to India, then Brazil? Remember when Unix then .NET was going to rule the world? Remember CompuServe, AOL and Prodigy, each ignoring the coming Internet?
.net are still here.
IT loves its fads, but then it gets tired and moves on to the newest shiny thing. Cloud computing is no different; this fad shall pass. But part of the fad will still be with us; after all, both Unix and
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
I wonder if this "fear the cloud" meme comes from the possibility that companies will be able to handle their IT needs without actually hiring any IT people? The office I work in is seriously considering moving into a tiny office suite with enough room for just a few people and the rest of us will telecommute. In support of this idea I've been pushing the use of Google Apps for Business.
I'm just wondering, but are IT people afraid of "the cloud" the way that autoworkers are afraid that their factories will be moved to the 3rd world?
-- QED
If it's only one customer upset enough about the problem then the $49.95 applies.
Even when it's as you've written above - that multiplied by all the customers on that server for instance, the care factor can still be close to zero. I've seen that with hotmail and a DNS configuration typo that put the email out of commission for a medium sized University among other customers, yet it was nearly a week before the problem came up in the queue to be fixed. The hosting provider didn't think it was likely that their customers would jump ship for a single outage like that, thus they expected zero financial repercussion, thus a care factor of close to zero.
Adopt or I will be happy to step in and help your management do it without you. Running services in the cloud does not mean you do not have to address backups, change management, disaster recovery, monitoring etc.
It does however mean I don't need to maintain hardware and networking gear including the FTE's required for those task.
The IT landscape shifts yearly adapt or get out of the way.
Got Code?
If it is in your data center guess what the feds will walk right in and take what they want anyhow.
Got Code?
Get your company's lawyers involved in negotiating with "cloud" providers. Make sure all the things that the "cloud" provider can screw up result in substantial financial penalties. Lawyers are paid to prepare for contingencies like that. If a "cloud" provider won't agree to enforceable service agreements, price out business interruption insurance coverage for the cloud provider's failure. Now you have a backup plan and costing for it.
Who cares about Google's Apps, beyond a functional example of an application deployed to their cloud?
We're not talking about using Google's Apps, rather we're talking about deploying our OWN custom applications. We're talking about transforming the idea of a physical data center to a virtual one.
If I need 5 servers to run my application I could find U10 of rack space in a data center somewhere, buy a bunch of hardware, rack it in, cable it up, install the OS, prereqs, etc.
Or...I could click "deploy" and have all of that happen in 60 seconds. Including live, hot failover DR for both data and systems, CDN, etc. And doing it for literally pennies compared to traditional datacenter deployment. What's not to love? (unless you're a sys admin or other IT support drone).
Cloud deployments are a complete no-brainer for nearly every application. The only exception at this point (and it won't be for long) are applications in PCI scope.
My
The end result of a catastrophic failure or data loss event is exactly the same whether you own the service or contract it out.
So under this amassing fucktard's blog of anti-cloud propaganda the summaries cradanzna ends with the point "your fucked either way" ...
I say except cloud is cheaper and business tends to go with the cheaper end of the-fucked-either-way stick.
http://dilbert.com/fast/2011-01-07/
Linux/Unix = fast. But only for smart people.
I learn someting useful every goddamn day. Fucking thanks.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
I have to agree. This summary is well.
I really love club dresses ,
Instead of being a skilled professional with power to change things and work on a problem, when you go to the cloud you demote yourself to a gopher
That is the point. As a manager I am looking to reduce costs. Why would I pay an engineer $80k/year to manage our infrastructure when I can pay an MSP to supply the same service for $10k/year? Maybe I then hire a $30k/year helpdesk 'gopher' to be the gateway between users and MSP support and I save 50% off my budget while delivering the same service. Cloud isn't the answer for everything, but for a lot of cases it is a lot more cost effective way of delivering IT.
If it's a sever that you rent, which might be virtual, then why not call it a rental [virtual] server?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I think that's a part of it. But only for those "Baron Von Raisedfloor", technology preventer, homo-club IT types. Those guys who build IT practices and policies so as to make themselves seem invaluable and put-upon at all times. Your Nick Burns, Sr. types. They fear losing all the warm machines and being able to barge into people's offices.
OK. You're talking about SDN. While it is a fundamental leap forward in configuration management, it shifts the responsibility of knowing how the hell the network is put together from network engineers and admins to programmers. Those "five lines of XML" (Just in time for JSON to completely take over) represent features offered by the network, storage and/or virtualization systems, each with a =vast= domain of knowledge. Can your system tune itself for distributed database performance based on your application? Of course it can't. Oracle and IBM have been trying for 35 years. ("NoSQL" vendors have gone from "next big thing" to "the new standard to replace the obsolete RDBMS" to "a valuable component in a larger infrastructure" to "Hey, everyone, let's go do NewSQL now!" in less than half a decade.) Howabout load balancers? Take a look at a F5 or Fortibalance manual lately? Application-specific firewalls from Imperva? Client compliance and patching systems from Juniper?
It's possible to push these decisions to "the cloud", but they will be simple default configurations that will fall over and die, and when you contact the "cloud" vendor, solutions will be expensive - optimization for reliability and performance takes money, time and manpower, in-house or outsourced. Also, now that manpower has to be both a network/database engineer =and= a software developer, and those five lines of XML sure bred like bunnies, didn't they? So now the configuration needs to be integrated into a development workflow, and sent through QA (a specialized QA who knows about modern load balancing and database optimization) and then through the compliance tools and possibly a manual audit.
I'm not saying SDN isn't the way forward - it clearly is - I'm saying it's barely keeping up with advances in technology, and in no position to obsolete anyone in the IT department. Silver Bullets are, as ever, a myth.
So their daily cash transactions are all handled by a bank and not their in house accountants or clerks?
Cheap storage VM.
In my case, it's less a fear of job outsourcing and more a fear that those moving the infrastructure don't understand what they are giving up. The "cloud" makes sense in some cases and I make use of it myself, but a private "cloud" is often better with lower costs. Use the right tool for the right job, don't try to take your lug nuts off with a screw driver because it's shiny and someone you know did it.
Cheap storage VM.
Cloud is RARELY cheaper. If you're making that argument you clearly haven't done a CAPEX and OPEX comparison. The argument is: if it breaks internally, you can set realistic expectations of recovery time. If it breaks in the cloud you get to sit on your thumb and hope someone clued is looking at it. If you've migrated 90k users you might have someone you can dial up and yell at. If you've moved over your shop of 50 employee's you can send an email and hope for the best.
Once you kick everything to the cloud, a monkey could run the infrastructure. There is no such thing as a client-side cloud operational specialist. You don't configure when to upgrade, alter, or even reboot the servers that you don't own or have any control over. A secretary could run it. Basically if you're going to be a company's "cloud operator" then you better have a 2nd degree in marketing or sales or learn janitorial services really fast.
Ever heard of vMotion? Buying an el cheapo Amazon box and expecting it to out perform a fully pledged DR process simply because its in the cloud is senseless.
Build a proper PaaS/IaaS service in cloud and it takes years off the overall cost. I'd start with cost comparisons of collaborative email. For example, as soon as you start hitting Microsofts CALs licenses you're paying a yearly cost for the service. With the cloud you're simply without the cost of having to pay for hardware upgrades every 2 years as the licenses are spread out over a 24 month break down, which works in line with the 20 year hardware deprecation gap. Even better is if you already have an on premises license with MS because you can simply take advantage of their license mobility and assurance program.
MS doped their pants for cloud by doing this and I think that's a good indicator that its cheaper.
As for your budget comparison, I'm confused, are you inferring that because Cloud switches costs under OPEX as my statement above stipulates, you carry the cost over a 12/24 month "pay as you go" concept evening out the cost and substantiating its use better? Most businesses love the idea of this because it means that they gradually pay for what they use when they use it. Rather than a yearly shopping spree where they have to fork out for a pile of money at the beginning of every FY? and maybe just maybe that's why shitloads of IT projects fail in the ass and maybe just maybe the accountability of Cloud ensures its success ... just spit balling here but that's what ive seen happening in my job.
2 year not 20 typo
I wonder if this "fear the cloud" meme comes from the possibility that companies will be able to handle their IT needs without actually hiring any IT people? The office I work in is seriously considering moving into a tiny office suite with enough room for just a few people and the rest of us will telecommute. In support of this idea I've been pushing the use of Google Apps for Business. I'm just wondering, but are IT people afraid of "the cloud" the way that autoworkers are afraid that their factories will be moved to the 3rd world?
As a veteran IT guy, I am blissfully unconcerned about being superannuated because of hosted apps/hosted servers/software as a service/etc. There will always be a need for (no, a shortage of) quality IT people. The people who need to be concerned are those who cannot or will not adapt to changes in both technology and in the business climate.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr