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I've always been introgued by the Guardian's focus on building its own technology. It seems a "bold" strategy, given that tech is not its core business and the

I've always been introgued by the Guardian's focus on building its own technology. It seems a "bold" strategy, given that tech is not its core business and the newspaper part of the group (which is pretty much all that remains now, since they've sold off their other assets) has been consistently losing money for some time now. I wonder if that strategy would still be in place if it wasn't owned by a not-for-profit trust. Other publishers who have gone down the "We're a tech company!" route have been forced to give up on that strategy[1]. I wonder whether the Guardian will be able to make that breakthrough, or whether they'll end up migrating to Wordpress or something similar. 1: http://digiday.com/publishers/gawkers-kinja-retreat-shows-false-hope-in-publishers-licensing-tech/ http://digiday.com/publishers/gawkers-kinja-retreat-shows-fa...

gaius 11y ago
They have a few very charismatic people in tech there, the kind of people who are very good showmen and salesmen (or women) but they've been "architects" or similar their whole careers, not hands-dirty engineers, and their grasp of what's feasible or not is driven mainly by which vendor buys them the nicest lunch or has the nicest typography in their whitepapers.
- jackgavigan 11y ago
  Do you have direct experience of working there?
  - gaius 11y ago
    Back in the day as an expensive consultant, yes, and I know a few people there now. If you want to see a newspaper who are really doing something interesting with technology, check out the Daily Mail, last I heard they were going all-in on Scala. Newspapers that are still in print are fascinating IT places - because come hell or high water, the paper has to come out the next morning. They are the definition of mission critical. Websites are easy in comparison.
    - jackgavigan 11y ago
      Interesting. Did any of these showmen find their way into GDS, by any chance? Would love to discuss over a pint sometime. Do you attend HNLondon?
cm2187 11y ago
You can say that of any company who owns its own servers. The problem is less that a company would want to keep control of its own infrastructure. But that there doesn't seem to be a software solution available to any company who wishes to do so. The "let Amazon run it" standard response is I think problematic: the cloud market is extremely concentrated. This is not a good thing in term of competition and diversification. We have already seen many times a bad software update shutting down a whole cloud service. Having more concentration is only going to make our infrastructures less resilient.

gaius 11y ago

They have a few very charismatic people in tech there, the kind of people who are very good showmen and salesmen (or women) but they've been "architects" or similar their whole careers, not hands-dirty engineers, and their grasp of what's feasible or not is driven mainly by which vendor buys them the nicest lunch or has the nicest typography in their whitepapers.

jackgavigan 11y ago
Do you have direct experience of working there?
- gaius 11y ago
  Back in the day as an expensive consultant, yes, and I know a few people there now. If you want to see a newspaper who are really doing something interesting with technology, check out the Daily Mail, last I heard they were going all-in on Scala. Newspapers that are still in print are fascinating IT places - because come hell or high water, the paper has to come out the next morning. They are the definition of mission critical. Websites are easy in comparison.
  - jackgavigan 11y ago
    Interesting. Did any of these showmen find their way into GDS, by any chance? Would love to discuss over a pint sometime. Do you attend HNLondon?

cm2187 11y ago

You can say that of any company who owns its own servers. The problem is less that a company would want to keep control of its own infrastructure. But that there doesn't seem to be a software solution available to any company who wishes to do so. The "let Amazon run it" standard response is I think problematic: the cloud market is extremely concentrated. This is not a good thing in term of competition and diversification. We have already seen many times a bad software update shutting down a whole cloud service. Having more concentration is only going to make our infrastructures less resilient.