Information technology 信息技术

Cloud atlas

The battle of the computing clouds intensifies—and the battlefield grows more complex

第一段：

How much have you spent on the cloud today? It takes Robert Hodges only a few clicks to find out. He pulls up a dashboard on a computer in his home office in Berkeley, California, which shows cloud spending at his database firm, Altinity, in real time. The cloud represents half of Altinity’s total costs.

你今天在“云”上花了多少钱? Robert Hodges只需点击几下鼠标就能知道答案。在加州伯克利的家中办公室里，他打开电脑上的一个“仪表盘‘”，上面显示了他的数据库公司Altinity在云上的实时支出费用。云占据了Altinity总成本的一半。

第二段：

Mr Hodges’s widget is a window onto the future. As bills soar, every firm of any size will need to understand not just the benefits of the cloud, but also its costs. Gartner, a consultancy, calculates that spending on public-cloud services will reach nearly 10% of all corporate spending on information technology (IT) in 2021, up from around 4% in 2017. Plenty of technophile startups spend 80% of their revenues on cloud services, estimate Sarah Wang and Martin Casado of Andreessen Horowitz, a venture-capital firm. The situation is analogous to a century ago, when electric power became an essential input (and prompted some firms to hire another kind of CEO: the chief electricity officer).

Hodges的产品是一扇通向未来的窗口。随着费用的飙升，任何规模的公司都不仅需要了解云计算的好处，还需要了解它的成本。据咨询公司Gartner计算，到2021年，公有云服务的支出将占所有企业花在IT上的支出的近10%，高于2017年的4%左右的数据。据风投公司Andreessen Horowitz的Sarah Wang和Martin Casado估计，许多技术爱好者创业公司将80%的收入投入在云服务上。这种情况与一个世纪前类似，当时电力成为一种必要的投入(这促使一些公司雇佣了另一种类型的CEO:首席电力官)。

第三段：

For cloud companies this has been a bonanza. Giants of the industry, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and, in China, Alibaba and Tencent, have been adding business briskly. Gartner expects global sales of cloud services to rise by 26% in 2021, to more than $400bn. But competition is stirring. On December 9th Oracle, a big software-maker, reported higher revenue than expected, mainly thanks to the rapid growth of its cloud unit. Its market value shot up by over 15%, or nearly $40bn. And a welkin of companies is emerging to help businesses manage their computing loads. One such firm, Snowflake, is worth $108bn. Another, HashiCorp, went public in New York on December 8th and now boasts a stockmarket value of $15bn, three times its last private valuation in 2020.

对于云计算公司来说，这是一次发财的机会。亚马逊AWS、微软Azure、谷歌云平台，以及中国的阿里巴巴和腾讯等行业巨头都在迅速增加业务。Gartner预计，2021年全球云服务销售额将增长26%，达到4000亿美元以上。但竞争也在加剧。12月9日，大型软件制造商甲骨文公司，报告了高于预期的收入，这主要归功于其云服务业务的快速增长。其市值飙升了15%以上，即近400亿美元。大量的公司正在涌现，帮助企业管理计算负载。其中一家名为雪花(Snowflake)的公司价值1080亿美元。另一家公司HashiCorp于12月8日在纽约上市，目前市值为150亿美元，是其去年最后一次私人估值的三倍。

第四段：

The latest cloud formation and the winds shaping it were on full display this month at Re:Invent, the world’s largest cloud-computing conference, held every year in Las Vegas by AWS. Panels discussing “cost optimisation” and “AWSbilling” were among the best attended. The accompanying expo featured booths where startups with names such as CloudFix, Cloudwiry and Zesty were offering to help customers manage their cloud use.

本月，AWS在拉斯维加斯举办的全球最大云计算会议Re:Invent上，充分展示了最新的cloud formation和影响它的一些趋势。讨论“成本优化”和“AWS账单”的座谈会出席人数是最多的。与此同时展会还设有一些"摊位"，其中包括CloudFix、cloudiry和Zesty等初创公司将帮助客户管理他们的云使用。

第五段：

Businesses’ main motive for moving to the cloud was never about cost but “scalability”: having access to additional computing resources with a few clicks. But cloud bills have grown more complicated as well as higher, sometimes rivalling those from America’s notoriously opaque health-care providers. The AWS bill of even a small customer like the Duckbill Group, another cost-consulting firm, can run to more than 30 pages, listing in detail the cost of every single service it has used, from bandwidth in India ($0.01 per request to its website) to a virtual server in Oregon ($83.59 for “Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud” running open-source software).

企业转移到云计算的主要动机不是成本，而是“可扩展性”:只需点击几下鼠标就可以使用额外的计算资源。但云计算账单已经变得越来越复杂，也越来越高，有时甚至可以与美国众所周知的不透明医疗服务提供商的账单不相上下。甚至像Duckbill造价咨询公司这样的一个小的客户的AWS账单都长达30多页, 上面详细列出每一个服务的使用成本, 从印度的带宽(每请求一次网站0.01美元)到在俄勒冈州一个虚拟服务器(运行开源软件的EC2 83.59美元)。

第六段：

That is only natural, says Corey Quinn, co-founder of the Duckbill Group. Big cloud providers such as AWS, Azure and GCP are amalgamations of dozens of services. AWS sells more than 200, ranging from simple storage and number-crunching to all sorts of specialised databases and artificial-intelligence offerings. Each is billed according to multiple dimensions, including the number of servers, time used or bytes transferred. Then come the discounts and special offers.

Duckbill集团的联合创始人Corey Quinn表示，这是很正常的。像AWS、Azure和GCP这样的大型云服务提供商提供许多混合的服务。AWS销售超过200种，从简单的存储和数字密集运算到各种专业数据库和人工智能产品。每一种服务都要根据多个维度计费的，包括服务器数量、使用的时间或传输的字节数。然后是折扣和特价。

第七段：

Ms Wang and Mr Casado have suggested that firms should think about building their own private clouds to keep costs down. So far few firms have opted for such “repatriation”, which is both pricey and makes it harder for businesses to enjoy the benefits of essentially unlimited computing resources in the public cloud. Rather, businesses are trying to professionalise their “cloud financial operations” (or Fin Ops in the compulsory tech shorthand), for example tying bonuses of executives responsible for cloud usage to cost control.

Wang女士和Casado先生建议公司应该考虑建立自己的私有云以降低成本。到目前为止，很少有公司选择这样的“回流”方式，这很昂贵而且又使企业难以享受到公有云非常无限的计算资源带来的好处。相反，企业正试图使它们的“云成本管理”(或者用强制的技术术语简称为Fin Ops)专业化，例如将负责云业务的高管的奖金与成本控制挂钩。

第八段：

For the time being, gauging the cloud’s financial impact is an arduous manual process. As cloud use grows, it will need to be automated, says Lydia Leong of Gartner. Some will probably be outsourced to upstarts of the sort thronging Re:Invent. A number sell a mix of consulting and software tools to assess cloud use and offer advice on how to lower costs. CloudFix, which unveiled its service in Las Vegas, charges a subscription to run a customer’s configuration through software that optimises the client’s cloud performance.

目前，评估云的财务影响是一个费力的人工过程。Gartner咨询公司的Lydia Leong说，随着云计算使用的增长，它将需要自动化。其中一些可能会被外包给蜂拥至Re:Invent的初创公司。一些公司出售咨询以及软件工具的组合，以评估云计算的使用，并就如何降低成本提供建议。CloudFix在拉斯维加斯推出了它的服务，通过优化客户云性能的软件向订阅用户收取运行客户配置的费用。

第九段：

The big cloud companies have taken note, both of the upstarts and of the growing customer grumbles. Just before the Las Vegas event AWS announced that it would start charging less for data transfers to the internet, lowering the bills of millions of customers. It also helps them identify savings, for instance by offering a “Simple Monthly Calculator” (though it looks rather complex and sports a web interface straight out of the late 1990s).

大型云计算公司已经注意到初创企业以及日益增长的客户的抱怨。就在拉斯维加斯活动之前，AWS宣布，它将开始降低向互联网传输数据的费用，从而降低数百万用户的账单费用。它还可以帮助他们确定节省的费用，例如提供一个“简单的月度计算器”(尽管它看起来相当复杂，并带有一个完全就是20世纪90年代末的web界面)。

第十段：

At Microsoft, Azure cloud costs are often rolled into the “enterprise agreements”, all-encompassing subscriptions that big companies typically sign up to. GCP, being the smallest of the top three, “strongly believes” in the “multi-cloud”, says Amit Zavery, a senior executive. In other words, it aims to enable customers to choose the best and cheapest cloud services from different providers (thus making it easier for them to pick Google).

在微软，Azure云成本经常被纳入“企业协议”，即大公司通常签署的包罗一切的订阅协议。GCP是这三家公司中规模最小的，其高管Amit Zavery说，GCP“强烈相信”“多云”的未来。换句话说，它的目标是让客户从不同的提供商那里选择最好和最便宜的云服务(从而使他们更容易选择谷歌)。

第十一段：

Yet the big providers are not making life easier for customers everywhere. Having customers pay only for the IT they use, while combining different services as needed, is the whole point of cloud computing. At AWS the complexity is seen as a competitive advantage. Its assortment of services is mostly created by independent teams that can innovate faster (including by changing how clients are charged). “We decided to let our developers build what they build—and unleash their creativity,” says Matt Garman, who heads sales and marketing at AWS.

然而，大型云服务提供商并没有让世界各地客户的日子好过一些。让客户只为他们使用的IT付费，同时根据他们需要，组合不同的服务，这就是云计算的全部意义。在AWS，复杂性被视为一种竞争优势。它的多样的服务大多是由独立团队创造的，这些团队能够更快地创新(包括改变客户的收费方式)。AWS的销售和营销主管 Matt Garman说：“我们决定让我们的开发者构建他们构建的东西，并释放他们的创造力”。

第十二段：

The three big providers also have a habit of making it cheap and easy to transfer data onto their clouds but pricey to move them out again. Critics accuse AWS, and to a lesser extent Azure and GCP, of being a digital “Hotel California”, where you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Locking customers in like this may push them to use other services. Mr Garman counters that the higher price of moving data off a cloud (“egress” in the jargon) reflects the higher costs of that exercise. Almost by definition, customers leave with more data than they entered with.

三大提供商也有一个习惯，就是让数据传输到他们的云上变得便宜和容易，但把数据转移出去却很昂贵。批评者指责AWS，以及（较小程度上指责）Azure和GCP，是一个数字“加州旅馆”，你想要从酒店退房随时都行，但你永远都无法离去[隐藏的意思是“即便你离开这儿，你的心也将永远留在这里了”]。这样困住客户可能会促使他们使用其他服务。Garman先生反驳道，将数据移出云端(行话叫做“出口费用”)的成本越高，反映了这种操作的成本越高。几乎从定义上讲，客户离开时携带的数据比他们上传时还要多。

第十三段：

Whatever the truth, cloud providers’ fat gross-profit margins—more than 60% in AWS’s case, according to Bernstein, a broker—are attracting competition. In September Cloudflare, which helps clients serve up online content and deflect digital attacks, launched a new data-storage service which does not charge for digital outflows. Matthew Prince, Cloudflare’s boss, says this should “unlock the true potential of the cloud”, by allowing businesses to mix and match services from different providers. “Each cloud provider has different strengths and weaknesses,” says Mr Prince. Investors still see CloudFlare’s strengths: despite a recent slide amid a general cooling on upstart tech stocks, the firm’s market value of $45bn is eight times what it was after its initial public offering in September 2019.

不管真相如何，云服务提供商丰厚的毛利正在吸引竞争对手。Bernstein经纪公司的数据显示，AWS的毛利超过了60%。9月，帮助客户提供在线内容并抵御数字攻击的Cloudflare公司推出了一项新的数据存储服务，该服务不对数字出口收费。Cloudflare的老板Matthew Prince表示，通过允许企业混合和匹配来自不同提供商的服务，这将“释放云计算的真正潜力”。Prince表示:“每家云服务提供商都有不同的优势和劣势。” 投资者仍然看到了CloudFlare的优势: 尽管在新兴科技股普遍降温的情况下，该公司最近出现了下滑，但该公司450亿美元的市值是2019年9月IPO后的8倍。

第十四段：

If bets like Mr Prince’s pay off, the industry will become more competitive. As for Altinity, its dashboard is an outgrowth of its product—a cloud-based database that lets users sift through information, including bills, in real time. It is considering releasing the dashboard’s code for anyone to use and adapt. Fair weather to it.

如果像Prince这样的选择获得了回报，这个行业的竞争将会更加激烈。至于Altinity，它的"仪表盘“是其产品的副产品, 其产品是一个基于云的数据库，可以让用户实时筛选信息，包括账单。它正在考虑开源“仪表盘”的代码供任何人使用和调整。对它来说，可是好事儿。