Is it just me or have you noticed the move toward a central computing model. With AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc.. This has been going on for a few years now.
Don’t get me wrong, it is an affordable way to have data processing, host your application, what ever you want to do with it – in a way that you don’t have to worry about the hardware and everything else that goes along with it.
Running your own datacenter is not an easy task. Back in the late 90s during the dot-com boom. I ran the datacenter for the operation. Back then, you had two choices, build your own datacenter, building with power, internet, cooling, etc. Or rent space in some other datacenter that provided the basics of power/internet/cooling etc.
Everything else you owned or rented. Networking on your side, physical computers – storage, etc. There was no Virtual Machines. If you had to add computing resources, you had to buy the machine, install it, which could take several weeks.
So, I get the love of clouding computing. You own nothing, but the data. You are renting resources by some amount of time. Which is nothing new, the concept of time-sharing has been around since the 70s. When mainframes ruled, time-sharing dramatically lowered the cost of providing computing capability, made it possible for individuals and organizations to use a computer without owning one.
Here is the problem as I see it.
When you invite technology – someone else built – in – you in turn give up a little independence – ever how insignificant. Easy always comes at some cost.
We need to look no further than the current supply chain issue. When everything gets centralized, and there are only a few companies providing a resource (product) – any disruptions at the head – moves though the entire system at a rapid pace.
To be frank, I don’t care what people say, maybe I have been around too long in this industry. Nothing is 100% – because it is built by humans. Either by laziness, carelessness, just didn’t know better, costing cutting, too many cooks in the kitchen, what ever else you can think of – there is never the perfect setup.
Just look at AWS and the latest outage in one of their datacenters. Or GoDaddy hosting where hackers gained access to – what was it over a million websites because of a shared password.
There are a lot of eggs in one basket. What if one of the major cloud providers is hacked – and it impacts not one – but all of their datacenters?
This has got me thinking of an idea I heard about the supply chain, which is local resources. If there is a problem in one area, the impact does not spread though out the system.
Independent Localized Computing. Means you are not tied to one provider. You can host it yourself, if needed, you can have mutiple providers. The key is not to buy into their proprietary APIs or tools.
It does require a little more work – but at the end of the day – the freedom to move as you wish, to me provides you with greater flexibility and resiliency.
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