Most Kubernetes abstractions add complexity for complexity's sake. Operators are the exception — they encode operational knowledge into software and turn 'file a ticket and wait three days' into 'apply a YAML file and get a database in two minutes.'
Post-merger tech consolidation is one of the most expensive, least glamorous problems in enterprise IT. Nobody talks about it because it's not sexy. But it's where careers go to die and budgets go to evaporate.
Vendor consultants optimise for showcasing their platform's capabilities, not for your team's ability to maintain it. They build reference architectures, not products. The demo passes. Production doesn't.
Nobody is running workloads portably across clouds. They're running different things on different clouds and calling it a strategy. Multi-cloud is what happens when nobody's in charge.
The cloud wars are raging. The secret to coming out unscathed is to back open technologies, think carefully about IaaS vs PaaS, and not get locked in while the giants fight it out.
Software as a service is a quiet revolution, dramatically changing the way we do things. The winners accept that they're carrying the can for quality of service — and that's their competitive advantage.