The Issue is not the Technology Concept
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| Author | Content |
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| Fettoosh Sep 01, 2011 11:52 PM EDT |
The concept of Cloud Computing is not new. It is the same old Client-Server concept packaged and being marketed as the biggest invention since sliced bread. Granted it utilizes more advanced infrastructures, it is still the same, never was a solution for all and never will.Quoting:Kundra argues why deal with all of the hardware maintenance and software updates when you can off-load it onto someone else? For individual, the main reason is it costs too much, and for some, self support is not a big deal. There are many other reason which we all know what they are. For large organization, I don't believe anyone would argue against it. It is appropriate and has many advantages. I guess what most argue against is why does it have to be outsourced, especially in large organizations and particularly governments? Quoting:He said every company doesn't own its own generator to generate electricity. Of course not, we buy it from a utility because it would be crazy to maintain that overhead when it's not even part of your business. First, electricity is not a service, it is energy/product served to customers to be consumed. Just like food, gasoline, etc... Can individuals produce their own electricity, sure, but it won't be cost effective until electricity produced by companies begin to be more expensive. In terms of cloud services, I haven't seen any figures to prove and show that it actually does save on cost. If Kundra has any figures, I am sure we would be interested in seeing it. Instead of using electricity, I prefer to use the car analogy. Some individuals, for good reason or not, do lease/rent them. But the fact is, most individuals purchase their cars instead because, in the long run, it is cheaper even with all the maintenance and repairs cost involved. If that isn't true, we would see most people leasing their cars instead, which is not the case. In regards to governments, private clouds shouldn't be an issue. But using an outsource to maintain and support its private cloud is more expensive, and most important, the information governments accrue about citizens should are sacred and shouldn't be taken lightly. |
| skelband Sep 02, 2011 5:51 PM EDT |
I've seen the electricity example used elsewhere and in the main I think it is a good analogy. The point that he is trying to make is a scale benefit point. In terms of the car analogy I think it would actually make more sense to compare owning your own car to using public transport. The lease example is weak because the difference is largely economic and fairly marginal at that. The scale advantage is usually seen for services that are just not practical on a small scale. Search engines are a good example of this and fit better with the electricity comparison. Each individual using the search engine benefits from massive economies of scale by sharing the resource. The advantages for the home user for outsourcing of their IT needs, again, is fairly marginal and I don't see Jo Public really seeing a big advantage purely on scale or economy for online document editing and the like. However, the picture is very different if you are responsible for maintaining a massive IT infrastructure. The thin client, outsourced IT infrastructure looked after by someone else becomes very attractive indeed, especially if you are sharing that infrastructure with a number of other large companies. |
| Fettoosh Sep 03, 2011 12:15 PM EDT |
Quoting:The point that he is trying to make is a scale benefit point. I agree with the scale benefit concept in principle, but not necessarily in every case. It works in favor of the producer of a product but not necessarily for the consumer of that product. It works in tangible products but not necessarily in services. See Wikipedia And Here Quoting:In terms of the car analogy I think it would actually make more sense to compare owning your own car to using public transport. For the car analogy, I am not sure this makes sense. First, public sector transport is controlled and managed by local government. It is not a profit driven entity as car leasing companies. That makes a whole lot of difference. Second, a big difference is that public transport doesn't furnish services for many of the destination a leased cars would, so it is not as adequate. On the other hand, a corporations with a few company cars, it would be more cost effective and they are better off outsourcing its cars for maintenance. But a corporation with a fleet of company cars, it might be much more cost effective and practical to have its own maintenance department crew to maintain the fleet. A factory with pretty large facility almost always have its own maintenance department and for many very good reasons. I believe this is how scale benefit modal works. Quoting:However, the picture is very different if you are responsible for maintaining a massive IT infrastructure. See links above. Like you have mentioned, governments have massive IT infrastructures, and most are much bigger than any Cloud outsourcing facilities. So, according to the scale benefit model, wouldn't be much more cost effective and practical for governments to support its own instead of having an outsource firm? There are many issues that should be considered before government start outsourcing, but one important factor is that Cloud outsourcing services could become a monopoly lock-in, and we all know how that goes. |
| mbaehrlxer Sep 06, 2011 11:39 PM EDT |
anyone talking about cost savings please take a look at the cost involved from switching proprietary cloud services when your current provider suddenly decides to charge to much and you have to throw away your code because it can't be used on another cloud service. greetings, eMBee. |
| skelband Sep 07, 2011 1:20 PM EDT |
@Fettoosh: Mostly agree I still think the sole benefits of this type of enterprise are scale. As you point out though, you can reap those scale benefits in house without outsourcing. The fact the public transport is supplied by the government/local authority is neither here not there. The costs are shared by all so it makes it a workable scenario that is not tenable on a smaller scale. As a big user of public transport I can tell you that it is a lot more cost effective than running a car. This big problem is that typically not all the revenue goes back into the public transport infrastructure to the costs are generally more inflated than they should be, and of course there is always a pressure to expand through capital projects funded also through that revenue. The electricity analogy works well because there is competition in the supply and standardisation (they must all supply the same voltage and frequency). The standards thing is going to be a problem for some time in IT cloud services as the different providers try to lock us in. The only way we will ever fix that one is to formulate a standard for a particular service and demand it from those that would bid for the work. As ever, becoming reliant on a 3rd party for a critical part of your business is always a risk. I agree with you that it is not necessarily the best idea for large organisations for which it is more cost-effective for them to do it in-house. I have a suspicion that a lot of companies do it for short-term savings and because they don't understand how much their business relies on IT. |
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