It seems every year the word commodity appears when discussing cloud computing.  Yet we are seeing the dominance of Amazon, the emergence of Microsoft Azure as a strong contender. Google’s deep pockets & architecture keep them a credible competitor. None of these players is playing a commodity game despite regularly trumpeting price cuts.

Price cuts are the inverse side of Moore’s Law: instead of trumpeting number of transistors, they trumpet the reduced cost of the compute unit.

So reading this article from GigaOm, “Yes, IT can be sold like a barrel of oil (but it’s going to take some work)“, reminds me that commodity dreams die hard.

Choice quote:

Big companies use commodity contracts to ensure predictable prices for oil, wheat, electricity, metal and other crucial supplies that keep their businesses going. These days, a crucial supply for many companies is cloud computing power — raising the question of whether that too can be bought and traded in the same way as oil or oranges.

A recent partnership suggests the answer is yes, and that we’re heading to a world where companies won’t just turn to Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure for cloud services, but to a commodities market that offers the best price, on the spot or in the future, for a range of interchangeable IT infrastructure.

I strongly disagree this is likely in the foreseeable future (3-6 years). Yes there will be price competition but that’s normal.

I wrote about why I don’t believe in this a little over a year ago. Not much has changed.

Here’s the original post where I dismissed brokers: “Brilliant! I Dismiss Service Brokers on Monday. Someone Announces One on Tuesday. Enron Bandwith Exchange Anyone?”

That’s my opinion. Not for the next 3-6 years. And maybe not after that either. But I’m product guy, not a futurist. Just a working class product guy.