Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future

From	RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com>
Newsgroups	comp.misc
Subject	Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future
Date	2014-04-03 20:45 +0000
Organization	solani.org
Message-ID	<lhkha5$3r8$1@solani.org> (permalink)

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From the «under ur bridge, trolln ur newzgroop» department:
Title: RIP, the server. It’s time to breathe the air of cloud connection
Author: Peter Coffee, Salesforce.com
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 13:30:09 -0400
Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/KXN2cls8pGU/
Podcast Download URL: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/453612803.jpg

Sometimes, it’s hard to tell when a novelty becomes a trend or a trend
becomes the new normal. This is not one of those times. The era of the
on-premise server is clearly behind us, with the cusp of change literally on
our calendars.

In just the past week, we’ve seen significant server-shedding events and
announcements from Google[1], Box[2] and Amazon Web Services[3]. Even 
Microsoft[4] finally seems to get it: enabling people to work from anywhere
is more important than keeping them leashed to a platform going nowhere.

This is no longer just a matter of doing things a little more cheaply, or a
little less painfully, by doing them in the cloud. It’s bigger than that.
Today, running your business on private servers is on the same level of odd
behavior as carrying scuba tanks to provide a private air supply. Does it
give you more control of exactly what you breathe? Certainly, but can you
make a business case for all that excess weight? Going forward, the notion of
owning your own server farm is looking equally eccentric.

Servers were a cost-effective stopgap during the period when processing power
got cheaper, much more quickly than our planet-wide networks became pervasive
and interoperable. The 1971 debut of Intel’s first microprocessor, the 4004,
came three years before the word “internet” was introduced; the birth of the
modern Internet’s TCP/IP protocol was still eleven years away, and that was
seven cycles of Moore’s-Law processor improvement. Having your own room full
of servers made sense, like having your own air dome on the surface of Mars:
inside our little habitats, we could have pockets of breathable “air” of
computation and connectivity, but outside it was still a near-vacuum.

As early settlers on Planet Computing, we all got pretty skilled at charging
up our air tanks and patching our space suits for those dangerous walks
across the landscape from one dome of air to the next. Remember your brief
episodes of “going online” with your dial-up modem? Over time, though, we’ve
made the atmosphere of connectitvity and shared processing power much more
breathable. We’ve even leapfrogged ourselves: as one CEO recently asked his
facility manager, “We spent how much to put state-of-the-art Wi-Fi in this
building? And I get more bandwidth on my 4G LTE smartphone?”

[image 6][5]

We’ve also changed, in a fundamental way, the kinds of workload that we
perform. When business computing was automation of internal record
management, data originated at a predictable pace; analysis was needed on a
regular schedule. Owning a battery of servers that can handle today’s world
of bursty, externally driven data would be like carrying tanks that are big
enough to get you through a marathon run at a sprinter’s speed. Even if you
can afford the cost, you rightly dread the unproductive burden.

So far, furthermore, we’ve only talked about gross computational capacity. We
haven’t even begun to discuss the more complicated tasks that we want to be
able to perform, like real-time collaboration. When you own your own servers,
collaboration requires you to simulate the sharing that a cloud makes
completely straightforward. If something happens on Department X servers in
one building, and something related happens on Department Y servers
elsewhere, it takes a ziggurat of middleware to make it look as if a shared
process is taking place in a shared space. This is more expensive, more
failure prone, and can’t possibly be more effective than the real thing: an
actual, single, concurrently accessible work product on the shared foundation
of a cloud service provider. That could be any of several reputable
innovators, but almost certainly will not be someone who’d rather sell you
software to run on your own machines.

Imagine a day when colonists on Planet Computing wake up to the news that the
air is now dense enough to breathe. Would some people say, “I don’t know: I’m
not sure I trust it”? Would some people strap on their air tanks, out of
long-established habit, and say, “You go ahead and try breathing that stuff.
I’m sticking with what I know”? Of course. Every new capability has its late
adopters.

But will those resolute tank-breathers be late to work, tired by their load,
and preoccupied with watching their air gauges while others are sprinting
ahead? Absolutely–and that’s what we see today in business, education,
government, health care and every other institution. Those who shed the dead
weight first get more done, sooner and better and at less cost.

We live on a fully connected planet, surrounded by tasks that increasingly
demand immediate scalable access to rich processing power–mediated by
ubiquitous networks. No new company starts out with a budget line item of
“buy servers”; even in the largest enterprises, few today would want to risk
joining the hall of shame for managers who build over-budget and
under-performing server farms, instead of marshalling modern cloud services
to solve the problem.

RIP, the server. You were what we needed when there was no alternative.
You’re now a relic of a time that’s almost unrecognizable today; you
represent a cost that’s unaffordable, and unreasonable, for all future time
to come.

Peter Coffee is VP for strategic research at salesforce.com, where he serves
as a liaison with the IT and business community to define the opportunity and
clarify customers’ requirements on the company’s evolving Salesforce1
Platform.

Feature image from Thinkstock/wavebreakmedialtd[7]. Cloud image from
Thinkstock/buchachon[8].
[image 9]

[image 11][10]

Related research and analysis from Gigaom Research:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial[12].

* 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012[13]
* The promise of SDNs in the enterprise[14]
* Continuous delivery and the world of devops[15]

[image 17][16][image 18]

Links:
[1]: http://gigaom.com/2014/03/25/and-bam-google-cuts-on-demand-prices-by-a-third-demos-live-migration-for-its-cloud/ (link)
[2]: http://www.boxdev2014.com/ (link)
[3]: http://gigaom.com/2014/03/26/and-here-are-those-aws-price-cuts-we-talked-about/ (link)
[4]: http://gigaom.com/2014/03/27/office-for-ipad-available-today/ (link)
[5]: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/453612803.jpg (link)
[6]: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/453612803.jpg?w=708 (image)
[7]: http://www.thinkstockphotos.com/image/stock-illustration-data-servers-resting-on-clouds-in-blue/172588046 (link)
[8]: http://www.thinkstockphotos.com/image/stock-photo-cloud-computing-networking-concept/453612803 (link)
[9]: http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=gigaom.com&blog=14960843&post=828910&subd=gigaom2&ref=&feed=1 (image)
[10]: http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?iu=/1008864/Gigaom_RSS_300x250&sz=300x250&c=915030 (link)
[11]: http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ad?iu=/1008864/Gigaom_RSS_300x250&sz=300x250&c=915030 (image)
[12]: http://research.gigaom.com/?utm_source=cloudutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=828910+rip-the-server-its-time-to-breathe-the-air-of-cloud-connection&utm_content=gigaguest (link)
[13]: http://research.gigaom.com/report/12-tech-leaders-resolutions-for-2012/?utm_source=cloudutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=828910+rip-the-server-its-time-to-breathe-the-air-of-cloud-connection&utm_content=gigaguest (link)
[14]: http://pro.gigaom.com/2012/11/an-overview-of-the-software-defined-networking-market/?utm_source=cloudutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=828910+rip-the-server-its-time-to-breathe-the-air-of-cloud-connection&utm_content=gigaguest (link)
[15]: http://pro.gigaom.com/2012/10/continuous-delivery-and-the-world-of-devops/?utm_source=cloudutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=828910+rip-the-server-its-time-to-breathe-the-air-of-cloud-connection&utm_content=gigaguest (link)
[16]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?a=KXN2cls8pGU:ZQErf-p6wow:yIl2AUoC8zA (link)
[17]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?d=yIl2AUoC8zA (image)
[18]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OmMalik/~4/KXN2cls8pGU (image)

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Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future RS Wood  <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-04-03 20:45 +0000
  Re:Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-04-05 10:29 +0000
    Re: Re:Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future Rich <rich@example.com> - 2014-04-05 17:04 +0000
    Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future David Harmon <source@netcom.com> - 2014-04-05 11:35 -0700
    Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future Tim Watts <tw_usenet@dionic.net> - 2014-04-05 19:47 +0100
      Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2014-04-06 01:31 -0300
        Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-04-06 18:49 +0000
          Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future Marek Novotny <marek.novotny@hushmail.com> - 2014-04-06 14:14 -0500
            Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future "G. Paul Ziemba" <paul+usenet@w6yx.stanford.edu> - 2014-04-07 01:18 +0000
            Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2014-04-07 09:06 +0000
          Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future Rich <rich@example.com> - 2014-04-06 22:35 +0000
            Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future Tim Watts <tw_usenet@dionic.net> - 2014-04-07 00:18 +0100
      Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des@des.no> - 2014-04-06 22:04 +0200
        Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future Tim Watts <tw_usenet@dionic.net> - 2014-04-06 22:18 +0100
  Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future Peter Percival <peterxpercival@hotmail.com> - 2014-04-07 23:25 +0100
    Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future Tim Watts <tw_usenet@dionic.net> - 2014-04-08 10:40 +0100
      Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future Randy Westlund <Vorzakir@invalid.invalid> - 2014-04-08 17:48 +0000
        Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future Tim Watts <tw_usenet@dionic.net> - 2014-04-08 19:11 +0100
          Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future Bob Eager <news0002@eager.cx> - 2014-04-08 19:34 +0000
          Re: Salesforce.com guy says servers are done, cloud is future scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2014-04-09 17:56 +0000

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