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I would love someone to explain clearly the strategy of "multi-cloud" products to me, what they do, and how they are long term viable. (I do mean this genuinely

by erentz 8y ago

I would love someone to explain clearly the strategy of "multi-cloud" products to me, what they do, and how they are long term viable. (I do mean this genuinely because I'm not getting it.) 1. Surely there is no way for any "multi-cloud" company to keep up with the constant changes and growth of products at all these companies that they can abstract between them in any meaningful way without constantly falling behind. 2. And if there is some purpose right now, is that purpose sustainable? Why would Amazon not have every incentive at some point to make it as easy as possible for an existing Microsoft customer to migrate workloads over to their platform, and vice versa. And if/when they get into the game, isn't that essentially game over for any independent product?

empath75 8y ago
> Surely there is no way for any "multi-cloud" company to keep up with the constant changes and growth of products at all these companies that they can abstract between them in any meaningful way without constantly falling behind. This is the appeal of kubernetes. And yes, it does make cloud providers glorified datacenters. I think k8s is an existential threat to aws long term. They're not going to be able to maintain their profit margins on ec2.
- scarface74 8y ago
  And Kubernetes still can’t give you all of the benefits of managed databases, queuing, messaging systems, etc. If you’re only using the cloud to do VMs at scale, you’re probably spending more than baremetal and spending just as much on maintenance. Kubernetes adds yet another level of complexity.
- lima 8y ago
  k8s was a genius move by Google, and it's working. Especially with OpenShift, it will commodize PaaS. I'm hoping the same thing happens with Knative.
  - ben509 8y ago
    That's a great move by Google, but it's a terrible move for Google. I'd love to see PaaS and FaaS commoditized, but precisely because I want to write apps that run on both vendors and transfer capacity back and forth depending on who is cheapest at the moment.
    - mamon 8y ago
      And that works in Google's favor currently, since they are small player entering the PaaS market, and they need to compete with AWS on price, because their offering is less mature and they don't have counterparts to many of AWS services. Making migration easier is a reasonable strategy for them.
ethbro 8y ago
> Why would Amazon not have every incentive at some point to make it as easy as possible for an existing Microsoft customer to migrate workloads over to their platform, and vice versa This is what flies in the face of multicloud efforts for me. Now, most of the big cloud provider's new revenue comes from enabling migrations to cloud infrastructure. But that's a finite amount of work. At some future point, everyone who will has already been migrated to the cloud. At that point, all the cloud provider's new business will be in the form of enabling migrations from existing clouds. And then you'll have the resources of Amazon / Microsoft / Google working to enable migrations. Which seems a lot more successful resource match. (That said, at that point cloud vendors could also really start actively turning the screws on making that difficult. But in a three-party world, where two parties don't, it seems unlikely that would succeed in the long run.)

by erentz 8y ago

empath75 8y ago

> Surely there is no way for any "multi-cloud" company to keep up with the constant changes and growth of products at all these companies that they can abstract between them in any meaningful way without constantly falling behind. This is the appeal of kubernetes. And yes, it does make cloud providers glorified datacenters. I think k8s is an existential threat to aws long term. They're not going to be able to maintain their profit margins on ec2.

scarface74 8y ago
And Kubernetes still can’t give you all of the benefits of managed databases, queuing, messaging systems, etc. If you’re only using the cloud to do VMs at scale, you’re probably spending more than baremetal and spending just as much on maintenance. Kubernetes adds yet another level of complexity.
lima 8y ago
k8s was a genius move by Google, and it's working. Especially with OpenShift, it will commodize PaaS. I'm hoping the same thing happens with Knative.
- ben509 8y ago
  That's a great move by Google, but it's a terrible move for Google. I'd love to see PaaS and FaaS commoditized, but precisely because I want to write apps that run on both vendors and transfer capacity back and forth depending on who is cheapest at the moment.
  - mamon 8y ago
    And that works in Google's favor currently, since they are small player entering the PaaS market, and they need to compete with AWS on price, because their offering is less mature and they don't have counterparts to many of AWS services. Making migration easier is a reasonable strategy for them.

ethbro 8y ago

> Why would Amazon not have every incentive at some point to make it as easy as possible for an existing Microsoft customer to migrate workloads over to their platform, and vice versa This is what flies in the face of multicloud efforts for me. Now, most of the big cloud provider's new revenue comes from enabling migrations to cloud infrastructure. But that's a finite amount of work. At some future point, everyone who will has already been migrated to the cloud. At that point, all the cloud provider's new business will be in the form of enabling migrations from existing clouds. And then you'll have the resources of Amazon / Microsoft / Google working to enable migrations. Which seems a lot more successful resource match. (That said, at that point cloud vendors could also really start actively turning the screws on making that difficult. But in a three-party world, where two parties don't, it seems unlikely that would succeed in the long run.)