Day Two Cloud 106: Towards A More Open Cloud

Most public clouds are closed. That is, cloud providers make it hard for customers to move workloads and data out, and integrating services from competing clouds is fraught with complications. But does it have to be this way? On today’s episode we discuss the notion of open cloud. The premise behind open cloud is about reducing or minimizing costs of migrating from a public cloud. In theory, open cloud lets organizations keep their options open to make changes, and should presumably increase competition because cloud providers can’t lock in customers. Our guest is Chris Psaltis, co-founder and CEO of Mist.io, a startup building an open-source, multi-cloud management platform. This is not a sponsored episode. We discuss: * A definition of open cloud * Why some kind of lock-in is inevitable * Whether lock-in is inherently bad * Why open cloud makes sense in a time of rapid technological change * A spectrum of openness among cloud services * What open cloud might look like for an enterprise * Whether open cloud can be sustained * More Takeaways: There are no totally open or closed clouds. It is a spectrum. Do your homework. The game is survival of the fittest, design your organization accordingly. Sponsor: CBT Nuggets CBT Nuggets is IT training for IT professionals and anyone looking to build IT skills. If you want to make fully operational your networking, security, cloud, automation, or DevOps battle station visit cbtnuggets.com/cloud. Show Links: Mist.io Mist.io Blog The True Meaning of “Open Cloud” – Mist.io Rule number one: Avoid vendor lock-in – Sean Boots @cpsaltis – Chris Psaltis on Twitter Chris Psaltis on LinkedIn Transcript: [00:00:01.010] – Ethan [AD] Sponsor CBT Nuggets is IT training for IT professionals and anyone looking to build IT skills, if you want to make fully operational your networking cloud security automation or DevOps Battle Station, visit CBT nuggets dotcom cloud. That’s CBT nuggets. Dotcom cloud. [/AD] [00:00:25.600] – Ned Welcome to Day Two Cloud, today’s conversation is about open cloud, and you might wonder what the heck is an open cloud and why do I care? Aren’t all clouds closed as far as I’m concerned? Well, they’re not. And we’ve got Chris Psaltis from mist.io to talk to us about it. Ethan, what stood out to you in the conversation? [00:00:46.120] – Ethan We get talking about vendor lock in. And this is a thing that I feel very strongly about, but in a conflicted way. I feel strongly in multiple directions for multiple reasons. Ned and open cloud as a topic kind of factors into this, because the whole idea is, well, wait a minute, I want to have flexibility and move workloads and do my thing wherever I want to do my thing. And these pesky clouds with their proprietary services that are all integrated are locking me in and how do I feel about that? And I’m of two minds. I’m strongly of two minds. And it’s really strange. Anyway, we have that part of the conversation along the way in this. And our guest, Chris,