1. managing compute clusters has gotten a lot easier but managing storage clusters and running good storage products for block & object storage on them is very very very far from a solved problem and quite frankly it sucks and is not fun.
2. planning out buying, installing, upgrading, patching, and retiring hardware, server/hypervisor OSs, takes waaaaaaaaay more engineering management skill and experience than 99.9% of companies have. Plus you probably have to fight for every dollar of investment against a board / investors. Even at the cloud provider we were constantly getting kneecapped by upper management not wanting to spend money on hardware.
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after working at a cloud provider, I would say:
1. managing compute clusters has gotten a lot easier but managing storage clusters and running good storage products for block & object storage on them is very very very far from a solved problem and quite frankly it sucks and is not fun.
2. planning out buying, installing, upgrading, patching, and retiring hardware, server/hypervisor OSs, takes waaaaaaaaay more engineering management skill and experience than 99.9% of companies have. Plus you probably have to fight for every dollar of investment against a board / investors. Even at the cloud provider we were constantly getting kneecapped by upper management not wanting to spend money on hardware.