• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI

2

Former top Russian official admits the country is over Putin and can 'imagine a future without him' — even elites bail as Kremlin seizes their assets 

3

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises

1

Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI

2

Former top Russian official admits the country is over Putin and can 'imagine a future without him' — even elites bail as Kremlin seizes their assets 

3

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
TechFortune 500

Here Are 5 Cloud Tech Lessons You Need to Know This Week

Barb Darrow
By
Barb Darrow
Barb Darrow
Down Arrow Button Icon
Barb Darrow
By
Barb Darrow
Barb Darrow
Down Arrow Button Icon
November 10, 2016, 11:40 AM ET
470621983
Sharks floating in cloudsJohn Lund/ Getty Images/ Blend Images

More and more corporate data and software now runs in the cloud, meaning outside a business’s own data centers. Software that once ran on internal servers has pretty much flown the coop. If your company uses Salesforce.com, Dropbox, or Microsoft Office 365, you’re part of the great cloud generation.

Ideally, you won’t notice the massive, tectonic change underlying this shift from on-premises to cloud. But sometimes, alas, you will.

As was the case with the recent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that took down Dyn’s domain name services (DNS), which blocked many Internet users on the Eastern Seaboard from their favorite applications. And it wasn’t just Twitter (TWTR), Netflix (NFLX), and Reddit, but also more business-focused applications from Github, Zendesk (ZEN), Zoho, Box (BOX), and other services. (For further information, Gizmodo complied a comprehensive list.)

So ten years into this massive tech migration, what have we learned? Here are some takeaways from tech leaders who spoke at the Structure Conference this week in San Francisco.

The Companies You Depend Upon Depend Upon Others

The use of applications from Salesforce (CRM), Microsoft (MSFT), and other companies that stream services over the Internet means you are dependent not only on those vendors, but on their partners as well.

It wasn’t Box’s fault that Dyn went down, but the lesson here is those big suppliers need to use more than one domain name service, said Lance Crosby, co-founder and CEO of Stackpath, a security startup. His company did not use Dyn, but it was hugely impacted by what happened to Dyn.

To be fair, Dyn recovered fairly quickly given the sheer size of the attack, which reportedly relied on millions of connected devices—most of which either were not password-protected or used factory default settings. But this was a very bad portent of things to come, said Crosby, who warned that the Internet is becoming a very dangerous place.

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.

Within a few years, it could become unusable, he predicted. “You’ll connect to the Internet only as long as it takes to transact business and immediately disconnect,” he said. That, clearly, is not the way we use the Internet now.

Don’t Forget the Dark Side of Disruption

Cloud services—including infrastructure from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google—can cut costs for tech companies and make them more flexible. But all those productivity gains impact others in negative ways. The people who used to reconfigure and maintain all those traditional server rooms and data centers are in less demand now. Automation means fewer people are needed for mundane tasks

Joyent chief technology officer Brian Cantrill pointed out that the impact of technology on people helped drive voters to Donald Trump. Cantrill’s post-election night talk outlined how those who are displaced by automation are not longer taking these huge changes lying down. As more jobs in healthcare, education, and transportation become automated out of existence, there will be more disaffected, under-, or unemployed people on the street. If they are not retrained for other jobs, that means trouble not only for these citizens, but also for businesses looking to sell to them.

Some Things Never Change

There were the usual arguments and debates over whether moving data and software to AWS, Microsoft Azure, or some other public cloud is always the cheapest, best option. For uneven, “spiky” workloads that change by the week, day, or hour, it makes sense to use flexible public cloud services because customers pay only for what they use. Why buy a pricey server that you have to power, maintain, and upgrade yourself if you use 10% of its capacity 90% of the time?

But for stable production workloads, it can be cheaper to run your own data center, skeptics continue to insist. One Structure attendee, who did not identify himself, asked AWS product strategy general manager Matt Wood about this. The questioner said that for a big stable set of tasks, it can be four times cheaper to run in-house versus AWS. The questioner’s contention is backed up by the fact that Dropbox, which relied heavily on AWS to store millions of customer files, has moved 90% of that work into its own data centers. Wood offered to go over the math with the questioner, and the session ended.

https://twitter.com/tomkrazit/status/796414504141656064

Risk-Averse Companies Are Now Moving to the Cloud

Microsoft cloud chief Scott Guthrie said even the most conservative financial institutions, the too-big-to-fail banks are now aboard the cloud bandwagon. These are the same sorts of companies that have shied away from the cloud because they feel they don’t have control of their hardware.

Nowadays, Guthrie claimed 75% of the largest banks and 90% of the Fortune 500 overall now use Microsoft Azure in some capacity. AWS’s Woods also noted how Capital One (COF), an early cloud advocate among banks, uses AWS to power its mobile apps.

Keep Your Data Safe—And in Many Places

There is an adage in modern computing: Never have one point of failure. And that is as true when it comes to your personal data as anywhere, remarked Paula Long, CEO of DataGravity, a New Hampshire-based data storage specialist.

Keeping multiple (encrypted) copies of your important data is table stakes for everyone from now on.

About the Author
Barb Darrow
By Barb Darrow
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in Tech

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Tech

murdochs
CommentaryMedia
OpenAI paid $100 million for a talk show. James Murdoch is eyeing an even bigger deal. The hot new asset class is humanity
By Lin CherryMay 17, 2026
2 hours ago
dennis
CommentaryAI agents
Freshworks CEO: why agile enterprises are winning the AI race — and what they did differently
By Dennis WoodsideMay 17, 2026
3 hours ago
A man with a headset sits at a desk in a call center.
EconomyAutomation
The AI boom hasn’t stopped U.S. companies from hiring cheap offshore labor, and overseas call center employment is still skyrocketing
By Sasha RogelbergMay 17, 2026
3 hours ago
Zillow CEO doubles down on remote-work model: ‘There is talent everywhere in this country’
Workplace Cultureremote work
Zillow CEO doubles down on remote-work model: ‘There is talent everywhere in this country’
By Marco Quiroz-GutierrezMay 17, 2026
3 hours ago
Stressed job seeker
SuccessGen Z
Gen Z is right about the job hunt—it really is worse than it was for millennials, with nearly 60% of fresh-faced grads frozen out of the workforce
By Emma BurleighMay 17, 2026
3 hours ago
A 45,000-person labor strike at Samsung’s memory chip plants could throw a wrench into the AI boom
EconomySamsung
A 45,000-person labor strike at Samsung’s memory chip plants could throw a wrench into the AI boom
By Catherina GioinoMay 17, 2026
6 hours ago

Most Popular

Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI
AI
Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI
By Jake AngeloMay 16, 2026
1 day ago
Former top Russian official admits the country is over Putin and can 'imagine a future without him' — even elites bail as Kremlin seizes their assets 
Politics
Former top Russian official admits the country is over Putin and can 'imagine a future without him' — even elites bail as Kremlin seizes their assets 
By Jason MaMay 16, 2026
17 hours ago
The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
Politics
The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
By Jake AngeloMay 12, 2026
5 days ago
‘You’re not a hero, you’re a liability’: Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary warns Gen Z founders to stop glorifying hustle culture
Future of Work
‘You’re not a hero, you’re a liability’: Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary warns Gen Z founders to stop glorifying hustle culture
By Jacqueline MunisMay 16, 2026
1 day ago
Meet the 20-year-old CEO who launched a company in high school to solve Gen Z's entry-level job crisis
Future of Work
Meet the 20-year-old CEO who launched a company in high school to solve Gen Z's entry-level job crisis
By Jake AngeloMay 16, 2026
1 day ago
SpaceX heads into a record-shattering IPO with the 'deepest moat that exists today' as investors vow to 'never bet against Elon'
Innovation
SpaceX heads into a record-shattering IPO with the 'deepest moat that exists today' as investors vow to 'never bet against Elon'
By Jason MaMay 16, 2026
23 hours ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.