Trevor Pott's guide to pricing up the cloud As a sysadmin for a small-ish business, I lack the resources to keep an in-house expert who is intimately familiar with the intricacies of each technology on my network. There are so many technologies from so many vendors: it is simply overwhelming for two sysadmins to try to know everything between them. So why not outsource …
I'd love to take all the credit...but I really can't. Any skill I have – and the quality of the polished, finished product – exists only because due to the patience and hard work of the excellent individuals who edit my articles.
Also: this article - as well as many others - was written at the pub. I find that writing at home has too many distractions. Writing at work tends to lead to getting interrupted by support calls. Writing at the pub is oddly peaceful. Nobody bothers you, the glass of Diet Coke is never empty...and when you're done you can reward yourself with a beer.
The great thing about writing for a tech magazine is that somewhere in the neighbourhood of 75% of all the research that needs to be done can be done from a tablet at the pub using RDP. For example: taking the time to sign up for various cloud services, create instances on them, play with their management tools, try to break them, etc. So when I head to the pub tonight, I’ll raise a glass for you, sir, and other other readers who enjoy my pub-written research. :D
What Trev doesn't tell you, is how many "ten pint-er" stories (or more likey - rambling dribbles) he got canned...now they would be amusing reading - if they were even readable, that is.
I wrote an email to a colleague once after six pints - I swear, I read it the next day, and thought some raving lunatic wrote it - it was utter shite.
"If it can deliver, then the opportunity exists - with the right services-split - to greatly reduce the workload of existing staff."
Translation for executives:
"If it can deliver, then the opportunity exists - with the right services-split - to greatly reduce the existing staff."
...given the Amazon EC2 cloud was used to brute-force the PS3 encryption (see Reg story), how long before we see usage restrictions applied to cloud computing (you can use it for x, but not y)?
And in that scenario, if your rent a cloud platform, how would the cloud provider trace your activity (to ensure you're not hacking encryption algorithims), and is it ethical for them to do such intrusive monitoring?
Genuine questions btw - enquiring minds must know.
A good, clear distinction between the types of services. The point about assessing the value of in-house expertise is well-made. But I think the management of risk of your vendor failing to deliver is an important costing exercise too, and that only gets a brief mention at the end of the last case. For example, whether your entire business then rests on fulfillment of a SLA, or if you feel the need to retain some standby capability.
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