back to article Prolong the working life of your cloud applications

Application lifecycle management (ALM) is a critical foundational concept. We haven't always called it this – and no doubt there will be new names as marketing requires them – but the idea has been there all along. In the past few years we have started to formalise processes around this concept, just in time for the cloud to …

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  1. Ouch

    Prolong the working life of your cloud applications.

    By not being stupid enough to put it in the cloud in the 1st place.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Prolong the working life of your cloud applications.

      And 640k is enough for anyone, eh, gramps?

      Cloud isn't the solution to everything, but "omg hosted applications that are coded to vendor agnostic standards are bad" is a little bit Fox News viewership.

      Every time I hear such block-cut extremest anti-cloud tripe I picture come crusty old dude squinting at his CRT monitor against his 140W incandescent desk lamp while listening to Fox News play out on the picture box across the room. The desk is littered with ensure and there is a stack of newspapers on the chair. The smell of menthol and death permeates the air the last remaining people he knows slowly die off one by one.

      It's time to power off and clear out; there's a new generation of old people moving into the home. These ones were born after the internal combustion engine was invented. They don't remember the steam train being used excepting in museums. They even had radios as a child.

      Yes, it's brave new world where these whippersnappers are signing up to be the next shambling hoard of arthritic retirees, but what can you do? One of them even has a portable computer. The times, they are a changing.

      In a scant few decades - if you haven't hardened into a solid shell of menthol and bran cereal by then - you might see the first new denizens to your idyllic shuffleboard kingdom bring in computation devices that respond to some sort of touch input.

      Better to nip that in the bud. Weld the doors shut. Keep this madness at bay.

      They're coming for your lightbulb. The hippies. They're coming.

      They're already here.

      1. ecofeco Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: Prolong the working life of your cloud applications.

        Missed the whole "clouds hacked every month" thing, did you, AC? Rather odd considering the reports are posted right here on El Reg.

        Now get the hell off my goddamn lawn you prat!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Prolong the working life of your cloud applications.

          Private networks are hacked every minute of every hour of every day. Frankly, barring some stupendeous ability or resourcing on the side of the private network admins, the cloud admins will be better at pretty much everything than the private network admin.

          But hey, if you want to Dunning-Kruger your level of expertise and knowledge all over the Internets, you go right ahead.

          ECOFECO, #1 SYSADMIN. WOO! BOW DOWN, NERDS! BOW DOWN!

          1. ecofeco Silver badge

            Re: Prolong the working life of your cloud applications.

            Touch a nerve, did I?

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Prolong the working life of your cloud applications.

              Absolutely. I've been on the internet long enough to be annoyed - even disgusted - by administrators who think so highly of their own abilities that they automatically assume they are "better" admins than those hired by cloud providers. In every single case where I've talked to these "super admins", their actual knowledge of the topics at hand is fractional compared to the combined knowledge of a cloud provider administration team.

              So yes, you've touched a nerve. You are the living example of Dunning-Kruger. You are - quite literally - the reason things like spam and botnets still exist. Your overwhelming arrogance blinds you to the possibility that you need to learn, adapt and grow. Because of your inflexibility those who are more flexible than you - but whose hats are black - slip through antiquated defences and designs without shitty admins like yourself ever knowing.

              Your arrogance blinds you to your ineptitude. Your ineptitude allows shits like that to keep attacking my networks. So fuck you, sir.

              It requires constant adaptation. The instant you are no longer capable of it you shouldn't be doing it because you become a threat to us all.

              As I said above; cloud isn't the solution to everything, but they have resources and skills beyond what even most of the fortune 1000 can bring to bear. That you cannot see that, learn from that, learn from their mistakes as well as your own - and then better yourself as well as share the knowledge and techniques so we can all do better - makes you unworthy of the title "sysadmin." It makes you a chump.

              And I'm sick of chumps on these forums.

              1. ecofeco Silver badge
                Holmes

                Re: Prolong the working life of your cloud applications.

                The kind of arrogance that ignores the massive hacks, thefts and unexpected downtimes from cloud systems?

                THAT kind of arrogance? The kind that rails on about non-progrssive old fuddy duddies while ignoring recent events where even your money is not safe in any bank or investment these days? Where in fact, NOTHING is safe with anyone and the liability of the 3rd party is almost non-existent?

                That kind?

                This has nothing to do with engineering everything to do with just plain common sense. NEVER trust your important things to strangers.

                So I have to ask, AC, what are you selling?

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Prolong the working life of your cloud applications.

                  So basically, you don't actually have facts on your side, just a bunch of paranoia?

                  I in no way "ignore hacks, thefts and unexpected downtimes." I say "if you believe that you are better at this than well-resourced teams of experts then prove it because that's a wild claim and the burden of proof in that rests upon you."

                  I am selling nothing. And I have counciled loudly and long that people need to be cautious when using cloud providers. They need backups. They need to worry about legal issues, data sovereignty, hacks by third parties and intrusion by governments.

                  I also know for a fact - and there is an unbelievable body of evidence to back this up - that *most* cloud providers have better uptime, better defences against third-party hackers than over 85% of sysadmins. I have spent the past two years immersed in this research. Private networks are unbelievably badly set up, corners cut and the software/hardware that is purchased is rarely made full use of.

                  IT in a private company supports the business. It isn't what the business does. With cloud providers, IT is indeed what the business does and their business processes are geared entirely towards making sure that they are doing the best possible setup.

                  If a bagel company has mediocre IT that is full of holes then they aren't going to suffer a competitive disadvantage or noticeable hit to their bottom line until a breach occurs. At which point, they're fucked and it's too late to go back in time and do things right.

                  If a cloud provider doesn't optimize their IT then they start losing out to their competitors almost immediately. Really slick marketing can distract from issues for a while, but business types are getting savvy and they are demanding things like HIPPA certification, complete walkthroughs of the backup/DR procedures and so forth.

                  If your cloud provider isn't transparent about their procedures and certifications, worry. It means they aren't sure enough of their architecture and procedures to stand behind it.

                  Similarly, when some putz on the internet claims that he can do better simply because he hasn't been compromised yet - or because "cloud providers are the boogyman - dismiss him as a worthless vistim of the Dunning Kruger effect and move on.

                  Not all cloud providers are equal, granted. But done right, you can offload significant chunks of everyday IT and fire the lazy jobsworths at 85% of companies that aren't even making full use of the security and backup features of the products they already own. Toss those workloads at a cloud provider and all you have to worry about is adding a few layers between you and them to do things like encrypt, ensure you aren't subject to lock-in and do backups.

                  Yes, that requires an IT guy to herd cloud services, but it requires a lot less work than keeping the infrastructure going and worrying about backups/lockin/security.

                  The chances that any business has even one rockstar sysadmin are vanishingly slim. As with any field of human endeavour most people aren't actually all that good at their jobs The best of the best (with few exceptions) go where the money is. The money is working as architects for cloud service providers.

                  The only argument you have is "security through obscurity." Because you are so small and insignificant they haven't come after you...yet. A cloud provider is a more tempting target, for now. It wasn't always the case and I promise you that pendulum will swing back again. (My firewall logs would say this is already beginning to happen.)

                  What then, hot shot? Will your network stand up against the barrage? Are your users perfectly trained, your software, hardware, policies and procedures up-to-date and downright impervious? Or will you fall too when the covetous eye of the greedy turns to the smaller, but (in theory) still lucrative cache of digital treasure that you guard?

                  Are you a dragon then? So might as to instill terror in thieves and brigands across the land? Or are you a green anole, puffing up his neck frill in a vain attempt to appear more dangerous than he really is?

                  If you're so amazing - your talents, designs and abilities so beyond reproach - then why the fnord aren't you out there making tens of millions hardening those cloud providers? Why are you here, on The Register's comments section puffing up your frill and hissing at shadows?

                  I never once advocated trusting a cloud provider unconditionally. I said they're better at this than virtually all sysadmins and certainly than the red-tape-infested polticial bullshit factories that are the chain of command that most IT departments have to report to inside the average company.

                  You council outright rejection of cloud services based on nothing but fear of the boogyman. That's irresponsible and assinine.

                  The proper response is to analyze both hosted and local options to see what is the best solution for a given workload and to constantly adapt your skills so that you are capable of providing secure, well backed up IT services to your paymasters regardless of who owns the infrastructure.

                  You say don't trust a cloud provider because they may not be secure.

                  I say don't trust you for the exact same reason.

                  The difference is that there's a whole pile of companies who have thrown marketing budgets worth billions of dollars trying to find a way to market cloud services. Survey after survey, expert analysis after expert analysis keeps coming back to the same thing:

                  A business owner should be a hell of a lot more worried about trusting the average mediocre in-house sysadmin than the average cloud provider. When you can come up with evidence that disproves that - not anecdotes or some single-instance bullshit pitting the in-house sysadmin of the year against the worst of the non-transparent cloud providers - I'll consider what you have to say meaningful and insightful.

                  Until then, you're just some geriatric geezer puffing his frill, trying to pretend he's a dragon.

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