Typically, when it comes to an enterprise cloud decision, you'll go with one of the big players: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Services, IBM Cloud, or Microsoft Azure. You know their names.
But the biggest clouds aren't always right for everyone or every job.
For example, with hyperscale clouds, it's easy to get locked into a particular cloud.
Suppose you are working with serverless computing. If AWS is your provider, it is configured with Lambda or Fargate. But let's say you think you can pay less and get more for your money with Google Cloud Run. Guess what? You will need to invest a lot of time, money, and effort to migrate your application stack from Lambda to Cloud Run or vice versa.
Complex applications in the cloud are not, I repeat, impossible to transport.
Or let's say your AWS serverless guru accepts a job elsewhere. Good luck finding another serverless expert. They are few and hard to find.
Instead, think small.
You're better off choosing a smaller cloud provider that, instead of selling you complex, high-end services, gives you the basics. Of course, sometimes you need access to more than 200 different Azure products and services. But sometimes you just need a lot of Linux virtual machines (VMs) or Docker containers.
For those times, I suggest looking at alternate clouds. These include providers like Digital Ocean, Linode, OVHcloud, Rackspace and Vultr. Of course, they are far from the same. But they do share some features that may make them better choices for small businesses.
For example, your offerings tend to be simpler and easier for you and your teams to learn. I'm a cloud expert, and honestly, even I can't keep up with all the AWS offerings.
Which one should you use for your particular needs? Well, pay me a lot of money, tell me what you need, and I'll give you an intelligent answer in a few weeks.
It's weeks, not days.
Now, do you have people in your company who can master the technical and financial complexities of a hypercloud? I doubt it. Let's take a trivial example. If I told you that you need AWS Route 53, which you probably do, by the way, would you know what I'm talking about without clicking on the name? Probably not.
(It's DNS, by the way.)
In a Linode blog post, Blair Lyon, cloud experience manager at Akamai, explained it this way: “SMBs need to focus on cloud computing, storage, and networking capabilities. These are the basic primitives you need. and dedicated GPUs and other builds, such as Kubernetes and containers. Then there's storage, which includes everything from backups to block storage to object storage. SMBs also need networks to scale, rely on load balancers, and take advantage of other features that make it easy to run applications in the cloud. … There is a misconception that you need the hundreds of services that the big cloud providers want you to buy. But in reality, for SMBs to run applications, they only need these basic capabilities.
Lyons is right.
With a smaller cloud provider, your employees are already familiar with Linux, PHP/Perl/Python, MariaDB, and Nginx, the LAMP stack. In short, they can do productive work without mastering the complexities of the high-end cloud.
I like the simplicity. Simple works.
That's not to say those alternate clouds are always right. Are not. Sometimes you need complex utility lines to get the job done.
Or, more simply, if you're a small business with operations spread across the globe, you need a cloud with Availability Zones (AZs) around the globe.
I suggest that before you buy a big international cloud, you take a hard look at the smaller cloud providers.
I suspect many small business owners will find that a small on-premises cloud might better serve their needs.
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