X : Do you think cloud will decentralise?
Me : Already has - started with regions and AZs and is now rapidly expanding into outpost, greengrass, EKS anwhere.
X : No, I mean many providers.
Me : There are two forms of decentralisation - provision and control (i.e. authorities) ...
... what is happening is decentralisation of provision (i.e. cloud everywhere, at the edge) but under centralised authorities (Amazon, Alibaba, MSFT, Google etc).
X : What about decentralisation of control?
Me : Many companies working to a common standard ...
... that was the dream of OpenStack but they blew that on day one creating a collective prisoner dilemma. They are trying to recorrect this with K8s but the cloud has moved on, higher up the stack ...
... so, the idea of a marketplace of many different companies each having authority is ... wishful thinking by past vendors and clients they've hoodwinked. Maybe in 15-20 years we will get another go ... open source is a long game ...
... more likely is many points of provision i.e. companies offering EKS anywhere on a utility basis but under centralised authority e.g. AWS.
So, yes, the cloud is going to edge, has been for sometime but it'll be AWS / Alibaba / MSFT cloud that is everywhere.