I know this goes against everything you have heard for the last 20 years, but not everything is better in the cloud. We have all been told over and over that the cloud is the only way to host our workloads and innovate for the future. Going back to the very first AWS ReInvent we heard Andy Jassy telling us about the promise of cloud computing highlighting: Scalability, flexibility, and the cost benefits that will come with economies of scale.
The Broken Promise of Cloud Economics
There is no question that for the last decade the scalability and flexibility of cloud computing has enabled massive innovation, but the cost benefits side of that promise seems to have been forgotten. In fact in a recent survey CIVO found that “59% of respondents see their cloud spend increasing year over year.”
What gets lost in the cloud hype is that while there are workloads that benefit from the scalability and flexibility of the cloud, many workloads are a better fit for on-premise hosting.
We are seeing this become a bigger trend among CIOs with “83% of respondents to the Barclay’s CIO Survey stating that they had workloads that they were going to be moving back to on-premise from the public cloud.”
Why Companies Are Leaving the Cloud
The largest driver for this is of course cost, the premium of cloud is not justified for many workloads, but we also see that security, reduce lock-in risk, and ironically flexibility being other major reasons for the trend back to on-premise.
When I worked at IBM one of the main reasons that we heard for why customers were choosing a Cloud Provider over IBM was the desire to not be ‘locked in’ with a single vendor, now it is a leading reason to leave the cloud. The cloud providers have locked their customer base, they know it and they are exploiting it.
The Same Old Game
It looks like we were fooled again! Whether it is the Cloud Providers or the Old Guard of Enterprise software their goal is to get you in, get you trapped, and then ‘raise rents’. The longer it takes for you to get off the longer they can enjoy the higher rents.
Given all the innovations of the last 15 years you should be able to have infrastructure automation that enables scalability, flexibility, and the cost benefits that we were promised back in 2012. But the reality is you are not going to get it from the Cloud Providers or the Old Guard of Enterprise software. They are incentivized to trap you on their antiquated solutions.
A New Approach for 2025
In the coming months we will share more about how we will put tools in YOUR hands to allow for cloud-like scalability and flexibility in your own data center where you control your costs and drive your own security. The infrastructure solutions that started 10 and 20 years ago are not sufficient for the modern data center and in 2025 Stealth Automation Startup will provide a modern solution for the modern data center.