done nothing but cause problems
The marketing hype behind cloud is pretty good, because it's somehow got most non technical idiots convinced it can save them everything. I was talking to one such idiot recently who was interviewing to be my new boss(I'd be shocked if he got the job), I had to physically hold myself from bursting out into laughter on several of his comments/responses about "cloud".
But more seriously, the Amazon cloud had been BY FAR the biggest fail I've ever seen, BY FAR the biggest frustration in my professional career, nothing else is even in the same galaxy cluster as this thing. Other clouds are similar from a cost perspective at least (as in cost is so bad it's a "face wall" moment). Companies spending literally a quarter million to half million or more in cloud fees PER MONTH are quite common in my experience. Spend a day learning what such companies do and you can quickly realize how much waste is going on.
But the waste itself is not a problem in itself - the problem is the quality that these cloud services provide is universally very poor. I would feel differently if the quality was really high, but I've yet to see(or hear) of a provider where the quality was really good(regardless of cost - I have been told stories of even the most expensive cloud players out there having terrible service/performance/etc).
I talk to folks fairly regularly these days now about them either 1) wanting to move out of a public cloud 2) are moving out or 3) already have moved out. Yet these *rarely* make the news, it's always the inverse.
My two most absurd reasons for using cloud that I have heard of in the past year:
"I don't want to have to deal with servers, or vendors" - from a company spending $600,000/mo in a cloud (not Amazon). They understand they can build their own stuff for around $2.5M - but it doesn't matter. The shitty cloud they use(they have quite a few outages) is what the management likes.
"I think(hope) we can attract (more) investors if we are in a cloud" - from a sinking company who wants to move to Amazon, they acknowledge/understand that public cloud will cost them minimum 3-5x what they are paying now. Yet they hope that is offset by additional investment from VC(s).
Top reasons for moving out of a public cloud:
- Unpredictable performance
- Bad/non existent support
- Cost
- Availability/reliability
I know one company that gets in excess of 80% off list pricing for a major public cloud and even with that pricing they still want to get out ASAP as they've had endless technical problems using the public cloud, some of which cause more than a day of lost productivity for each glitch.
For me the technical(and business) reasons go FAR FAR BEYOND the above top reasons, but the marketing has been so successfully drilled into these clueless management types that it's like trench warfare getting them to understand that cloud is bullshit.
Fortunately for my own sanity I have not had to deal with public cloud shit in well over a year now. The ~3 years I had working with amazon gave me PTSD, I start twitching when I hear that word.
SO THANKS FOR THE PTSD
With this firefox plugin I can now have a more positive experience when reading about cloud. This article for example comes across as
"Ask the Sysadmins: What has my butt ever done for me?"
https://github.com/DaveRandom/cloud-to-butt-mozilla
one word: awesome (said in the voice of Cartman)