Pay as you go is really going to make a difference

[Rumbu]

On Thursday, 16 January 2020 at 17:59:53 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2020 at 03:08:47PM +0000, Gregor Mückl via 
> Digitalmars-d wrote: [...][
>> There's just so many incentives pointing the wrong way:
>> 
>> - Cloud providers want to lock their customers in (Google, 
>> Amazon, MS)
>
> Yeah, this is another major ideological problem I have with 
> this whole cloud hype. Your data doesn't belong to you anymore; 
> it's sitting on the hard drives of some 3rd party whose 
> interests do not necessarily coincide with yours. The 
> accessibility of your mission-critical data is dependent upon 
> the availability of some remote service that isn't under your 
> control.  You're in trouble if the service goes down, or 
> becomes unavailable for whatever reason during the critical 
> times when you most need your data. You're in trouble if the 
> 3rd party gets hacked and now your supposedly private data is 
> out in the open.  Or there's a serious security flaw that you 
> were never aware of, that has left your data that you thought 
> was securely stored open to the whole world.  And worst of all, 
> your data is in the hands of a 3rd party who has the power to 
> do what they want with it, and their interests may not coincide 
> with yours.
>
> How anyone could be comfortable with that idea is beyond me.
>

It depends. The business world is more dynamic today. As a 
startup company you have access to advanced technologies that you 
never dream of in a blink of time.

Last year I started a new company. In 30 minutes I had a fully 
fledged e-mail system, a communication platform, a secure 
environment and a nice pack of development software. Uploaded my 
databases, opened Visual Studio, load the project, changed some 
settings in the configuration file, hit Build, hit Publish 
button. Zbang, my web application is up and running in the wild. 
As a service, I don't even need a virtual machine for this.

The company doesn't even have a physical office, we are three 
partners and all we got are three laptops working from home. 300 
eur/month licenses and services.

Now imagine the same scenario years ago. Buy some servers, buy 
storage, buy firewall, configure, install. Set-up e-mail, setup 
network, have a server room, put some cables. 30k eur at least.

More than that, since I am working in the payroll industry, 
clients ask for security certifications. We cannot afford to buy 
such systems and services to meet their criteria. Instead I gave 
them the security certifications of the cloud provider, which are 
state of the art. I have access to secure technologies like data 
leaking prevention, audit, logging without any supplementary 
investment.