The cloud bad. It was all a lie. Self hosting is more energy efficient and cost effective
- Private cloud is better than public cloud for different goals.
  Here, though, DC costs can be swept under the rug.
  
  OPex (operational expendeture) vs CAPex (capital expenditures) reporting rules steer companies toward going into the cloud, which is classified as Opex. Running your own DC is classified as capex. Capex makes shareholders very unhappy when expensive investments in infrastructure are bought. If the government wanted to, it could change the rules such that cloud company fees counted as CAPex, and the cloud companies would drastically shrink.
  
  OPex (operational expende\iture) vs CAPex (capital expenditures) reporting rules steer companies toward going into the cloud, which is classified as Opex. Running your own DC is classified as capex. Capex makes shareholders very unhappy when expensive investments in infrastructure are bought. If the government wanted to, it could change the rules such that cloud company fees counted as CAPex, and the cloud companies would drastically shrink.
- The cloud wasn't the worst idea when storage was pricey. These days, I can get a 2 TB SSD for $100 and download a ton of movies and TVs and games and still take months to fill it up. A cursory web search tells me a 2 TB SSD can hold over 1000 1080p movies.
  And if you're buying a bunch of really big games, you weren't going to put them on the cloud to begin with even when cloud storage made a bit of sense.

18 comments