Can confirm: The cloud computing fad is well underway to dying...that is why AI is booming. One need only to follow the wall street dollars to figure that one out.
Several very big profile names have recently begun moving back to self-hosted, hybrid, or dedicated hosting solutions.
Cloud computing never was good in terms of value, however, it was only good in terms of scalability. AI solutions built on top of 'the cloud' will always be even worse.
Note that I pay a certain "third tier" cloud provider less than $100/mo total for hosting large websites that would cost me more than 10 grand a month on AWS/Azure/Google...while having better uptime. (the biggest differences? the complete lack of IO and bandwidth charges, and much lower storage charges)
That should tell you all you need about these types of bubbles, but then again, most of us that watched the entire tech field unfold since the pre-internet phase already knew this.
Just gonna chip in here and say that anything costing a 100 bucks is not valid as an argument in a conversation about cloud.
The prime selling point for cloud for large enterprises was (and still is):
- a signatory that shares blame on several core security issues (iso stuff)
- high amount of flexibility for individual teams used to asking for a vm then waiting four weeks for the itops dept to bring it online
Now the vast majority of cloud moves for large enterprises ends up as a shitshow due to poor implementation sure, but the key points for getting it sold are still there.
And ofc you CAN still cost optimize with cloud, its just harder.
Context: Worked in post and pre sales over some years in MSFT in the enterprise segment.
I got out before the downturn and everyone talking about cost, but my approach in selling azure to the c-suite would be fairly similar today I reckon.
Dropbox has been the biggest name who did the whole “cloud repatriation” thing, which was all the rage at the beginning of 2023, with claims that the cloud was soon to be dead—but cloud revenues are supposedly expected to be in excess of $1T by 2026, so whatever.
Some random survey from ESG found 60% of respondents repatriated at least some workloads. Who knows what the N was though.
Several very big profile names have recently begun moving back to self-hosted, hybrid, or dedicated hosting solutions.
Cloud computing never was good in terms of value, however, it was only good in terms of scalability. AI solutions built on top of 'the cloud' will always be even worse.
Note that I pay a certain "third tier" cloud provider less than $100/mo total for hosting large websites that would cost me more than 10 grand a month on AWS/Azure/Google...while having better uptime. (the biggest differences? the complete lack of IO and bandwidth charges, and much lower storage charges)
That should tell you all you need about these types of bubbles, but then again, most of us that watched the entire tech field unfold since the pre-internet phase already knew this.