Nothing Much Changes – Just Paying Vendors For Nothing!
“We are moving to the cloud to digitally transform our business!”
Company after company is realizing moving to the cloud has not and will not transform anything.
“Oh my gosh! It’s just someone else’s data center! Who knew?”
Sure, you can provision that crappy UNIX server in minutes when before it took 16 weeks. Was that a technical issue or the result of stupid internal paperwork mandates you were too afraid to eliminate in the first place?
It certainly was NOT a tech issue.
Firms are reaping the result of moving to the cloud; they are indeed able to provision a server in a fraction of the time it took before. Who cares?
Transformation means something changes. Important stuff changes, not provisioning a server.
Your apps should run a quantum level faster. 20% faster is not transformative.
Applications should run 1,000 times faster to 1 million times faster.
Storage should be reduced by 90% or more from eliminating much of the redundancy of current database technology.
No more Oracle, no more VMware and no more patchwork security products.
There should be no data center. How’s that for transformation?
Do you think the person who waits for her consolidated VISA, MasterCard or AMEX bill until late February to do her taxes would think having her bill, in real time on her phone, January 1st of the new year, is transformative?
Clearly it is. Something of importance to the customer changed!
Nobody from the credit card industry can deliver the 2019 consolidated bill on January 1, 2020 in either their data center or the cloud – and certainly not real time on an iPhone. They will never be able to do it with current technology.
What is the “cloud?” It is just someone else’s data center, same Oracle, VMware, infrastructure, hardware, security products.
You cannot transform current technology with the same current technology located in a different data center.
Time’s about up for the CIOs who faked out their management that the cloud is “transformation.”
The singular cloud transformation is in cash from data center ops transforming into the pocket of cloud vendors.
Next comes the realization of vendor lock in.
Remember that?
Sure you do. Throughout the 80’s and 90’s CIOs, then called VP of IT, moved everything they could to open systems, open standards, open anything. “Don’t fence me in” was more than a cowboy song, it was the Gartner, Forrester warning of avoiding vendor lock in.
It seems the first phase of a new technology is always “buy stuff that everyone else is doing.” We are there as most large corporations are moving as as much as they can to the cloud. Mindlessly.
Then disappointment seems to settle in. “Hey, Jack, where’s the transformation?”
We are there now.
Coming around the bend is “…we want to move to another platform. Did anyone know we have to make major code changes to our apps to get out of AWS?”
Well, well, well, welcome to today’s cloud transformation FAKE OUT.
A persistent artifact of the cloud transformation hoax is the Microsoft Azure billing system.
Customers tell us they cannot come close to making out the Azure bill. Even Azure reps tell us their customers hate the billing system so much they rake the reps over a hot griddle in every meeting.
So if the cloud is transformational, why can’t the Azure guys transform their billing system?
Why isn’t the Azure bill real time, delivered on a phone or tablet, in detail?
Microsoft can’t do it because transformation is NOT a result of moving to the cloud. And they OWN the cloud!
Microsoft does not have the technology to make its billing system a sales value rather than an obstacle. Yet, CIOs are faking their management out that Microsoft or AWS can “transform” their business.
Moving to the cloud is the ultimate fake out that sucks up time, effort and dollars so the IT department can look like it is doing something – anything, now that DevOps, low code, and other tools failed to change much.
CIOs are too often lemmings going over the cliff. Failure is OK if everyone has the same results.
Fortunately innovative firms are delivering new programming paradigms and tech stacks so you can get that consolidated VISA or AMEX bill hours after the New Year’s Eve party breaks up.
Getting the AZURE bill to work? Well, probably not because Microsoft needs to push its cloud as transformative. If you are the poor person dealing with their bill, sorry!