Andreas Gauger, Gründer und CMO vor ProfitBricks, zeigt auf den CloudCamp Frankfurt, warum Hybrid Cloud nicht die Zukunft des Cloud Computing und für Unternehmens IT ist. Die Zukunft der IT liegt im Bezug von Rechenpower wie aus der Steckdose. Aber: Die Cloud Preise müssen runter.

1. Hybrid Clouds are not the
future, better IaaS pricing is
Andreas Gauger
@gaugi

2. Introduction
•
Andreas Gauger
•
18 years in the hosting/cloud industry
•
Founded and led the 1&1 hosting business from
1995 to 2008
•
Started ProfitBricks in 2010 together with Achim
Weiß who was CTO at 1&1 and responsible for all
development and all datacenters

3. Two statements…

4. When I saw the
first cloud
computing
products I thought
they would never
be a success

5. First cloud computing
•
Only pretty small instances
•
performance fluctuation due to bad neighbor problems
•
No that reliable
•
Lot’s of things you could not do (no networking, load
balancing etc.)
•
2 to 4 times more expensive than dedicated
servers

6. But it was a success…
•
Very low starting cost
•
No investments
•
No long term contract, no unused capacity
•
Once the workload was adapted to the cloud it was
easily scalable, no (wrong) pre planning of capacity was
necessary any more
•
No management of hardware, datacenter or connectivity
any more

7. Today cloud is different
•
Small to very big instances available
•
Performance of modern clouds can be very high
•
Reliability can be very good due to more
redundancy
•
Software defined datacenters offer all the
possibilities of „real hardware“ data centers

8. But…

9. The cloud is still
overpriced

10. It’s the elephant in the room
•
Typical public cloud IaaS offerings have gross
margins as high as 80% to 90%
•
Cloud pricing is dominated by big players that set
the standards nearly all the competitors use as
orientation
•
Sadly also most companies that offer services on
top of IaaS do the same

11. Why do I tell you?
•
I should shut up and be happy about the margins
•
But I think the artificially high pricing has started to
hinder the adoption of IaaS
•
Hybrid clouds emerge, and one of the main
reasons for this is - the too high price of IaaS
•
Companies with large workloads pull them from
IaaS providers out of cost reasons

12. Old technology is happy
•
The too high pricing leaves the door open for old
technology
•
Hardware vendors tell their customers to use
„hybrid clouds“ that are a combination of a „private
cloud“ where they can sell the good old servers and
storage systems and public cloud
•
Dedicated server hosters do the same thing but
there the „private cloud“ is rented not bought

13. Even IaaS providers go back
in time
•
Some IaaS providers have „indecent proposals“
•
The more more we take away from the flexibility the
cloud promised, the better pricing you will get
•
„Sign a three year fixed contract on an instance.
Pay a high setup fee and a fixed monthly fee (no
matter if you use the instance) and you get a 66%
discount“ (actual offer of Amazon)

14. And why is this bad?
•
Cloud computing is a promise.
•
It is a very elegant form of resource allocation and it
takes away a lot of burdens from the user
•
Hybrid clouds and „lock-in“ pricing schemes take
away these advantages and even add an additional
layer of complexity to the management (hybrid
clouds)

15. So what should you do?
•
Look out for the new and modern IaaS companies
out there.
•
They didn’t have the burden of older technology
and existing revenue streams to protect
•
They offer modern, high performant virtual
datacenters at much more reasonable pricing than
the big players

16. Another secret
•
If you want to know your cost of a certain IaaS
provider for you there is ONLY ONE WAY to find
out:
•
•
Run your actual workload on that provider. The
real one. Then find out what bang you get for your
buck.
If you try to compare IaaS provider pricing on paper
you have a high chance to be factors off.

17. Conclusion
•
Don’t go hybrid cloud for cost reasons
•
Just find and test cost efficient IaaS providers and
live happy ever after