>Cloud Computing (and SASS even more so) is little more than just another attempt to recreate access/info monopolies, [...] , everyone will blame anything and e

>Cloud Computing (and SASS even more so) is little more than just another attempt to recreate access/info monopolies, [...] , everyone will blame anything and everything but their own willful ignorance, For some reason, "cloud computing" has become a bogeyman and therefore corporations paying for it are clueless "sheeple". To help prevent the phrase "cloud computing" from distorting our thinking, we have to remember that companies have been paying others for off-premise computing without calling it "cloud" or "SaaS" for decades before Amazon AWS, Salesforce, etc existed. Examples... In the 1960s, IBM's SABRE[1] airline reservations system was the "cloud" for companies like American Airlines, Delta, etc. In the 1980s, many companies used to process payroll in-house accounting software and print paychecks on self-owned dot-matrix printers. But most companies eventually outsourced all that to specialized companies such as ADP[2]. Companies tried to manage employees' retirement benefits on in-house software but most outsource that to companies like Fidelity[3]. Likewise, even companies that self-fund their own healthcare benefits will still outsource the administration to a company like Cigna[4]. Don't install a bunch of "healthcare management software" on your own on-premise servers. Just use the "cloud/SaaS" computers that Cigna has. Some companies (really old ones) used to print their own stock ownership certificates and mail them out to grandma. Now, virtually every company outsources that to another company. Most companies that have Employee Stock Purchase Plans outsource the administration of it to a company like Computershare[5]. The major difference with "cloud" terminology taking hold is that services like AWS is offering generic compute (EC2) and non-vertical industry solutions. Otherwise, the so-called "cloud" has been going on for decades. Amazon AWS made "cloud" really convenient by allocating off-premise resources via a web interface (dashboard or REST api) instead of calling a salesperson from IBM/ADP/Fidelity/Cigna/etc. That doesn't mean it's always correct to buy into everything the cloud offers. Pick and choose the tradeoffs that make financial sense. Netflix got rid of their datacenters and moved 100% of the customer billing to the cloud. But Dropbox did the opposite and migrated from AWS to their own datacenter. They're both correct for their situations. >, when some of the bigger service providers will eventually fall over (which they will). The big established vendors like AWS, Azure, and GCP ... all have enough business that they will be around for decades. If anybody will exit, I'd guess it would be the smaller players like Oracle Cloud. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabre_(computer_system)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabre_(computer_system)#Histor... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADP_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADP_(company) [3] https://www.fidelityworkplace.com/ https://www.fidelityworkplace.com/ [4] https://www.cigna.com/assets/docs/business/medium-employers/cigna-funding-solutions-brochure.pdf https://www.cigna.com/assets/docs/business/medium-employers/... [5] https://www.computershare.com/us/business/employee-equity-plans/employee-stock-purchase-plans https://www.computershare.com/us/business/employee-equity-pl...