Thinking of starting a small business IT consulting

[Webhead]

I know you all realize that us hardware people are the TV repairmen from the 60's? Everything in the cloud, hardware craps, throw it out, buy a new one, bring it down from the cloud, or leave it up there and work it. Cell phone screen repair is hot now. We have store fronts called "Broke Ass Phone" stores advertising on the radio here. I believe small business is the spot we need to focus on.

I agree. There is still a need for the small business I think. Even if it's just helping a customer get a web site put up. Most people do need help with technology.

As for everything being in the cloud,... you sure got that right too. It's crazy. I've been working on learning AWS lately. They have a free tier that allows you to use it and learn it. Turns out it's exactly the same thing as I've ever done all these years. But instead of building a physical server, I build an EC2 Instance. Or instead of creating a folder on the server and sharing it, I just create an S3 bucket. So no more plugging things in, attaching KVM switches, screwing parts together, lifting heavy equipment, etc. Now you just login and create whatever you need. LOL

[CeeBee]

I've been working on learning AWS lately. [...] But instead of building a physical server, I build an EC2 Instance.

There is a new player on the field and it's directly chewing into the EC2 user base... AWS Lambda, server-less web services.. on-demand computing billed to the 0.1 second.
The advantage for Amazon is that they provide the same computing power with fewer resources, no need for some apps to sit on top of an OS multiplied across tens of thousands of VMs.
As a developer I would just setup the app, upload my code to the service and it's ready to serve 1 client/day or 1 million clients per hour, no need to worry about load balancing and adding extra resources ahead of a major national campaign.

[Webhead]

There is a new player on the field and it's directly chewing into the EC2 user base... AWS Lambda, server-less web services.. on-demand computing billed to the 0.1 second.
The advantage for Amazon is that they provide the same computing power with fewer resources, no need for some apps to sit on top of an OS multiplied across tens of thousands of VMs.
As a developer I would just setup the app, upload my code to the service and it's ready to serve 1 client/day or 1 million clients per hour, no need to worry about load balancing and adding extra resources ahead of a major national campaign.

That is so awesome. It's amazing how easy AWS makes everything now. Heck, I can bring up an entire solution with just my keyboard. Gone are the days of doing back breaking work setting up physical servers, etc. Pretty amazing. And this has been around and growing all these years. I'm just now discovering it. I wish I would've jumped on this bandwagon in the beginning.