Technology

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After years of adoption, differentiation has started to disappear on some layers of cloud systems, particularly infrastructure. While there are still notable differences between providers, and particularly cost and skill implications between public, private, and on-premise/user-owned cloud systems, cloud as a baseline technology has become a commodity. “Yes, it is very commoditised," says Trent Lester, head of technology at cloud services and hosting provider IronTree. "But that also drives innovation because it encourages a more competitive market, pushing innovation and differentiation in other areas.”

That differentiation is very customer-oriented. Lester notes that in many circumstances, one hypervisor is similar to another, and many cloud users care little about the difference. They care more about matching the right services to their workloads, and whether a cloud service provider can meet those expectations with skills, experience, responsiveness, and cost.