What's new

Fear and Loathing of the Cloud - Part 2

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

They want money. If control gets them that, then they want that too.

Hardware is a dead business. There isn't any profit anymore. The whole concept of boxes is now called "SRE" - service-related equipment. They only sell devices to facilitate services which can not only be monetized but at a high margin.

Circular reasoning at it's best.
 
Reasoning has nothing to do with it. It's not a theory.

Your statement that functioning hardware with a one time cost for users is a dead business is a theory.

Like I already stated, for the biggest users, the cloud is an option because they can build it from the ground up. Unlike any consumer with a consumer budget.

Reasoning has everything to do with it. Nobody will pay for each piece of equipment they own at an ever increasing cost just to do what they did 'yesterday' with a one time cost of the equipment itself.

This is one of the reasons PC's were born in the first place. Known cost with many (usage) options.
 
They want money. If control gets them that, then they want that too.

Hardware is a dead business. There isn't any profit anymore. The whole concept of boxes is now called "SRE" - service-related equipment. They only sell devices to facilitate services which can not only be monetized but at a high margin.

And this is changing the landscape in a big way... from the FAAN's to the GERQYM's, it's SRE, driven by SDN and NFV - all players in the stack are going cloud in a big way...

FAAN - Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix
GERQYM - Google, Ebay, RedHat, Qualcomm, Yahoo, Microsoft

I'd toss Oracle/Cisco into that basket somewhere, as they've been very active on the M&A activities to get a better position in this paradigm shift that we're currently seeing..
 
This is one of the reasons PC's were born in the first place. Known cost with many (usage) options.

Got too expensive in the long run... costs rule in the service provider world...

Case in point - IBM Blade Center Chassis - 8 blades, 2 sockets each... can run at most 16 instances of the same application without virtualization - running VM in a private cloud, can run over 200 VM's without breaking a sweat, and easily 10 times more utilization of the same hardware...
 
Got too expensive in the long run... costs rule in the service provider world...

Case in point - IBM Blade Center Chassis - 8 blades, 2 sockets each... can run at most 16 instances of the same application without virtualization - running VM in a private cloud, can run over 200 VM's without breaking a sweat, and easily 10 times more utilization of the same hardware...


Uhm, okay. But PC's we're made with government's in mind nor country scaled enterprises either. Same as your example; nobody on the consumer side needs that today or in the next few decades either.
 
My ex-employer as I left was moving to virtual desktops - regular PCs/MACs but VMs running "desktops". All enterprise apps on the virtual desktop. No access to enterprise servers other than via virtual desktop. To include VPNs for remote users. All company info/email on the servers. Security, Security, Security. Not economics.

I am reminded of this:
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowl...com.ibm.zos.znetwork/znetwork_261.htm?lang=en
No disk. No removable media
 
My ex-employer as I left was moving to virtual desktops - regular PCs/MACs but VMs running "desktops". All enterprise apps on the virtual desktop. No access to enterprise servers other than via virtual desktop. To include VPNs for remote users. All company info/email on the servers. Security, Security, Security. Not economics.

I am reminded of this:
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowl...com.ibm.zos.znetwork/znetwork_261.htm?lang=en
No disk. No removable media

Yes, security, security, security.

But the economics of it are a no-brainer. Supporting 20K laptops running Win8/10 vs. running 20K bricks with VDI? VDI comes in at 1/4 to 1/3 of the price tag once support and soft costs are figured in.
 
apparently, in the US, we don't want no stinkin' manufacturing.

Good God, no. It costs too much to make it here and can't sell it for any profit regardless.

Might as well avoid any politically-charged discussion but I find the consumer electronics market to be kind of depressing myself.
 
With the cloud, it all depends on the expectation, and what is being offered to the customer. With facebook, I don't expect them to be around forever, and if they die today, I lose nothing. For netflix, if they die at the end of the billing cycle, then I lose nothing. For amazon, if they die right now, I lose nothing.

Now suppose I have a router or AP that is entirely managed in the cloud, if they die, then the product I spend money on, becomes a paperweight, and I have to spend more money to buy new hardware the do the exact same thing and likely the same performance as the old hardware.

From a consumer standpoint, when you buy a product that offers a specific function that shouldn't need the cloud, then they are buying it with the expectation that it will die at any moment, The average customer will not feel comfortable buying a product if they know that the CEO of the company had what is effectively a kill switch of the product the consumer was using.

Would you buy a cloud reliant pacemaker?

Would you buy a cloud reliant CPU? There are many people who are still using their core i7 2600k in their gaming PC (because when overclocked, it does not really bottleneck modern games). How would those users feel if their CPU relied on Intel keeping a special DRM like server running, and how would that feeling be if Intel killed the server 2 years after the release of the CPU?

The cloud is perfectly fine for services that truly benefit from it (e.g., can you imagine facebook working without the "cloud" (download the entirety of facebook and then use the site to chat with yourself).

As a forum member recently showed with a cloud reliant AP, a product you purchase can be crippled at the whims of a company (I highly doubt that the change was a unintentional, as such a change would never make it past QA if it was unintentional).

When you buy a non cloud reliant product, you can use it with confidence knowing that it will offer its functionality for as long as you want to use it.
I have been to factories which still have equipment running DOS, if those systems required a "cloud" service to function, do you think that the cloud service would be available and maintained from the 80's, all with no additional cost?

At the consumer level, the cloud always increases the total cost of ownership of the physical device. As seen with cloud reliant security cameras, APs, and various other products, they start to charge reoccurring fees to previously free functions For example moving the web UI from being locally hosted on the device or a local system, and shifting it to a remote server that you now have to pay a monthly fee to access it. Or if you look at some cloud reliant security cameras, you are often charged a steep monthly fee to record footage, all while providing a lesser experience (e.g., you often will not get a very responsive timeline that you can scrub through in order to quickly spot something of interest that may not be in your motion detect zone). If I wanted 5 cameras recording to the cloud, I would spend a lot of money, especially if I wanted 4-8TB of storage of the footage. For me, the one time upfront cost of the system because it will offer its full functionality. If Western Digital goes out of business, my 4TB WD red drives will still work. If Intel goes out of business, the CPU in the system will still work. If Asus goes out of business, the motherboard in the system will still work. If Nvidia goes out of business, the GPU will still continue to work.

I can pay a netflix subscription to get tons of good entertainment in the form of well made movies and TV shows. Why would I want to convert to a system and pay an even higher monthly cost to record footage like this (recorded this a few weeks back).
(detail is not present but the action can be considered NSFW in terms of what the neighbor is doing to my fence).



Compare the cost of a 5 IP camera system recording to a local system, to the cost of having 5 dropcams in addition to paying for their recording service for the cameras. (If I was willing to pay that kind of money, I would just work on tiling my walls with new harddrives instead of deleting old footage).

Quote from their site

"1st Dropcam: $29.95 / month or $299 / year (two months free!)
Each additional Dropcam on 30-day cloud recording, 50% discount: $14.95 / month or $149 / year (that's two months free!)"

A cloud reliant physical product, is the worst state to be in as a consumer, It primes you for far more abuse because you are anchored to a cloud service. With things like netflix, crunchyroll and various other services, it is easy to drop them if they try and screw you over, but if you have a physical product tied to it, and say the company does an unnecessary price increase, you will be more likely to accept it if the alternative means that you have to turn your expensive product into a paperweight.
 
Last edited:
Razor512, you said it perfectly.

Cloud based 'stuff' is not cheaper for the consumer in the long run. The exact opposite and you showed that well.

I would also add the security issue of cloud based 'solutions' too. Another login/password is needed to access something in your life. More possibility that that login/password is hacked (simply because it is facing the www 24/7 and hackers can do it at their leisure and they don't necessarily need to attack 'you', they attack the cloud company instead). In addition, the fact that most use the same login/passwords for all or most of their online activity leads to more security fails. Of course, that last is not the 'cloud solution' provider's fault, but it still plays a big part in how I perceive 'the cloud' when used with physical hardware that can run better, cheaper and far, far longer without it.

Is the way business happens changing? Yes.

That is just all the more reason for consumers to be even more wary. Not to blindly believe that the 'cloud companies' have their best interest at heart.
 
Most cloud services have suffered data loss or data disclosures, due to disgruntled ex-employees or contractors. More likely than hackers.
This is the reason one should not upload client or personal private information. Most providers encrypt for transport on the Internet, decrypt, then re-encrypt for storage with a key that they know but try to control need-to-know within their company.
So if you must upload or backup private info to a cloud service, encrypt it yourself with software that is unrelated to the service provider's software.
Service providers (mostly) encrypt for storage in order to be able to answer a court order for disclosure.

Or just don't upload sensitive info like healthcare (HIPAA), financial, legal.

My ex-investment advisor's firm naively used Drop Box without security, and used a third party "data vault" service. The advisor had no clue if these were a risk - either security or data loss.

I also paid for a service provider for my customer's project. The provider's RAID crashed and they couldn't recover. I had a month old backup on my own backup of THEIR RAID that saved the day. The providers pointed to obscure language in the Terms and Conditions that relieved them of liability. Despite the written Marketing/sales promise of five 9's, blah, blah.
 
Last edited:
Most cloud services have suffered data loss or data disclosures, due to disgruntled ex-employees or contractors. More likely than hackers.

Most disclosures - cloud or not - are mistakes/errors... either in code by developers, or deployment by operations... rarely in design, but that also happens, esp. when multiple teams are working on the same data set...
 
Are you guys done yet? It's really a echo chamber in here. Same people repeating the same complaints over and over...

Then again, I suppose everyone needs a hobby.
 
Razor512, you said it perfectly.

Cloud based 'stuff' is not cheaper for the consumer in the long run. The exact opposite and you showed that well.

I would also add the security issue of cloud based 'solutions' too. Another login/password is needed to access something in your life. More possibility that that login/password is hacked (simply because it is facing the www 24/7 and hackers can do it at their leisure and they don't necessarily need to attack 'you', they attack the cloud company instead). In addition, the fact that most use the same login/passwords for all or most of their online activity leads to more security fails. Of course, that last is not the 'cloud solution' provider's fault, but it still plays a big part in how I perceive 'the cloud' when used with physical hardware that can run better, cheaper and far, far longer without it.

Is the way business happens changing? Yes.

That is just all the more reason for consumers to be even more wary. Not to blindly believe that the 'cloud companies' have their best interest at heart.


"Cloud Stuff" can certainly be cheaper. I see it every day as we phase-out/replace big old fire breathing furnace servers....and replace them with cloud based servers, for small to medium businesses. When you add up the *cost for hardware...servers, plus *cost for server licenses, plus *cost for battery backup, plus *cost for backup/disaster recovery, plus *cost for IT to maintain the servers, plus *cost to refresh the server hardware every 3-5 years, plus *cost of electricity of running those big furnace servers, plus *cost for cooling the server room..maintaining a 65* temp, plus....<the list goes on..and on..but this covers "some" of the big factors.

...versus, a cloud based subscription model.

Of the past couple of years, I've migrated a LOT of businesses from full local servers, to hybrid setups w/cloud and smaller local servers, to 100% cloud...and all sorts of combinations in between.

I actually miss the HUGE profits we made from server installs and server migrations and server replacements. Making fat profit on the sale of 5 and 10 and 15 thousand dollar servers....plus another 5 or 10 or 20 grand and sometimes more in labor charges. Oh yeah....we ate thick juicy steaks and drank expensive wine all the time back in those days.

And then a few years ago, this "cloud" thing came in. Microsoft replace Small Business Server (a big part of our bread and butter) with hybrids of local servers and Office 365...or all O365. I panicked at all the money we'd lose...not only from the initial sale of servers and migrations, but all the fat recurring revenue too....our e-mail filtering for local Exchange servers, our monthly maintenance (MSP) fees for maintaining servers...monitoring, updates, etc. "The Cloud" stuff was taking all of that away! I feared having to eat 99cent Raman Pride noodle soup every night instead of 2.5" thick New York Strip steak and expensive wine or bottls of Guinness!

...but like Clint Eastwood said in one of his little know movies Heartbreak Ridge..."Adapt and Overcome!"
and we did. We jumped on the Microsoft CSP program and through volumes of O365 sales...have some steady monthly coming in, and of course other MSP things have grown. We're starting to at least eat a steak a month or sometimes two steaks a month again.

Savings....to the clients, yes...I see them all the time. Smaller monthly payments versus a huge initial purchase, and then monthly maintenance, and then hardware refreshments every 3-5 years with a huge initial cost again...repeat cycle..repeat cycle. Not to mention savings on much less invested in disaster recovery. And that can lead to savings in cyber insurance too.

IT Consulting/services/support is what I do for a living, for...nearly 20 years now.
As for "security" of data.....sure, if some people select some fly by night cloud host...yeah, there is a slight worry they can pack up in the middle of the night and relocate to south america and you'll never see your data again. But...I prefer to say...do you homework, select legit, solid companies to host your data at.

...and more importantly regarding data...you do realize that the vast majority of residential users have insecure home networks, and a large percentage of those are infested with botnets and trojans. Pretty much the same goes for businesses, I'd wager that >50% of business networks are rife with trojans and bots.....quietly taking their "data". The good trojans and bots aren't detected. Only the poorly written ones are. And we don't even have to talk about ransomware....holy cow is that stuff exploding all over. Can't tell you how many situations I've seen where servers tanked, or ransomware hit, or malware hit...and compromised data..and the client had no good, monitored backup. Yeah..."Whoops!!!"

Cloud based biz networks take away much of that worry.
 

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top