private cloud?

Well ok, lets assume you have a CD called “AWS on a platter”. Great! Now you just need to buy a few hundred servers, a massive storage array, a data center with redundant power, cooling, and network connections, and add in a staff of top-notch network, storage, and server experts, and, somehow, manage them all…

At some point, people may get over it and realize the real magic of AWS is Amazon. Building a large, innovative, technically competent company… well, I have no idea how one does that. I not only wouldn’t know where to begin, but I’m not entirely sure it’s not a mass hallucination, or AWS is really a layer on top of alien technology.

Secondarily, the reason public cloud works is *because* every aspect of computing resources is billed for. This is the only thing that keeps developers in check. Offer people the illusion of unlimited resources, and that illusion will dissipate very rapidly.

This is not to say public cloud is the answer to everything. It’s just another tool in the box. But do match the solution to the scale. I think for most, server and some light network virtualization is good enough. Give your developers a rack of used servers to play on; if they break, that’s just better testing. If it doesn’t work on a slightly different Linux flavor of the same kernel vintage, then either the code is overblown and in dependency-hell, or you lack systems programmers. Or probably both.

I’m not sure at what scale private cloud makes sense. But I’m pretty sure it’s “the big boys”.

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