Against the Cloud

I talk to a lot of people about their opinions about the cloud.  I find that most sysadmins, network managers, and IT-Pro staff members are strongly against the cloud.  I repeatedly hear the same reasons why they don't like it:

1)  The company will lose control of their resources and will have to trust a 3rd party.

2)  The 3rd party will not be as responsive to tech support issues as on premise IT guys.

3)  The cloud goes down a lot.

4)  What happens if your cloud vendor goes out of business?  

5)  Once you choose a cloud vendor, you're tied to it.

6)  They won't customize their offerings to fit our special needs.

When I talk to developers about the cloud, they love it.  When I ask them why they don't just stay on premise, they answer with these reasons:

1)  Internal IT is too slow to respond to our needs.

2)  Internal IT is too overworked to do what I ask them to do when I ask them to do it.

3)  It's too expensive.

4)  Internal IT tends to go down a lot, while the cloud stays up more often.

5)  Internal IT knows that I'm a captive customer.  Unless I have executive buy-in they will ignore me.

6)  Internal IT won't customize their offerings to fit my specific needs.

I think the real reason why IT-Pro staff don't like the cloud is that they don't all want to end up working for Amazon, Microsoft, or Google.  I think they realize that once all of the infrastructure is in the cloud, that's where their jobs will go.  I think all of the other reasons are really minor compared to that central one.

I think developers love the cloud because they gain control over the resources where they felt they lose them when it goes on-prem.  I also think C-levels love it because it's cheaper and more predictable.