I see a cycle coming. I think Azure is a fairly compelling idea, but it makes me wonder what the company I work for will do going forward. We have obviously seen economies of scale work to a corporation’s advantage. So will large corporations like mine be better off negotiating cloud rates with Microsoft based on a certain amount of volume? If so what would this do to developer productivity?
Instead of the developer just being able to create a new environment, I can just see these companies putting process in place to provision the new environment in their configured way. Thus it would raise the maturity level, but reduce productivity. Imagine having an “Azure Development Workspace” catalog item where it has to go through approval chains and get lots of people involved.
It may sound cynical, but it seems every time something comes out that is supposed to simplify life, we add process (as opposed to guidelines) for formal structure and thus make life more complicated and expensive.
The Watering Can 