5 ms·

I find the directions the cloud space is evolving in completely fascinating. I suspect we're going to see some major shifts over the next decade. Primarily: Az

by 013a 8y ago

I find the directions the cloud space is evolving in completely fascinating. I suspect we're going to see some major shifts over the next decade. Primarily: Azure is already super successful and I see it taking a solid #1 over the next few years. The main reason is that Microsoft is doing what they do best: offering a product in every category. Want Kubernetes? They've got it. Need issue management? Azure DevOps. Chat? Teams. Email and Office? 365. Once you're in that ecosystem you're just going to bleed into all of their products before suddenly you're a Microsoft shop. Moreover, Microsoft has done an extraordinary job at revitalizing the user experience of many of their products. Azure DevOps and Teams has its issues, but they're miles ahead of the products they're replacing, and truly only maybe 10% behind the 'best in class' of each category. Compare this positioning to Amazon: AWS still only competes solidly in the cloud space, without extending out into the rest of "development team support" that Azure/Microsoft does. They were also ridiculously slow to accept that Kubernetes won the container war, and even today EKS is a comparatively garbage product when lined up against AKS/GKE (no managed worker nodes, $0.20/hour for the control plane, reliance on eksctl to do anything easily which isn't even an official AWS product, etc). Amazon will be fine, but I worry about Google Cloud's future. They're industry leaders when it comes to new technology, no one else is even close, but that doesn't really matter when its open source and Microsoft is so quick to implement everything they make directly into Azure. Why isn't Google Cloud more successful? I think its enterprise support and respect, which isn't something you can just buy especially with Google's lackluster history in that domain.

jacquesm 8y ago
The really scary thing about Google Cloud to me is that Google has a very long history of axing projects. I'm just trying to imagine what it would be like to be totally tied into GC and to receive an email along the lines of 'Dear customer, to serve you better we have decided to retire GC by the end of this year, as per your contract you have three months to move'.
- 013a 8y ago
  Google takes G-Suite/Enterprise focused products very seriously. I can't think of many major examples of them axing one of their enterprise products (or really any, though I'm sure there's one or two fringe examples). In other words, I think they have an issue of reputation here, but that reputation is mostly unfounded because it applies to a different class of products. I also think GCloud is very unique in that all of the capex that Google spends on it comes back to benefit Google. All of their product offerings need servers and world class networks behind them. So even if GCloud remains a solid third/fourth place in the cloud race, I doubt we'll see them go anywhere just because Google itself is probably using it internally to some degree. I mostly worry about the scope of investment from management. I want to see way more products out of them. More managed databases, a better managed NoSQL database than Firestore, lower prices, more enterprise focused things like automated security auditing, better support. We're just not getting it; they're so focused on shiny trivialities like Firebase and Stackdriver while missing the basics.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    > but that reputation is mostly unfounded because it applies to a different class of products That's not how reputation works. A brand has one reputation. You mess with that at your peril.
    - huhlig 8y ago
      A brand can have a reputation both per audience and per product segment.
      - jacquesm 8y ago
        How unfortunate when your audience crosses your carefully laid lines and is active both as a business user and as a private individual. Screw them on the one and expect mercy on the other and we'll see how that multiple reputations theory works out in practice.

by 013a 8y ago

jacquesm 8y ago

The really scary thing about Google Cloud to me is that Google has a very long history of axing projects. I'm just trying to imagine what it would be like to be totally tied into GC and to receive an email along the lines of 'Dear customer, to serve you better we have decided to retire GC by the end of this year, as per your contract you have three months to move'.

013a 8y ago
Google takes G-Suite/Enterprise focused products very seriously. I can't think of many major examples of them axing one of their enterprise products (or really any, though I'm sure there's one or two fringe examples). In other words, I think they have an issue of reputation here, but that reputation is mostly unfounded because it applies to a different class of products. I also think GCloud is very unique in that all of the capex that Google spends on it comes back to benefit Google. All of their product offerings need servers and world class networks behind them. So even if GCloud remains a solid third/fourth place in the cloud race, I doubt we'll see them go anywhere just because Google itself is probably using it internally to some degree. I mostly worry about the scope of investment from management. I want to see way more products out of them. More managed databases, a better managed NoSQL database than Firestore, lower prices, more enterprise focused things like automated security auditing, better support. We're just not getting it; they're so focused on shiny trivialities like Firebase and Stackdriver while missing the basics.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  > but that reputation is mostly unfounded because it applies to a different class of products That's not how reputation works. A brand has one reputation. You mess with that at your peril.
  - huhlig 8y ago
    A brand can have a reputation both per audience and per product segment.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      How unfortunate when your audience crosses your carefully laid lines and is active both as a business user and as a private individual. Screw them on the one and expect mercy on the other and we'll see how that multiple reputations theory works out in practice.