8 ms·

Certainly, a good part of A.W.S. software is open source, which means it could be used elsewhere, and companies like Microsoft and Google also have big

by crabasa 11y ago

Certainly, a good part of A.W.S. software is open source, which means it could be used elsewhere, and companies like Microsoft and Google also have big clouds. But neither of them, nor IBM, which also wants the cloud business, created more than 500 new features and services last year, as A.W.S. did. Not sure about the precision of that number, but the speed and agility of AWS compared to MSFT/GOOG/IBM is astonishing. I still don't quite understand how they do it.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
patio11 11y ago
I think it's more or less "Throw a few billion dollars at the problem; continue doing so for years." (My over-under for the size of the AWS team would be, oh, 2,500 engineers.)
azinman2 11y ago
Or is it that everyone else is so slow. My guess is Google/MSFT is doing a lot of putting out fires since their offerings are newer than AWS, and they're not getting as much usage (which makes bugs appear earlier). That's been my understanding as to why Dropbox hasn't changed all that much -- they've just been making sure scaling works. But can teams of 10 at MSFT/GOOG really not put out new desirable product with any decent timeframe? They have enough staff members.
- abakker 11y ago
  I think with Google, it is really unclear whether the org. as a whole really believed in their Cloud products. They really don't take selling to the biggest users very seriously. Self-service has been fine for Google's low-margin businesses in the past, but its not clear that they've made any effort to invest in the ecosystem of other vendors the way Amazon has. If the IaaS vendor is low-cost/commodity, then most companies will be swayed by the size and competence of the ecosystem as a form of 'insurance'. Now that Alphabet is the parent company, maybe this part of google can be taken more seriously. They are very capable of succeeding, but they don't really understand B2B/Enteprise and really never have.
  - varelse 11y ago
    Speaking as an ex-googler, I think a disturbing amount of Google is dedicated to pointless blind-allocated me-too attempts to kick sand in the face of its competitors. Of course, I also think they could work wonders on their horrible attrition rate by ending blind allocation for middle to senior talent, so I'm clearly out of my mind.
    - Pyxl101 11y ago
      I haven't heard about blind allocation before. Is there a good article I can read to learn more about it? This seems to explain some of it: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/2kzo5v/i_have_a_google_offer_but_im_interested_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/2kzo5v/i...
  - pnathan 11y ago
    Google is legendary for its inability to have medium-/high-touch relationships with customers. Unfortunately. I've always thought their products were pretty high quality.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
codeonfire 11y ago
My interpretation is that those companies are stodgey. It's always one or two guys trying to be in charge of the whole circus instead of having 5 rings going on. Google and Microsoft also have lengthy, old school review processes for performance, security, etc and lots of gatekeepers. Amazon plays more loose. Not sure about IBM, I thought they just outsource stuff and make jeopardy robots.
- Negitivefrags 11y ago
  IBM own Softlayer. http://www.softlayer.com/ http://www.softlayer.com/
falcolas 11y ago
Pessimistically, I believe they achieve such speed by strictly limiting the amount time they put into polish and bugfixes for the products they've already created. After all, it works for their platform, what more could someone want?
- varelse 11y ago
  AWS IMO is insanely great at cutting the price of established web services. This is more than enough to carry them for the next 5-10 years. What will be interesting is how they deal with what comes afterwards...
- segmondy 11y ago
  feature requests is not the same as bugs.
devy 11y ago
Half way through the article, it reads: One way Amazon adds so many features, though it won’t talk much about this, is to contract key elements from other companies. QuickSight, the data analysis tool announced on Wednesday as a competitor to IBM’s Cognos, uses technology A.W.S. hired from a start-up called Zoomdata, according to people familiar with the technology. They asked not to be named in order to maintain professional relationships.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
rstianyu 11y ago
microsoft azure has added the same amount of new features during the past year as well (600+ features). the new services like machine learning, data factory, data lakes, sql data warehouse, and powerbi are amazingly powerful. the only problem is people seem to ignore them in the conversation of cloud computing.
anon1mous 11y ago
Amazon has by far the best dev leads. Some of them are guys who worked on the Common Lisp standards in the 80s, some are 22 yo Bring Your Own JS framework hippies. But the management manages to select for lead roles the very best devs internally and mighty capable ppl externally.
quanticle 11y ago
>I still don't quite understand how they do it. Why maintain and improve your existing services when you can get credit for launching a new shiny thing? Steve Yegge called out this tendency in his (in)famous platforms rant [1]: They prioritize launching early over everything else, including retention and engineering discipline and a bunch of other stuff that turns out to matter in the long run. So even though it's given them some competitive advantages in the marketplace, it's created enough other problems to make it something less than a slam-dunk. Amazon's "speed and agility" comes at the cost of not updating anything, ever. If you want new functionality, you'll have to integrate a new service. [1]: https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX
- joevandyk 11y ago
  There's benefits to immutable/stable services.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Hydraulix989 11y ago
  How do they do it? With their Bezos-esque working hours, of course.
5ersi 11y ago
What speed are you talking about? In my experience EC2 is not performant. For example: http://remcobron.com/cloud-server-review-and-comparison-amazon-aws-ec2-vs-linode-vs-digitalocean/ http://remcobron.com/cloud-server-review-and-comparison-amaz...

by crabasa 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

patio11 11y ago

I think it's more or less "Throw a few billion dollars at the problem; continue doing so for years." (My over-under for the size of the AWS team would be, oh, 2,500 engineers.)

azinman2 11y ago

Or is it that everyone else is so slow. My guess is Google/MSFT is doing a lot of putting out fires since their offerings are newer than AWS, and they're not getting as much usage (which makes bugs appear earlier). That's been my understanding as to why Dropbox hasn't changed all that much -- they've just been making sure scaling works. But can teams of 10 at MSFT/GOOG really not put out new desirable product with any decent timeframe? They have enough staff members.

abakker 11y ago
I think with Google, it is really unclear whether the org. as a whole really believed in their Cloud products. They really don't take selling to the biggest users very seriously. Self-service has been fine for Google's low-margin businesses in the past, but its not clear that they've made any effort to invest in the ecosystem of other vendors the way Amazon has. If the IaaS vendor is low-cost/commodity, then most companies will be swayed by the size and competence of the ecosystem as a form of 'insurance'. Now that Alphabet is the parent company, maybe this part of google can be taken more seriously. They are very capable of succeeding, but they don't really understand B2B/Enteprise and really never have.
- varelse 11y ago
  Speaking as an ex-googler, I think a disturbing amount of Google is dedicated to pointless blind-allocated me-too attempts to kick sand in the face of its competitors. Of course, I also think they could work wonders on their horrible attrition rate by ending blind allocation for middle to senior talent, so I'm clearly out of my mind.
  - Pyxl101 11y ago
    I haven't heard about blind allocation before. Is there a good article I can read to learn more about it? This seems to explain some of it: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/2kzo5v/i_have_a_google_offer_but_im_interested_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/2kzo5v/i...
- pnathan 11y ago
  Google is legendary for its inability to have medium-/high-touch relationships with customers. Unfortunately. I've always thought their products were pretty high quality.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

codeonfire 11y ago

My interpretation is that those companies are stodgey. It's always one or two guys trying to be in charge of the whole circus instead of having 5 rings going on. Google and Microsoft also have lengthy, old school review processes for performance, security, etc and lots of gatekeepers. Amazon plays more loose. Not sure about IBM, I thought they just outsource stuff and make jeopardy robots.

Negitivefrags 11y ago
IBM own Softlayer. http://www.softlayer.com/ http://www.softlayer.com/

falcolas 11y ago

Pessimistically, I believe they achieve such speed by strictly limiting the amount time they put into polish and bugfixes for the products they've already created. After all, it works for their platform, what more could someone want?

varelse 11y ago
AWS IMO is insanely great at cutting the price of established web services. This is more than enough to carry them for the next 5-10 years. What will be interesting is how they deal with what comes afterwards...
segmondy 11y ago
feature requests is not the same as bugs.

devy 11y ago

Half way through the article, it reads: One way Amazon adds so many features, though it won’t talk much about this, is to contract key elements from other companies. QuickSight, the data analysis tool announced on Wednesday as a competitor to IBM’s Cognos, uses technology A.W.S. hired from a start-up called Zoomdata, according to people familiar with the technology. They asked not to be named in order to maintain professional relationships.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

rstianyu 11y ago

microsoft azure has added the same amount of new features during the past year as well (600+ features). the new services like machine learning, data factory, data lakes, sql data warehouse, and powerbi are amazingly powerful. the only problem is people seem to ignore them in the conversation of cloud computing.

anon1mous 11y ago

Amazon has by far the best dev leads. Some of them are guys who worked on the Common Lisp standards in the 80s, some are 22 yo Bring Your Own JS framework hippies. But the management manages to select for lead roles the very best devs internally and mighty capable ppl externally.

quanticle 11y ago

>I still don't quite understand how they do it. Why maintain and improve your existing services when you can get credit for launching a new shiny thing? Steve Yegge called out this tendency in his (in)famous platforms rant [1]: They prioritize launching early over everything else, including retention and engineering discipline and a bunch of other stuff that turns out to matter in the long run. So even though it's given them some competitive advantages in the marketplace, it's created enough other problems to make it something less than a slam-dunk. Amazon's "speed and agility" comes at the cost of not updating anything, ever. If you want new functionality, you'll have to integrate a new service. [1]: https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX

joevandyk 11y ago
There's benefits to immutable/stable services.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Hydraulix989 11y ago
How do they do it? With their Bezos-esque working hours, of course.

5ersi 11y ago

What speed are you talking about? In my experience EC2 is not performant. For example: http://remcobron.com/cloud-server-review-and-comparison-amazon-aws-ec2-vs-linode-vs-digitalocean/ http://remcobron.com/cloud-server-review-and-comparison-amaz...