Scattering Clouds: Price Surprises and Technical Labyrinths Have an Impact

February 12, 2024

green-dino_thumb_thumb_thumbThis essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

Yep, the cloud. A third-party time sharing services with some 21st-century add ons. I am not too keen on the cloud even though I am forced to use it for certain specific tasks. Others, however, think nothing of using the cloud like an invisible and infinite USB stick. “2023 Could Be the Year of Public Cloud Repatriation” strikes me as a “real” news story reporting that others are taking a look at the sky, spotting threatening clouds, and heading to a long-abandoned computer room to rethink their expenditures.

The write up reports:

Many regard repatriating data and applications back to enterprise data centers from a public cloud provider as an admission that someone made a big mistake moving the workloads to the cloud in the first place. I don’t automatically consider this a failure as much as an adjustment of hosting platforms based on current economic realities. Many cite the high cost of cloud computing as the reason for moving back to more traditional platforms.

I agree. However, there are several other factors which may reflect more managerial analysis than technical acumen; specifically:

  1. The cloud computing solution was better, faster, and cheaper. Better than an in house staff? Well, not for everyone because cloud companies are not working overtime to address user / customer problems. The technical personnel have other fires, floods, and earthquakes. Users / customers have to wait unless the user / customer “buys” dedicated support staff.
  2. So the “cheaper” argument becomes an issue. In addition to paying for escalated support, one has to deal with Byzantine pricing mechanisms. If one considers any of the major cloud providers, one can spend hours reading how to manage certain costs. Data transfer is a popular subject. Activated but unused services are another. Why is pricing so intricate and complex? Answer: Revenue for the cloud providers. Many customers are confident the big clouds are their friend and have their best financial interests at heart. That’s true. It is just that the heart is in the cloud computer books, not the user / customer balance sheets.
  3. And better? For certain operations, a user / customer has limited options. The current AI craze means the cloud is the principal game in town. Payroll, sales management, and Webby stuff are also popular functions to move to the cloud.

The rationale for shifting to the cloud varies, but there are some themes which my team and I have noted in our work over the years:

First, the cloud allowed “experts” who cost a lot of money to be hired by the cloud vendor. Users / customers did not have to have these expensive people on their staff. Plus, there are not that many experts who are really expert. The cloud vendor has the smarts to hire the best and the resources to pay these people accordingly… in theory. But bean counters love to cut costs so IT professionals were downsized in many organizations. The mythical “power user” could do more and gig workers could pick up any slack. But the costs of cloud computing held a little box with some Tannerite inside. Costs for information technology were going up. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to do computing in house? For some, the answer is, “Yes.”

2 11 ostrich

An ostrich company with its head in the clouds, not in the sand. Thanks, MidJourney, what a not-even-good-enough illustration.

Second, most organizations lacked the expertise to manage a multi-cloud set up. When an organization has two or more clouds, one cannot allow a cloud company to manage itself and one or more competitors. Therefore, organizations had to add to their headcount a new and expensive position: A cloud manager.

Third, the cloud solutions are not homogeneous. Different rules of the road, different technical set up, and different pricing schemes. The solution? Add another position: A technical manager to manage the cloud technologies.

I will stop with these three points. One can rationalize using the cloud easily; for example a government agency can push tasks to the cloud. Some work in government agencies consists entirely of attending meetings at which third-party contractors explain what they are doing and why an engineering change order is priority number one. Who wants to do this work as part of a nine to five job?

But now there is a threat to the clouds themselves. That is security. What’s more secure? Data in a user / customer server facility down the hall or in a disused building in Piscataway, New Jersey, or sitting in a cloud service scattered wherever? Security? Cloud vendors are great at security. Yeah, how about those AWS S3 buckets or the Microsoft email “issue”?

My view is that a “where should our computing be done and where should our data reside” audit be considered by many organizations. People have had their heads in the clouds for a number of years. It is time to hold a meeting in that little-used computer room and do some thinking.

Stephen E Arnold, February 12, 2024

The Cloud Kids Are Not Happy: Where Is Mom?

December 13, 2023

green-dino_thumb_thumb_thumbThis essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

An amusing item about the trials and tribulations of a cloud techno feudalists seems appropriate today. Navigate to the paywalled story “Microsoft Has Stranglehold on the Cloud, Say Amazon and Google.” With zero irony, the write up reports:

Amazon and Google have complained to the UK’s competition regulator that their rival, Microsoft, uses practices that restrict customer choice in the £7.5 billion cloud computing market.

What’s amusing is that Google allegedly said before it lost its case related to the business practices of its online store:

“These licensing practices are the only insurmountable barrier preventing competition on the merits for new customers migrating to the cloud and for existing workloads. They lead to less choice, less innovation, and increased costs for UK customers of all sizes.”

What was Amazon’s view? According to the article:

“Microsoft changed its licensing terms in 2019 and again in 2022 to make it more difficult for customers to run some of its popular software offerings on Google Cloud, AWS and Alibaba. To use many of Microsoft’s software products with these other cloud services providers, a customer must purchase a separate license even if they already own the software. This often makes it financially unviable for a customer to choose a provider other than Microsoft.”

How similar is this finger pointing and legal activity to a group of rich kids complaining that one child has all the toys? I think the similarities are — well — similar.

The question is, “What entity will become the mom to adjudicate the selfish actions of the cloud kids?”

Stephen E Arnold, December 13, 2023

Useful Cloud Market Share Data: Accurate? Well, Close Enough for Horseshoes

August 9, 2023

Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_tNote: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.

Anyone looking for a handy summary of data about big cloud players will find “AWS vs Google Cloud vs Microsoft Azure” worth reading. The article mentions the big folks and includes some data about smaller (although large) players; for example, Oracle. Trigger warning: The article users the term “hyperscalers” which I find a bit rizzy for my rhetorical spice cupboard.

Here are three representative items from the article. For more numbers, navigate to the original, please.

  1. Amazon’s worldwide [cloud] market share is 34 percent.
  2. The Google Cloud (bless those kind Googlers) is a bold 10 percent.
  3. Microsoft “cloud” [a fuzzy wuzzy nebulous and undefined word] surpassed $110 billion in annual revenue for 2022 and Azure accounted for $55 billion of the $110 billion.

Why is the cloud a big money maker? The article has an answer: Generative AI. Okay, that’s a good reason. I think there may be other factors as well.

If you collect these types of data, you will find the short write up a good reference point for a few months.

Stephen E Arnold, August 9, 2023

Smart Software and a Re-Run of Paradise Lost Joined Progress

June 5, 2023

Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[1]Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.

I picked up two non-so-faint and definitely not-encrypted signals about the goals of Google and Microsoft for smart software.

6 3 god 2

Which company will emerge as the one true force in smart software? MidJourney did not pick a winner, just what the top dog will wear to the next quarterly sales report delivered via a neutral Zoom call.

Navigate to the visually thrilling podcast hosted by Lex Fridman, an American MIT wizard. He interviewed the voluble Google wizard Chris Lattner. The subject was the Future of Programming and AI. After listening to the interview, I concluded the following:

  1. Google wants to define and control the “meta” framework for artificial intelligence. What’s this mean? Think a digital version of a happy family: Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva, among others.
  2. Google has an advantage when it comes to doing smart software because its humanoids have learned what works, what to do, and how to do certain things.
  3. The complexity of Google’s multi-pronged smart software methods, its home-brew programming languages, and its proprietary hardware are nothing more than innovation. Simple? Innovation means no one outside of the Google AI cortex can possibly duplicate, understand, or outperform Googzilla.
  4. Google has money and will continue to spend it to deliver the Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva experience in my interpretation of programmer speak.

How’s that sound? I assume that the fruit fly start ups are going to ignore the vibrations emitted from Chris Lattner, the voluble Chris Lattner, I want to emphasize. But like those short-lived Diptera, one can derive some insights from the efforts of less well-informed, dependent, and less-well-funded lab experiments.

Okay, that’s signal number one.

Signal number two appears in “Microsoft Signs Deal for AI Computing Power with Nvidia-Backed CoreWeave That Could Be Worth Billions.” This “real news” story asserts:

… Microsoft has agreed to spend potentially billions of dollars over multiple years on cloud computing infrastructure from startup CoreWeave …

CoreWeave? Yep, the company “sells simplified access to Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, which are considered the best available on the market for running AI models.” By the way, nVidia has invested in this outfit. What’s this signal mean to me? Here are the flickering lines on my oscilloscope:

  1. Microsoft wants to put smart software into its widely-used enterprise applications in order to make the one true religion of smart software. The idea, of course, is to pass the collection plate and convert dead dog software into racing greyhounds.
  2. Microsoft has an advantage because when an MBA does calculations and probably letters to significant others, Excel is the go-to solution. Some people create art in Excel and then sell it. MBAs just get spreadsheet fever and do leveraged buyouts. With smart software the Microsoft alleged monopoly does the billing.
  3. The wild and wonderful world of Azure is going to become smarter because… well, Microsoft does smart things. Imagine the demand for training courses, certification for Microsoft engineers, and how-to YouTube videos.
  4. Microsoft has money and will continue to achieve compulsory attendance at the Church of Redmond.

Net net: Two titans will compete. I am thinking about the battle between the John Milton’s protagonist and antagonist in “Paradise Lost.” This will be fun to watch whilst eating chicken korma.

Stephen E Arnold, June 5, 2023

The Confluence: Big Tech, Lobbyists, and the US Government

March 13, 2023

I read “Biden Admin’s Cloud Security Problem: It Could Take Down the Internet Like a Stack of Dominos.” I was thinking that the take down might be more like the collapses of outfits like Silicon Valley Bank.

I noted this statement about the US government, which is

embarking on the nation’s first comprehensive plan to regulate the security practices of cloud providers like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Oracle, whose servers provide data storage and computing power for customers ranging from mom-and-pop businesses to the Pentagon and CIA.

Several observations:

  1. Lobbyists have worked to make it easy for cloud providers and big technology companies to generate revenue is an unregulated environment.
  2. Government officials have responded with inaction and spins through the revolving door. A regulator or elected official today becomes tomorrow’s technology decision maker and then back again.
  3. The companies themselves have figured out how to use their money and armies of attorneys to do what is best for the companies paying them.

What’s the consequence? Wonderful wordsmithing is one consequence. The problem is that now there are Mauna Loas burbling in different places.

Three of them are evident: The fragility of Silicon Valley approach to innovation. That’s reactive and imitative at this time. The second issue is the complexity of the three body problem resulting from lobbyists, government methods, and monopolistic behaviors. Commercial enterprises have become familiar with the practice of putting their thumbs on the scale. Who will notice?

What will happen? The possible answers are not comforting. Waving a magic wand and changing what are now institutional behaviors established over decades of handcrafting will be difficult.

I touch on a few of the consequences in an upcoming lecture for the attendees at the 2023 National Cyber Crime Conference.

Stephen E Arnold, March 13, 2023

Clearing the Clouds in the EU

January 5, 2023

For many companies, computing in the cloud so someone else can worry about all that infrastructure seems like a no-brainer. But there is one big problem. The cloud services market is dominated by just three players: Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. The Next Web argues that “Dependence on Cloud’s ‘Big Three’ Is Hurting EU Startup Growth—It’s Time for a New Approach.” Writer Marris Adikwu informs us tech firms in Europe are suffering losses, cutting payroll, and struggling to attract investors. Several related factors contribute to the problem, like the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, and rising inflation. However, Adikwu asserts, a lack of cloudy competition also plays a role. Yep, it is time to gear up for more pressure on some high profile tech giants. We are told:

“While founders are reviewing budgets up and down looking to trim as much as possible in order to stay afloat, one major spend has been left largely untouched: cloud services. While the shift to the cloud was intended to reduce computing costs, many companies that have adopted these services are facing a surge in spending. Contract lock-ins and egress fees are making it impossible to leave. In fact, some argue that the cloud could be costing many businesses more than it’s actually saving.”

Yes, one must pay to leave but often not to enter. That can make the contract seem like a great deal at first. But once a cloud service is holding a firm’s data, the company is stuck if it cannot afford the fees to move it out. Held hostage are little items like office software, payroll systems, and customer websites. We learn:

“Currently, AWS charges between $0.08 to $0.12 per GB in egress fees, meanwhile Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure charge $0.08 and $0.05 per GB respectively for inter-continental data transfers from North America to Europe. According to Yann Lechelle, CEO of EU-based cloud provider Scaleway, startups often accept six-figure cloud credits from AWS, GCP, and Azure and take on products and services that they don’t always need, because they seem free.”

EU regulators address the issue in the European Data Act, but that legislation is still under discussion and, some feel, does not go far enough to protect against unfair contractual terms anyway. Adikwu recommends startups protect themselves by carefully considering their needs, spreading services across multiple cloud vendors, seeking out reserved instances and other discounts, and tapping into cost-saving technology. See the write-up for more details on these suggestions.

Cynthia Murrell, January 5, 2023

The Cloud and Points of Failure: Really?

September 13, 2022

A professional affiliated with Syntropy points out one of my “laws” of online; namely, that centralization is inevitable. What’s interesting about “The Internet is Now So Centralized That One Company Can Break It” is that it does not explain much about Syntropy. In my opinion, there is zero information about the c9ompany. The firm’s Web site explains:

Unlocking the power of the world’s scientific data requires more than a new tool or method – it requires a catalyst for change and collaboration across industries.

The Web site continues:

We are committed to inspiring others around our vision — a world in which the immense power of a single source of truth in biomedical data propels us towards discoveries, breakthroughs and cures faster than ever before.

The company is apparently involved with Merck KGaA, which as I recall from my Pharmaceutical News Index days, is not too keen on sharing its intellectual property, trial data, or staff biographies. Also, the company has some (maybe organic, maybe more diaphanous) connection with Palantir Technologies. Palantir, an interesting search and retrieval company morphing into search based applications and consulting, is a fairly secretive outfit despite its being a publicly traded company. (The firm’s string of quarterly disappointments and its share price send a signal to some astute observers I think.)

But what’s in the article by individual identified at the foot of the essay as Domas Povilauskas, the top dog at Syntropy. Note that the byline for the article is Benzinga Contributor which is not particularly helpful.

Hmmm. What’s up?

The write up recycles the online leads to centralization notion. Okay. But centralization is a general feature of online information, and that’s not a particularly new idea either.

The author continues:

The problem with the modern Internet is that it is essentially a set of private networks run by individual internet service providers. Each has a network, and most connections occur between these networks…. Networks are only managed locally. Routing decisions are made locally by the providers via the BGP protocol. There’s no shared knowledge, and nobody controls the entire route of the connection. Using these public ISPs is like using public transport. You have no control over where it goes. Providers own the cables and everything else. In this system, there are no incentives for ISPs to provide a good service.

The set up of ISPs strikes me as a mix of centralization and whatever works. My working classification of ISPs and providers has three categories: Constrained services (Amazon-type outfits), Boundary Operators (the TOR relay type outfits), and Unconstrained ISPs and providers (CyberBunker-type organizations). My view is that this is the opposite of centralization. In each category there are big and small outfits, but 90 percent of the action follows Arnold’s Law of Centralization. What’s interesting is that in each category — for instance, boundary operators — the centralization repeats just on a smaller scale. AccessNow runs a conference. At this conference are many operators unknown by the general online user.

The author of the article says:

The only way to get a more reliable service is to pay ISPs a lot for high-speed private connections. That’s the only way big tech companies like Amazon run their data centers. But the biggest irony is that there is enough infrastructure to handle much more growth.  70% of Internet infrastructure isn’t utilized because nobody knows about these routes, and ISPs don’t have an excellent solution to monetize them on demand. They prefer to work based on fixed, predetermined contracts, which take a lot of time to negotiate and sign.

I think this is partially correct. As soon as one shifts from focusing on what appear to be legitimate online activities to more questionable and possibly illegal activities, evidence of persistent online services which are difficult for law enforcement to take down thrive. CyberBunker generated millions and required more than two years to knock offline and reign in the owners. There is more dimensionality in the ISP/provider sector than the author of the essay considers.

The knock-offline idea sounds good. One can point to the outages and the pain caused by Microsoft Azure/Microsoft Cloud, Google Cloud, Amazon, and others as points of weakness with as many vulnerabilities as a five-legged Achilles would have.

The reality is that the generalizations about centralization sound good, seem logical, and appear to follow the Arnold Law that says online services tend to centralization. Unfortunately new technologies exist which make it possible for more subtle approaches to put services online.

Plus, I am not sure how a company focused on a biomedical single source of truth fits into what is an emerging and diverse ecosystem of ISPs and service providers.

Stephen E Arnold, September 13, 2022

ISPs and Network Providers: The Big Warming

September 5, 2022

On September 14, 2022, I will be sharing some of my team’s research about ISPs and network providers. Coincidentally, the “open” information services are providing interesting — but as yet not yet rock solid information — about the ISP and network provider world. In a sense, figuring out what ISPs and network providers are doing is like looking at distant star data in the Webb space telescope data stream. There is information flowing, but making those data speak clearly is not an easy job.

I read “I Ran the Worlds Largest DDOS for Hire Empire and CloudFlare Helped.” The write up struck me as quite interesting. I circled this pass as interesting but not backed up with footnotes or cheerful hyperlinks:

As the infrastructure provider for over 20% of all www traffic traversing the internet today, CloudFlare is in a position to enforce it’s beliefs on a global scale. Most of the time this isn’t a problem, lots of nefarious websites try to take advantage of the services CloudFlare offers and are rightfully kicked off. The problems arise in a small category of websites that blur the line.

The “blur” seems to say to me: Hey, we are big and well known, and maybe some bad actors use our service.”

Here’s another sentence which may catch the attention of legal eagles:

As someone who has previously justified their actions by saying “I am not directly causing harm, the responsibility flows downstream to my end users” I can tell you it is a shaky defense at best. The situation would be different if CloudFlare was unaware of the booter websites they are offering protection to, but that is not the case. CloudFlare knows who they are protecting and chooses to continue doing so, being fully cognizant of the end result their actions will have. Let’s talk about that end result because the hypocrisy of it all stings like a slap in the face as I type this. CloudFlare is responsible for keeping booter websites online and operating, the very same websites who’s sole purpose is to fuel CloudFlare’s very own business model, selling DDoS protection.

I am no lawyer and I certainly don’t understand anything other than my dinobaby world. However, it seems as if a big company is allegedly in a position to do more to protect truth, justice, and the American way than it may be doing. Oh, the American way means operating without meaningful oversight, regulation, and the invisible ethical hand that makes stakeholders quiver with glee.

Worth watching what other ISP and network provider examples emerge as the real journalists reach their coffee shops and begin working this subject.

Stephen E Arnold, September 5, 2022

Is Google Drive — Gulp — a Hacking Tool for Bad Actors?

August 17, 2022

Russia is a near-impregnable force when it comes to hacking. Vladimir Putin’s home base is potentially responsible for influencing many events in the United States, including helping Donald Trump win his first presidential election. Russia neither confirms nor denies the roles hackers play in its and global politics. Unfortunately, Cyber Scoop shares how a common Google tool has been purloined by hackers: “Russian Hacking Unit Cozy Bears Adds Google Drive To Its Arsenal, Researchers Say.”

In what is one of the simplest ways to deliver malware, Russian hackers from the state-funded unit Cozy Bear are using Dropbox and Google Drive. Did you read that? Russian hackers are using legitimate cloud storage services, including one from one of the biggest tech giants, to deliver malware. Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 researchers are confounded by the delivery process, because it is hard to detect:

“This is a new tactic for this actor and one that proves challenging to detect due to the ubiquitous nature of these services and the fact that they are trusted by millions of customers worldwide,” the researchers said. “When the use of trusted services is combined with encryption, as we see here, it becomes extremely difficult for organizations to detect malicious activity in connection with the campaign.”

Russian hackers and other black hat people have used cloud storage services to deliver malware before, but using Google Drive is a new tactic. Google is a globally trusted brand that makes more people vulnerable to malware. When people see Google, they automatically trust it, so potential victims could unknowingly download malware.

Dropbox is deleting any accounts that are exploiting their services for hacking. The good news is cloud storage services want to protect users, but the bad news is they are not acting fast enough.

Whitney Grace, August 17, 2022

Is the New Era of Timesharing Winding Down?

August 11, 2022

What kind of question is that? Stupid for sure. The cloud is infinite. The earnings bright spots for Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are cloud revenue and services. Google wants to amp up its cloud because sitting in third place behind the dorky outfits Amazon and Microsoft is not part of the high school science club’s master plan. And Microsoft cannot cope with Amazon AWS. Accordingly Microsoft is chasing start ups in order to be in the front of the ChocoTaco line for the next big thing. And Amazon. Fancy moves like killing long-provided services like backup, making changes that will cause recoding of some applications, and thinking about ways to increase revenue from Fancy Dan billing thresholds.

The cloud is the big thing.

If the information in “Why AI and Machine Learning Are Drifting Away from the Cloud” is on the money, one of those odd ball Hegelian things may be gaining momentum. The reference is to the much loved and pretty obvious theory that sine waves operated in the biological world. I am referring to the old chestnut test question about thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Stated another way: First there was a big computer. Then there was timesharing. Then there was the personal computer. Then there was client server. That begot the new version of the cloud. The future? Back to company-owned and controlled computers. Hegelian stuff, right?

The article presents this idea:

Cloud computing isn’t going anywhere, but some companies are shifting their machine learning data and models to their own machines they manage in-house. Adopters are spending less money and getting better performance.

Let’s follow this idea. If smart software becomes the next big thing as opposed to feeding people, the big clouds will face customer defection and maybe pushback about pricing, lock in, and restrictions on what can and cannot be done on the services. (Yep, some phishing outfits use the cloud to bedevil email users. Yes, some durable Dark Web sites host some of their data on big cloud services. Yep, some cloud services have “inspection” tools to prevent misuse which may not be as performant as the confections presented in marketing collateral.)

With more AI, perhaps there will be less cloud. Then what?

The write up points out:

Companies shifting compute and data to their own physical servers located inside owned or leased co-located data centers tend to be on the cutting edge of AI or deep-learning use, Robinson [vice president of strategic partnerships and corporate development at MLOps platform company Domino Data Lab] said. “[They] are now saying, ‘Maybe I need to have a strategy where I can burst to the cloud for appropriate stuff. I can do, maybe, some initial research, but I can also attach an on-prem workload.”

Hegel? What’s he got to do with this rethinking of the cloud, today’s version of good old timesharing? Probably nothing. The sine wave theories are silly. Ask any Econ 101 or Poli Sci 101 student. And who does not enjoy surprise charges for cloud computing services which are tough to see through? I know I do.

Stephen E Arnold, August 11, 2022

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