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With due respect, why do you think Microsoft and Google are investing so much into the cloud?
You are always going to get business people who are focussed on the tactical, rather than the long term and strategic. . . and they don't care, since once they sold the product, they move to another business.
In other fields it would be called shonky workmanship.
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0.0, and I have not yet reached the lowest intention of ever doing so.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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I have, for the long term, and with good reasons.
I don't get the platform dependence @lopatir is talking about.
I just develop an ASP.NET Core application that I can host on-premises or in the cloud and on Windows or Linux, so what's the deal?
Besides, how is a WinForms or ASP.NET application not platform dependent?
Works on all Windows platforms that support your version of .NET and your database needs at least Windows Server 2012, such freedom, much hosting 
However, I have one client that went from all paper to having an application.
They use the application in the field (like literally fields where they gather hay), so the application has to be available everywhere.
We have two choices, buy a server and install and secure SQL Server and IIS and a Domain Controller(!), something I don't know how to do.
The client is as a-technical as they get, so they can't do it either.
Or put it in the cloud and be done with it, that I can do and it very easy and it costs the client about €50 a month.
Maybe a server would've been cheaper over three years time, but it just isn't worth the hassle in this case.
Another customer has plenty of on-premises servers... That I don't have access to!
Every time I have to do anything I have to call their (external) IT department and plan a day and time.
So, I just put everything in the cloud.
The customer was initially happy because they're now one of the most modern companies in their field, although I think the IT manager isn't as happy anymore because he's a control freak and now that we're on Azure he can't be bothered to learn the cloud, so that's a bit of a black box for him.
They even ended up with two Azure environment because their external IT party created one too that I knew nothing about (while they knew about mine) 
Kind of tells you how much the IT manager is on top of it...
Anyway, it also allowed me to use some cloud-only services, like Azure Functions and Logic Apps.
I'm not quite happy with my Functions because they somehow don't work as advertised (but still free), but the Logic Apps are just way easier than coding it yourself.
I've now created a little on-premises app because I really couldn't access their SMTP server in the cloud, but I'm waiting for credentials and someone to give me access.
Too bad, the Logic App would've been a MUCH faster alternative...
I've got another customer coming up who is going to the cloud as well.
Simply because for €50 a month you can't be arsed to setup an on-premises server.
Other than that the cloud offers other benefits, like scaling that you can't get on-premises.
Not for my clients, obviously, but something other companies have to deal with.
I don't have to think about updates, I get free TLS certificates that are automatically refreshed, integration with Azure DevOps and automated deployment is easy.
To me, the cloud is a no-brainer.
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Sander Rossel wrote: I don't get the platform dependence @lopatir is talking about.
I do not think the platform dependency mentioned meant Windows vs Linux... but cloud provider vs cloud provider...
Which is worst, as now you not writing application for OS but for OS hosted at specific cloud provider...
Sander Rossel wrote: We have two choices, buy a server and install and secure SQL Server and IIS and a Domain Controller(!), something I don't know how to do.
It has nothing to do with the cloud application/development - as it is represented by providers - it is simple server/service hosting...
Sander Rossel wrote: Other than that the cloud offers other benefits, like scaling that you can't get on-premises.
Come-on - it may be easier that someone else doing it for you, but that does not mean you can't have with without the cloud...
Sander Rossel wrote: I get free
There are no free meals...
Sander Rossel wrote: To me, the cloud is a no-brainer.
So you already know what you will do when your cloud provider will brake the rules?
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote: Come-on - it may be easier that someone else doing it for you, but that does not mean you can't have with without the cloud...
Seriously, the cloud has virtually limitless scaling!
On-premises you would need 200 servers sitting idle most of the time to get that amount of scaling.
For high-availability you can mirror some services on local, regional and zone level, all available for reads, giving you minimum latency all over the world as well as 99.99999999999999% (16 9's) uptime.
You probably don't need that for all your files, but you could create your own CDN for your websites, which you also can't do on-premises.
And it's as easy as selecting an option or moving a slider.
It's crazy to even think you could compete with the cloud on that level.
Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote: There are no free meals...
Yeah, it's REALLY free (up to 1,000,000 executions and x GB).
Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote: So you already know what you will do when your cloud provider will brake the rules?
I'll worry about that when the time comes.
Meanwhile, what will you do when your on-premises server has a breaking change or simply just breaks?
At a previous employer, their server just went out of space, good luck with that!
I really don't know what you're getting at or what you're worried about.
My development process hasn't changed, so I'm not "developing for the cloud", I'm just "developing", unless I want to use an Azure specific service like Functions, of course, but that's a choice.
I'm pretty sure I could host my web apps on AWS or GC as well if I wanted to, especially if I used containers, like Docker, but I don't.
I get a feeling you want to see your prejudices confirmed, but I'm not giving you that.
In fact, I don't think anyone who used the cloud will give you that because they're mostly not true.
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Sander Rossel wrote: Seriously, the cloud has virtually limitless scaling!
So that why we had a 4 hours downtime when the pandemic panic started and the North Europe zone couldn't cope with the request...
Sander Rossel wrote: I'll worry about that when the time comes.
Based on the fact that the cloud is a business it may be too late...
To be fair - all those cloud providers has a fantastic host service, no competition their... My problem is not here, but from the point of a developer who plans (has to) to the long run (and I mean 20+ years)...
These cloud solutions are lock you in... You wrote to Nelek that you can - with lost of time - run your application on a fresh install of several servers... It is just not true... If you didn't planed for that specific case, part of your code will just break...
My problem with all around is he way 'fashion' took over the development scene... Every second Monday there is a revelation of the ultimate -one-for-all solution... And I dare the next Monday...
Cloud is good - when it is good, just like everything else... There is no no-brain solution, one have to learn and examine and choose mindfully...
(And just to clarify - the company I work for got a special 'gift' from Microsoft, to spend thousands of hours on Azure, without paying for, to resolve problems we found with the system... These are including legacy applications, same application in/out of Azure, and some others...)
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote: There is no no-brain solution, one have to learn and examine and choose mindfully...
Let's put it this way.
Telling my customers to buy a server, hire another party to install it, invest thousands, just to run their application.
Or let me host it for €50 a month on Azure.
That's the no-brainer here 
Also, if you were starting from scratch, I'd really consider the cloud (as much cloud native as possible).
When you already have legacy and on-premise environments it's less obvious.
I just really don't agree with the "never cloud" mentality I see here.
Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote: So that why we had a 4 hours downtime
Yeah, sh*t like that happens.
Happened on our on-premises too though.
I've had a three days outage on an on-premises system, some (third-party) application had to be rewritten for it to work again.
I've seen it with Azure DevOps too, somehow always when we wanted to deploy 
But I've had to wait for hours on a build on an on-premises Jenkins server too.
Never had an outage of my services on Azure though.
People act like everything will always go wrong on the cloud and everything always goes right on-premises, but the truth is outages happen on-premises too and the cloud can have really high uptime just as well.
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We definitely went o the cloud - it is probably the best for our small customers...
However, we have some large (including some that cloud, or anything depends on the internet is just a no-go for them [security]) that already run a huge IT department and not willing to add the cloud to that...
With all this we have one application to sell (lots of parts but one solution), so it must run on all setups from single computer to the cloud... Of course we can not develop different versions to different platforms...
I would say - the right tool...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote: I would say - the right tool...
Exactly, and for my smaller customers, Azure is definitely the right tool.
But the general vibe I got from this thread was that cloud is NEVER the right tool.
Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote: anything depends on the internet is just a no-go for them [security]
I don't think security has to be an issue in the cloud.
Of course not having any internet access at all is always more secure, but that's rarely possible nowadays.
I had a potential customer (before COVID-19 happened) who wanted to make sure everything kept working during an internet outage, which apparently happens from time to time in his region.
He has a butchery and the meat processing really can't be interrupted during the day because they have a tight schedule.
Obviously, I won't be using the cloud there, if he ever becomes my customer.
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Sander Rossel wrote: I don't think security has to be an issue in the cloud.
These are gov issues - security means something else there...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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Yes, a lot of hot air 
What Government Organizations Can Learn From The Private Sector About Cybersecurity[^]
Seriously, I worked for a (semi-)government company who had a so-called DMZ and only a few people were able to access the production servers, USB was forbidden, etc.
I was lured in with stories about cloud migrations and software modernization, but once I was in I discovered cloud was a no-go because management didn't think it was secure.
Meanwhile, all passwords were stored in config files and committed to source control 
I get it though, their policies are secure, but ultimately it's only as secure as the weakest link 
Like the IT manager at a very large international enterprise whose products are in all our houses who opened some ransomware email on a server 
Management can't say "you can't store passwords in config files" because that's so low level they don't even know it's happening.
They can say "you cannot open ransomware email", but if even their IT manager doesn't recognize them you're pretty screwed either way.
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Government has no incentive to learn from the private sector, because those running it have no skin in the game. They seldom answer to anyone, have few budgetary constraints, and rely on violence to keep their "customers".
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Yeah, it's not like they have competition.
You are legally obliged to file your taxes at the website of your one and only tax authority.
Our tax authority used to have a slogan, freely translated "we can't make it any easier, but we can make it more fun."
They failed at both, but how the hell can't they make it easier!?
How about you give us a clear and responsive website without so much jargon so I know what I have to enter where? 
They're now going to force companies to use some paid third-party login service.
It didn't work on someone I know's phone, so she never was able to login and so she never paid (after many emails, of course, that just said she had to restart her phone).
They went as far as to send a debt collector, but she was ultimately in the right.
It sure as hell doesn't count as "easy" or "fun" (well, it may be fun to send the debt collector back and get your right anyway)
What's more absurd is that you now have to pay to file taxes that you are obliged to do!?
Making it easier should be easier than making it fun 
And that's just one government example, but probably the worst.
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Sander Rossel wrote: People act like everything will always go wrong on the cloud and everything always goes right on-premises, but the truth is outages happen on-premises too and the cloud can have really high uptime just as well.
No, I (at least I) act against, the cloud is wonderful and a "no-brainer"
It has advantages and disadvantages as everything.
It might be the best solution, but it doesn't have to be it.
For some things will be the only logical solution, but for others should not even be considered.
I can understand your plus points, but it looks like you have been lucky enough in your life to not see the negative sides that some more experienced (and I mean it from the point of view "more years in the field", nothing to do with "better professional than you") are more cautious about.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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With U.S. economic sanctions on Venezuela taking effect, Adobe discontinued its Creative Cloud (CC) subscription service in the country, stranding thousands of creators without their creative apps. They were customers, paying their bills in time, but ooopss... from one moment to the other.... bye bye
Looks like 3 or 4 weeks later was solved again (https://apnews.com/da3fd7a122124cd5af88400cd2338753[^]), I can give you that... but what if not? Or if not 100% the same as before the cut?
That can happens every day and you won't probably have enough time to react.
So...
is the web / app, a not critical nice to have? Can be in the cloud.
Is the web / app, my only way of earning my money? Over my dead corpse to the cloud.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
modified 19-May-20 5:38am.
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Didn't something similar happen to Huawei?
Trump is wrecking economies and businesses all over the world, including American ones that got their stuff from China.
Could happen to anyone.
But let's for a moment think about using Azure.
And for some reason Microsoft isn't allowed to do business in your country anymore.
YOU'RE SCREWED EITHER WAY!
The chances of that happening to Azure, AWS or GC in Europe are really small though.
But say you have everything on-premises and now COVID-19 happens.
With the cloud I can access everything from home without any additional effort.
So yeah, in really far-fetched doom scenario's one may take precedence over the other.
In any case, if that really did happen, I still have all my source code (oh, but GitHub and Azure DevOps are Microsoft too, so I lost that too).
Luckily I have local copies
I'll have to find a server real quick and install everything (a bootleg version of Windows, obviously, since Microsoft is a no-go now), but I'll hopefully manage.
Not without serious downtime, obviously, but such a tiny risk far outweighs the costs and efforts.
My point is, we can all start panicking if Microsoft is banned from our country.
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Sander Rossel wrote: The chances of that happening to Azure, AWS or GC in Europe are really small though.
...
My point is, we can all start panicking if Microsoft is banned from our country.
I am not panicking on Microsoft being banned of Europe.
I just don't consider the possibility of XXX-Cloud-Provider being forced or being hacked to pull the plug / activate a *.* firewall / whatever it is needed to cut the services for a concrete country / group of countries that "really small though".
To give a better reply to that I would open the possibility in fast Soapbox degeneration and I don't want to do it.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
modified 19-May-20 6:15am.
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Let's put it this way, the sure thing for Microsoft to lose business is to cut off all their customers or be unavailable.
So they'll be really careful about that.
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It depends on (a) the required level of reliability, (b) the required security, and (c) the required disaster recovery plan.
The cloud (as provided by Microsoft/Google/Amazon or other large players) is pretty good as far as reliability is concerned. Where it falls down IMO is on security - if the data are not on your server, you don't own them.
As for disaster recovery, any DR scheme is useless once you tailor your application to a specific provider. While it is unlikely that MS /Google/Amazon will go bankrupt or be banned from operating in your country, a good DR plan should take these contingencies into account.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: Where it falls down IMO is on security - if the data are not on your server, you don't own them.
I don't think that's true?
Cloud providers just provide you with storage capability.
I guess they could access it if they wanted to, although they won't know your password (I hope).
At least I always make sure my data stays in Europe, preferably Amsterdam, because of GDPR.
The USA is a no-go due to privacy concerns.
But I don't think they actually own your data and it may even be illegal for them to use it.
It's a bit of a grey area though, like when the USA said "if you're a US company the US has the right to view your data no matter where in the world it's stored."
But that comes with international companies I guess.
Azure has pretty good disaster recovery capabilities.
You can backup to your on-premises servers or keep it in Azure in other regions or continents.
For example, Amsterdam and Dublin, or Amsterdam and New York.
Daniel Pfeffer wrote: a good DR plan should take these contingencies into account.
I guess that's a cost/risk descision.
If the costs for planning something like that are millions and the chances of it happening are minuscule it may not be worth it.
You'll probably have other issues too, like Windows not getting security updates anymore, but your ASP.NET application being unable to run on anything else but Windows.
You may be able to run it for a while, but having to rewrite everything could mean the end of your company just as well.
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With EU GDPR it may become quite unsafe relying on cloud vendors because they are not the Controllers or Processors of data treatment and if they don't have the main registered office in the EU they are unbound by GDPR laws - their EU customers are not, and a court of law can easily rule that using a particular or any cloud providers is not "adequate protection". And the chances of this happening depend entirely on politics.
This could have a massive effect on the usage of cloud services, given the impossibility of actuating the mandated periodical security audits, impossibility of actually knowing if the internal management of data is GDPR compliant and impossibility of knowing the true position of the data service.
Or, on the contrary, it can become the easiest and cheapest way for EU companies to cheat around most of the GDPR.
GCS d--(d+) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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I have always been a Microsoft developer and currently most everything I do is in Azure.
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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My company learned the "hard way" to provide some own cloud services. Mostly to use AWS resources.
Press F1 for help or google it.
Greetings from Germany
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You don't hardcode against a provider, you make an abstraction layer
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Not me and it ain't gonna happen. We are more likely to make our own than to rent one.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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