Cloud is a Utility
We’re already there. Cloud is just another utility today.
Taken from HPC Club 27 Nov 2024
I’ve been saying for some time, probably since 2016, that cloud providers will just become the next utility companies of our time. Well, I think it’s already happened.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at the state of GPU compute today. The massive demand from AI peddlers has accelerated not only the heat death of the universe but also the transition of cloud providers from bleeding edge innovators to utility companies. We still have the big three of course, but we have a rather large number of smaller providers snapping at their heels with much more competitive pricing too. AWS will not only let you reserve capacity in the future (GPUs and CPUs now in fact) but even give you a marketplace to resell capacity you no longer need!
It's still early days though. A bit like when we couldn’t decide what an electrical plug should look like, if distribution should be AC or DC or at what voltage.
We still have multiple APIs to contend with. Moving workload from one cloud to another is hardly trivial. Moving it to your own hardware is usually even more fraught.
But this pattern isn’t anything new either. We’ve seen it play out in the past not only with electricity but also telephony, then mobile telephony and then mobile data. If you’re building enterprise systems with a shelf life of 30+ years rather than the latest SaaS product that will be canned or completely rebuilt within 2 years, then these macro technological trends are very important.
Think carefully about the portability of your workload, not only today but what that may look like in 3, 5 or 10 years. What will you do if you’re stuck on the equivalent of British Gas and Octopus would halve your bills? How hard is that switch today? In 5 years?
