“The cloud” does not exist, it’s just someone else’s computer.
That’s a very simplified version of it that just ignores the premise though. The cloud does a lot of things that locally-hosted software and content does not, and not all of it is simply by nature of being on another PC
Hence why the article seems to suggest advancing P2P for more uses, which is another way to visit another computer, but has many differences from visiting “The Cloud”
We have already seen the effects of over-reliance on a few CDNs and cloud providers: One bad push, one ill intentioned employee and potentially entire portions of the web might become unaccessible. That by itself should have been the end of this business model long ago
If no legal issues stand in your way and your uptime requirement warrant the invest, you can design and host your system across multiple providers. So instead of “just” going multi-datacenter within for example Azure, you go multi-datacenter across Azure, AWS, GCP, etc.
So you’re recognizing that a bad command execution can exist in CDN or cloud provider, but where is your recognition of the tens of millions off bad command executions that happen in small IT shops every month?
I looks like you’re ignoring the practical realities that companies rarely ever:
- hire enough support staff
- hire enough skilled staff
- invest in enough redundant infrastructure to survive hardware or connectivity failures
- design applications with resiliency
- have high enough rigor for audit, safe change control, rollback
- shield the operations stupid decisions leads impose because business goals are more important that IT safety
All of these things lead to system impacts and downtime that can only come from running your own datacenters.
The cloud isn’t perfect, but for lots and lots of companies its a much better and cheaper option than “rolling your own”.
Tangentially: Microsoft Teams and SharePoint web infuriate me daily. All the functions that should be separate programs are rolled up into one inseparable window forcing you into a single task workflow.
Want to have two folders open at once that you can drag between? Want to copy a file to your desktop? Read a message from a colleague while looking at a planner item? Pretty much any basic task that Windows 95 can handle with ease? You’re screwed.
These are all things that should be separate programs handled by the OS and a samba share. The MS Office ecosystem has regressed massively over just a few short years thanks to teams.
