There certainly is. And it strongly depends on industry. For some, Cloud simply cannot be applied, be it for regulatory, technical or other reasons of suitability. The customer makes the choice. The developer needs a tool allowing to meet customer requirements. It’s that simple.
A platform vendor can try to convince me (developer) of the advantages of his Cloud offering. If suitable, I may in turn suggest this offering to my customer.
A platform vendor who starts cutting off other choices than Cloud is already on his way out, for strategical reasons.
The old adage ‘Cloud is someone else’s computer’ holds true.
Some time ago, I have read that the Cloud was less in demand - can't recall where - and that lots of people step down from Cloud.
Personally, I don't like Cloud because that means my systems and data are in someone's else hands. Sure there are big players like Amazon, but there are also other players that I am not sure I can trust.
When on Claris Cloud, you can't control when a patch is applied. If it comes with regression bugs, you're done. When it's your own hardware and software, you read and watch before running to apply a patch.
Before the Cloud was born, the buzz word was outsourcing. A lot of companies run to that, they were told that it would cost less . . . It costs less, but the the companies found out that these outsources were working for themselves and not for the customer. Nobody talk about outsourcing anymore.
When you have your own infrastructure and competent IT employees dedicated to you, it's a good thing.
I get that. One of the big things that change was when cloud offerings became more distributed, and less monolithic. Instead of offering you this full system, they offer one thing, really well. Cake fly is a perfect example. The offering becomes super simple, has an API, and handles the right problems for you. That makes it a viable cloud offering.
Next is security and maintenance. In areas where there is sufficient internet coverage, there is little downside to an online version. Web technology simplified so much.
Going back to @Torsten post, because this doesn’t work for everyone, it’s why they aren't planning on dropping the on-prem deployment model. But the technology in it, will still be cloud technology.
From my conversations, I have complete confidence on-peen will be around for a long time. It’s going to change. Much like we see happening with OS versions. Over time, we are going to be able to do less directly with the OS, and it will be handled through pre-defined APIs. Todd and Dave Ramsey and a group of us were talking about this yesterday.
That's not what I'm hearing from people at Claris. The stated future for them is a totally new product that is NOT the FileMaker we know and love - Cloud or onprem - it's a SaaS-based workflow/app builder like workato/power apps, etc.
I don't see it moving to Cloud only. But I'll bet we see FMS disappear for Windows and Mac in the next few years. With only a Linux version of FMS, it will run either on a local Linux machine or on AWS and they only need to test and maintain one version/platform.
They will lose some big customers -- perhaps their biggest -- by moving to Cloud only. I have a couple large movie industry clients that would never, ever, EVER allow their database to live off-premises (let alone on a third-party owned server).
The stated future for them is a totally new product that is NOT the FileMaker we know and love - Cloud or onprem - it's a SaaS-based workflow/app builder like workato/power apps, etc.
SaaS is still based on a cloud server, which is usually running on Linux. A local Linux server could also run an on-prem SaaS solution.
The Developer Subscription is NOT based on FMCloud. That would cost them money. It very clearly says is it an on-premise license, it is for testing AND development, the the copy of FMP that comes with it can ONLY connect to the server license that comes with it.
(It includes) "up to three (3) licenses of Claris FileMaker Server" (i.e. not FM Cloud) and "The FileMaker Server license may only be used for development and testing purposes. It is not eligible to convert to FileMaker Cloud for AWS"
I do not see many of the low code competitors offering onprem - Powerapps, Airtable, Honeycode, etc. The new product shown at the devcon keynote last year plus Claris' emphasizing how they are "cloud-first" does not fill me with confidence about the current FileMaker platform in the long term. I could be wrong but I'm also hearing from people within Claris that there is internal division about what will happen to FileMaker onprem and the lack of resources set aside for it. It's prudent to have a diversified skillset with this uncertainly.
Srini was very clear, I feel, in his presentation. That is also reenforced by the conversation my boss had with Sirni directly at lunch that day. It is everyone interpreting "Cloud-first" as meaning on-prem is now a lower class citizen at Claris. That is not what I hear from the people I know at Claris internally.
What will happen, is that FileMaker Server may change in the long term. Instead of being built as a separate product from FileMaker Cloud, the 2 will merge into a single code base ( if they aren't already ). Deployment of FileMaker Server will most definitely change.
This is prudent advice, even with significant certainty. I don't agree however, that for most people, this change creates uncertainty. If anything, these changes prepare FileMaker for the future, and creates that forward progression that keeps the platform relevant.
Developers better be prudent, as @dbguy wisely suggests.
Trust can be earned by being a reliable and predictable partner. Smart marketing is no surrogate to that.
The goal with the Linux deployment is, as @Bobino said, to containerize it. It will be an appliance.
Long term, it's a lot of maintenance for the Claris engineers to keep up 3 OS version to support. It becomes a little easier as they swap in technology that runs on all 3, so we will have to see what Claris actually does. Could it be that they eventually move to a single OS, Linux? Maybe, I guess. I am not convinced of that. Windows is so big in the IT server world, I honestly don't see them dropping Windows deployment for FileMaker Server. If anything, maybe macOS, since it no longer carries true server grade hardware any longer... but also still not convinced of that either. At the same time, I'm not overly concerned about it. Linux deployment will likely become our default as the stable release matures.
I believe this is the "next gen" product they refer to hopefully we will learn more at Engage this year. Why they want to put resources into this and not instead direct those resources to FM is a mystery to me and very disappointing.
It depends who you talk to at Claris. From some of the old-timers, I hear a different story - that there is no increase in the total number of engineers but now 4 product lines to support instead of 1. This is my concern - that FM is now under-resourced.