3 reasons cloud computing doesn't save money:
I found this article interesting, especially the statement, "Over the past decade, cloud adoption has become the rule, not the exception. And yet, many companies that have embraced the cloud are feeling the acute burden of a spike in spending. In other words, cloud usage costs may be costing many businesses more than they are actually saving."
Other recent articles and studies say the same thing. The initial perception that cloud computing would lead to operational cost savings did not pan out for many Global 2000 companies.
[...] First, there is little or no monitoring. A common problem is enterprises have ineffective or no cloud cost management operations, also known as cloud finops (financial operations). Finops should include cloud cost observability systems that report what's spent where, by whom, and for what purpose, as well as the root cause of the spending.
[...] Second, there is no discipline or accountability. A lack of cloud cost monitoring means we can't see what we're spending. The other side of this coin is a lack of accountability. Even when a business monitors cloud spending, that data is useless if everyone knows there are no penalties. Why should people change their behavior? They need known incentives to conserve cloud computing resources as well as known consequences.
[...] Third, the business can't or won't optimize cloud resources. One of the core goals of a sound finops program is to optimize cloud spending. Finops will report the measured value of all money spent on cloud-based resources that's returned to the business. The overall objective is to have more business value from fewer cloud computing dollars.
(Score: 5, Informative) by drussell on Wednesday August 24 2022, @11:45PM (5 children)
Paying some other middleman to take a layer of profit off providing a service that you could simply just do yourself costs more?!
Who would have thought?! 🙄
(This must have been brought to you by the good folks at the duh! department?)
(In association with the number 8 and the letter I.)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RS3 on Thursday August 25 2022, @12:54AM
Corporate bean-counters (accounting dept.) often consider IT (IS?) departments as pure loss column. So anything to minimize them is deemed good.
The problem, as with so many things, is the bean-counters are short-sighted. They don't consider the loss when the cloud goes down, or is breached and data stolen. And even then, they consider it someone else's problem- cause is external to the company, and maybe cloud provider is liable for the loss (although their contract probably absolves them of all liability...)
Another way to look at it: internal IT dept. is a known expense. IE, you plan on spending the $ for it. Cloud is cheaper, and you don't allocate cost for the downtime and other problems / costs / complications.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25 2022, @01:37AM (1 child)
For a mom and pop shop sure. For large enterprises, they're already renting data centers, rack space, network backbone, etc. long before cloud came along. Its a natural progression to also rent the cpu & memory and software services.
I do agree with the article to some extent though that cloud doesn't safe money and there's a real misconception that it does. Our drivers were clearly cost saving when we move to cloud, its all about agility and being able to move faster - and to some extent better security - but only because our legacy setup is way way behind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25 2022, @01:39AM
Ahh edit!.. I meant clear NOT cost savings.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mr Big in the Pants on Thursday August 25 2022, @03:45AM (1 child)
But at least that middle man is somewhat competent, has a large and varied infrastructure you can tap into on an as needed basis.
And many of the really hard things to get right on premises (or are just ignored) come as standard with the cloud. e.g. core networking security, load balancing.
And saying it is more expensive as a matter of fact in most cases seems to indicate you are not looking at this from a TCO perspective. My experience is different.
Gone are the days of having to build a business case for a million dollar rack of servers that may or may not be fully utilised for a new project but have to be budgeted up front.
You no longer REQUIRE a skilled DBA just to do things like HA/backups/LB/etc.
Devops is a realistic thing many teams can realistically do now...
Ops teams that spend a large portion of their time just keeping core infrastructure running, something the cloud does automatically.
And good riddance to it all.
Lest we forget...
Note: Not saying it is perfect.
e.g. Pricing is downright predatory, obfuscated, and often intentionally scales poorly.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday August 25 2022, @07:12PM
I think using cloud services as a tool in your toolbox is fine. Using it as a copy/paste replacement for literally everything, is stupid. We went from managing our own website (with our IT department hosting the server), to using a standard cloud service for libraries. It works great and they can afford to work on the security issues, (XSS vulnerabilities, etc.) that were drowning us. Now, we can focus on content and just doing a good job at what we do. That said, we host our own Integrated Library System software. They do offer cloud service options, but they then house your data on their services. Which is a more uncomfortable proposition.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fraxinus-tree on Thursday August 25 2022, @12:01AM (1 child)
Its only purpose is to dilute responsibility for both spendings and failures. It was marketed as a solution for the incompetent IT staff - instead it replaced the inhouse incompetent staff with overburdened incompetent staff at the cloud provider.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday August 25 2022, @03:37AM
All that and now companies are trying to hire IT staff with much cloud experience, (as if it would be all that difficult for someone already doing intense and complex IT stuff) and the additional knowledge / training / experience increases salary costs.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by krishnoid on Thursday August 25 2022, @12:19AM
Based on an O'Reilly Amazon Web Services video course I perused, AWS provides fairly customizable options for usage and financial reporting [amazon.com].
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25 2022, @12:40AM (3 children)
I paid $2/L for drinking water on a trip this Summer. I knew I was being robbed. Filling up a cooler at the grocery store would have saved me a lot of money, but I didn't do it.
The Cloud is convenient. The pricing is probably not as bad as water (I paid $0.50/L down the road at a grocery store later, and it was cold and convenient!).
Still, you're paying to outsource stuff. You're paying for that convenience, and if you don't have the time to do it in-house is it really such a bad deal?
I wasn't going to burn $4 worth of gas looking for $0.50/L water. Why should you waste time setting up your own IT while the competition uses the cloud and beats you to market?
Just because it looks more expensive from a certain PoV, doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad deal. You can talk all you want about how it would be cheaper if you were in different circumstances, but YOU AREN'T IN DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Nuke on Thursday August 25 2022, @09:32AM (2 children)
Bad analogy. I've never paid for drinking water in my life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2022, @07:50PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday August 27 2022, @09:16AM
I'm in the UK where tap water is safe anywhere. Doesn't stop the paranoid buying bottled water though.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 25 2022, @12:56AM (2 children)
What's worse is, you own nothing. If/when AWS goes down, you're down, unless and until AWS comes back up. You can't turn on a generator to keep your essential stuff running.
Yeah, I know, Amazon has billions of dollars, they're reliable, bad stuff doesn't happen to them. At least until it happens.
Worse, if Big Brother wants to examine your stuff, they can tell AWS what they want, and AWS gives Big Brother everything they want - without even telling you.
Maybe even worse than that? It's not Big Brother examining your stuff, but maybe an elite team of Chinese hackers, or Russian hackers, or, whichever hackers you fear the most.
I wonder how many government contractors rely on the cloud for their IT needs?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mykl on Thursday August 25 2022, @01:11AM (1 child)
Most of these can be applied to the Data Centre that your "on prem" equipment lives at.
The advantage of cloud is that it offers a low cost of entry for starting. Once you're up and running at scale, it may make sense to switch to your own equipment, however there is likely a lot of inertia by that stage (plus you've probably started taking advantage of some AWS-exclusive features).
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25 2022, @03:19AM
"The advantage of cloud is that it offers a low cost of entry for starting."
hey kid, the first one is free.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday August 25 2022, @08:26AM
Like external accounting and legal retainers, cloud computing is there to avoid the who-gets-the-expensive-car type squabbles getting in the way of doing business. That is, even for fortune 500s that like to pretend otherwise, most companies are family businesses at heart: If they let certain expenses and operations intermix into their usual family table fights, they'll end up with some dept. running out of paper and pens simply because someone doesn't like someone's boss.
It's also why companies hire expensive CEOs and the likes. They'd rather leak out money by the millions than let the kids (3rd gen so basically everyone) run the company to the ground while fighting feuds that go back 30years to who ate the last treat or put back an empty milk cartoon in the fridge...
It's stupid and it's wasteful and it's how the world economy operates.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday August 25 2022, @12:53PM
Getting in is easy, getting out is difficult, costly and it's likely that quite a bit of your stuff will be missing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday August 25 2022, @09:20PM
With cloud computing, you can dial up and dial down resources quickly and easily.
That doesn't mean that cloud computing is for everyone unless that ability is a big deal to you.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...