原文作者：Matt Asay

譯者：李哲

關鍵詞：私有云，公有云

核心提示：私有云還是公有云？這已經(jīng)是老生常談了。本文觀點認為，亞馬遜、谷歌、微軟等企業(yè)提供的公有云平臺，將在與私有云的創(chuàng)新競爭中保持完勝。

上周，微軟、亞馬遜、Alphabet（谷歌）的財報相繼出臺，宣示了三家公司云業(yè)務增長的強勁勢頭（增長率分別為116%、55%和“所有產(chǎn)品線中最高的增長率”）。然而，事實還不止如此。

這些公司還宣布，支撐云服務的基礎設施建設是投資重點。投資數(shù)額是其他公司望塵莫及的。那么，這是否意味著你的私有云已經(jīng)淪落成“二等云公民”了？很不幸，事實基本如此。因為你的創(chuàng)新速度完全跟不上。

“但是我可以像谷歌一樣運營??！”

“服務器擁護者”過去常常聲稱，企業(yè)的很多工作不能轉入公有云，因為有安全、性能或者其他方面的顧慮。隨著這些顧慮的煙消云散，他們又轉而論道：“精明的企業(yè)可以更高效地運行它們的基礎設施，而且比使用公有云更經(jīng)濟?！?/p>

真的是這樣嗎？

對成百上千的大規(guī)模的服務器進行高效的管理，不是不可能。如果能做到，當然很好。根據(jù)451 Research的研究報告，對于那些能夠高效管理大規(guī)模服務器的企業(yè)來說，使用私有云的總體擁有成本（TCO）比使用公有云更低。

但是，這種優(yōu)勢始終無法與亞馬遜、谷歌、微軟等公司產(chǎn)生的規(guī)模經(jīng)濟相提并論。規(guī)模經(jīng)濟意味著更多更好的硬件、軟件和人才。谷歌宣布，到2017年，云服務將成為公司最大的投資領域和人數(shù)增長領域之一，而且將在下一年覆蓋八個新地區(qū)。微軟已經(jīng)覆蓋了38個地區(qū)，在不久的將來還會進軍法國。

至于亞馬遜？谷歌和微軟只能相形見絀了。

然而，規(guī)模經(jīng)濟不僅僅意味著花更少的錢，買更多的硬件。正如Randy Bias所說，“創(chuàng)新率和開發(fā)率才是這些公有云企業(yè)規(guī)模經(jīng)濟的真正意義所在?！毕胫肋@句話的真正含義嗎？看看這些公司發(fā)布的開源和研究項目吧！這只是它們的數(shù)據(jù)中心研發(fā)投入的冰山一角。

在建立起根深蒂固的“云DNA”之前，不管你的公司有多大，都不可能和公有云同日而語。就像亞馬遜的CFO Brian Olsavsky在公司的電話會議上強調的，“我們做這行的時間比其他人都長，這些時間都被用來完善我們的產(chǎn)品和服務了?！?/p>

如果，你還沒被說服的話……

當然，即使你不再幻想著與公有云的靈活性和創(chuàng)新性相媲美，仍然要把工作流保持在自己的數(shù)據(jù)中心內，也是可以理解的。如果是這樣的話，你可以考慮投資被Forrester稱為私有云的業(yè)界標準和“安全賭注”的OpenStack。

如果你不是一家電信公司或者沃爾瑪，你可能會選擇在OpenStack上進行開發(fā)和測試工作（dev-and-test workloads）。根據(jù)最近的調查，在所有使用OpenStack的企業(yè)中，89%服務的用戶少于1,000位。沒錯，開發(fā)和測試工作很重要，而且可以鼓舞你在云領域的自信心，為生產(chǎn)工作（production workloads）鋪平道路。但是，OpenStack還遠沒有像AWS或微軟Azure一樣擁有如此廣泛的用戶。

而且它永遠也不會。因為OpenStack服務的用戶群在不斷縮小，這些人相信他們需要有自己的基礎設施，就像上個世紀初的制造商相信要有自己的發(fā)電廠一樣。

對私有數(shù)據(jù)中心的需求是可以理解的，但是，當像通用這樣的公司都在宣布要把90%的工作流轉入公有云的時候，我們是否應該考慮一下，把默認設置從“私有云”調整為 “公有云”。

亞馬遜、谷歌、微軟……它們將在創(chuàng)新的競爭中保持完勝。

英文原文：

This past week Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet (Google) all reported earnings, and all announced impressive growth (116 percent, 55 percent, and “the highest percentage growth of all its product lines,” respectively) in their public cloud businesses. That, however, isn’t all they announced.

These same companies announced major investments into the infrastructure powering their clouds, investments that no single company can hope to match. Does this mean your private cloud is a second-class cloud citizen? Almost definitely. You simply can’t innovate fast enough.

But I can run like Google!

It used to be that server-huggers argued that a wide array of enterprise workloads wouldn’t go to the public cloud due to security, performance, or other concerns. These concerns keep evaporating, leaving apologists to declare, “Well, savvy enterprises can run their infrastructure more efficiently and save money over the public cloud.”

Really?

Sure, it’s possible that you’re awesome at efficiently managing hundreds or thousands of servers at scale. If so, good for you. In a summary of a 451 Research report, Brandon Butler of Network World notes, “Generally speaking, if any organization has the expertise to manage a large number of servers at a high level of utilization, then on-premises, customer-managed private clouds can have a total cost of ownership (TCO) advantage compared to public clouds.”

Ultimately, there’s no way you can keep up with the relentless economies of scale of an Amazon, Google, or Microsoft.?As RedMonk analyst Stephen O’Grady has called out:

[Public cloud providers’] variable costs decrease due to their ability to purchase in larger quantities; their fixed costs are amortized over a higher volume customer base; their relative efficiency can increase as scale drives automation and improved processes; their ability to attract and retain talent increases in proportion to the difficulty of the technical challenges imposed; and so on.

This translates into more and better hardware, software, and people. Google, for example, revealed that “cloud [will] be one of our largest areas of investment and head count growth” in 2017, also stating that the company will add eight new regions next year. Microsoft, for its part, has 38 regions and will add France in the near future. The company also announced it’s spending heavily at the expense of higher profits: “Given the growth opportunity in cloud, we increased our operating expenses by 21 percent … to fund cloud engineering, sales capacity, and developer engagement.”

And Amazon? It dwarfs them all.

But “economies of scale” isn’t merely about the ability to buy more hardware for less. As Randy Bias concludes, “The rate of innovation and development at these public clouds is where the true economies of scale reside.” Want a taste of what he means? Check out the impressive open source and/or research projects these companies keep releasing, a hint of the R&D that goes into their datacenters.

I don’t care how big your company is — until you spend the years building up that institutional cloud DNA, you simply cannot hope to match the public clouds. As Amazon’s CFO Brian Olsavsky stressed on the company’s earnings call, “We’ve been in this business a long time, longer than anyone else, and we’ve used that time to make our products and services better.”

Still not budging

That said, you might not be convinced. Undoubtedly there are valid reasons to keep workloads within your datacenter, even if you can’t hope to keep up with the public clouds’ agility or innovation. As such, you may consider investing in OpenStack, which as Forrester points out?is the default for private clouds and finally a “safe bet.”

Unless you’re a telco or Walmart, however, you’re probably going to stick with dev-and-test workloads on OpenStack, with 89 percent of enterprises recently surveyed using OpenStack to service fewer than 1,000 users. Yes, dev-and-test workloads are important and help breed confidence in the cloud, paving the way for production workloads. But for all the hoopla around OpenStack, it hasn’t come close to finding the broad audience that AWS or Microsoft Azure have.

Nor will it — OpenStack serves the ever-shrinking base of people who believe they need to own their infrastructure, akin to the manufacturers at the turn of the last century that felt they needed to own their power plants.

There are legitimate needs for private datacenters, but when a company like GE announces it’s moving 90 percent of its workloads to the public cloud, it’s probably time to start setting the default to “public cloud” instead of “private cloud.” They’re going to out-innovate you every single time.

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