Chris Evans has some interesting thoughts on where cloud adoption is going. He stages for cloud adoption go from initial private cloud implementations to something he calls a “multi-cloud brokerage”. There’s no doubt that in 2017 we saw multi-cloud strategies become common talking points for any number of vendors. While fear of cloud lock-in is perhaps overblown, multi-cloud seems to be where many organizations want to go.
We’re just starting to see services that offer true multi-cloud support, but Chris sees cloud adoption taking that a step further with his brokerage concept. It’s an interesting concept, although as pointed out in the piece, there are a number of issues to still be worked out. My question is what kind of entity takes on that role? Would there be a centralized cloud clearinghouse that would provide transparent and comparable cost, performance, and billing among providers? Or would there be numerous cloud VARs to assume this role?
The issue I see is that while organizations may would cloud to be a “dumb pipe” utility of compute, storage, and swappable services, the cloud providers have every incentive to differentiate themselves. Were such a brokerage to exist, I think the temptation would be to package their service in such a way that it avoid easy comparison, or to partner with the brokerage to offer discounted referral rates.
That may be the ugly reality of implementation, but it doesn’t mean that what Chris proposes isn’t possible. Ultimately, if customers respond to cloud as a commodified utility, someone will figure out how to make it work.
Chris Evans comments:
A quick look at the adoption of technology over the last 60 years shows us that no one vendor, technology or concept becomes 100% dominant. Back in September 2017, I presented at Scality’s SDS day on what I thought the future of storage and cloud would be. With technology and specifically cloud adoption in mind, I suggested that the long-term future of IT will be multi-cloud. What does that mean and how do we get there?
Read more at: The Four Stages of Cloud Adoption
