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I agree with Simon Wardley here [0] - OpenStack is a joke (from a business perspective) and all companies trying to build businesses on it will perish as Amazon

by hendzen 12y ago

I agree with Simon Wardley here [0] - OpenStack is a joke (from a business perspective) and all companies trying to build businesses on it will perish as Amazon builds a dominant monopoly. EDIT: Not companies that use OpenStack, companies that attempt to sell "enterprise clouds" based on OpenStack (like Nebula). [0] - https://twitter.com/swardley/status/499952875813224448 https://twitter.com/swardley/status/499952875813224448

late2part 12y ago
I don't know how to parse your comment. If you mean that companies using openstack as their core intellectual property, and providing add-ons and ancillary systems for it will perish, I think that may be so. If instead you suggest that any company using openstack in their business will perish, I think that's false. At the highest level, AWS lacks a private cloud on-site solution, for all but the CIA, AFAIK. Many companies can/will/are us[e|ing] openstack as part of their business to provide a private cloud. Arguably they'd be better off w/ native xen, lxc, docker, etc, but they seem to be making it work.
- hendzen 12y ago
  The former interpretation is what I meant and I have updated my comment to reflect it.
- count 12y ago
  The future AWS is driving towards is where they are the power generation company that nobody has onsite either (except for very rare circumstances). You might keep some temporary capacity / backups locally, but you'll depend on the utility to be there for the vast majority of things. The market will see if that's the future or not...
  - ghaff 12y ago
    That's the "Big Switch" theory. It's one possible future although my sense is that there's considerable skepticism about it from both the perspective of where the economical scale points sit and with respect to governance/control.
  - jasonlotito 12y ago
    > The future AWS is driving towards is where they are the power generation company that nobody has onsite eithe Don't you mean "a power generation company." I take it you live some place that does not give you choice.
    - count 12y ago
      You don't chose who provides the electrons coming over your poles in the VAST Majority of locations (some folks run substations to multiple grids, but even then, are talking to the whole other grid, not a single power company). Deregulated power is about where you send your bill, not who's producing the electrons.
- devonkim 12y ago
  I'm sure if someone paid Amazon enough money they would consider building out their very own GovCloud. However, I suspect that the amount of money to do so would be so high that the only way it'd make financial sense would be when you're as hopelessly dysfunctional and leaking money out every pore like the Pentagon. I have a customer on track to be one of the largest users of AWS in the world within several years and yet they're not asking for their own datacenter despite the millions and millions that'll be spent.
  - GatesBills 12y ago
    http://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/ http://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/
ghaff 12y ago
So, are you suggesting that if you want computing infrastructure your one and only option will be to use AWS? Nothing against AWS--I use it for some things personally--but that suggests a future where the 1990s Microsoft quasi-monopoly is nothing in comparison.
- trevyn 12y ago
  Google is putting substantial resources behind Cloud Platform: https://cloud.google.com/ https://cloud.google.com/ But in general, yes, there are serious capital costs and economies of scale with infrastructure, so there won't be a lot of small competitors in this space.
- count 12y ago
  Do you get to chose between electricity providers? I wonder how big AWS gets before it becomes a regulated utility and 'critical infrastructure' (they hate that question, btw).
  - pacificmint 12y ago
    > Do you get to chose between electricity providers? I know this is not your point, but in Germany, for example, you do get to choose. They've created competition between electricity providers.
    - jamiesonbecker 12y ago
      > Do you get to chose between electricity providers? Texas also. Compare pricing here: http://PowerToChoose.org http://PowerToChoose.org
      - count 12y ago
        You don't actually chose between providers, you get the same electricity. You simply choose who gets your cash from all the generators on the local grid. It's not like they run new wires to your house or that your house gets a special charge that your neighbors don't.
chrissnell 12y ago
I hope that your post is an April Fools joke. We've been running our company on OpenStack for the last year (longer if you count Rackspace's OpenStack-based public cloud) and it's been awesome. I gave a presentation on it last night at the Seattle DevOps meetup: https://speakerdeck.com/chrissnell/so-long-public-cloud https://speakerdeck.com/chrissnell/so-long-public-cloud EDIT: In response to your edit (companies that sell OpenStack), I also disagree! OpenStack is still a bit of a bear to maintain and upgrade. It requires a lot of specialized knowledge and many companies that might leverage it may not because of the amount of time required to set up and maintain the infrastructure. We utilize a managed OpenStack cloud at Rackspace. For various reasons, building a collocated cluster based on Nebula was not evaluated as a hosting option for us but it might have been viable. I think there's a market for easy-to-operate OpenStack and I'm not sure why Nebula failed. I'm guessing (based on some other comments here) that there's more to the story.
- andrewguenther 12y ago
  Well hey there! That was a great talk!
- achanda358 12y ago
  That is a good presentation!
vgabios 12y ago
OpenStack tries to support too many different backends for most components and is a consultants' wet dream when it comes to custom work and patches required that can be readily milked into an expensive and lengthy deployment, as well as expensive post-deployment maintainence and upgrades. It's only that at a significant (Netflix) scale can the costs of DIY be cheaper than just paying the AWS tax. (Last I heard, Yahoo employed a team dedicated to maintaining OpenStack. Also, I hear from others that this is the norm, not the exception. We looked at OpenStack at Stanford, but there are other IaaS clouds that have better opinions about architectural choices (only supporting say Xen and Vmware because they're production proven) and less code.)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- batbomb 12y ago
  Technically, there is an OpenStack installation at Stanford (at SLAC). It's mind boggling that SLAC and Stanford hasn't banded together on this yet, especially considering the new-ish "Farm" at SLAC.
  - vgabios 12y ago
    SLAC has a larger budget, better staff and processes with narrower use-cases than campus proper. They run a decent IT shop.

by hendzen 12y ago

late2part 12y ago

I don't know how to parse your comment. If you mean that companies using openstack as their core intellectual property, and providing add-ons and ancillary systems for it will perish, I think that may be so. If instead you suggest that any company using openstack in their business will perish, I think that's false. At the highest level, AWS lacks a private cloud on-site solution, for all but the CIA, AFAIK. Many companies can/will/are us[e|ing] openstack as part of their business to provide a private cloud. Arguably they'd be better off w/ native xen, lxc, docker, etc, but they seem to be making it work.

hendzen 12y ago
The former interpretation is what I meant and I have updated my comment to reflect it.
count 12y ago
The future AWS is driving towards is where they are the power generation company that nobody has onsite either (except for very rare circumstances). You might keep some temporary capacity / backups locally, but you'll depend on the utility to be there for the vast majority of things. The market will see if that's the future or not...
- ghaff 12y ago
  That's the "Big Switch" theory. It's one possible future although my sense is that there's considerable skepticism about it from both the perspective of where the economical scale points sit and with respect to governance/control.
- jasonlotito 12y ago
  > The future AWS is driving towards is where they are the power generation company that nobody has onsite eithe Don't you mean "a power generation company." I take it you live some place that does not give you choice.
  - count 12y ago
    You don't chose who provides the electrons coming over your poles in the VAST Majority of locations (some folks run substations to multiple grids, but even then, are talking to the whole other grid, not a single power company). Deregulated power is about where you send your bill, not who's producing the electrons.
devonkim 12y ago
I'm sure if someone paid Amazon enough money they would consider building out their very own GovCloud. However, I suspect that the amount of money to do so would be so high that the only way it'd make financial sense would be when you're as hopelessly dysfunctional and leaking money out every pore like the Pentagon. I have a customer on track to be one of the largest users of AWS in the world within several years and yet they're not asking for their own datacenter despite the millions and millions that'll be spent.
- GatesBills 12y ago
  http://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/ http://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/

ghaff 12y ago

So, are you suggesting that if you want computing infrastructure your one and only option will be to use AWS? Nothing against AWS--I use it for some things personally--but that suggests a future where the 1990s Microsoft quasi-monopoly is nothing in comparison.

trevyn 12y ago
Google is putting substantial resources behind Cloud Platform: https://cloud.google.com/ https://cloud.google.com/ But in general, yes, there are serious capital costs and economies of scale with infrastructure, so there won't be a lot of small competitors in this space.
count 12y ago
Do you get to chose between electricity providers? I wonder how big AWS gets before it becomes a regulated utility and 'critical infrastructure' (they hate that question, btw).
- pacificmint 12y ago
  > Do you get to chose between electricity providers? I know this is not your point, but in Germany, for example, you do get to choose. They've created competition between electricity providers.
  - jamiesonbecker 12y ago
    > Do you get to chose between electricity providers? Texas also. Compare pricing here: http://PowerToChoose.org http://PowerToChoose.org
    - count 12y ago
      You don't actually chose between providers, you get the same electricity. You simply choose who gets your cash from all the generators on the local grid. It's not like they run new wires to your house or that your house gets a special charge that your neighbors don't.

chrissnell 12y ago

I hope that your post is an April Fools joke. We've been running our company on OpenStack for the last year (longer if you count Rackspace's OpenStack-based public cloud) and it's been awesome. I gave a presentation on it last night at the Seattle DevOps meetup: https://speakerdeck.com/chrissnell/so-long-public-cloud https://speakerdeck.com/chrissnell/so-long-public-cloud EDIT: In response to your edit (companies that sell OpenStack), I also disagree! OpenStack is still a bit of a bear to maintain and upgrade. It requires a lot of specialized knowledge and many companies that might leverage it may not because of the amount of time required to set up and maintain the infrastructure. We utilize a managed OpenStack cloud at Rackspace. For various reasons, building a collocated cluster based on Nebula was not evaluated as a hosting option for us but it might have been viable. I think there's a market for easy-to-operate OpenStack and I'm not sure why Nebula failed. I'm guessing (based on some other comments here) that there's more to the story.

andrewguenther 12y ago
Well hey there! That was a great talk!
achanda358 12y ago
That is a good presentation!

vgabios 12y ago

OpenStack tries to support too many different backends for most components and is a consultants' wet dream when it comes to custom work and patches required that can be readily milked into an expensive and lengthy deployment, as well as expensive post-deployment maintainence and upgrades. It's only that at a significant (Netflix) scale can the costs of DIY be cheaper than just paying the AWS tax. (Last I heard, Yahoo employed a team dedicated to maintaining OpenStack. Also, I hear from others that this is the norm, not the exception. We looked at OpenStack at Stanford, but there are other IaaS clouds that have better opinions about architectural choices (only supporting say Xen and Vmware because they're production proven) and less code.)

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
batbomb 12y ago
Technically, there is an OpenStack installation at Stanford (at SLAC). It's mind boggling that SLAC and Stanford hasn't banded together on this yet, especially considering the new-ish "Farm" at SLAC.
- vgabios 12y ago
  SLAC has a larger budget, better staff and processes with narrower use-cases than campus proper. They run a decent IT shop.