Is the cloud dead? Nope.

So, my two cents on if the cloud is dead or not. (If Sun Microsystem was still around I would crack a joke on Sun being good with Clouds. But I don't).

I read that people start moving off the cloud and back on-prem and saving truckloads of money in the process, maybe enough for a gallon or two of gas so you can fill up your Ferrari (for example see https://basecamp.com/cloud-exit and https://shiftmag.dev/leaving-the-cloud-314/). On the other hand, I also see statistics showing that the cloud is growing, for example here: https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/global-cloud-services-q2-2023. What that last article says is that growth is slowing down, but it is still growing at a healthy rate.

So, what is all this about? I have some ideas of my own here, really (surprise!) and that what the rest of this artile is about. On one hand, if you move from on-prem to the cloud and think that this will be just like having all your computer cabinets, netwok switches etc. just like before, but have someone else managing the hardware, then you are likely going to fail and will not benefit from the #1 reason you likely went to the cloud to begin with: saving cost! Really, to benefit from the cloud you want to take advantage of how the cloud works, using the services provided by the cloud vendors, create and remove instances and other reasources as they are needed and prepare your application for an infrastructure that is moving and changing at times. If all you want is servers running linux on fixed IPs and have system that assume that all services are always available and are always, 24x7, in the same place and with the same attributes, maybe the cloud isn't for you.

This is not what happened to most of services that went back on-prem after having been on the cloud for a considerable time. The folks behind these services likely know exactly what they do and how their system work. They have systems that can sustain that services are gone or have moved, they don't assume that everything is always in the same place. They don't assume that scaling necessarily mean getting a bigger box, it can mean getting more boxes or something else. Often they have an application infrastructure largely running on containers (in some cases these smart guys and gals even put their database servers on some more firm ground (VMs) and ignored containers only for these).

In the latter cases we are talking about people who know stuff really well and actually do not mind managing IT infrastructure on their own. In this cases, there are again limited advantages to the cloud as they know how to do everything that a cloud provider can offer themselves and, just as important, they have the money and resources to do so.

Inbetween these two extremes, on one end those who has services, organization and / or a state of mind that is just to inflexible to benefit from the cloud and on the other end the super smart and resourceful geeks that can outsmart even Amazon, there is still a bunch of solid applications, companies and infrastructure that can benefit from the cloud. Maybe they are just a bit more flexible than the first group I mentioned and are willing to take the plunge and modernize what they have and to cloudify themselves, or maybe it is a company where IT is run by modern day Albert Einstein types and can outsmart anyone on the planet but they just cannot be bothered to mock around with IT hardware, OS patching and grand scale security implementations (if you ask me, this is the #1 reason to cloudify: having security looked after by someone else, and I am not claiming it gets more secure I just claim that I cannot be bothered with the mess of CA, SSL and Certificates and all that. What is a Certificate even?).

/Karlsson
Trying hard not to get a job that involves IT security