Is cloud-computing the next big thing?

G.O.A.T

I'm wondering if the cloud is really here to stay, would you say it is a sturdy career to dive into, or is it something that will most likely fade-out?

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dustervoice

The "cloud" is here to stay. If its your passion go for it!

networker050184

I think you are looking at it wrong. Don't build a career around a specific technology as they change. Cloud technologies are great to learn though.

philz1982

Here are my thoughts having architected a bunch of different IT solutions. Don't focus on a technology as Networker said, rather focus on concepts. You have folks on here who are great an infrastructure, cyber security, compute, and dev/ops. Ask them what the key concepts they use. For cloud, you will really need to understand CAP theorem, multi-threading/parallel programming, the data sciences, and you will need to understand the sys-admin side of things. If you understand these concepts then you can learn the platforms. Understanding how to effectively distribute on-prem applications, when to switch to a caching vs CDN's, how to mirror data stores, how to to use traffic managers, ect. All of those are similar to on-prem tasks but when you add cloud you switch the billing model, the speed, throughput, ect.

Hope my rambling makes sense. If you want to learn cloud MS has 3 good free E-books on deploying cloud applications (realize the technologies in the books are dated but the concepts are not):

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff728592.aspx - Porting Apps in the cloud
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff966499.aspx -Multi-Tenant Apps
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh871440.aspx -Hybrid Apps

Phillies8607

Yeah, it's here to stay. I've seen first hand sooooooo many companies go to a cloud based solution. It's a neat technology because you have less physical hardware on site, which means less money spent on hardware and fewer points of failure. Also, you can add or change the design of your network alot easier

philz1982

On the flip side of what Phillies said, I've seen a lot of companies mess up cloud transitions because they didn't understand the ramifications of porting applications in the cloud. Mainly due to the consumption model. Employee behavior needs to change especially when you are being charged based on egress traffic and employees are used to downloading and uploading massive amounts of data on local shares. This is really prevalent in cloud based CRM applications.

TechGromit

Yes the cloud is here to stay, but I feel that the cloud is more for small to mid-sized companies. Larger organizations may not see the kind of savings the cloud providers are promising. For one the cost per gigabyte of RAM, CPU, Storage and bandwidth is far higher than the cost to host them yourself. Also long term storage fees add up. Face it a cloud provider is in the business to make money, they are not going to have a fee structure that doesn't earn them a profit. The cloud strength is a cluster of servers and shared resources can service several different companies, when the companies become large enough where they need thousands of servers to run there business, the sharing resources cloud model just isn't cost effective anymore. It's cheaper to just run things in-house, despite all the cloud hype.

UnixGuy

no.....

Mike7

If you are in a industry that is heavily regulated (financial, pharmaceutical) or/and has stringent security requirements (military, health, government?), cloud computing is most likely a no no. Not impossible but unlikely.

Brain-D

If the cloud is here to stay, will it be good or bad for the IT field?

alan2308

The cloud has been around for decades. The only thing new about it is the name.

dustervoice

alan2308 wrote: »

The cloud has been around for decades. The only thing new about it is the name.

Are you saying the Cloud is a fancy term for someone else's Datacentre? Cant be!!!

cyberguypr

I double-checked with the marketing department and they confirmed that what alan2308 said is wrong. They said they invented the cloud

UncleB

Like most things in IT I think it is here for some time until companies decide it is better to bring it back in house - which will require remote access solutions, firewalls and protection to evolve considerably.

Most of these things work in cycles as technology and appetites evolve. It has happened time and again so I don't think this wave of change is going to be any different. Make the most of it while it is here but always keep an eye open for the next bandwagon and get ahead of the curve where you can make good money by getting the skills before there are many competitors.

thanks
Iain

stryder144

Cloud is a term, or concept, not a technology by itself. The underlying technologies that have made the adoption of "cloud" so prevalent have been around for decades: virtualization, storage area networks, remotely accessed applications, etc. What has shifted, I suppose, is the cost of the technology. I remember reading an article years ago explaining why companies like Amazon and Google have allowed people to use their resources. The gist of the article centered around the very inexpensive hardware that was being under-utilized in the data centers and enterprising business types who wondered if there was a way to leverage that excess hardware for mind-share or monetary gain.

In my opinion, if you strive to understand the underlying technologies, you will have more opportunities than if you focus purely on cloud. If the industry shifts back to in-house data centers, and you have focused on understanding the distributed model, you might find yourself scrambling to reinvent yourself. If you stayed on top of the core tech, you should be able to shift with the industry without too many problems.

Claymoore

It's just a fancy term for using someone else's computer. Cloud computing has been around since people leased time on mainframes. Maybe the definitions are more specific now with SaaS, PaaS, and Iaas, but it isn't new. Salesforce SaaS has been around since 1999, AWS IaaS since 2006, and Microsoft BPOS (the precursor to Office 365) since 2008.

The largest companies in the world - see the AWS re:Invent presentations from GE, Capital One, John Deere, and BMW - on down to the newest startups leverage cloud computing. Most use more than one cloud, for example, infrastructure in AWS, productivity in Office 365, and CRM in Salesforce.

And cloud isn't going away. Based on current earnings and multiples, AWS by itself is worth more than HP, is roughly equal to SAP, and about half of either IBM or Oracle. In addition to the obvious economies of scale that give the large cloud providers a cost advantage, there is also an economy of practice from the millions of man hours they have spent managing the datacenters. Amazon refers to this as a virtuous cycle.

Lexluethar

As others have said - 'cloud' is here to stay. Cloud is a fancy word for someone else's data center. As others have said i would focus on concepts instead of the specific technology b/c it will always change.

Cloud is here to stay, but don't think the big hardware players like Dell, EMC, HP and the like will just accept that fact. Disk prices will continue to go down, i think you are going to see more hybrid solutions in the local data center and more leasing options to help with cost.

Don't buy into all of the hype - Cloud is here to stay but on site data centers will still be around. Instead of moving everything into the cloud i believe when the dust settles you will see more hybrid solutions - application specific items in the cloud and flat files still in the data center. A lot of companies have big road blocks like cost. If you have anything private it cannot be on a shared resource which are the prices you see on most cloud provider sites. Look at private resources and do some cost analysis - you will quickly see that having a DC onsite is much cheaper.

bigdogz

Yes, the 'Cloud' has been around. It was basically known as 'Managed Services'... or pick any term used in your region.

What others have said is just to learn the concepts and know the pros and cons of using it. The 'Cloud' is generic in terminology so you must understand how the infrastructure / applications are managed.

Is it Shared? Cheap in price but good luck relying on another customer trying to keep their application(s) or infrastructure / environment secure. In most cases you will pay for this in the long run. Your company will lose their reputation when they do not have a functional website.

Who manages the hardware, you or the MSP?
Do you have any DR / BCM processes .... that have been tested?
You may also want to look at SLA (Service Level Agreements). If not, this could hurt you in the end. Don't listen to the salesman who promises you everything.

Chris_Wess

Nowadays, cloud computing has become a wide technology that is being used by most of the businessmen. Instead of storing and accessing your data through any hardware or other physical device, you can easily retrieve your data backup from the internet.

Chinook

In the future the concept of computing will be like electricity. You'll plug in, use what you need & get a bill for it. I suppose you could say that the Cloud has been around for decades but that's not really true. There were bits and pieces of it available but not a complete package.

The Cloud will actually cut down on the number of servers an organization needs. In Azure you can purchases roles which don't need to be hosted on a server. For example, you can purchase AD as a Service without it being hosted on one of your servers. In fact, it's feasible some companies may only need a few servers or no servers at all. After all, many servers only exist to host roles.

The real limiting factor of Cloud (in my opinion) is the fear of it. Technicians and companies see it as a threat to their business models. The result is many techs are reticent to learn about it. I often hear how it's "not cheap" and this is usually because people do a 1:1 comparison of their current network to a cloud based network. That's not how you architect it.

AWS has been highly successful in the WWW realm. I can see Azure being "the" player in the "Operational IT" side of things. I can see the SMB market being the first to adopt Cloud computing (especially Azure).

EagerDinosaur

It's definitely the next big thing, in fact it's here already. Many of the customers of the big IT outsourcing company I work for want to go cloud. As I'm a developer, I don't feel threatened by this, although it means yet another set of certifications to study for. On the other hand, about a quarter of my colleagues are responsible for building and supporting in-house servers and infrastructure at present; I can see many of their jobs disappearing into public cloud providers.

My employer has tried to sell its own cloud services to customers, but most of them aren't keen, they see AWS as cheaper and less subject to vendor tie-in.