Cloud vs non cloud software sales
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I just saw this article on LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/commercial-cloud-dwarfed-perpetual-software-licence-spend-noel-unwin
What do you think? -
I don't think that they know what "cloud" is. Subscription vs. perpetual is one thing. Cloud is something completely different. Office 365 for Office is not cloud, just subscription. Adobe is subscription. Even RubyMine is subscription (you just have to pay an annual maintenance fee.) I don't know much of anything that is available perpetual anymore. Certainly nothing that I buy.
Using the term cloud leads me to believe that the article has data all messed up. They don't know what they are talking about so the article is just gibberish.
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I know that he puts cloud in quotes, but he never, ever describes or explains what he thinks that it means at all. I can't tell what he is thinking in any way. He only uses traditional non-subscription businesses as his example. Yeah, it's the big three, but they are the old big three. He leaves out, for example, Google which is the biggest pure cloud provider.
And he doesn't describe how he separates the revenues of MS Office perpetual from MS Office perpetual with Software Assurance.... which turns it into a subscription again.
I don't think he's thought through what he is saying and is just producing FUD. He might be right in the end, but if he is it has nothing to do with the research that he thinks that he has done.
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Give up SAM, the marketers have won
Cloud means anything that is subscription, online, or having anything to do with the Internet. -
@Nic said:
Give up SAM, the marketers have won
Cloud means anything that is subscription, online, or having anything to do with the Internet.The sad fact of the matter is, this is true.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Cloud is something completely different. Office 365 for Office is not cloud, just subscription.
Because I can't seem to keep cloud straight in my own head - how is Office 365 not cloud?
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@Nic said:
Give up SAM, the marketers have won
Cloud means anything that is subscription, online, or having anything to do with the Internet.Problem is, the article means nothing. Both sides that he is comparing are the same thing. So the article literally says nothing. That the terms are used incorrectly is bad, that they are used unpredictably and undecipherably even from context makes it totally worthless. Literally, it says nothing at all.
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@Dashrender said:
Because I can't seem to keep cloud straight in my own head - how is Office 365 not cloud?
Ask the opposite. How is it cloud. It is just a way to pay for services. Since when has cloud meant "a way to pay for things?"
If Office 365 is cloud, everything is cloud. Your car is cloud because you pay by the month, if it is leased. Do you consider a leased car to be cloud? Or an apartment?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Because I can't seem to keep cloud straight in my own head - how is Office 365 not cloud?
Ask the opposite. How is it cloud. It is just a way to pay for services. Since when has cloud meant "a way to pay for things?"
If Office 365 is cloud, everything is cloud. Your car is cloud because you pay by the month, if it is leased. Do you consider a leased car to be cloud? Or an apartment?
That's great, but doesn't help me understand what is 'cloud'? what makes one thing cloud and another not?
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There are two legitimate uses of the term cloud, and only two.
1: Could computing as defined by Amazon and ratified by the US gov't. This is a term created by and defined by Amazon. It is solid and does not change over time. It is a very strict definition. The is where we say "a cloud" or "cloud computing."
2: Anything "over the Internet" where the product comes over the Internet. This is the use where we say "the cloud.:" It is just a fluffy marketing term for "hosted."
Subscriptions like magazines, cars, apartments, electric bills, water, sewer, software that own and other things have no association with cloud in any way in either term.
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I thought the point of the article - obviously poorly written - was to explain that in the writer's view the move from in-house solutions to someone else's house solutions i.e. what he calls cloud haven't been as epic as some have been claiming. He's basing this on the sales numbers from the top 3.
While i do believe that Google sells (or at least used to sell) an appliance you can put on prem for local search services, Google hasn't really ever had an on prem solution like Microsoft or the other two.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
Give up SAM, the marketers have won
Cloud means anything that is subscription, online, or having anything to do with the Internet.Problem is, the article means nothing. Both sides that he is comparing are the same thing. So the article literally says nothing. That the terms are used incorrectly is bad, that they are used unpredictably and undecipherably even from context makes it totally worthless. Literally, it says nothing at all.
Marketing is all about meaning nothing!
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@scottalanmiller said:
There are two legitimate uses of the term cloud, and only two.
1: Could computing as defined by Amazon and ratified by the US gov't. This is a term created by and defined by Amazon. It is solid and does not change over time. It is a very strict definition. The is where we say "a cloud" or "cloud computing."
did I miss where you posted what that definition is?
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@Dashrender said:
That's great, but doesn't help me understand what is 'cloud'? what makes one thing cloud and another not?
Here is the NIST Definition of Cloud. This is the US gov't but is simply them making Amazon's definitions completely legal and ratified. All major governments agree on this definition. This is the only definition that would hold up in court, should someone try to use the term cloud there. This is cloud computing, this is what made "cloud" cool.
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And here is the video on ML that walks you through the NIST definition to make it easy...
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The other definition, the marketing definition, of cloud is "the cloud" which just replaced "the Internet." The word Internet is replaced with cloud. It's a silly thing to say. I have email "on the cloud" or "in the cloud" just means "email over the Internet." Nothing more, nothing less. Just that.
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@Dashrender said:
I thought the point of the article - obviously poorly written - was to explain that in the writer's view the move from in-house solutions to someone else's house solutions i.e. what he calls cloud haven't been as epic as some have been claiming. He's basing this on the sales numbers from the top 3.
Is that what he was saying? I didn't see that at all. Nothing in what he said suggested that he was looking at things hosted in house and out of house. He seems to be looking at how you pay for software, not how it is hosted. But who knows, he never describes the terms he uses nor gives any indication what he might think the term means.
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@Dashrender said:
While i do believe that Google sells (or at least used to sell) an appliance you can put on prem for local search services, Google hasn't really ever had an on prem solution like Microsoft or the other two.
Hence why picking exclusively vendors that don't focus that way makes the numbers very misleading.
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Imagine if he had picked "only the largest software making in the US" to determine what platforms are common today? Had he isolated to that extreme degree he would conclude that software is never sold by subscription but is always made for the Mac OSX platform exclusively and that Windows is dead. Because the largest player is Apple. But picking only one massive player, or three really big but related ones, is not a good cross section.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I thought the point of the article - obviously poorly written - was to explain that in the writer's view the move from in-house solutions to someone else's house solutions i.e. what he calls cloud haven't been as epic as some have been claiming. He's basing this on the sales numbers from the top 3.
Is that what he was saying? I didn't see that at all. Nothing in what he said suggested that he was looking at things hosted in house and out of house. He seems to be looking at how you pay for software, not how it is hosted. But who knows, he never describes the terms he uses nor gives any indication what he might think the term means.
I came to this conclusion because of this line
I had lunch with a friend (a seasoned IT professional) who decided to raise the subject of the ‘Cloud’ and proclaim the demise of ‘Perpetual / on-Premises’ software around the year 2015 (ongoing, I’ll refer to 'Perpetual / on-Premises' as ‘non-Cloud’).
Where he specifically says on-Premises a few times.
