Day Two Cloud 083: Should Cloud Be A Public Utility?

Computing power is a vital part of modern life. Should access to that power be more equitably distributed? Is there a role for a public-utility-style cloud that could make computing more cost-effective and accessible to a broader number of constituencies? Is there a role for governments, whether federal or municipal, in providing compute to citizens? These are the starting questions for today’s episode of Day Two Cloud. Our guest is Dwayne Monroe, a cloud architect, consultant, and author. We discuss: * A definition of compute as a public utility * Constituencies for a public utility * Building for citizens rather than consumers * Whether computing is a right * Funding schemes * Governance models * Whether means testing should be required * More Show Links: @cloudquistador – Dwayne Monroe on Twitter Dwayne Monroe on LinkedIn monroelab.net – Dwayne Monroe’s Web site Dwayne Monroe’s AI blog Dwayne’s Azure Blog Azure Cost Management for Busy People: A Guide for Business and IT – Amazon Ned’s Terraform Tuesdays – YouTube Day Two Cloud 013: To Do Cloud Right, Leave Data Center Thinking Behind – Packet Pushers   Transcript: [00:00:05.600] – Ethan Welcome to Day Two Cloud and today, well, I don’t know if this is a heavy guitar sort of a topic or not, Ned, but we are going to be talking about the cloud as public utility. The big idea here is imagine you have a government agency of some sort that is providing cloud computing resources to the populace at large. And Dwayne Monroe is our guest here. He’s going to be joining us for this. I got to admit, Ned, that I came into this skeptically as someone who’s not very eager to see government doing all the things. [00:00:43.160] I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I don’t know. [00:00:45.260] My my opinion may be changed during the course of the podcast. Do you have any big thoughts here about the conversation I had with Dwayne? [00:00:51.440] – Ned I had a similar reaction. In fact, when he pitched the idea initially on Twitter of a public cloud utility, I was like, no, no way. That’s a terrible idea. It’s going to suck. It’s going to be slow and it’s just going to waste people’s money. I am completely against this in every single way and now what? Over the course of the conversation. I started to come around and it was really the way that he framed it and the way that I started figuring out in my own mind some similarities to other utilities that exist out there and the way that technology has developed over time. [00:01:23.400] – Ethan Yeah, I went through a similar kind of a process of strong skepticism. You just you were blunt. I was trying to be polite, but you just went for it, so fine. Yep, it was I was similarly like, no, just no. And also no. And then as he was talking through and I started thinking about it. No, wait, this does actually make some sense.