Amazon today operates at a scale that most people are unaware of and find incomprehensible when they get a glimmer of understanding of it. Just to offer an example, one weekend Cycle Computing used EC2 spot instances to create a 156,000 core supercomputer that spanned 8 AWS regions and provided 1.2 Petaflops of processing power. In its presentation, Cycle noted the tremendous cost savings this offered: $33,000 instead of the $50 million plus it would have cost if the equipment were purchased.

Cloud is really, really hard. Just read the headlines – enterprises and traditional IT vendors are struggling. Cloud is hard

Cloud is really, really hard. Just read the headlines – enterprises and traditional IT vendors are struggling. Cloud is hard

Cloud is really, really hard. Just read the headlines – enterprises and traditional IT vendors are struggling. Cloud is hard

While this dude’s tone is pretty harsh, there’s not too much wrong here if you peel that back. The issue is one of contextualizing OpenStack. I think a lot of people want it to be a finished, done product. There’s even the sense from some OpenStack die-hards I’ve spoken with over recent years that commercializing at this point is a joke: it’s too early. I don’t think any of them realize that’s what they’re thinking, but when you hear about modularity and customization, it’s a good sign that the person is implying “it’s not fully baked yet” (though not always).

While this dude’s tone is pretty harsh, there’s not too much wrong here if you peel that back. The issue is one of contextualizing OpenStack. I think a lot of people want it to be a finished, done product. There’s even the sense from some OpenStack die-hards I’ve spoken with over recent years that commercializing at this point is a joke: it’s too early. I don’t think any of them realize that’s what they’re thinking, but when you hear about modularity and customization, it’s a good sign that the person is implying “it’s not fully baked yet” (though not always).

While this dude’s tone is pretty harsh, there’s not too much wrong here if you peel that back. The issue is one of contextualizing OpenStack. I think a lot of people want it to be a finished, done product. There’s even the sense from some OpenStack die-hards I’ve spoken with over recent years that commercializing at this point is a joke: it’s too early. I don’t think any of them realize that’s what they’re thinking, but when you hear about modularity and customization, it’s a good sign that the person is implying “it’s not fully baked yet” (though not always).

“It is clear that networking has for a very long time been a black box. They don’t even come with APIs,” he explains. “This is the history that forced us to really look at way networks are laid out and build [devices] and do [it] ourselves. Also the cost – everything else in our data centre [is] more efficient.” "They don't even come with APIs."

“It is clear that networking has for a very long time been a black box. They don’t even come with APIs,” he explains. “This is the history that forced us to really look at way networks are laid out and build [devices] and do [it] ourselves. Also the cost – everything else in our data centre [is] more efficient.” "They don't even come with APIs."

“It is clear that networking has for a very long time been a black box. They don’t even come with APIs,” he explains. “This is the history that forced us to really look at way networks are laid out and build [devices] and do [it] ourselves. Also the cost – everything else in our data centre [is] more efficient.” "They don't even come with APIs."