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Cloud Nine

Moving data to cloud is happening at what seems to be a hysterical pace. Companies decide that is the way to go and then an assortment of vendors descend upon them to make this goal a reality. It's good business if you are a cloud or a cloud-adjacent vendor these days. One Slashdot commentator throws much needed cold water on this emerging and burgeoning "cloud transformation" trend with a quick history lesson

Today's cloud is the modern version of the timeshare computer bureau of the 1960s/1970s. If history repeats itself, companies will eventually realize that they have a critical dependence on these computing service and bring them in-house, like they did with mainframes (then minis). If going to the cloud is what is needed to gain a centrally-managed development resource, though, then it might be worth it.

At first blush, the comparison between old-school computer time-sharing and modern cloud computing seems a bit silly. But there are some strong parallels. A customer does not want to be responsible for managing their own data center anymore and wants to move it to cloud. There is no magical place in the cloud where this data moved from a physical data center will now reside in immaterial ether where infrastructure disappears like a magician's rabbit. Its just a matter of who is responsible for this new physical location where the company's data now resides. 

A time will come when the managed model of the data center, and all data being in the cloud will start to cause problems that seem far-fetched right now. Much can be learned from the stress-test Amazon Prime Delivery was subjected due to the pandemic. It went from being a fairly well-oiled machine to unmitigated chaos in less than a week and is yet to make a recovery months later. As 80% of the world's data moves to cloud in a very short period of time, the entire eco-system of providers will be stressed much in the same way. 

Customers who are only getting starting on the cloud, are salivating over all the IoT and sensor data that they will pump into their data lakehouse and make crazy magic with it. At some point in this amazing trip through the cloud, there will be contact with real, earthbound stuff - just a matter of time. It won't be surprising if on-premise solutions make a strong comeback much in the way of mainframes and minis from back in the day.

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