Selling the Cloud Sublime - To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World - page 101

The space is still very much a work in progress and big cloud computing
services, like AWS, Google, Sun Microsystems and Microsoft, are regularly
coming out with different products. As these companies throw their hats
into the 'cloud computing ring,' AWS will face increased competition in
the market and could cause prices to go down to ight for market share”
(Butler 2013a). For some analysts, too much attention paid to current
prices (“the report seems to hype the cloud costs”) and too little to the
prospects for innovation doomed the report (ibid.).
The irst McKinsey report does not sound promotional at all. But
what makes this example particularly interesting is that the company
has completely changed its tune. At a 2012 conference, a senior part-
ner with the company delivered an altogether different outlook. In an
interview Bertil Chappuis described “an entrepreneurial groundswell
for the cloud.” His point is that the cloud has not just been good for
companies selling cloud services; it has been good for all business and for
entrepreneurship as well. Regarding the latter, Chappuis makes it clear
that he is not just talking about a Silicon Valley brand of entrepreneurial
business formation, but about all forms of business activity, large, small,
and individual. What changed from 2009 to 2012? For this Chappuis
concentrated on three key developments. In a reversal from the expecta-
tion contained in the irst report, it's “cheap computing.” Speciically,
he cites a threefold difference in cost between running your own server
system and shipping it to the cloud. In fact, owing to “massively scaled
and eficient data centers” the cost of a complete cloud service is lower
than the cost of providing the power for in-house servers. Furthermore,
cloud services are far more agile for provisioning infrastructure. Whereas
it takes anywhere from 60 to 150 days for an enterprise to provide for a
server system, access to the cloud is practically instantaneous. In fact, he
cites cases of people “buying compute power on their credit cards.” On
top of this he notes the capacity of the cloud to enable new experiences:
“social, local, mobile, big data.” These require rapid, agile development
to satisfy the requirements across multiple device platforms that have
what he calls very “bursty” processing proiles. Putting together cost,
agility, and the possibility for new experiences creates “a reinforcing
cycle that will enable these cloud environments to propagate in all sorts
of environments.” As a result, cloud computing actually becomes far
more signiicant than even what its early boosters predicted. In addition