When and Why does Portability Matter? Exploring multi-cloud, open source and cloud switching costs

When and Why does Portability Matter?

Dan Young | CEO, EngineerBetter | @dan0young

Exploring Multi-cloud, Open Source and Cloud Switching Costs.

The past.

The present.

Making better decisions.

This talk:

A story about lock-in.

“The AWS Console is this

generation's Visual Studio”

@brianleroux

Got Déjà vu?

Lock-in fear

considered harmful.

Wakefield Research Survey (Logicworks) - July 2016

What exactly is

lock-in?

The Lock-in CycleInformation Rules (Shapiro, Varian) 1998

10 years of public

cloud decisions.

● One horse race

● Compelling economics

● Compelling velocity

● Few switching tools

● Nobody to switch to

Who cares?

Image Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Shared things.

“Cloud computing is now

pervasive in our everyday

lives..It is so fully integrated

that it is not obvious how

dependent we already are”

CloudWATCH2 Consortium

(http://www.cloudwatchhub.eu/Roadmap-for-trans

parent-pricing)

We are always

unprepared.

Image Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory

The global utility.

Image Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory

No predictable

outcomes.

Image Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory

Meanwhile, back at

the ranch...

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/215680269631781978/

Where has my

competitive

advantage gone?

We keep on

abstracting. “Modularity through abstraction is the way things get done”

Barbara Liskov

We keep on

re-architecting.

We have unmet

demand for

portability.

We have unmet

demand for

portability.

Intermedia Survey (April 2016)

Private/Public

multi-cloud is a

thing.

What do the

analysts think?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pasukaru76/3998273279

2014 2015 2016

Gartner’s magical shrinking island.

"Although Azure is neither as feature-rich nor mature as AWS, many organizations can now consider it "good enough," and base their vendor decision on factors other than technical capabilities."

-Gartner MQ, 2016

The age of ‘good

enough’ alternatives.

“One interpretation of this

development is that

infrastructure is reaching a

commodity status”

-Rachel Stevens, Aug 2016

Recap, so far:

Image Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory

● Pervasive single supplier

● Unmanaged switching costs

● Black Swans happen

● AWS ubiquity

● We keep abstracting

● We wish we had options

● IaaS market commodity-like

Open Source at your

service.

Image Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory

"It's important to understand

that open source in this utility

computing world is not a

tactic, it's not a strategy, it's

the only practical way of

creating and competing in a

marketplace"- Simon Wardley OSCON 2007

Protected portability.

Devs can go

anywhere.$ cf push

Operators can go

anywhere.

http://lightsofsoho.com/product/bish-bash-bosh/

(http://bosh.io)

Who is paying

attention?

Image Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory

Banks

Governments

Multi-cloud in

action.

Image Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory

● Entire production PaaS● 120 Apps● VMware → Openstack● 2-3 people● 2 weeks effort● 30 mins downtime.

BOSH keeps

getting better.

Image credit: @mreider

BOSH CPIs keep

getting better.

Managing your

IaaS switching

costs.

The Lock-in CycleInformation Rules (Shapiro, Varian) 1998

Remember:

You can manage you switching costs, just like you manage technical debt.

● Open source wins.

● Portabilty for Devs

● Portability for Ops

● Lower marginal cost

● Higher marginal benefit

Portability in 2016+

@dan0young

[email protected]