Behind The Scenes: What Lies Beneath Your Benchmarks?
Oracle News, Thursday, August 24,2023
As an engineer, I'm a reluctant consumer, especially of commodity technology. I enjoy solving constraint problems, so I like to comparison shop. Then, analysis paralysis sets in. I get overwhelmed by the variables and potential tradeoffs. Once I have managed to find a solution that doesn't get in my way, I'm reluctant to upgrade -- with laptops, phones, and cars alike.
As a cloud builder, I become part of that problem. Our customers adopt the cloud for flexibility, agility, and commodify cutting-edge tech. The cloud can provide great operational and financial efficiency, but efficiency requires vigilance. Efficiency should be simple, but it's not. To provide flexibility, agility, and cutting edge tech, the optimal configuration changes at a frequent, overwhelming pace.
I am reluctant to upgrade my work laptop--while in the interim, we have introduced five new Compute architectures since I got it. These are all big improvements worth consideration. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has benefited from evaluating and adopting them ourselves. But keeping up with changes in the cloud, with fast experimentation and low switching costs, isn't easy. Software upgrade cycles often fall behind new technology releases, which makes cloud efficiency a gnarly, multi-objective optimization problem.