Google Cloud: A Fog Bank Persists
April 26, 2020
Protocol published “Google’s Thomas Kurian on COVID-19, Customers in Crisis and the Big Cloud Fight.”
Let’s look at one slice of this interview with Google’s stratocumulus of cloud computing. One interesting question and Thomas Kurian’s answer is:
Google has a reputation for closing down services that it believes aren’t being used in sufficient numbers. Among people I talk to, that sometimes raises a red flag when it comes to working with Google. As you work with these new customers who are in really, really severe difficulty right now, what kind of assurances are you giving them that, as they bet on these services from you, you’ll be there over the long haul?
Our cloud services are offered under a standard support agreement. For cloud services publicly, for example, all the GCP services are exactly the same as those from our competitors. So we give them assurances that we won’t deprecate a service without the proper notice period, and the notice periods are exactly the same as competitors.
DarkCyber noticed the word support in the write up five times in the 1900 word write up.
One wisp of condensed information wafted through the write up: “Google has struggled to win the trust of the enterprise buyer.” Why? Perhaps the list of discontinued services displayed on the Killed by Google Web site explains the challenge. With little or no warning, with little or no explanation, and with little or no interest in the users and “customers” relying on these services—more than 190 products and services have been disappeared. To make Google’s “strategy” more clear, Google Hangouts which was marked for death is now trying to be like Zoom.
The article is a showcase for Google to make clear that it really, really is committed to delivering commercial grade cloud services. Google was committed to Google Plus as well as the other 190 plus products and services dismissed with a Googley insouciance.
The write up is crafted to make clear that Google is an enterprise class service provider. The company made that pitch to the US Department of Defense, only to pull out of Project Maven because employees were not happy with the application of a Google technology to a US government need. And there are other examples of the words of the Google not matching the actions of the Google. One example: Search services for China. Yep, waffling.
What’s the challenge for the online advertising company? One clue is that according to the write up, Google’s cloud revenues for the fourth quarter of 2019-2020 was $2.9 billion. Compare that to Amazon AWS revenue of $9.9 billion. Google likes data. Well, that gap is a data point.
Is the Google Cloud going to approach the enterprise with the track record of Microsoft and its partners or the go-go roar of the Bezos bulldozer?
Google has the vocabulary for the task. The Googler uses two interesting words in his clarification of the Google approach. These words are re-pivot and re-platform. Those terms remind me that Google re-placed Diane Greene, the previous stratocumulus of cloud computing.
Did the interview convince DarkCyber that Google will stick with cloud computing? Sort of. You know like the fog comes in on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.
Stephen E Arnold, April 26, 2020
Do Big Clouds Pay Forward?
April 26, 2020
This spring’s sudden increase in work- and school-from-home arrangements has been a huge boon for cloud providers. Many of their business clients, however, have suffered revenue losses of as much as 50 or 60 percent this season. You would be wrong if you thought the biggest providers would have mercy on their small-business customers. Taipei Times reports, “Amazon, Microsoft Offer Little Relief to Cloud Clients.” We’re told Google joins those two in their lack of compassion.
A hallmark of the cloud business model has been flexibility, where companies pay for what they use. However, big providers have been pushing long term contracts with minimum spending thresholds. Companies who could once cover these minimums with ease are now stretched thin, and many feel betrayed. While countless landlords and regulated utilities have offered relief programs, cloud providers are doing little to nothing of the sort. Perhaps they are too busy counting their growing piles of coin. Journalists Mark Bergen and Matthew Day report:
“By the middle of last month, John Lyotier’s travel software business Left Technologies Inc was cratering with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Seeking to cut costs, he reached out to his office landlord, who offered rent relief. Then he contacted Amazon.com Inc, asking to ‘explore creative financing opportunities’ for his monthly cloud-computing bill. The response was succinct: ‘Nope, that’s the way it is.’ … With the economic devastation of COVID-19, entrepreneurs such as Lyotier feel that the fate of their businesses rests on the benevolence of their cloud provider. While Amazon Web Services (AWS) is restructuring some large contracts on a case-by-case basis, according to a person familiar with the decisions, smaller companies are not receiving the same flexibility. Half a dozen start-up executives said that recent appeals to these cloud companies have gone unanswered. While older technology providers, such as Cisco Systems Inc, are offering credits to customers, the major cloud companies have not made any public announcements about deferring or cutting bills for clients.”
As this pandemic and its economic repercussions continue, perhaps big tech will decide to extend some grace to its clientele. After all, one cannot make money off of customers who have gone out of business.
Cynthia Murrell, April 26, 2020
In Cobol News: Cloudflare Gets Interested in Revealing That It Is a Time Sharing Company
April 21, 2020
Legacy systems exist. This is perhaps big news for the recently unemployed Silicon Valley types. Some states are struggling to find Cobol programmers. IBM has rolled out Cobol training.
“Cloudflare Workers Now Support Cobol” reports:
COBOL can now be used to write code for Cloudflare’s serverless platform Workers.
The write up provides a number of historical factoids, including sample code and a Game of Life example.
Quick thought: Has the mainframe returned to offer coding opportunities and a career path to the thumb typing millennials?
What’s next for Cloudflare? Lab coats, glass walls, and elevated floors, sign up sheets for keypunch machines, and greenbar paper?
Has cloud computing become a time shared mainframe?
PS. My first programming project relied on Cobol. That was in 1963. I also used Cobol for the Psychology Today / Intellectual Digest readability work I did in the 1970s. Am I relevant again? I miss JCL too.
Stephen E Arnold, April 18, 2020
About Those Cloud Services?
April 3, 2020
Okay, Amazon can’t deliver. Microsoft can’t scale. Now Google Cloud Engine just falls over. What were the techno experts saying about those cloud services?
Navigate to to “Google Cloud Engine Outage Caused by Large Backlog of Queued Mutations.” The article reports:
A 14-hour Google cloud platform outage that we missed in the shadow of last week’s G Suite outage was caused by a failure to scale, an internal investigation has shown.
But why?
The outage was caused by a lack of memory in the company’s cache servers…
To simplify. Google’s smart scaling failed. Does this mean that Google and Microsoft are more alike than different? If Amazon can’t deliver, does this mean Google cannot deliver?
About those cloud services powering decision making? Well, sort of.
Stephen E Arnold, April 3, 2020
Microsoft Azure: The Reoccurring Blues
March 30, 2020
On a call this weekend, a person mentioned this explanation: “Microsoft Details Impact of Coronavirus on Cloud Services Usage.” The main idea is that “A 775 percent increase in overall cloud services usage in those regions that have enforced social distancing or shelter in place orders.”
Short version: Microsoft’s cloud services do not scale seamlessly.
That “gee, Microsoft is good to me” explanation is interesting, just muffled by snuggling.
This morning (March 30, 2020), the DarkCyber news feed presented this interesting write up: “Microsoft Teams Not Working Again – Here’s What You Need to Know.” This write up reports:
Research from online outage watchdog Downdetector saw a huge spike in complaints concerning Microsoft Teams at 9am BST as much of the UK and Western European workforces came online.
Let’s assume that the snuggle report and the down again report are accurate. DarkCyber concludes:
- Not even Microsoft’s influence can snuff out grousing about its online collaboration Teams service. (Skype? Ho, ho, ho)
- Microsoft hopes to build the cloud centric services for the US Department of Defense. Sounds good, but will the outage and scaling blues color the deal. (An armed conflict? Sorry may not make the DoD comfortable.)
- The yipyap about automatic scaling, failover, and redundancy is definitely marketing baloney. (Down means fail, doesn’t it?)
Net net: Microsoft’s cloud like the Amazon and Google clouds are billing machines. The complexity almost guarantees problems. Google’s follow through on stuff that does not work; Amazon’s magical invoices with mysterious line items; and now Microsoft’s magic.
Silver or azure bullets? Ho, ho, ho.
Stephen E Arnold, March 30, 2020
Amazon AWS Challenge to Microsoft JEDI Win Reported
March 27, 2020
If you follow the grudge match between Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, you may be interested in “AWS Charges Pentagon Wants to Give Microsoft a Do-Over on Contested JEDI Bid.” The article states:
In a court filing made public today, Amazon Web Services Inc. is charging that the Pentagon is unfairly favoring rival Microsoft Corp. as part of its reevaluation of the JEDI contract.
The today is March 24, 2020.
The article quotes the document as saying:
“Offerors would be able to change only the services they proposed for Price Scenario 6, and would not be allowed to adjust the unit prices and discounts for those services.
Discriminatory? Maybe.
The article also quotes the document as saying:
“DoD provides no meaningful commitment to evaluate the other serious errors identified by AWS’s protest,” the company wrote. “Even if taken at face value, DoD’s proposed corrective action fails to address in any meaningful way how it would resolve the technical issues AWS has raised, or which specific technical challenges it intends to address.”
Stay tuned.
Stephen E Arnold, March 26, 2020
Microsoft Azure: A Capacity Problem?
March 27, 2020
In a conversation earlier this week, an expert in Microsoft Azure pointed out that Azure, despite its technical challenges, was pretty good at billing.
There are other challenges at Microsoft too. How about those Windows 10 updates, bugs, and delays?
The Register reports that there is another Microsoft hitch in the gitalong. “Azure Appears to Be Full” states:
Customers of Microsoft’s Azure cloud are reporting capacity issues such as the inability to create resources and associated reliability issues.
And what about Microsoft Teams, which is another attempt by Microsoft to pile more utensils in its digital kitchen sink. The article includes this paragraph:
Is it possible that resource capacity allocated to Teams is affecting customers of other kinds of resource? We have asked Microsoft for any information it can share and will report back.
Is Microsoft up to the task of becoming the go to vendor for the US government? Sure, good enough technology may be what the procurement system is designed to deliver.
But the company’s billing system seems to be working just fine.
PS: The Register is offering free job ads. For information, send email to regjobs@sitpub.com.
Stephen E Arnold, March 28, 2020
Cloud Search Magic
March 26, 2020
Storing files on the cloud is a marvelous way to back up files and also free up valuable memory on devices. There is one big problem if you offload files on the cloud: finding them. There are various platforms to store files in the cloud, but Popular Science explains in the article “Find Any File In The Cloud” if you are unfamiliar with the platform it will be harder to find files.
The article explores popular cloud hosting platforms and walks readers through how to locate and search for files. The platforms examined are Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud, and OneDrive. Each specific platform has its intricacies, but are important to master:
“But if you haven’t taken the time to explore a platform in depth, or if you use several and often get confused, you might find it harder to track down particular files compared to having them on a local hard drive. It doesn’t have to be this way, though. All the big cloud storage providers have useful tools for searching through your files and folders, whether you’re using a web browser, a desktop computer, or your phone.”
Be aware that these platforms can change based on the device accessing them. Many devices have mobile and desktop interfaces, so things are changed around if you move from one machine to another. None of these platforms are superior to the other, but users will prefer one to the other based on the type of machine they are using.
Another thing to consider when selecting a platform to use are the security parameters each one uses. The platform could be easy to use, but it also might be easy to hack.
Whitney Grace, March 26, 2020
Microsoft Teams: Demand-Centric Scaling a Problem?
March 16, 2020
Quick item. DarkCyber noted two separate write ups which seem to suggest that Microsoft Azure has some fascinating characteristics. “Microsoft Teams Goes Down Just as Europe Logs On to Work Remotely” says “Two hours of issues as many work from home during the cornonavirus pandemic.” VentureBeat says “Microsoft Teams Struggles As Coronavirus Pushes Millions to Work from Home.” DarkCyber looks forward to verification that an outage took place. Also, what happens if the proposed Microsoft JEDI solution demonstrates the same behavior in an even more critical situation?
Stephen E Arnold, March 16, 2020
A Guide to Finding Cloudy Files
March 11, 2020
Justa brief honk to describe this handy reference we have found. Popular Science tells us how to “Find Any File in the Cloud.” Writer David Nield describes platform-specific search functionality at Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, and OneDrive. He observes:
“Keeping your files in an online cloud locker means you can free up some space on your computer and get at your files from anywhere, using any device. But if you haven’t taken the time to explore a platform in depth, or if you use several and often get confused, you might find it harder to track down particular files compared to having them on a local hard drive. It doesn’t have to be this way, though. All the big cloud storage providers have useful tools for searching through your files and folders, whether you’re using a web browser, a desktop computer, or your phone.”
For each option, Nield details us where to find a basic search box as well as all filtering options. He also notes each platform’s limitations, if any. Naturally, the descriptions are illustrated with screenshots. See the writeup if you use, or are considering using, any of these cloud storage options.
Cynthia Murrell, March 11, 2020
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